14 August 2009
[Severus Snape’s diary]
The Patils’ visit met neither your nor my expectations.
You hoped they would offer to vouch for us, and that they would go through your lists, confirming deaths, verifying survivals.
I already knew they wouldn’t do that. Clearly, they are much too to vouch for us. And I hoped that Padma would have the sense not to cater to your obsession.
I understand your need, believe me. (I have my own lists to keep me awake at night.) But I do doubt your capability of confronting the facts at this time.
…perhaps I should apply this insight to my own disappointment.
I wanted facts as well, and got none.
I tell myself they are wiser than Albus Dumbledore not to trust prisoners on probation with any details. Your lecture about war- and prison-induced paranoia (delivered ex tempore with footnotes, side notes, and addenda) reassured me concerning your mental state and—loath as I am to admit that—it was not completely without merit. Yet this lack of information leaves me uneasy.
Their unwillingness or inability to provide clues for the riddle of our release is worse, though.
I fear we were set only free to serve as decoy.
As do they.
Once already our futures were sacrificed for the Greater Good. Save your breath for that lecture. I agree: It was not completely without merit.
Yet we both know we will not survive a second time.
And I promise we won’t have to.
One way or another.
Enough of that; that was yesterday.
The Patil chits cannot provide jobs for us. Hogwarts doesn’t employ half-bloods or Mudbloods. And we must not get closer to the Ministry than we absolutely have to.
So this morning we went looking at the bulletin board in the post office. Jobs for ex-inmates of Azkaban aren’t advertised in the Prophet, not even in Goyle’s Quibbler.
I set out looking into a career as a professional de-gnomer or ghoul washer, with the option of trying my luck as a day-labourer collecting bat guano, unicorn dung, or squid shit tomorrow. You marched off to try your luck as window charmer, garbage vanisher, and owlery cleaner.
At noon lack of success led me to the Three Broomsticks. Four sickles, six knuts for a soup—I needed something fortifying before asking Aberforth for help.
A decision I regretted when I spat a mouthful of uncut cabbage back into lukewarm water thick with grease drops and tasting of soap.
“If you wanted me dead,” I asked Abbott, “why wait to poison me now?”
She snorted, and shocked me for the second time. “I’ve always liked your sense of humour, Snape.—I hear you’re looking for a job.”
I only nodded. (A dunderhead would have figured that out by now; albeit a Hufflepuff, she never was a dunderhead.)
“If I recall correctly, you were a fair hand at cutting, chopping, and stirring?” she asked snidely.
“Possibly,” I spat. “Why?”
“I’m looking for a soup-cook.” She smirked.
…but I have a job now.
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.