17 August 2009
[Severus Snape’s diary]
Today I cooked Cullen Skink. It was the perfect day for it; cool and rainy, with fog hanging over the loch most of the day. The weather only brightened late in the afternoon.
Cooking is soothing work, even though the kitchen of the Three Broomsticks is a busy place, with a full cook, his assistant, and a dumpy little witch helping out with Cleaning and Stirring Charms milling about.
Minerva adored that soup, if I recall correctly. Albus used to tease her about that. How she loved it best in cat-shape, lapping it up as soon as it cooled down. I couldn’t say. She never trusted me enough to let me see her like that—playful, kittenish…human. Not even after I nearly died trying to protect Albus on the Astronomy Tower. Though I assume I mustn’t blame her. I failed, after all.
Like I always failed in my life.
…when it mattered most.
Like I failed Lily. Although I became Dumbledore’s spy with the stroke of midnight on my seventeenth birthday, I did not manage to win her love or protect her life.
Like I failed you. You were just a child when you were caught up in this war. Barely an adult when I declared my doomed love for you, when you Him. And it
just as Potter promised.
—I may have won your love. And you did survive. But what about your life?
Your youth and your sanity are gone.
You just picked at your food again tonight, although you’re already toothpick-thin. Another day over, and still no job or someone to vouch for you. (Or for me, for that matter.) Though the guests at the Three Broomsticks do seem to like their soup now. Well, they don’t know who’s cooking it. I dare say the popularity of cheap liquid luncheons would dwindle phoenix-quick, should that ever get out…
After supper we talked about Madam Agan. She seemed helpful yesterday, yet she scared you deeply. And I clearly recall my own discomfiture in her presence. She appears to be a beautiful—if reserved—Indian woman. With such a background she could easily possess a draught that could heal your hand. Perhaps the Patils’ warning is just some sort of power-play among witches of a shared cultural background.
Bloody mongooses.
Of course they refuse to give any details to back up their warning. And Hannah couldn’t tell me much about Agan, either; the woman showed up in Hogsmeade a week after Bellatrix’ death, two weeks after Voldemort’s death.
She is a mystery.
I never liked mysteries.
I was weary to my bones tonight. And I admit, I longed for the peace of our other cottage, where you enjoy the meals we cook together, even the pudding. Where the only conditions that rule our lives are those of haphazard Highland weather.
We went to bed together.
But when I held you and kissed you and drew our rune on your forehead, I could not tell where I was.
Here, or there.
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.