26 August 2009
[Hermione Snape’s diary]
—write this—
Yes…exactly…every single word.
Write it down! Yes. Just like that.
Ex-cell-ent.
No, write that DOWN. Down.
What am I doing?
You said you didn’t know what to write. So I’m helping you. I’m giving you dictation.
…there’s nothing in those rules that says it’s not allowed. You must write every day; you must use the blood-quill; you must write where you are and what you did.
That’s all.
So: Hermione Jean Granger spent 26 August at home. To be precise, she spent the day in bed. In the ridiculous four poster bed that has been squeezed into the first floor bedroom of the Lake House in Hogsmeade, Scotland—
and she was not alone.
She is not alone now.
Because I, Draco Abraxas Malfoy, and Severus Snape, are in bed with her.
While Hermione Granger lies naked on her stomach, her nipples just touching the sheets, and fills her diary with truth and blood, I kneel next to her and slowly lick the fresh blood from the quill cuts on the back of her left hand. While Severus Snape sits with his back against the headboard and watches my naked arse. And, dare I make you write that? My wicked little tongue, as it flicks over your skin, slides in glistening trails up your arm, over your shoulder, down your back, to your arse—
Pervert!
Didn’t I say that you’re to write only what I say? But I’ll indulge you.
Pervert!
Yes!
That’s what my father screamed at me when he discovered the truth.
But you called me and Harry that, too, once or twice.
Don’t cry, love.
You had little reason to trust me. And we were—
…less than friends…
Yes.
I don’t even know if we are friends now. Certainly we are more than friends: lovers in adversity. But also less than friends because friendship is a sane relationship. Which we are not.
Don’t start counting floorboards now. You’re proving my point.
Very well.
But let me count for you.
Let me count…
How often I kissed you today. How often Severus kissed you. How long we held you, seconds, minutes, hours. How often you moaned in our arms. How often you gasped as he or I or both of us entered you. How often we fucked. How often we made love.
I arrived in time for breakfast and a thorough scolding.
—You shouldn’t have come, Draco. It’s dangerous!
Of course it is. But you both need looking after. Dear me, Severus can scowl again? That must be a good sign.
…will you look at that! I’ve made you smile.
I’m not in as much danger as you think. Your diaries told the Ministry that I’m alive and where I live on 4 August. The Snatchers could have grabbed me every day, every night, every hour since then. They didn’t.
And we had to celebrate! You’ve fulfilled the conditions of your probation, Hermione! You have a house, a job, and someone to vouch for you.
—But Severus doesn’t.
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.