Competitions

Competition Name: 2007 Valentine's Day Challenge
Competition End Date: Saturday 27th January 2007

PhoenixSong is pleased to announce its 4th Annual Valentine's Day Challenge! We'll be accepting submissions for Valentine's Day fics only beginning Thursday , January 25th at 12:01 AM Pacific Time until Saturday, January 27th at 11:59 PM Pacific Time. These submissions will be for BOTH new and current authors. Current authors: please submit your stories during this time as well, and it will then be sent to your usual beta.

Official Rules

What would a challenge be without a bit of a challenge? All stories submitted must adhere to the following requirements, or else they will be disqualified:

• All stories submitted must include one of the following lines:

1. "You want to take him/her where?" & "And do what?" (both must be used)
2. "Where did find that?"
3. "Ron, I could kiss you!" said Harry (or any other characters' names of the same gender can be substituted)
4. "Will you look at the size of that!"
5. "We're already married, you prat!"
6. "This is our seventieth Valentine's together, you know."
7. It was his/her first Valentine's Day alone since fourth year.
8. "Happy Singles' Awareness Day," he/she said bitterly.
9. Harry reckoned Valentine's Day was celebrated in February to lighten up the gloom and doom of the long winter months. He also reckoned the whole thing was a load of . (Again, any other character's name can be used instead.)
10. "Oh!" he/she exclaimed. "Oh... that's a really terrific present. Thanks! "

The names of any canon-consistent couple can be substituted for Harry and Ginny, of course: James/Lily, Ron/Hermione, Remus/Tonks, Molly/Arthur, etc. (Neville/Luna is not acceptable since Ms Rowling has stated this is not a canon couple, but Neville/Susan could be, since we have no information to contradict this at this point.)

• Also, each story must also be generally set, for the majority of the fic, in one of the following places:

1. In Hogwarts
2. In the Ministry of Magic
3. In Grimmauld Place
4. At the Burrow
5. In Hogsmeade
6. In Muggle London
7. In the hospital wing
8. In Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes
9. At the Quidditch Pitch

• Length of story: All stories are required to have a word content of between 3000 and 5000 words.

PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGES TO THE DATES BELOW:

All stories will post onto the site on February 7th. Our site members will have the opportunity to vote for "Members Choice" between February 7th and midnight on the 14th. The entries will also be judged by the PS staff and all winners will be announced on February 15th!

Please note : As usual, all stories are subject to our typical "Silencing Charm" – do not announce which story is yours via email, LiveJournals (or other blog-sites), etc. You may encourage your friends to vote in the contest, but do not do anything that specifically gives away the identity of your specific story, or it will be disqualified.