24 August 2009
[Hermione Snape’s diary]
This morning I walked to Hogsmeade with Severus. At the Three Broomsticks he turned right to enter the kitchen through the backdoor, while I walked past the pub to the Owl office. On the pub’s front door I noticed the remnants of a graffiti. “Prison bait” it said.
I owled off my application to be employed as Minerva McGonagall’s assistant to the DMLE [Department of Magical Law Enforcement]. Madam Clif-Wyrt wished me luck.
Outside Madam Agan waited for me. Although it wasn’t really cold, perhaps 17°C, she was wrapped in a thick cloak. I approached her. (If she wanted to kill us in broad daylight, she could have done so already.)
“Thank you,” I said, showing my hands. The cuts are deep, but clean. She nodded, a strange, swaying gesture—she’s very tall. Looking at her closely today, I realised her eyes aren’t black, actually. Her pupils are huge, the iris reduced to a circle, that’s all. Her eye colour is amber, almost golden. Disconcerting, but beautiful.
“And for sending me to Minerva McGonagall,” I added.
Again, Agan silently inclined her head.
“Why are you helping us?” I asked. “You don’t know us at all!”
She ignored my question. Instead she inquired: “The Prophet writes today that the Minister’s son is alive after all. He is the one that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named loved, is that so?”
Shocked, I exclaimed: “Voldemort loved Draco?!?”
She jerked backwards. “No. Not the Lord Protector. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.” She swallowed convulsively. “Harry Potter.”
That made me laugh.
And when I stopped laughing—cry.
Agan just stood and watched me.
At last I calmed down. “Yes,” I replied. I realised that I miss Draco. How strange. Eleven years or—eleven years ago, Draco and Harry may have been lovers, but Draco and I were less than friends. “Yes,” I repeated. “They were lovers.”
Agan nodded again. Then she turned wordlessly and glided away. I shivered—had I endangered Draco by answering her question? But it is all over the papers, not exactly a secret anymore…
The afternoon I spent with Minerva.
I talked to her.
Eleven years or—she asked me to call her Minerva before the Final Battle. I remember how self-conscious I felt. I don’t think I managed more than once or twice. Now—eleven years or nearly 136 months or 590 weeks or 4,132 days later—it is easy.
I believe Minerva enjoyed hearing my voice. Annie Maddock is affectionate and well-spoken for a house-elf, but her ways of expressing solicitousness are naturally different from a human’s.
After feeding Minerva her dinner (leftover Hairst Bree), Annie hovered her upstairs into her bedroom. She told me to let down Minerva’s hair and to brush it. Now silver streaked with black, it’s still beautiful and silky. I counted the brush strokes. Gentle murmurs. Soothing strokes. One hundred.
Afterwards, I stood with my hands on her shoulders, lost in thought. That’s probably why I didn’t recognise the sound right away.
I’m sure I heard it, though. Very softly, and only for a moment.
But Minerva purred.
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.