the deep moans round with many voices

An Ounce of Prevention: 20,000 words, Aug. 2006-July 2008. During the timeskip, Sakura finds a very interesting diary among Tsunade's books and papers. Trouble ensues. Contains mind games, violence, discussion of death and dirty tricks, and discussion of the ethics of war and assassination. [Crossover: Naruto/Harry Potter]

"An Ounce of Prevention" is the direct result of a crack pairings meme from 2005, though Sakura and Tom do NOT have a romantic relationship. I began writing this as a silly one-shot for askerian's birthday, but the plot bunny nagged at me until I expanded the story. It ended up being about loyalty, responsibility, and Sakura's lingering issues over Sasuke's departure from Konoha; Tom is mostly a catalyst.

I set myself the challenge of writing a crossover that didn't disrupt canon in either series -- in other words, to write a story that could be a lost chapter of both the Harry Potter books and the Naruto manga -- and I think I succeeded. *is proud*

( An Ounce of Prevention - Table of Contents )

For the record, I am perfectly well aware that these chapters are ridiculously tiny, and hardly deserve the name "chapter" at all. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the way I wrote the story. You see, "An Ounce of Prevention" was meant to be a one-shot. Its continuation was completely unexpected, and ran headlong into my semi-compulsive need to keep all chapters of any given story at roughly similar lengths, give or take about 15%-20% of that story's average chapter length. The average length for "An Ounce of Prevention," discounting the two epilogues (because epilogues totally don't count) is 875 words, which means all chapters should stay between 700 and 1,050 words... and with the glaring exception of chapter 1 (the original one-shot, clocking in at a tidy 600 words), they do.

...

I try to start with longer first chapters these days. *wry*

I started "An Ounce of Prevention" with a title taken from a common... aphorism? Proverb? Whatever. When I began turning it into a chaptered story, I stuck with that theme, so each chapter title is half of an English saying. And there is, in fact, a rationale to their relationship with the chapters -- I didn't just pick them out of a hat.

( 1. An Ounce of Prevention [is worth a pound of cure]. A little caution at the beginning is better at solving a problem than... )

This is part 23 of An Ounce of Prevention, a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one HP character/plot device into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts. "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series; that is, it takes place during the Naruto timeskip, and before CoS in HP. (Which gives away at least part of the ending, but whatever. *grin*)

( An Ounce of Prevention, chapter 23a )

---------------------------------------------

And now the other epilogue, which didn't turn out anywhere nearly as amusing as I meant it to. In fact, it's more disturbing than the first one. (I had no idea I was this much of a fatalist, swear to god. Just remember that CoS has a happy ending.)

( An Ounce of Prevention, chapter 23b )

And that, as they say, is that. 23 chapters, 20,250 words (give or take), and not quite two years of work.

I had a lot of fun. I hope you all did too. :-)

...

Next week, I will start on "Secrets." I just need time to decompress my mind and reread the posted chapters, because I've completely forgotten where I was on that story. (Maybe something about spiders? Oh well, it'll come back to me.)

This is part 22 of An Ounce of Prevention, a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one HP character/plot device into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts. "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series; that is, it takes place during the Naruto timeskip, and significantly before CoS in HP. (Which gives away at least part of the ending, but whatever. *grin*)

( An Ounce of Prevention, chapter 22 )

Happy almost-not-Independence-Day-anymore! (I think I sneaked in just under the wire.)

I fiddled the first four chapters thematically -- which meant adding a paragraph or so to chapter 1, tweaking a couple word choices in chapter 2, reconceiving the ending of chapter 3, and adding a parenthetical phrase to chapter 4 -- and will post the revised versions on ff.net shortly.

I finished the rough draft of "An Ounce of Prevention" chapter 23 tonight, and made a start on the real epilogue (am still undecided about an omake epilogue, btw, but I'm leaning toward 'yes'). Anyway, that's all well and good, but I think I need to go back and tweak the early chapters of the story so they line up thematically with the ending of the story.

This is the trouble with doing a continuation of a one-shot. You write something small and self-contained, and then when you extend it, you have to find a different structure to carry the weight of the extra words. And while the theme of the original "An Ounce of Prevention" was basically 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if diary!Tom ran into someone who was a match for him?' the theme of the chaptered story turns out to be more about ethics, the nature of betrayal, and Sakura growing up.

So. I need to go back and 'start' the story I finished.

*sigh*

I hate writing. The trouble is, I can't stop telling stories, and I hate not writing even more. (And okay, when it's good, it's the best thing in the world.)