I used a few tricks to keep myself on track with ATYD - mostly using the years at Hogwarts as markers, creating chronological bullet lists of events that needed to happen in each year (both canon and my own invention), and just building on this as I went. A lot of the plot lines, especially at Hogwarts, got a bit out of control and took on lives of their own, but I think that's the great thing about writing a really long fic!

Hi! Thank you so much - 2020 was such a difficult time and it makes me so happy to know I made anyone's year a bit more bearable.

Research is a passion of mine! I love to immerse myself in a world. The full moons were extremely easy - that info is available online, so I just slotted in dates. Cultural references - I just love the '70s as a decade; the music, the fashion, the politics. I think a lot of people's image of the 1970s comes from American media, and I really wanted to show what Britain was like during those decades. I watched lots of TV shows and films made in Britain from the '70s, obviously I listened to the music too. I spend an unhealthy amount of time on Wikipedia, as well XD

I don't personally believe in an afterlife, so I'm not sure I could say. I would hope that if there is a place like that, then it's a place of perfect peace and perfect understanding.

Oh my GOSH, thank you XD the pranks were honestly some of the parts I stressed over the most, they really push your creativity and imagination - especially as I'm definitely not as mischievous as the boys.

I looked at lots of common, 'traditional' pranks and tried to give them a magical twist - water bucket over the doorframe became a raincloud that chases you, itching powder gets a herbology makeover, stink bombs become bubotuber-puffballs. I got the idea for the clock thing when we were turning the clocks back (or forward?) one year, and got mixed up so that three of our clocks showed different times and we had no idea what time it was until we checked our phones XD I really loved how such a small change could throw everything into chaos.

I was never a fan of 'soft boy' anything, personally. It didn't sit comfortably with me. I wanted Remus to feel like a 'real' teenage boy from the 1970s, and I feel like boys are trained to process their emotions very differently from girls, from a very young age. Boys are taught to respond with anger, not tears when they are afraid or hurt, and I wanted to bring that to the forefront. I thought Remus had every right to be furious. He's very sensitive, still, compassionate and gentle - but those things only begin to show outwardly as he matures. I felt that was realistic.

Thank you for your lovely words! I just really love angst, I gotta say. I find writing those strong emotions very cathartic. It's exhilarating, rather than exhausting for me, that's the only way I can explain it! The only time I got close to tears was writing the very final scene, I think - and only because I knew that was it :(

Grant was heavily inspired by one of my best friends, the sweetest, kindest, most selfless man you will ever meet. He lives in Brighton with the love of his life
He's also one of the strongest people I know, I admire him so much.

I knew someone would ask :rolf:

GENUINELY I had no idea this would become such a big mystery! I was so deep in oblivious teenage boy mindset. You're going to hate it, but all the was going to say was: "Moony? Are you pissed off with me about something?" (or along those lines). Sirius at this point is completely suppressing any feelings he might have for Remus - but he has noticed that Remus has been avoiding him lately, and is anxious about having upset him.

Hi! I think I have a handle on this question, apologies if I've misunderstood.

So. Realism was important to me in two main areas - the time period, and the characterisations. Both of these massively impacted the way I dealt with most of the characters' sexualities.

I wanted the readers to really feel how much pressure the characters felt around gayness/queerness, and the very private and intimate pressures and fears that people still face today. Obviously, I drew from personal experience and the experiences of people close to me where appropriate. A lot of it is deeply, deeply personal to me, and so I can't promise it's all perfect, but it was as honest as I could possibly manage. I wanted everything to feel as complicated and messy as it really is, basically! I wanted to have characters say one thing and behave differently - because that's how people are. We are constantly learning new things about ourselves, and sometimes that's so painful you can't touch it, and other times it's wonderful; jubilant and freeing.

Wow, I really rambled there, I hope some of it makes sense!

Hi! Thank you so much! I certainly never wanted to destroy anybody.

Bittersweet is exactly right. That's how I felt about their story. I felt proud of them for being strong enough to keep going in those last few scenes - I felt weirdly proud of Remus for the choice he made. But I couldn't bear to keep writing it. I feel I ended it in exactly the right place. I don't like Tonks/Remus, but I left it in, because I wanted it to be believably canon. I couldn't have found a way to get them together that would satisfy me, but I did like including it in 'Out of the Blue' almost as a final 'twist' for Grant - a final wink from Remus like 'I could always surprise you'. Yeah.

Hey! Thank you

I really can't believe how well everyone received Grant. Honestly it's so amazing that everybody takes him so seriously, and considers him with such care. Just. My proudest achievement as a writer, I think.

ANYWAY. I don't know if I believe in soul mates. I think 'soul mates' is open to all sorts of interpretations. I prefer the idea of having 'great loves' in our lives - and these could be friends or romantic partners. If you are lucky enough, both - and Remus got both twice. I let him have his cake and eat it too, really.


I think that Remus loved Grant with all his heart, and they were best friends. I think that Remus was aware that he owed a huge amount to Grant - that he had been 'his worst' with Grant, and that in terms of emotional labour (though of course, Remus wouldn't use those words) things had been very unequal in their relationship. Grant knew this too, and truly didn't mind, but what he did mind was that he and Remus ultimately had different priorities. Grant wanted a family and a quiet life. Remus needs excitement.

Sirius and Remus were very much not a perfect couple, but they just want each other so much, and they never stop trying for each other. They inspire each other and excite each other, and in the end that's how Remus wants to live his life.

How does it feel?? Overwhelming. Gratifying. A little bit scary. Happy. Really, I can't believe it sometimes. I remember when I started writing, there was so much wolfstar content, and I really thought I was just throwing my ideas into a void where they'd be buried in a few days. I could never have imagined this, ever.

Waheeey! Southend! I genuinely loved dropping in English place names like that, I think I got Skegness in at one point? Peak British culture.

I think it's almost impossible to write Peter in an unbiased way! I really just tried to write him like any other little boy, really, and built up on traits I thought would be believable. It's so common in groups of children who are friends (particularly boys) to have one 'picked on' by the others, or used as the punchline a bit. I could picture that kind of boy very clearly, I think everyone knew someone a bit like that at school. That made it much easier for me to empathise with him, especially in the Hogwarts years.

I imagine Peter did a lot of spluttering and not understanding what he'd said that was so offensive, and James would have been very stern and tight-jawed. I think James' message would be not to treat Remus any differently, and I think that Pete was probably more scared than understanding. I am surprised and flattered by ATYD TikTok XD though I have had to stop watching because that song. omg. I'm starting to hate that song :rolf:

I... actually did not see the film until after I had finished atyd, and it was annoying because it would have been really useful! I knew the story already from my research, so I can't believe I missed the film. I love the fan cast of George Mckay for Grant, btw!

Hi! So he read ATYD while I was writing it and he eventually asked me if it was him. I said it was and he was thrilled lol! He is not aware of the fandom, but he loves Grant too!

Hi! So he read ATYD while I was writing it and he eventually asked me if it was him. I said it was and he was thrilled lol! He is not aware of the fandom, but he loves Grant too!

Those werewolf scenes were written completely blind - I had no plan at all going in expect that at some point I was going to have to include The Pack. I pretty much made it up myself - it was the most 'fantasy' the story ever got, as I usually kept Remus in quite real world, relatable situations, so it felt like a big risk.

I wanted the werewolves to feel very tied to the earth, and to natural magic. I liked the idea of enchanted forests where wizards were viewed as hostile, and I liked the idea of werewolves being able to tap into something ancient and feral. Basically all of my favourite horror tropes. I was also so sick of the wizarding world by that point - the way society functioned in a way that was hurting so many of the characters. I wanted the werewolves to feel like an extreme opposition to this, a complete rejection of 'society' in that sense.

This was one of the hardest parts to navigate for me. Because yes, of course Remus would have known Sirius was not capable of hurting James. He would have known. It was incredibly hard to try and force a reason that Remus would simply accept what he'd been told, and I probably leant a bit too much on his alcoholism and depression to try and patch over quite a big plot hole.

I am utterly, utterly thrilled with peoples' reception of Grant. OCs are a risky business, especially for a pairing like wolfstar which has such a huge fanbase. I am just so glad that readers understood how necessary he was, and how much of his own person he was. To see people talk about Grant with the same affection they do canon characters is just. Very emotional for me! Really incredible.

I feel similarly about Mary!

I had read a few wolfstar fics over a short period of time and got really into their story. There were a few tropes I noticed that I wanted to try a different way. Then the idea of Remus as this angry care home kid with a chip on his shoulder just stomped into my brain in bovver boots and I just saw the entire story roll out before me. I started writing and didn't stop for 18 months, it was wild.

I was listening to a LOT of 70s music at the time, and I've always been a fan of that decade - i love glam rock, and I grew up listening to old records like that. A lot of the songs are just some of my favourite songs and I wanted to share them! I get so much inspiration listening to music and lyrics.

Marlene!! Ok, so I'm going to reveal something I am very embarrassed about here. Marlene was gonna be straight. When I was initially planning the story (only writing first year) I saw Marlene and Mary as useful side characters who I could slip in here and there, and eventually use for Sirius to date during his 'girl mad' phase. Terrible. Terrible. Boring. She just started developing. I loved how she was a bit quieter, but still very fierce and with a dry sense of humour. I love that she really 'got' Remus, and made him a bit nervous sometimes. I loved her disdain for Sirius Black. She and Mary grew in the background, and by the time they were part of the 'main group' I knew that Marlene had to have much more complexity.

I didn't write it in, no - I didn't want too much clutter in those last few chapters. If I had to write it (and I won't, but others are free to) I would have had Sirius eventually wear Remus down, and Remus calls her. She listens, and is relieved about Sirius, but it's a firm no on re-joining the order.

That's a tough one. I was very certain that Teddy would not know about Remus' sexuality, and that this would be something he would have to find out from Grant. This is because the way I wrote it, I intended everything in the books to hold true. So Teddy knows what Harry knows, what Andromeda knows. Which is hardly anything about Remus.

It was very much emotional closure for Grant, too, and to have his part in Remus' life acknowledged by Remus' son. Remus kept secrets, and it's awful that Grant had to be one of them for so long.

I think that Mary's child (or even children?) was likely magical, and she would have let them go to Hogwarts. That might be the first time she reconnects with the wizarding world, so that's how she'd find out. Bloody hell, that's a bit sad innit!

That's great! Writing is one of the best things in my life.

Honestly, I have never written or finished anything as long as ATYD before or since! It was like a fog descended and it was all I could think about, and I somehow just churned it all out so fast and mostly coherent. I think the key to staying engaged is just enjoying yourself! Just write, and if you get bored, write short stories!

Yes, I'm English, born and raised south London. So obviously I have the advantage that all the slang is second nature to me, and that I can talk to people older than me who lived through the '80s and even '70s to get a feel for it.

The Ms were interesting, because I had to write them from Remus' point of view, and when he's an 11 year old he just sees girls as complete aliens. :rolf: He's had very little experience around girls at all when he starts at Hogwarts, and being a child of the 1960s he's pretty sexist.

As I said earlier, this gave me the opportunity to think about Mary and Marlene as they developed in the background. I wanted to break down Remus's pre-conceived notions, and watch him get to know them and love them. I didn't really think about other characterisations I had read for them, I just considered them OCs most of the time, to suit my own needs. I loved what they became, and how full their lives were, even as side characters. It was horrible killing Marlene, possibly the worst death for me because of Mary's reaction.

I loved Lockhart :rolf: pure nonsense. I honestly didn't ever envision his home life! I wouldn't know where to start, he obviously didn't get enough attention.

Ferox. I knew he was going to be important later, but I didn't know how. Initially I wanted to give Remus a male role model (and unrecognised first crush) at an age when he was starting to consider his place in the world. Ferox serves so many purposes for Remus - as a very sweet, innocent kind of awakening, as a father figure and mentor, as a hero.

Then later he begins to let Remus down in small ways, which I think is a relatable experience. As Remus continues to grow and mature and discover the kind of man he is (remember it was Ferox who told him 'know thyself') he begins to see the flaws in his old teacher. I really enjoyed playing with that metaphor.

Remus didn't sleep with Mary to make Sirius jealous. He was into the idea of a new experience, and liked the way it was presented to him.

I wanted Ferox to seem very cool and rugged, so I see why he had Bill vibes XD I think he plays a very different role in Remus' life than Bill does in Harry's, though.

I haven't given much thought to Harry and Teddy's relationship!

It's never meant to look 'perfect', or even as an example of a healthy relationship. Just a relationship between two people who love each other a lot, but both have flaws. I think they were often good for each other, and in the end it was good that they were in each other's lives, even if they hurt each other sometimes.

Christopher! Poor thing, it didn't end very happily for him. My reasoning for that was, again, 'realism'. I didn't want to hide how difficult things were (and continue to be) for gay men in some communities. I had Grant, who was out and proud from a young age, and Sirius/Remus with their individual struggles. I just wanted to remember those who never came out, who never found the words or saw a way to be themselves openly.

Lyall is a hard one, a spectre over the story, particularly early chapters (later he's replaced by Greyback). I do think he loved Remus, but I think he was a seriously flawed man. He was arrogant, thoughtless and had a terrible temper. In the end he was very ashamed of what he'd done to his son, and had no way to live with those feelings.

I really don't feel like I'm in a position to give any advice to the fandom (or any fandom!) I would just say enjoy it, and that it is what you make it.

I'm assuming you mean Grant's accent, mostly? That was just me doing my best at a broad London accent XD if it slipped into Australian then that's really funny and I don't know how it happened.

I know East London very well and wanted St Edmund's near enough that Remus could just take one tube to Mile End, so Essex it was! I'm from south London myself, and come from a working class family, so this was a major theme for me and something I was extremely passionate about!

thug life Remus 4eva.

I wanted to really emphasise the class difference, and felt that the more extreme I made it, the more interesting. Also the theme of orphans is obviously prevalent in the Harry Potter books.

I also grew up near a very famous young offender's institution, and their stories always fascinated me. I looked up borstels from the '70s and saw photos of these angry scrawny boys with shaved heads and I just knew I wanted to see the world through those eyes.

James really just wrote himself, I take no credit - he was just a very nice dude who could be a bit full of himself sometimes. For Sirius, I felt that I wanted to make him a bit more of a snob, and a bit less 'effortlessly cool' than I had seen him done in other fics. I like how my Sirius is a bit of a try-hard. Also, class needed to play a big part in his characterisation - his snobbery and his unconscious biases.

I consciously held back on Regulus, purely because he was such a fascinating and complex character, and I couldn't fit him into Remus' story and do him justice. If I had written from Sirius' point of view I think he'd have had a role as big as Grant's in Remus' life, and it would have been absolutely gut-wrenching.

I think I've answered this in some form - but basically I just had the idea and knew it had to be Remus' whole life. It just kept growing! I kept interested just out of sheer enjoyment, and having a very clear plan for the ending.

The books are written for a young audience, so the politics are relatively simple and easy to relate to the real world – I mean it's all vaguely a metaphor for World War II, right? I think that the themes of prejudice and an uncaring/incompetent government are universal and examples can be found at every time in history.

The engagement! I needed a big plot point for second year, and I wanted to demonstrate how extreme the Black family were in their views on blood purity. It's canon that they intermarried in the Black family, and I thought that by the 1970s the only way to ensure their bloodline was protected would be by arranged marriage.

It was meant to be very shocking - and also an attempt to keep Sirius in line, even at Narcissa's expense (demonstrating how little the Blacks thought of their daughters).

That part really was heartbeaking. I think it has more to do with Grant's self image - I think Remus probably did look at him like that, but it's different seeing him look at someone else that way. He's probably always felt a bit inferior to Sirius, particularly Sirius' handsomeness.

I think it would be obvious to anyone that Remus was still in love with Sirius though, and vice versa.

Least favourite wolfstar tropes... hmm. I'll have to have a think.

Remus, of course! And Grant. And Mary. Argh.

I would do a hard grammar edit! The grammar is awful. I would re-write some of Marlene's scenes, and I would give Yaz more scenes where she's involved and gets dialogue. I would have opened Hope's bloody boxes and not left them in the garage XD

They were just best friends from the second they met. They had a perfect understanding of each other - similar to how Grant understood Remus' upbringing, James (being a pureblood from a wealthy and well known family) understood Sirius' situation immediately. He was naturally a sympathetic person, and felt responsible for Sirius. They also made each other laugh and were complete idiots together. They probably talked about anything and everything (except the obvious...)

Yes, what a mess! I think that Sirius was a very reactive person, and not very introspective. Part of this is his upbringing. I think that he was very good at hiding things from himself by creating distractions, and I think you have to really force him to confront big personal stuff.

So, the first time it clicks for Sirius is when Remus kisses him - when he can't ignore it any more. At that point he kind of splits himself in two, unconsciously, and makes the mistake of thinking that Remus feels exactly the same way.

Hope was incredibly tragic, which I love, because as I mentioned, I just live for writing extreme situations XD I really felt for Hope, I never wanted her to be blamed or judged for what she had to do. Again, if you remove the magic and the lycanthropy, it would STILL have been an almost impossible feat to raise a child as a single woman in the 1960s without a huge amount of support.

I really tried to always keep in mind where Remus had come from, the lessons he had learnt and the outlook on life he had because of it. His self-doubt and sometimes even self-hatred played a huge part in the way he responded to a lot of situations during the war, and his behaviour with Sirius.

The mantra 'no one owes you a happy life' which he often remembers matron saying was intended to show this. Remus' pessimism made him practical sometimes, it made him work hard, but it also made him defensive and selfish. I tried to balance this with Grant's outlook, which was quite different, despite having a similar background.