Trying to write a profile, are we? What a good time to have writer's block! - My muse, apparently.

Well since I only have one story here and likely that will be the case for some time, let's talk about that. I started writing 'Harry Potter and the Difference a Year Makes' purely as a practice piece to get better at the emotive aspects of character-focused storytelling. As such I jumped in way over my head with zero plot or character arc ideas. I apologise in advance for when that eventually comes back to bite, although at 25k words written it hasn't yet. The POV characters are going to be Harry and Hermione in roughly equal measure, with the odd extra for exposition or scenes that are too fun not to write just because the golden pair aren't present.

My goal is to write about 100k words per school year, with no plans to terminate the story before sixth year. This is entirely unreasonable given my previous experiences in long-form novel writing, but one can dream. Maybe my hatred of seeing a great story on 'indefinite hiatus' will spur me to greatness? Update: As of 65k words into year one, 100k has become 200k. Somebody save me from myself.

A few things are AU in the story:

Students start Hogwarts one year older. I want to address some mature topics without having to write all the way through to the characters being old enough to reasonably do so.
Harry and Neville were born at the end of September, putting them into the next school year. This is the crux of the story; the butterfly wing that changes the world; the difference a year makes.
A bunch of OCs are needed to populate Harry's year. I'll still be using canon characters for the important stuff unless one of my OCs steals my heart along the way.
Harry is going to be more affected by years of abuse than canon Harry was, because that's how abuse works. Canon Harry is too happy and well adjusted and that just isn't on.
Characters may not act exactly as they do in canon. It's been a long time since I read the books and I don't agree with several choices Rowling made. Sue me.

There may be well-meaning attempts made to represent to certain groups to which I, a straight white cis male with only the one disorder, do not belong. Sorry about that.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to give up their time and beta read for me, hit me up. I'm looking for feedback on how I get the POV character's feelings across more than anything else - this goes for constructive reviewers as well. Grammar may be questionable in places because I write in one draft to avoid my muse dying a tragic death through self-deprecation and boredom. Anything I missed while writing I tend to miss on the proofread too. I'm aiming to write about 2 weeks ahead of posting, which means any beta would have a week to read and get back to me. (I wouldn't be at all upset if someone missed that deadline now and then, this is a hobby not a job!)

My upload schedule is two chapters a week at around 4k words per chapter. Betting on how long it takes me to fail at that is now open.

To the characters I unashamedly bash: You all deserve it. You know what you did.
To the characters I forget to make mention of for the whole story: Whoops?
And to Hermione: I'm sorry, but I'm really not.