25 August 2009
[Severus Snape’s diary]
I told you this morning that I have resigned from my job. You were not surprised. But I could see what you were thinking without Legilimency.
“How Gryffindor.”
Living with you for eleven years—even just in dreams—has changed me.
[ . . . ]
Six days of probation remain.
We have a house. (A nice house at that; even though you insist on a green door.)
You have found someone to vouch for you—the documents lie safely warded in your desk. Tonight Blaise and Gabrielle will Apparate from London to discuss your job application. Their owl arrived late last evening. Like the Patils, like Hannah, they are indeed willing to do what is within their power.
But all of their power is limited.
I have lost my job, and there is no one to vouch for me.
Azkaban has become a dark temptation.
Don’t you see, Hermione?
I could return to the silence of my cell. I could return to dreaming through the twilight of my imprisonment. I could return to where I cannot see the shadows of the past or the future.
I could go back to a world where the sun always shines warm upon our faces as we sit on the bench next to our Gryffindor-red door, where the rain falls forever soft upon our gardens, where you never count days or weeks or months or years, because we are together, and we are happy, and everything is as it should be.
But I will not. I will not
However… the Dementors have become the prison guards of the whole wizarding world, and I cannot produce a Patronus anymore, so I
Besides, you need me.
[ . . . ]
I fear for Draco after your latest encounter with Agan.
I must admit that—as you put it—if she wanted to kill either of us in broad daylight she truly had sufficient opportunity to accomplish that. However, the mere fact that she did not cast the Killing Curse on us at first sight, does not necessarily imply she means us (or Draco) no harm.
We have not been in touch with Draco. It seemed safer that way. But now, we worry.
Worrying about Draco inevitably leads me to consider Lucius.
We were never enemies. Not even after my treason and Draco’s betrayal. Even in the Shrieking Shack, when he cast Cruciatus on me and put me in chains, I saw no hatred in his eyes. Satisfaction, yes. Rage, yes. But also regret. And…fear.
Lucius signed our release papers.
Eleven years ago he could not have resisted the chance to flaunt his power over my life and my death. Today? Not even a statement in the Daily Prophet.
Enough of that.
You’ve been watching me as I write—choosing to wait for good news to put down in your diary, whereas I prefer to get this chore out of the way before bad news arrive.
Now let us see how we can while away this rainy afternoon.
“Perhaps in bed?” I smirk.
…and you smile.
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.