13 August 2009
[Hermione Snape’s diary]
Severus never came back to bed last night.
I woke alone, curled up in a corner of our four poster bed. As far away from the door as possible. Waking alone was…difficult. I—cannot say how long I cowered, counting the four posts of our bed over and over and over again. Getting out of bed wasn’t any easier. I—cannot say how often I crossed and re-crossed the space between windows, wall, and door, counting the floorboards, again and again and again, although I really wanted to leave the room. And I knew I could leave the room. Rationally. I knew I was in our bedroom. In our house. But—
When I finally made it downstairs, I found Severus sitting in the kitchen, staring at a burnt down candle, his diary in front of him, his right hand resting in a puddle of bloody ink.
I must have screamed.
He dropped the quill, jumped up, spun around. And blinked at me with the dazed confusion of someone woken from deepest slumber.
“Why didn’t you come back to bed?” I asked.
“But I—” he started. Bewildered, he looked from me to the desk, taking in the candle stub, the diary, and the bloody ink on the table, slowly drying into a brown, flaky crust.
“—I did come to bed,” he muttered.
“I kissed you good night,” he whispered. With a slow, unsteady gesture, he raised his hand. “I sketched our rune on your forehead to keep you safe, to ward off nightmares…”
I shook my head. “Not here,” I said. “Not here.”
We left it at that.
The rest of the morning we spent outside, working in the garden. The house came fully furnished; so we have tools, and even some old packages of seeds. Though it’s too late in the year to sow anything but sunflowers. They take well to Growing Charms and should brighten up our September.
…if we’re still here then, that is.
Although it’s the wrong time of the year for gardening, it felt good to be outside. To move, to breathe, to go inside—to have a drink of water, or to eat an apple—and then to come back outside. A…remarkable experience. Exhilarating.
Around noon I began to feel uncomfortable, though. Edgy. I couldn’t tell why. My skin crawled. When I looked at Severus, he was just as tense—although much better at hiding it.
“How about something to drink?” I suggested.
“Good idea,” he agreed. A raised black eyebrow indicated that he saw straight through my strategy.
In the kitchen he didn’t wait for my question.
“Someone’s watching us,” he said. “I can’t tell who, or how. But I’m certain of it.”
“Evil? An enemy?”
He paused—shook his head—shrugged. “I’m not sure. It—” He frowned at his instinctive choice of words. “Whoever it is feels…different. Not friend or foe. Alien.”
We did not go back outside. But the disturbing presence remained…until the Patil twins arrived to check on us.
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.