Literatti: Fiction By Deslea

This story, written for 2014 HP Horror Fest, explores Albus Dumbledore's guilt and self-loathing after his sister's death and his estrangement from Gellert, as well as his final betrayal of his love for Gellert by defeating him at Nurmengard. The catalyst is Tom Riddle, who as a young man has worked out Albus' weakness. He embarks on a campaign of psychological torture, impersonating Gellert and young men who resemble him to seduce him and get inside his head, in revenge for his belief that Albus abandoned him as a child. Interestingly, Tom appears not to have resumed his campaign after his fall in 1981, but by this point Albus' own mind has turned on him, and the impact continues right up until the moment of his death. Read it here

"I really liked Sarah and Derek because they were a mass of contradictions colliding, and it was possible to explore a lot of the Terminator dilemmas within them. Sarah has this binary approach to the world – her John switch is on and her Everything Else switch is off. Derek is more holistic – he loves Kyle and John and Jess and Billy, and was even fond of Riley and Lauren. For someone who gripes all the time about security, he'll let just about anyone in. His heart is big and his world and what he thinks is worth saving is big. At the same time, he's a much more utilitarian operator, much more willing to kill to save the world and much less likely to angst about it. So he's more human, but she's more moral. It's really interesting to play with."

Ratings are roughly equivalent to those used by the Motion Picture Association of America.

G: General audiences.
PG: Parental Guidance. Adult concepts and dilemmas, but without graphic detail.
M (or R): Mature audience. Adult concepts and dilemmas, anti-social attitudes, people doing the wrong thing and not necessarily feeling guilty about it. Also includes low-level sexual content (a few soft-focus paragraphs with little or no direct discussion of body parts). Most of my work is M.
NC-17: No children 17 or under. May contain explicit and extended descriptions of sexual activity, brief but graphic sexual descriptions, or graphic violence. A couple of my works contain rape scenes; these are graphic but not sexualised, and are appropriately marked with content warnings.
Trigger/Content Warnings: I take a conservative approach to triggers and will generally warn for anything that might trigger reader trauma to do with violence, self-harm, or grief. If the term "dark themes" is used, this may mean too many dark themes to mention, a dark theme that I don't want to reveal because it's a plot twist, or a vague dark feel that doesn't have a more precise description. Caveat lector.