Author's Closing Remarks!
Tver Fawley. The name is actually a little feminine, chosen to reflect Tver's gentle nature.
He has short black hair, pale blue eyes, a deep gaze, and a gentle, refined appearance. He likes to smile, and his smile is very beautiful.
He is 1.9 meters tall.
His wand is aspen wood, dragon heartstring, eleven and a quarter inches. In darkness, it flickers like a river of stars; beneath sunlight, it gleams like ivory.
Only those who carry great ideals in their hearts can draw out its true power.
He was born on July 1, 1973, and graduated from Durmstrang at eighteen.
(The day this book was completed also happens to be July 1. All I can say is, that is far too much of a coincidence...)
Tver likes wearing dark red robes, which add a faint, chilling hint of blood to his otherwise gentle appearance. He occasionally wears a ring on the index finger of his left hand.
It is not a Horcrux, but an old, simple ring passed down through the Fawley family, meant to suggest the protagonist's quiet and restrained personality.
There is a Dark Mark on his right hand.
He is skilled in dark magic; all kinds of Shield Charm variants, Protection, Salvio Hexia, Protego Horribilis, Fire Evasion, and Life Guard, used to block the corrosion of dark magic; the Pressure Charm, Laser Charm, Ghost Light Charm, an advanced version of the Lighting Charm, and other modified Charms.
The Fawley family is based in Fawley Village, Hampshire, not far from London, at least for wizards.
The family values restraint. Before the Secrecy Act was enacted, they were minor nobility. Generations of Fawleys liked entertaining themselves with small things they personally enjoyed, disliked luxury and extravagance, and tended to go with the flow when faced with major events. This was also why the previous family head, Hector Fawley, failed to pay enough attention to Grindelwald during his time as Minister for Magic.
But because they were friendly and avoided offending people, they managed to live peacefully in Britain for over a thousand years, unknowingly accumulating an enormous fortune, while having no idea how to spend it.
His mother, Brenda Fawley, is clever but rather quirky. She is the true decision-maker of the Fawley family and comes from the Bulstrode family. Her distant cousin Dorea is Harry's grandmother, though the two families never had any contact.
She likes muggle technology and products, and often disguises herself as an ordinary noblewoman to go shopping in London with her husband. Her husband opened a French restaurant in London mainly because of her suggestion.
Mills Fawley is an honest man who only loves cooking and his wife, and does not manage his son.
The two of them were born in 1955 and attended Hogwarts from 1966 to 1973, just overlapping with Snape's first three years. Brenda and Mills belonged to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff respectively, but they had a good relationship with Lily, so even after graduation, they continued to keep in touch with her.
Jeff is the House-elf who grew up with the Fawley family. He is diligent and conscientious, and originally wanted to be a hardworking House-elf. But since the Fawley family really did not have much for him to do, the chores he did most were sweeping, washing dishes, and tasting Mills's new dishes and desserts.
Those are some of the character settings. I did not describe the protagonist's appearance in detail before because I wanted everyone to imagine it for themselves. If you do not want to imagine it, you can use this version.
...
It's over. It's finally over.
From starting this book at the end of last November to finishing it today in early July, I updated continuously for 215 days, writing 643 chapters and 1.4 million words. On average, that was three chapters and 6,500 words per day.
It is not especially long, but I did not miss a single day of updates. That should be this book's greatest achievement.
I do not know why, but now that it has truly ended, my heart feels empty, and yet also as if I have finally breathed out.
To be honest, before writing this book, I never imagined I could write a million words. When I first made the outline, I even thought it was too short. I estimated it would reach three or four hundred chapters at most, which would already be considered very long for a Harry Potter fanfic on Tomato.
But as I kept writing, padding out the word count seemed to become a passive skill. Somehow, without anyone teaching me, I just learned it...
But honestly, I do admire myself a little for being able to persist for this long.
For you, three chapters a day might only take the time of a short nap to read, but for an author, it may consume almost all free time and leisure.
When others are watching movies, the author has to write. When others are commuting, the author has to think about the outline. When others are shopping, the author has to sit in front of the computer, racking their brain.
I am not trying to sell hardship for sympathy. I genuinely admire myself.
Actually, Tomato allows authors to take one day off each month, and I also have the habit of keeping drafts in reserve, so it was not as though I had no leisure time at all.
But I was afraid. Afraid that if I relaxed once, I would never be able to keep going again.
That is also why I scheduled chapters for release in advance: to give myself a sense of urgency, a feeling that I had a task to complete, so that one day I would not suddenly slack off and cause this book to stop updating.
I suspect many authors suddenly stop updating and then never manage to continue for exactly this reason. So I forced myself to finish this work. Even when I had no inspiration, I still had to sit in front of the computer pulling at my hair. Even deleting and revising the outline was better than doing nothing.
That is why I feel this book's greatest achievement is, in fact, that it never stopped updating.
Actually, I had ambitions for this book, and it was precisely that ambition that supported me all the way until now.
Most Harry Potter fanfics I saw on Tomato, and even elsewhere, were mainly adventure stories about the protagonist. Almost no one wrote about The Statute of Secrecy, or about how wizards and muggles might get along.
Let alone a protagonist whose explicit goal was to overturn The Statute of Secrecy.
So I eagerly began writing this book, intending to write something special and different.
It might not be especially brilliant or especially refined, but it would definitely be the most distinctive.
That is why I focused on portraying Peter Pettigrew, changed Percy's thoughts and actions, and used Marvolio to reinterpret Voldemort.
In the outline, I actually planned to write George's death. In the end, Fred, who survived, would deliberately have Joanne switch the characters in Harry Potter so that his younger brother could live on in people's hearts.
I imagine attentive readers have already noticed that George in this book is livelier, while Fred is more composed, exactly the opposite of the original. That was the foreshadowing I planted for that plot.
Similarly, for the part where Percy discovered traces of Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic, I also considered whether to have him suffer some injury, like Bill in the original.
The same was true for Snape.
I had planned for the protagonist to enter Snape's Limbo, and after a long conversation, discover that Snape's heart had actually died long ago. In the end, the protagonist would choose to respect Snape's wishes and let him escape the pain of "living."
Later, after thinking about it carefully, I felt that writing such a plot would be far too inhuman, so I did not continue according to that outline.
It was this ambition that kept me going for 215 days, writing the longest Harry Potter fanfic on Tomato by word count.
I would not call it something I poured blood and tears into, but I did pour more than two hundred days of effort into it.
But the result is obvious. I failed.
To be honest, if I had to name the thing that surprised me most during these two hundred days on Tomato, it would probably be the term "female lead."
I racked my brain, and even after analyzing the images of many characters in the original, I still could not understand why "female lead" has become a taboo on Tomato like Voldemort.
If it is because the romantic writing in other books is bad and awkward, so people do not want to see female-lead plots, I can understand that.
But the problem is, even if a book's romantic line is written well, or simply not written at all, people assume it will be bad just because of the two words "female lead."
Isn't that a classic case of putting the cart before the horse?
Later, I thought about it. If J.K. Rowling came to Tomato, she probably would not be able to explain clearly whether Hermione counts as the female lead of Harry Potter either, and would probably get scolded too. That made me feel much better.
In any case, over these two hundred-plus days, through the New Year holiday, illness, hard-drive damage, and losing saved drafts, I still persisted.
That should be the greatest treasure I gained from completing my first book.
That is why, at the end, I spent a bit of time emphasizing the meaning of perseverance. Consider it my own genuine realization.
As for the new book, there will be one. But as you all know, I like having an outline when I write. I need to prepare at least the outline for the first hundred thousand words before I officially begin, so I can only guarantee that the new book will be released within seven days.
I do not want to spoil too much, but it can indeed be considered a sequel to this book.
It is just that the fusion of magic and technology may not be quite what everyone imagines. It is more like a work set during the witch-hunting era. Otherwise, the protagonist would not have much room to act.
Finally, I want to thank all the readers who supported me. Because of you, I was able to get through many periods of confusion and incomprehension, and this book was able to persist until now.
Thank you, everyone!
Confetti ✺◟(∗❛ัᴗ❛ั∗)◞✺!