~This first entry is dedicated to Dickgloucester~
31 July 2009
[Hermione Snape’s diary]
[Lines on the fly-leaf of Hermione’s diary, obviously added in retrospect.]
I still remember the last time I touched a book. A parchment. A quill.
Even after more than eleven years I still remember.
After more than 135 months.
After 587 weeks.
After 4,109 days.
…I can’t calculate the hours in my mind, but they have been long and dark and cold since then.
Since 1 May 1998.
Severus presented me with a bouquet at breakfast that morning: rowan, whitethorn, furze, a sprig of juniper. He didn’t tell me what it was; he liked to challenge his little know-it-all. And he knew that nothing soothed me as quiet hours in the library.
We were all on edge—living on our nerves, tight-rope acrobats over frayed nets of fragile friendships, our safety net a web of spider’s silk, sticky with suspicion, woven above a vast abyss threatening to swallow us whole.
And the whole world with us.
My radials and spirals have turned into squares and lines.
Thirteen rough-tough squares to the window. Seven uneven squares to the door.
No bears, though; just thirteen squares to a dead wall, seven squares to a locked door, thirteen squares to a barred window, and seven squares to a narrow cot.
And lurking between those squares and lines: memories.
The scent of new parchment in the library. Severus’ aftershave—the spicy-sour tang of freshly mown grass, of herbs and flowers and morning dew, all just a kiss away. Harry in the Shrieking Shack. The choking smell of life-blood spilling from his torn throat, the glittering scent of silver memories pouring from his mouth, eyes, nose, ears…the stink of his bowels, released in death. Ron crumpled, discarded, just an afterthought, even in death.
And that last list I made, of hawthorn, rowan, furze, and juniper.
Of my Beltane’s bouquet and what it meant.
Hawthorn—the wishing-tree, the crown of thorns that Jesus bore and the torches that light the nuptial chambers of the wizarding world since Roman times.
Rowan—bright orange berries, life in the death of winter, its wood for protection and good fortune and a peaceful death.
Furze—“When gorse is out of bloom, kissing’s out of season”, or so the saying goes; painful, then, that he gave me a twig with but one, closed bud, and no blooms at all. Beneficial against snake-bite and scarlet fever. A symbol also for new love and fiery passion.
Juniper—its oil used for mummification in ancient Egypt, its wood burnt to cleanse foul air and protect against Evil, its berries consumed to get rid of unwanted bastards.
A message of death and despair, of life and of love.
Had we been victorious, had Voldemort been vanquished, Severus Snape would have waited for me, would have waited to be crowned May Lord to my May Lady.
Thirteen squares for the length of my cell.
Seven for the width.
Invisible letters fill each square. Names of the fallen, one per square. Thirteen by seven, seven by thirteen. And I pace, pace, pace.
It is 31 July 2009, in Azkaban.
Well! I must say I’m impressed by this development. As unlikely as these things are to occur, this kind of upsprung friendship where there was only the opposite before can and does happen. You portrayed it quite nicely, and I’m also glad it’s a positive plot point. Good things happen even to people who are depressed and have gone through the mill. I hope this means there’s some hope!
Too bad the picture at the top of the chapter gave it away. Seeing Maggie Smith as McGonagall in the (admittedly nicely-done) artwork at the top took all the dramatic force away from the end of the chapter. Still a positive development, though, even if it wasn’t a surprise. I’m glad for Hermione, and by extension, for Severus.
Ah, Christ, I can feel you sharpening your knives for another gloom-fest. Only five more chapters left, and already I can feel you poking holes in whatever limited happiness or security they’ve found.
Amazing! A happy ending! I love it! See–hope isn’t so bad, is it? It does seem a trifle sudden, your ending. And we never did find out about the mystery woman. But I feel able to let our Hermione and Severus go, knowing that whatever further vicissitudes they face, they have each other on a more solid, saner basis. Thank you for your writing, and thank you for the hope you left our favorite couple (and us!) with.
I had wanted to delete the third review I left (“Ah, Christ…”), but I’ve been having problems with my computer, and it didn’t allow me to send my reasons back to you, so it (the deletion) could be done. I had read “Apprentice & Necromancer” first, and was deeply disturbed by how damaged so many of the characters had been at the end of that fic. I was therefore afraid that any positives that were about to jell in this story were all going to fall apart, instead. Once I came to the end of this and found it wasn’t going to end badly for them (yay!), I was sorry I’d been so negative in that third review. So I ask your pardon, and that you disregard that one. You really are quite a special writer, and even though I hated the fact my fictional friends suffered so badly by the finish of “A&N”, I must say your plotting is excellent, and so are your characterizations. I will come back to read more of your writing. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us!
Nice to see that you’re still reading!
One thing puzzles me: You must surely be aware that the characters in “Prisoners” are much, much more damaged than those in “Apprentice”.
Of course “Apprentice” leaves key-characters badly damaged … they have been to Death and back, after all. But that story has an ending that assures readers that yes, everything will be just fine one day, this is something we can cope with, eventually.
While in “Prisoners” the challenge of the plot is met, and superficially the characters and readers are rewarded with a fairly straightforward “happy ending”, the story is really much, much worse if you take a moment to think about it. There is no way back, no matter how much they heal. Hermione will for the rest of her life live under the compulsion of counting things. Severus will in times of crisis always drift off to his parallel world. They will always remain unable to live in an emotionally stable fashion without Draco anchoring them …
I don’t mind at all that you dislike or even “hate” the dark turns and twists of my story/stories. Some people like sweet milk chocolate, others like bitter dark chocolate, it’s as simple as that – different tastes and preferences.
Anyway, from your remarks I gather that you might be interested in hearing a bit about my motivation concerning my stories, so here are a few comments about that:
What I loathe in many fanfiction stories in various fandoms is how authors make light of consequences. People are tortured, traumatised, injured … and there are no consequences. Everyone is right as rain again in one and the same chapter. Personally, I find that not only ridiculous and boring, but somewhat despicable. It doesn’t work like that. As a reader, and therefore also as a writer, I’m simply not interested in fluffy lies, I’m in it for the hard-won happy ending, like the one I wrote for “Apprentice” … I prefer characters who have looked, heck, *jumped into* the abyss of despair and have crawled out of it again and persevered. I am interested in how characters will act when they are pushed far beyond their limits, and how that will change them, and how they will move on from there.
So if you’re looking for fluff, you will rarely find that kind of thing in my stories. But I do try to come up with interesting, twisty plots, and heroes who find the strength to go on no matter what.