Fanfic Bind: Mon Couteau Aiguisé by GILLIANELIZA

Earlier this year, I was requested to do a bind of Mon Couteau Aiguisé by GILLIANELIZA by an Instagram follower. Having recently completed my bind of Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love, I have since found myself deep in a Dramione spiral. So buckle in for another one!

A dark grey hard cover book with black text, a gold snake and dagger, with blood dripping from the dagger.

As always, THIS POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, so if you don't want the surprise to be ruined, come back when you've finished reading this awesome fanfic! In this post, I'll run through a brief (spoiler-free) Summary of the Fic, go into my Design Decisions regarding the Physical Design and the Typesetting of this fic, and then finally, Process Details on How It Was Made.

Fanfic Summary

In a Harry Potter Alternate Reality, Hermione Granger finds herself befriending Draco Malfoy and a group of other Slytherins during her third year. As the bond grows from friendship to family, Hermione must betray her first Hogwarts friends by joining his enemy's ranks to protect herself and those she loves.

Tropes Include:

Found Family
Secret Relationship / Friendships
Bully Turned Sweetheart
One True Love / Soulmates
Touch Her and I'll Kill You / I'd Die For Her

Design Decisions

Each book is different, so although my design process is normally pretty standard, it always starts with me reading the book or fic I am binding or rebinding. This gives me a sense of the material, as well as an opportunity to connect with physical details and notable themes that I can then utilize in my design. The only time I do not read a piece first is if a very specific design is requested, or already drawn up.

The Physical Design:

When designing this book, I knew that a knife would be at the forefront of my design. Seeing as it's in the name, and is the defining factor in the book, I needed to showcase it adequately. I decided I wanted my materials to be dark, seeing as Hermione ends up not only a Death Eater, but Voldemort's right hand and an avid dark magic wielder, so I opted for a dark charcoal off-black material. I knew I wanted to tinker with multiple colors, so in contrast to the black writing I planned to use, I made the dagger gold. It still didn't feel like enough, so I ended up wanting to add a snake dangling on the dagger to symbolize the Slytherins, as well as again nodding at the Death Eaters and topped it off with a bit of blood. As I do with all of my designs, I ended up drawing up a very rough first draft, which I will include here in the slideshow below (click to expand images).

When doodling the name of the fic over the drawing, I accidentally put the title on a lower layer in the image causing the title to fall behind the dagger and snake. I ended up loving this and wanting to incorporate it into the final design. I decided to throw in a third color and do the writing in black to match the cover fabric.

I adore the look of borders, as I feel like they bring a necessary conclusion to the design and draw the eye in, so I, of course, added a black border to the front, back, and spine.

As for the end pages, oh boy did I have big dreams. Unfortunately, due to self-imposed time constraints, they simply did not come to fruition. My original plan was to recreate Dephne's painting she gifts to Hermione for the endpapers. Unfortunately, I simply did not have the time to create the art and decided to move forward with the project rather than stall. As an alternative, I used beautiful deep purple endpapers featuring snakes inside circular patterns that I had on hand. I think they ended up pairing beautifully, and am happy with the compromise.

Finally, for the back cover, I used one of my favorite quotes from the piece:

"You really love her, don't you?" Harry said in a weak voice. "More than air," Draco replied justt as softly. "Morre than magic. More than anything."

I like to use quotes that I feel represent the work without giving too much of the details away. A little easteregg to inspire whomever picks it up to read. Since it's a Dramione fic, I figured it wasn't too much of a spoiler if I revealed that Draco was in love with Hermione.

The Typeset:

When creating this typeset, I knew I wanted to be a little more intentional than I had been with previous binds. I cannot even quantify how many hours I spent typesetting, especially with technical difficulties - ugh. For the chapter titles, I opted to surround the chapter numbers with snakes, as her bond with the Slytherins generally plays such a huge role throughout this book. Even more so, it felt fitting, that Hermione, in her way, became a snake, laying in wait to betray people multiple times throughout the book. Don't even get me started on how much I love me some dark Hermione! Mmmmm... and Ron Bashing. I love me some Ron Bashing.

The next typesetting nod I added in was the breaks throughout the story. I wanted something a little more exciting than a simple line separating paragraphs and sections of time. The title, Mon Couteau Aiguisé, is French for My Sharp Knife and is also the nickname given to Hermione by Voldy – a lovely foreshadowing of the fate he will ultimately meet. I used a couple of cute little daggers pointing towards each other as my section breaks. I also love this, because by using two daggers facing each other, it symbolizes the internal struggle Hermione faces throughout the book, constantly being met by lose-lose situations.

As for my title page and quote page, I used similar designs to the cover of a snake and knife on the title pages. I always do two title pages, one simple, and one a little more detailed. I also added another Draco quote from the fic to my dedication page. I made this look like a handwritten note as a nod to the notes Draco and Hermione would share within their two-way journals - one of my favorite themes throughout this book.

"And if tomorrow is my last day of this life, I promise I will find you in the next." - Draco

Further, when going through the typeset, one may notice that every character who writes notes throughout this fic was given their own font. I thought it would be cute and fun for each person to write uniquely in their own way, and matched the fonts to how I felt each character would write - elegant cursive font for Narcissa, playful, more scribbly font for Theo, and so on.

The Making Of

For this fic, after typesetting, I printed on my home computer on regular 8.5 x 11 in printer paper. Yes, I know that I need to upgrade to short grain, but I am using the rest of what I have on hand before making the switch. Each of my signatures contained 6 pieces of paper. I used a French Link stitch with binder's tape when sewing my signatures to make the text block. I chose this method to add extra support, as the fic came out to be 663 pages. After this, I prepared my text block and cover as normal. If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out.

Thank you for checking out this bind! Make sure to follow us on Instagram to get more frequent updates on what we are working on, and check out our other fanfic binds and rebinds!

Happy Reading!

XOXO, The Binder's Room

Reminder:

Fanfic Binds are for my personal use only and are not available for commission.

Commissions are only offered for Rebinds and Original Works.