18 August 2009
[Hermione Snape’s diary]
What a strange day today has been. Not the day as such; it was a perfectly normal Tuesday in the Scottish Highlands in August. Heavy rain with bright spots later in the day. But my day, today as I experienced it, has been strange. Very strange.
On my lap a Kneazle-kitten with tiger stripes and leopard spots is purring. I’ve called him Schroedinger.
Not because I understand the problem of Schroedinger’s cat, but because I remember my father trying to explain it to me. It is an experiment with a cat in a box. At one point the cat in the box is dead and alive at the same time. Until you open the box.
I am that cat.
I am dead and alive at the same time.
And I am afraid that I will remain in that box forever.
Schroedinger is one of three gifts Millicent Bulstrode gave me today. She came to tea today, just as she had promised.
It was awkward.
We were not friends, before. In fact, in terms of childhood relationships, we must be considered arch-enemies. We even got into a catfight once, complete with name-calling, hair-pulling, pinching, scratching, and hissing.
Strange, how that memory makes me smile today.
When we got to the point where two women who meet for tea or coffee compliment each other on their outfit or physical appearance, I was at a loss. I wasn’t good at this game before.
And now…
The years have not been kind to Millicent. She was always a…big girl. Ron used to make fun of her, calling her fat and frumpy, a hag, all kinds of nasty names. Now I can see that she was simply born to be a woman of generous curves. This bony, haggard look does not suit her at all.
She broke the silence first, her tone wry: “You make a great wraith, Granger. Do you think I can blow you away if I try hard enough?”
Upon which I retorted: “I’m sure you’d be a great valet stand. Or perhaps a scratching post?”
We stared at each other.
When we were children, this would have been the moment to draw our wands. Today, we started laughing.
After we finally calmed down, Millicent put a crate on the table and gazed at me with a solemn expression. “I’ll always remember how you saved my Tigger. And him just a cat, not even a half-kneazle as your Crookshanks was.”
She opened the box.
“I’m a licensed breeder now,” she added. “Cats and Kneazles. This one’s the runt of my spring litters.”
Then she scowled. “He’s yours.”
That was the first gift.
We sat down, had tea, talked. Millicent narrowly avoided being branded a half-blood. Thanks to her mother’s second—pure-blood—husband, blood magic, and Dark adoption rites that leave her eyes dead and empty when she talks about her past.
“Therefore I can vouch for you,” she announced. “And I will.”
That was the second gift.
Her third gift was a book.
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.