Chapter Text
I used to hate romance novels. My teenage self had some lofty opponents on their objectification of women and their perpetuation of abusive relationships. Books only written to provide fantasy for lonely people who'd never actually been in a healthy relationship. Not that I had any experience in that department either. But in that, I developed a drive to prove this point. As an English major with a love of research and a thesis to complete I decided to finally get some solid evidence to my theory.
Was I right is the real question.
Yes… well mostly. I read over 150 romance books that year. Contemporary romance, historical romance, fantasy romance, paranormal romance, and all the weird in-between. All categories and all levels of erotica and non-erotica. The classics and the very new ones. I read it all, I bought, borrowed, and exchanged so many romance novels my friends and family thought I was going through a mental break. I annotated, highlighted, and sticky notes all in the efforts of my beautiful thesis. Naturally, I got a 100% and a note from my professor asking if I was alright.
In some ways, I was perfect, in others my world had shifted slightly to the left. I liked some of the books, a lot of them. I didn’t read them uncritically, no, no, no. I could never let something like that inhibit my research. I have three pages of notes on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to prove that I can be impartial. I also desperately tried to go unbiased reading the 50 Shades of Grey series. That was the only time my teenage self was completely right about everything and I desperately wished for some way to go back in time. Despite that- it was mostly normal. Some books were bad, and more had flaws. Flaws that while minor were incidence. All things noted in my perfect thesis.
But I fell in love. It was illogical and unscrupulous, odd in all ways. I fell head over heels in love with romance. The genre was messy and fraught with problems, but I finally understood why people read them.
Hope.
People like happy endings and that's what the romance genre is fundamentally. Happy hopeful endings that make you want to keep trying. That's why they exist. That is why people love them. They are hope for love, something so beautiful and so hard to find. Maybe in my own life, I had created the perfect conditions for this love to occur. A lonely girl who had just broken off a three-year relationship on top of not having many social skills, that same girl who had just committed herself to read a truly obscene amount of novels in six months. I had created a storm that I had no ability to stop.
My bookshelves were a mad mix of romance novels, classic literature, and writing books. I’d never thought of writing literature till I started dreaming about them, till my blood ran with stories, till my muscles demanded I write them down. I wanted to do it properly, I spent the summer before my last year of college obsessively plotting my first novel, The lady Isabella Dear. I put all my research and ideas into the planner then spent every spare moment I had during the semester working on it. I spent graduation half listening to call ups and half writing the final chapter.
Gryffindor Publishing picked it up as soon as I brought my draft to them. The co-owners Minerva, and Albus were delighted to help me edit and publish the novel under the name H. Granger.
It blew up…
The preliminary stock Gryffindor had bought completely disappeared within three weeks. Stores were clambering for copies and the few books I signed were snatched up so fast it made my head spin. We spent the next year advertising the book and waiting for the hype to die down.
It didn’t, it just kept going and going and going… leading then here five years down the line.
Minerva sat back in her office, her stuffed rolling chair locked to the ground and she tapped her foot on the ground. She had just been on the phone for the last hour, her voice tight and her shoulders tense. I flipped through the script and she'd handed me a similar disdainful expression on my face. Minerva finally hung up the phone, the sour expression on her face wavering into calm with each deep breath.
“Did they really think this script would persuade me?”
“Its preliminary thats for sure,”
“Priliminary is a generous interpretation,” “it’s like the writer read the summary then whipped all possible controversy from the plot.”
“I thought you might say that,”
“When we put the rights up I was expecting…” I didn’t know what I was expectating, the fans had demanded the book be put up for adaptation. Gryffindor had put up some feelers and gotten back a couple of offers that were dismissed out of hand. Minerva was now arguing with Riddle productions, one of the top studios.
“Ruined book adaptations are incredibly common, even in popular novels,” “the good news is this script won't see the light of day… unless you want it to,” she glared at me daring for me to disagree with her, to disappoint her so.
I tapped the papers on the table pursing my lips as I tried to rationalise all the changes made to the story. Rationally I had enough sense to know that there was no possible way to keep all details of the novel in tact. The medium of the screen was conducive to far more visual storytelling then the novel, but the novel could convey more thought. For me the real test of a good adaptation of my work had to be the theme, plot beats could be shifted around to facilitate better flow in the new medium but the heart of the story had to be the same. The script that riddle productions sent me was like if they had ripped the heart out of the story and sent me the corpse with a smiley face drawn on every available piece of skin. Their offer for the rights was generous to say the least but if I allowed this to go into production the outcry from fans would kill any possible opportunity for future productions of my novels.
At its core The lady Isabella Dear was a story of love blooming in 1850s Britain. A young black girl taken in by a wealthy nobleman in the country living a privileged life up until her father dies and his bastard son is the inheritor of his estate. The whole novel frames their love story as a treatise on class and race and the intersections on privilege. Isabella’s privilege growing up with a loving family and everything she’d ever need. Thomas grew up poor and without a loving family, and needing to work for everything in life. His ability to inherit his fathers estate, Isabella’s ostracisation from nobility because of her race. The class divide and the way their gender and race affect that way they move through the strict society they live in. I spent far too long researching for the adaptation to sweep away all possible themes of class, gender, and race from the work.
It was the reason I wrote The lady Isabella Dear In the first place. I wanted to explore something meaningful in a medium that is enjoyable to read. My mother described it as a bait and switch, I disagreed, it’s more like sneaking vegetables into a brownie.
I rubbed my temples and placed the script on Minerva’s desk, “please tell me something better than this came up?”
“It’s a small studio, their offer is good for their proposed budget for the film, they are also offering gross profit sharing if the film is successful. The director’s name is Dean Thomas. He did that indie film a few years back, The Strange case of Mr. Lucy and Ms. Lacy,” Minerva pulled out a printed script with the name Harry Potter scribbled at the top, “the writer has done a couple projects, he sold the pilot of give and take to paramount last year.”
I raised an eyebrow when I heard both of those names. The strange case of Mr. Lucy and Ms. Lacy was a highschool romance adaptation of The strange case Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde. It was fantastic for its low budget and relatively unknown cast. It was ostensibly a queer film made to depict the double life queer youth often have to have when dealing with unsupportive family members. It was very good for a first film and won several awards at film festivals the year it was released. He certainly knew how to portray themes subtly.
Give and take was sold as a pilot rather than the writer continuing with the series. From what she had heard Harry was pushed from the project as it developed due to some disagreements with the studio. The plot was based on the traditional fairytale concept of a random poor kid inheriting incredible amounts of wealth and slowly transforms into a psychological drama about the corrupting influences of wealth. I’d watched the first season but it dropped off in quality as the studio took more control of the work.
Both good at their craft and familiar with dealing with complex themes.
I picked up the script and flicked to the spider scene… and I paused.
That's not right.
That's not how the scene goes. Isabella is the one who’s terrified of the spider. Yet the monologue is almost exactly the same, their reactions colouring the dialogue in a whole new light. The scene in my book was around the start just a few weeks after the couple met. It was meant to represent the power Thomas has in that moment, the fear Isabella had for her station. In that moment Thomas hadn’t recognised his own power over Isabella, the fear he had of going back to the peasantry his only focus at the moment.
Minerva watched my face as I read her catlike eyes darting from the script to me, “Any good?”
“Maybe…” I hummed, “Give me the writer's number.”
She chuckled before handing over the information. I typed it into my phone with haste wanting nothing more than to get my questions out.
The voice that picked up on the other line was smooth and deep, “Hello, Harry Potter speaking.”
“Hi! This is H. Granger, I've just received a copy of the preliminary script you wrote.” I cut straight to the point my impatience from the earlier terrible script bleading through.
I heard Harry stutter for a moment, a pen scraping over a desk before he composed himself, “Hello Ms. Granger, it's nice to finally speak with you.”
I cut straight to the chase, the one question that could make or break the “Why did you write the spider scene the way you did?”
Harry paused for a moment and I waited patiently for his answer.
“Well for one, the actor I have in mind for Thomas is tariffied of spiders and getting him to do that scene would never work,” I snotted imagining some man, someone with red hair and blue eyes running onto a table as described, Of course it would have to be a mountain of a man, Thomas was particularly tall and broad due to all his hard labor. I could see him in my mind so clearly and for the first time I wondered what man would have to step into the role.
Harry continued, “and for two I thought it would be an interesting inversion of the themes in that original scene. In my version the spider represents the harshness of the world. Thomas has experienced this harshness to its full extent and so is justifiably terrified of losing his newfound peace. While Isabella has navigated her place in society and is confident enough in her friendship with Thomas that she doesn’t have that fear. The books had a little more time to develop the relationship and I moved around the scenes so the spider happens a lot later in the timeline. I thought it was a good cameo while still being good for structuring.”
I smiled with all my teeth sharp. Minerva mirrored my smile as she watched on.
“Mr. Potter I’d like to meet you and Mr. Thomas for dinner, I think our visitations for this movie are compatible.”