Current Status of Stories (2024-06-20):

As of Oct 2023, "The Finding" has my full-time attention (for some small value of "full"). As of the Jun 20, I've got 25 long'ish chapters done or 277K-words. I've been stuck on ch26 for a few weeks -- sadly, the muse doesn't want to cooperate. While there is some action, I really can't help but writing some as it's just in my nature, this is more a character driven story. Pulling a number out of the air, I'm guessing I'll hit in the low 30's for total number of chapters. I've incredibly busy right now, so it may be Aug or Sep before this story starts to post (and no promises on those months either!).

I also added a link to a very interesting essay about Harry and Ginny versus Harry and Hermione. See it below (search for 2023).

For those that want to know what I'm working on, I have several stories that I've been bouncing between, although I'm not sure what will come out. Of course, it is possible something small will appear "whenever", possibly on its own or in "Odds and Ends" -- you just never know. I doubt you'll see anything until after summer though as I'm extremely busy in my personal life for the next several months.

Stories will continue to be slow to come out. Writing only happens when I have time, I have a full time job, and I'm not paid for this. This is the order I'd like to write them in, but no guarantees. It's possible not all of these will even be written.

The Finding: Harry and Ginny "find" each other as he heads to the train for his first year. Ginny may know more about the Wizarding world than he does, but Harry knows more about magic than she does. Together, they derail plans and go their own way, not Dumbledore's.

Trek2 Omake: An extra chapter at the end with some "what if" for that universe.

"Dancing His Own Tune"?: A fifth year story with Daphne Greengrass where he decides to become more Slytherin like and independent. (generally outlined, 5 chapters written)

Abused(?): When Harry comes to Hogwarts, Albus is shocked to find that Harry was barely safe and definitely not "whole". Harry is sorted into Hufflepuff. There, he finds a secret as he tries to find healing for himself. All of Albus's plans will never happen with this Harry. (a few ideas are written)

Broken Secrets(?): Fawkes doesn't come to help Harry in the Chamber of Secrets; Harry wins anyway but he and Ginny are very broken and don't know who they can trust for help as they try to put themselves back together. (a few ideas are written)

Double Trouble: A time travel (do over) story (high level outlined but not started)

A Harry/Hermy story in a crossover universe: This is still in concepts in my head. This would be an action/comedy -- maybe.

Random Small Stuff (either stand-alone or in my "Odds and Ends" collection) might also appear.

REMINDER: My policy is that I don't start posting until the first draft is finished. This protects you as much as it protect me. :)

Lily's Child: My muse is torturing me. Most of ch 4 is done, but I'm not happy with it and can't figure out how to get to where I want. It will come out when it's ready. However, if you want to consider this story as on hiatus, feel free. OTOH, Bobmin has given me an idea that may help get this back on track -- we'll see. There's also a good chance I'll just yank it until I can get a better handle on it.

Here are some stories I've written in the Harry Potter universe. While I started uploading stories to SIYE (http:///siye/), I'm uploading here too because some of the stories I write will not fit into SIYE's guidelines. So I guess all my works will be here. If you're looking for me on SIYE, my ID is "_kb_" (yeah, a bit strange, but that's me. :-)

In some of my early stories posted here, I've noticed that I've lost some of my formatting, and a few of my chapters were cut-short. I believe I've fixed all the short chapters. I've also tried to fix the formatting in various alternate ways. But if you see a place where you suspect there should be a section marker and there isn't, it's probably just missing because the upload filter stripped it out. To make matters work, FFdotNet keeps changing the rules on what characters are allowed and what's not. My apologies, but it ain't me. :-) I'll see about what other fixes I can do.

I'd like to redo "Leave Me Alone" one day. While it was sorta what I envisioned, I had trouble getting it there. I think I've had enough reviews to help me understand what I did wrong and how to fix it, although I doubt it will ever happen due to lack of time. This is my least favorite story of the ones I've written if it matters.

A reader here on (GinaWeasleyPotter) has decided to translate my story "A Friend Indeed" into French; she has 3 chapters done last I looked. So if French is a more natural language to you than English, head on over to her profile page or directly to "Un_ami_en_effet".

Another reader here on (Myrkul) has finished translating my story "A Friend Indeed" into Polish. So if Polish is a more natural language to you than English, head on over to his profile page or directly to "Prawdziwa_przyjaciorka".

A reader here on (TraduccionesNortia) has decided to translate my story "The Grass Is Always Greener" into Spanish; she currently has 4 chapters up last I looked. So if Spanish is a more natural language to you than English, head on over to her profile page or directly to "El Césped Es Siempre Más Verde".

I hope you'll forgive me for this section, but I feel it really needs to be said...

I've had multiple reviews over multiple stories that express "Ginny-hate". They come in the form of: "I like this story so please don't pair Ginny with Harry", "I liked this story, despite Ginny being paired with Harry", "I usually don't read Ginny stories, but I liked this one", etc.

First, I'm happy that people like what I write. I enjoy writing and sharing is fun (just like they taught us in kindergarten. :) So, I must have done something right.

Second, I'm mystified by the "Ginny-hate". I suppose I can understand a very small number hating Ginny just because of something that happened in their life, like where a best friend did something mean to them and that person happened to be named Ginny, so they transfer that hate to all people named Ginny (real or fictional). Other than something like that, I truly don't understand.

I now believe that a lot of the "Ginny-hate" can be laid at either the feet of JKR who spent very little time developing Ginny (80perc) or by people being too lazy to think about and understand what JKR did (or her writing style if that explains it better for you) (20perc). (Doesn't everything generalization have an 80/20 rule? :) On the other hand, I think another major source of much of the "Ginny-hate" comes from non-H/G forums/boards (I won't name any of them lest it encourage them). There's also the aspect of by tearing Ginny down, it supposedly makes their favorite female better. Hmm, I've got 4 things here, so maybe the 80/20 rule doesn't apply here. :)

The books were written from Harry's PoV (or "Third-person limited", except for about 4 scenes in the entire series). That means, if something didn't happen around Harry, we don't know about it. To make it worse, JKR didn't write about everything that happened to him. (One of the things this means is that there are a LOT of things about the HP-universe we don't know because Harry didn't see or understand them.)

Because the story is from Harry's PoV, the extreme vast majority of the time the story focuses on Harry, Ron, and Hermione -- the Golden Trio. Ginny was not a part of that, nor was any other girl. Therefore, all girls but Hermione are essentially unknown (or a blank slate). That means, you don't know enough about them to be able to fully say if you should like them or not, and that includes Ginny and Luna to some degree -- those 2 are developed a little but all of the support characters in the 2nd tier should have been developed more, IMO. (I'll make an exception for girls like Marietta who did something very wrong to Harry, it's OK to hate them. :)

For example, if my search was done right, in book 5, Ginny talks around Harry a total of 11 times, and the conversation in each is from 2-12 paragraphs long. My numbers may not be totally correct, but they should be close enough for this analysis. That's not much information to glean about how Ginny thinks, feels, or anything else on very many subjects (Ron saying "Ginny likes..." doesn't count very much to me because we all know Ron is wrong a lot of the time, and he doesn't talk about Ginny much anyway). That is true of all other girls, except for Hermione, and only because she hung around with Harry. So I don't see any reason to hate Ginny more than any other non-Hermione girl, because we don't know the real her until you get to the last 3 books. BTW, I picked book5 because this is where H/G start to see each other as real people and become friends, forming the basis of their later relationship.

Now, I completely understand those who say something like, "It's not that I hate Ginny, but I don't understand why JKR put her and Harry together -- Hermione makes more sense." That logic has some credibility because we know about Hermione, but not very much about anyone else; therefore, it's easy (lazy?) to pick the 1 girl we know about and ignore the rest we don't know about. One could also argue that Harry and Hermione share a Muggle background, something Ginny and all the other Pureblood girls don't have. For the stories that focus on or have a lot of time spent in the Muggle world, it makes sense to pair Harry with Hermione. I've read (and enjoyed) a number of good stories in that type of universe. I have a story like that in my plot-bunny file that I hope to have time to write one day.

However, I'll also point out that Ginny shares a "core personality trait" that Hermione doesn't have: Ginny understands Voldemort and fighting him in a way Hermione never will. The battle with the diary gave Ginny a very special common ground with Harry that no one else will ever have. (I know it's said that Ginny doesn't really know much from the "diary episodes", but her conversation with Harry during Christmas in book5 where she talks about possession makes me think she knows more about Tom Riddle than most give her credit for.) Ginny loves flying and Quidditch, something Hermione really doesn't. I think Ginny's sense of humor is something that meshes more closely with Harry's than Hermione's does. Harry is also more fun loving like Ginny is (and not so much a stickler for the rules like Hermione is). There's probably other things, but with the way Voldemort has impacted Harry's life, this common ground is central to understanding why JKR put Harry and Ginny together. I also suspect Harry and Ginny talked more than the books told us (like when he stayed at the Weasleys and Hermione wasn't there), but that's merely speculation. In my (real) world, practically every successful relationship is built on common ground starting with beliefs, and I think H/G have more common ground than H/Hr.

[new-2023] I accidentally found an interesting essay explaining why Harry chose Ginny over Hermione. You can find it at (http:///features/essays/issue2/whyharrypickedginny/). They make a lot of sense and give you quotes from the book to support their view. Go check it out. Because of this essay, I've bolded 2 sentences in the previous paragraphs. Nope, they were not added now, they've been there all along; I just highlighted them now.

[new-2020] As another reviewer pointed out, one other problem with Hermione that you have to get around in a story is that in the books she does a lot of nagging. Harry comes from an abusive home. Those 2 things generally don't go well together. The "Harry I'm telling a teacher about your gift broom without your approval" episode in book 3 is great example of where Harry and Hermione butt heads hard. Sure he forgives her in the end, but she really shouldn't have done what she did. I think I recall a few other issues where they disagreed in a major way, so it wouldn't be all roses between those 2 either.]

Don't get me started on R/Hr, as I think their common ground is so small, that pairing really is a work of fiction :) and JKR just goofed! R/Hr's common ground is through adventures with Harry as "the glue", take those away and they have almost nothing in common for a relationship -- IMO. Without a similar PoV, they will be in for a difficult time in the long run. They're fighting is not "sexual tension", it's low-level animosity -- not a good foundation for a romantic relationship. [Late update: JKR has admitted later that the R/Hr isn't a good pairing and would probably end in divorce, IIRC.]

Some people have mentioned that they hate Ginny because she's a "rabid-fangirl", "demonic stalker", a "moody girl with a temper", etc. If you see Ginny that way, then it's because you've been reading fanfic stories with Ginny written that way. I don't see any of that in JKR's books. Yes, Ginny had a crush on Harry and did seem to keep an eye on him at times, but watching someone occasionally from across the room does not make you a bad person or fulfill any of the "bad terms" I've listed above. Watching a person a little more than others usually means you find that person attractive in some way, which I find perfectly normal. Her difficulty talking around him in her first year is shyness, not a "rabid-fangirl".

[new-2019] One other common criticism I'd like to slay is the "Harry can't date Ginny because she looks like his mother". What?! Where in the books does it say that? Right, no where; it's something those who don't like Ginny made up. "But she has red hair like his mother!" If we go by that logic, you've just drastically reduced the population of Asia. What trait do most of the Asians from Korea down to Vietnam and from Japan over to the Mediterranean have? Brown hair. So if boys there can't date girls there with brown hair, well...that's going to be a problem. So bad logic on this one!

We all have our favorite characters and 'ships. Personally, after good H/G stories, I happen to like Harry and "strong Slytherin girl" stories, as that tends to make Harry more independent and grow up faster, not to mention growing a spine in every day life, unlike how wimpy JKR wrote Harry at times. Nevertheless, as long as the story is well-written and the plot gives good, logical reasons for what happens (I'm ignoring any "Eww!" factor that we each have, like pairing Harry with a female of his parents generation), is the pairing really that important if the plot and writing and character development are good?

One last thing to put everyone's mind at ease. I never write Ginny as "fangirl" or anything else bad. So even if you normally hate Ginny, you should be able to stand her in my stories because she should come across as a reasonably normal person. Even in those stories where she's not the lead female, I do my best to make her reasonable. Go on, read any of my stories and point out 1 where I make her "bad". The closest you'll find is in "Leave Me Alone" (my least favorite if it matters), and in there, Ginny is someone who makes 1 mistake as a young teen girl and has to deal with the consequences until she grows up and fixes the mistake. Even in that story, she seeks Harry out of love for him, her family and friends, and because she doesn't want to see her country destroyed -- not because she's a fangirl nor does she throw a temper tantrum. In "Mage Harry" (which is a comedy and so I'm allowed to have more fun with things), you might accuse Ginny of being a "Mary Sue" (I didn't write her that way but I could see where some people say that as I spent very little time developing her character in that story), but I don't see that as "bad" or as a fangirl. I write the lead female (whoever she is) to be strong (or she becomes so during the story) and someone who's a good match for Harry.

So, can we please get over the "Ginny-hate", at least for my stories? If the above hasn't helped to change your mind and you still hate Ginny, go tell someone who writes weak/spiteful Ginny stories to start writing Ginny more realistically. You won't find any whiny Ginny here.

(Added 12/2019) I received a PM from "old-crow" who makes a very interesting point. While not "Ginny-hate", there is a downside to pairing H/G. Namely, that pairing requires dealing with a smothering/over-protective/Victorian-age Molly and a usually jealous/over-protective/big-brother Ron. I will admit, those two points (err -- people) are very real issues when writing the pair, and as an author, those have to either be pushed aside (blindly ignored) or else dealt with head-on -- if you're going to make Molly and Ron anywhere near like their canon characters. "Old-crow" also pointed out there is the issue of Ginny being a year younger, which can cause other issues: like lack of screen-time (she's not in his classes), Harry has to wait an extra year for her after Hogwarts, and Harry must wait an extra year before doing various "romantic" things or risk doing inappropriate things with a younger girl. Of course, the same timing problem exists for Luna.

(Added 8/2016) From a PM from "Harper Potts", cited with permission:

I do have an insight, but it isn't a logical one. It's very much an emotional one. For many of us, especially those of us of the female persuasion who are studious introverts, Hermione isn't just one of the characters. We identify with her. Yes, we cheer on Harry, but we cheer for Hermione just as much. Ginny doesn't get enough moments in the story to identify with in the same way. We shudder in dismay at Half-Blood Prince at how stupid our beloved Hermione has become. To add insult, why does Harry like Ginny. From the cannon books, it isn't because of her mind. Harry is focused on her looks. To be fair, teenaged boys always go for looks over brains in girls. Still, it hurts. We wanted Harry to be better than that. To see Harry ignore the wonderful girl who risked her life for him over and over, to instead go for the cute cheerleader - not a good feeling. Not a good message either. It's that double standard. Encourage boys to excel, but girls if you want to get your man, don't study, learn to put on makeup and pretty dresses. So that's why I usually search out Harry/Hermione stories. Because I want to read stories where the bookworm can get the hero instead of settling for the sidekick. So no venom here, but I can empathize with it.

I can't go here myself (probably because I'm a guy), but I can see the PoV and there is some valid logic to it; hence why I'm putting this here. I fully agree that JKR wasn't nice to Hermione in book6; then again, book7 more than made up for that as it seemed to me the last book looked at Hermione more than Harry and she was (in some ways) the bigger hero (really heroine). I will disagree with "teenaged boys always go for looks over brains". Having been a teenaged boy once, :) I'll agree with the idea that girls with good looks get noticed first, just like girls notice guys who are better looking first; but boys will ask out the "shy girls with brains" (sometimes first), especially if the boy is shy himself (yes, I am an introvert and I almost never asked out the popular girls, experience quickly teaches that doesn't work well). As I've told my daughters, look for a boy who will appreciate you as you are. Those sorts of boys do exist, so hang in there girls.

If you want to discuss "Ginny" from either side, or have more insight I should add, feel free to PM me. All I ask is that the comments/questions be logical and delivered in a civil way. Please don't send flames or spiteful comments, unless you want me to think badly of you.

BTW, if you ever read a reply from me with "Hermy" (as Grawp says), it's not a slam on Hermione. That's me being lazy with a long name.

My stories in the order they were written:

1 Choices
2 To Love Is To Live
3 His Motivation
4 Harry Potter: Rogue
5 Leave Me Alone
6 A Friend Indeed
7 Harry Potter: Unchampion
8 Harry Potter's Promise
9 Fates Mistake
10 The Grass Is Always Greener
11 Lily's Child (on hiatus)
12 Ginny's Return
13 Harry Potter: Kidnapped
14 Mage Harry
15 A Smarter Hunt
16 The Easy Way
17 Odds and Ends (won't ever really complete)
18 Accidental Bond
19 Harry Potter's Reaction to the Marriage Law
20 Unconventional Harry
21 Harry's Happy Christmas
22 Harry Potter and the Unexpected Power
23 The Real Boy Who Lived
24 The British Reformation
25 Harry Potter: Avenger
26 Harry's Trek
27 Harry Potter: Air Elemental
28 Hogwarts Protection System
29 Home Schooled
30 Harry Potter: IronWizard
31 Who Did It?
32 Starting Over
33 Ginny's Plan
34 Mirror, Mirror
35 Changes
36 Harry Potter: Unspeakable
37 The Lost Year
38 Harry Goes on Holiday
39 We've Been Betrayed
40 Exiles
41 Elves
42 What Magic?
43 The Ad
44 Taken
45 Harry's Trek 2
46 Intervention