the sun and the moon and the stars

...some tasty long Harry Potter book-era fic, please? Gen is fine, as is any pairing; I have a slight preference for H/D but I'm really not too fussy. The longer the better. :)

Unfortunately I stopped reading widely in HP well before I started reliably bookmarking, so apart from a few favourites (*cough*Transfigurations*cough*) I have no idea where the good older stuff is, and I have been jonesing to read some.

In particular, I'm really hoping for stuff set near the end of the book series, or post-series, but written back around the book 3-4 era -- when it was clear there was going to be a war, and soon, but nobody knew what form it was going to take, so every fic handled it very differently.

(Alternatively, I also love Hogwarts-set AUs; "what if Harry had been a Slytherin", and so forth.)

Help gratefully appreciated, or a pointer to a reliable reccer would be lovely too. :)

First up one must acknowledge the huge amounts of work done by the Yuletide mods, elynross and astolat, without whom we wouldn't even have Yuletide. ♥

Also owed thanks are the coders and volunteers from the AO3, who built the platform in time for this year and wrangled every bug into submission. ♥

And the good people of #yuletide, hippos and non-hippos alike, for the awesome support and company. ♥

...this is starting to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech, so on with the show.

I was lucky enough to get four stories this year, and I have a sneaking suspicion that at least one of them is written by someone I know. My signup actually went up for pinch-hit (along with 300 others, heh), so I'm not sure which is my 'official' story, but they're all awesome. I haven't commented yet because the Archive server is sadfacing all over the place (as someone said in chat, BEST BETA TEST EVER) so I thought I'd squee about them here. :)

I got:

When We Meet (gen, general), a Fifth Element story about one of Korben's less-than-perfect fares. I love The Fifth Element so very much, and yet I've always been totally unable to produce any fanworks for it - seeing another slice of the world is very, very cool.

The One With No Pants (het, mature), a Castle story about the morning after the night before. I love the banter between Beckett and Castle, and the characterisation felt very true to both of them.

Years Gone (gen, general), a Bugs Potter story about where Bugs is in ten years' time - and it's not where one might expect. A very interesting concept about the future, and I didn't see it coming. Plus, hey, Bugs Potter - a Korman fandom that does not get enough love. :)

A Few Of My Favorite Things (gen, general), a Castle story full of Christmas and laughter and awesomeness. This is the one that I think was written by one of you lot (or at least someone who knows me) and oh, it's delightful. The characters are all note-perfect and it's a lovely Christmassy slice of Castle.

Thankyou, wonderful writers, thankyou so much! ♥

Plus I've got two more gifts waiting for me when Yuletide Madness opens, which will hopefully be soon!

Now I am going to eat dinner, and when I come back I will brave the servers to leave grateful comments for my lovely generous Yuletide writers!