Being Heard

Writer's Angst

2011-02-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's almost a month to the day since I last posted. Well that's better than last time, lol.

1. I've written 2 fan fic stories since I last posted here: Hair Without the Shirt ( Cheveux sans la chemise ) and 10 Things You Never Knew About Severus Snape's Mum. Both are available at fan fiction.net. I'd like to post them here but I still haven't gotten the hang of the formatting. So I guess I'll just have to go with links.

2. I'm still burnt out from all the work I did on Confessions of a Cornwall Grad Chapter 3. ( See Cornwall Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to catch up. ) So while I have glimmers of Chapter 4 in my head, they aren't amounting to too much.

3. However, I did what I always do when my writer's well runs dry: I made a run to Borders, had my usual green tea latte, bought some new music ( deluxe edition of Alanis Morissette's album Flavors Of Entanglement; the song Orchid made it worth it ), bought 2 new DVDs, and bought a book on Angels. All purchases were made after I quaffed latte ( and snarfed plain bagel with butter ), while sitting peacefully in the cafe and killing a chapter in my re-read of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

4. Alanis' deluxe album has a cute ( maybe a little too precious! ) song about tequila on it. It's fun. Made me wonder what Severus Snape would get up to if Demeter could get him drunk enough. I think I just might have stumbled across an opening scenario for Cornwall Chapter 4...

5. I'm consumed with angst over an open house I'm scheduled to attend this coming Saturday. It's for people interested in getting an MFA in Creative Writing, among other majors. I could apply while there because the fee is waved. But I refuse to do so. First because I don't really have enough time or energy. Second because I'm scared. And third because I REFUSE to rush. Last time I did something like this I rushed and it didn't work out. Now I'm taking my sweet-ass time.

6. I've been inundated with thoughts and images and sounds for chapter 2 of The Healer's Apprentice. I'm feeling the need to write this chapter - which would take away from Cornwall. But Healer's has languished longer than Cornwall, albeit it only has 2 reviews. What makes it harder is that the emotional architecture is filling itself in. I've been doing LOTS of work with Kate Bush's classic album The Hounds of Love ( especially the songs Under Ice, Waking the Witch, Jig of Life, and Hello Earth ) as well as her sublime latest album Aerial, especially the second disc A Sky of Honey. BRILLIANT work. Add in Sting's The Soul Cages and I pretty much have nearly everything I need. I've been alternating lately with Sade's Love Deluxe, especially her gorgeous instrumental track, Mermaid.All of this is rattling around in my head to help me construct the character of Ophelia Broomall, my - hopefully NOT Mary Sue - original character love interest for Severus. Yes I do need a life, now that you mention it...

7. I've made tremendous, although still nascent, progress on my original story. Right now I'm calling it Alice Darkly and that's all I can say about the title. But I've created 2 characters who I think are the most powerful I've ever created. And neither of their names shows up in a Google search. So they're ALL MINE * cackles evilly *

8. I feel a change coming. And I don't know if it's for good or ill. This sounds flaky but...astrologically my sun is in Scorpio and, more importantly, my moon is in Pisces. I'm one of those folks who can sense atmospheres in a room or sometimes tell who's on the phone when it rings before I pick it up. Yeah. And the spidey- I mean Pisces signal is saying something's looming on the horizon. And you know I've had ENOUGH pain in my life. I REALLY don't want or need another dose right now. God has been surprising me with a lot of good things lately. I hope He keeps up the pattern. I'm just not ready for tears again...

2011-01-29T20:25:00.000-08:00

Amazingly, this blog is still alive...although just barely.

Also amazingly, I've completed chapter 3 of Confessions of a Cornwall Grad. Let's see if I can possibly post it the way I'd like to.

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There are houses and then there are HOUSES...

Confessions of
a Cornwall Grad

Chapter 3

Author’s Note: *sobs* Yes it took over a year to add chapter 3. Mea culpa. Partly it was real life distracting me. Partly it was myself becoming obsessed with creating a whole world and not just another story.

Author’s Thank You’s: HUGE, HUGE thanks to Helena and Penni for embracing my madness and reading draft after draft. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. I feel free to boot my patootie into Chapter 4, lol!

Disclaimer: You know the drill – With the exception of my gal Demter and assorted secondary original characters, JKR owns ‘em. I just mess about with them for a bit – purely profit free of course.

Minor Britpick Note: I tried to avoid too many Americanisms. And yes I know the counties no longer have to be included in postal addresses and the address included below is probably all kinds of wrong. All I can say is that I actually went to the Royal Mail website to learn about the UK address system and only came away with a headache (Why do your county lines keep moving? ) C’est la vie!

*~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**

He owns a house.

No, not that squalid little shack in Manchester that he lists as his official residence.

A house.

With acreage.

And a pedigree.

And, dare I say it, a bit of architectural dignity.

I was gobsmacked!

Finding out was like going through that Alice girl’s looking glass. ( When will Muggles learn not to mess about with magic mirrors? )

I was intrigued.

As my mum always says, a man is never more attractive than when he comes packaged with a house. An over-stuffed Gringotts vault doesn’t hurt either. But a fully paid off house trumps all.

But there are houses and then there are Houses.

The Manchester house isn’t generally known among the faculty whom Snape seems to despise. I can’t say I blame him. Most of them are a little too jumped up and satisfied with themselves. On the rare occasions when I have to go to their staff room to find one of them, I could swear the temperature drops more than a few degrees the minute I cross the threshold. Merlin forbid if I ever need to borrow a lump of sugar! They’d probably demand a finger as payment. I shudder to think how deep the chill goes when Severus is there. When I dropped a few hints about it to Filch ( who gets the same treatment by the way) he said too many of the faculty probably haven’t gotten over being shown up by Severus when he was still just a student. No professor likes to come up short in comparison to one of their pupils, especially not compared to the “raggedy little swot” he used to be.

They’d hated him then too, even though he was brilliant. And Snape hates them right back. So I suppose he’d rather die – or better yet dispose of one of THEM – rather than let slip any word of Manchester.

I suspect only the Headmaster and McGonagall know about Manchester. And maybe perhaps Pomfrey in case of medical emergencies. I’ve never heard any of them mention it. And I can’t imagine anyone else on the faculty – with the exception of sweet little Filius, who would never be so rude – having either the standing or the courage to raise the subject.

At the time, though, Filch’s comments had left me uneasy. The old man had been here when Severus was a student and I sensed there was a lot about Snape that he wasn’t telling me. Why he told me as much as he did probably had more to do with the Goblin brandy I used – with Filch’s blessing – to spike his tea than with any fear of breaching Snape’s confidences. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get any more out of him.

Raggedy? Mr. Darkly Immaculate, himself?

No his hair isn’t perfect. Nor are his teeth. But these are minor easily correctible things. They’re small parts of his very impressive whole which he holds erect with pride.

And yet…

It doesn’t take a genius to see that at some point, someone, somewhere, perhaps someone near and dear to him, had convinced him he was ugly.

I hadn’t realized at first. When I’d first arrived here, I’d simply registered him as this sweeping, darkly majestic force, the thundercloud to the headmaster’s genial lemon-drop sun.

Yes his skin is sallow. Not pocked, or pitted, or scarred, just sallow. And not all the time. Sometimes he’s simply pale, which is hardly a shock in someone who spends most of his life in the deep dark of the dungeons. But if you pay attention, you’ll see his color shift with the seasons. In August, when the faculty members return, what is tanned and rested in them is sallow in him. By December, he’s pale again. You can hardly blame the man for being a poor tanner. Otherwise Witch Weekly’s style aurors would have chucked me into Azkaban long ago.

And no his teeth are not perfect. To hear the students tell it, he’s a snaggle-toothed, crooked-mouth, mess. In actuality, the bottom row of his teeth are slightly misaligned. Whether this is congenital or the result of stress-induced teeth grinding, I couldn’t tell. But by a happy accident, his upper row is perfectly straight. It overlaps enough to almost completely obscure his bottom row, so you can’t see that imperfection unless you’re literally staring down his throat. And if you need to do that BE FOREWARNED – I suspect he bites.

And his teeth aren’t perfectly white either. He smokes. Clove cigarettes. I’d wager any amount of galleons that habit is stress induced. When his colleagues come back from the summer tanned with sparkling teeth, he comes back sallow-skinned but with perfectly acceptable ivory-colored teeth. By the Halloween Feast he’s becoming paler and his teeth dingier. At least during the day. Catch him in the morning and his teeth are bloody brilliant. By the end of the day, he’s back where he started. I suspect he fights a neverending battle between what I’d estimate is a pack a day habit and his tooth whitener. I haven’t come across a wizard-made tooth whitener yet that can’t handle ordinary food or cigarette stains, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more than just cloves in those fags.

But if it keeps him from murdering the little beasts, I say smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

I wonder if he stocks up for the year before the start of term feast. Hogsmeade’s merchants carry tobacco but they aren’t exactly known for selling exotic goods. And scoring a side trip to Knockturn Alley during school terms just for a pack of fags just inst’ worth it. Then again he could have someone supplying him. Several other faculty members smoke as well, especially Hooch. Some days that woman reeks like chimney! But I’ve never caught the same deep, spicy aroma wafting from them as I smell on him.

His hair is its own little saga.

I’ve heard the nasty little remarks about the so-called “greasy git” from students and, worse, the faculty – as if any of them had the goods to be crowned sexy sorcerer of the year. All behind his back of course. Not one of them has got the guts to say it to his face. Oh I’ve heard them muttering about him under their breath just loud enough for him to hear. They’re so chuffed with themselves they don’t even notice I can hear them too. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter to them. He never acknowledges the comments. But I’ve seen the way his mouth tightens and his shoulders pull back ever so slightly as if he’s willing himself to face down an attack. But he remains silent. Oh, he’ll tear a loose-lipped student’s house points to shreds if he overhears them, but he leaves the faculty alone. With the students, it’s a matter of disrespecting authority. With his colleagues… I suppose he thinks it’s beneath his dignity to even acknowledge them with a response.

But it bothers him.

It took me awhile to figure out that too.

I didn’t believe it at first.

I mean he’s so proud. He stands like a prince – the Machiavellian version, perhaps, but still a prince. It must infuriate his peers because there seems to be an unspoken rule that only the headmaster can adopt anything like a royal presence. Severus does it without thinking. I’m not sure he’d know how to stop even if he wanted to. It isn’t in him to slouch or shuffle or amble. He swoops. He stalks. He never stoops – unless he’s snatching up a hapless student. I think his pride amuses the Headmaster.

And the way he moves… I don’t have the words to describe him.

I once spent a long, frustrating – sexually and otherwise – night, poring through Madame Pince’s sadly limited literature collection, trying to find some word, some author, someone who had conjured up the words that could describe his physical grace. The closest I came was Edgar Allen Poe – how he wound up in the mug-lit section I’ll never know – and T.S. Eliot. And even they weren’t enough. All I got out of that night was a raging headache, dark dreams of “nevermore” and the realization that I wanted to be seduced by the wasteland.

And, possessing all this, he thinks he’s ugly.

I guess I just don’t see him the way other people do.

It’s as if other people are determined to only see him in pieces.

It’s shamefully easy to do.

He’s SO intense that his energy actually seems to twist reality around him so that people can only see a distorted version of him, like a trick of the light.

Turned one way, he’s all sharp, sour angles and seething anger. The Grim Reaper made snarling flesh.

Turned the other way, he’s smoky, seductive shadows and sweetly, stinging allure.

Seeing him as only one or the other is like seeing him through one eye and then the other. Sooner or later you wind up cockeyed or half blind.

And yet his colleagues never seem to catch on.

Most of them seem to forget they actually have two eyes when it comes to him. To them he’s forever frozen in mid-snarl. And the tragedy of it is that they get a sort of petty revenge on him. Because he believes them. It’s as if, on some level, he believes their resentment and fear is his just due.

And THAT’S what I could not understand. Even with that less than savory history of his WHY would he believe them?

Well it wasn’t as if I could walk up to His Immaculate Darkness and ask. I didn’t even have the courage to ask Filch. If it were anyone else, I’m sure Filch would fill me in. But I could just imagine the kind of threats, spoken or unspoken, upon which Snape would condition sharing any confidences with the old caretaker. Why Filch had told me as much as he had previously probably had more to do with the Goblin brandy I’d used beforehand – with Filch’s blessing – to spike his tea. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get any more out of him. Besides, asking Filch, a defenseless squib, to risk running afoul of Snape was wrong. Not that I could defend myself any better if I collided with Snape’s dark – or rather darker – side. Still it was the principle of the thing. Last time I had no idea I was asking Filch to breach Severus’ confidence and luck and brandy were on my side. This time I was on my own.

So I took myself off for a quiet little side trip to Manchester.

After sneaking off for a look at it I could see why.

It was…it was…

It was a wary walk down cracked, litter-strewn Muggle pavements, gripping my mother’s wand tight as I passed Muggles who could have been right at home in Knockturn Alley. It was a stroll past rows of narrow, aging homes packed as tightly together as knuckles in a fist. It was a jarring stop before a house with grimy, greasy brick and crumbling mortar; a dulled rust-coated wrought-iron railing; clouded window panes framed by splintering window sashes and flaking paint; all huddled under an ashen sky and backed against a field of trash and debris choked weeds...

I didn’t want to believe it.

He’s the Head of Slytherin House – Hogwarts’ proudest, no matter what the Gryffindors might say. All the houses have their share of heirs and spares. But he rides herd over the spoiled spawn of the proudest, wealthiest purebloods. If ever there was a nest of vipers, er brats who not only demand that the world and everyone in it be organized to THEIR convenience, but who also routinely scheme to get the upper hand over their head of house, it’s in Slytherin House.

Of course they fail. And when the accumulated weight of Prof. Snape’s multiple, gleefully vindictive and, Filch assures me, richly deserved detentions crushes even their proud spirits, they finally bow their necks to the inevitable. For the duration of their stay at Hogwarts, Prof. Snape’s word is law. And since it’s inconceivable that such pureblood aristocrats could bow to anything less than their superior, I always assumed that at the very least he’d come from the same elevated tier.

Not…this.

Manchester.

The mills.

MUGGLE mills.

The proud head of Slytherin – with his hauteur, his regal bearing, his cultured syllables, and his immaculately tailored robes, the man who sweeps past us as if he were the walking, talking avatar of Machiavelli’s Prince – sprang forth from Muggle mills?

Can you imagine if these brats KNEW?

Can you imagine if their PARENTS knew?

No wonder he never mentions it.

I’m surprised he doesn’t have it under fidelius or at least a good, strong notice-me-not charm. Then again he lists it in his personnel file, so I suppose that would have defeated the purpose.

Still I would have expected a wizard neighborhood at least.

Diagon and Knockturn Alleys are much too commercial to make good residential space. But the dozens of secondary and tertiary streets branching off of them make lovely neighborhoods. Parsh Alley certainly can’t match the prestige of Diagon Alley but it made a decent enough home for my sister, my mother, my granddad and me. True, mum had to work at the custom house down in Navigation Alley, and there was that row of shady Goblin pawn shops at our cross street, Thrift Alley. But the Goblins kept order, and besides, all of that was at the far end of our long, winding street. It might as well have been another world to us kids.

Our block of converted Victorian-era flats actually enclosed a long inner courtyard that we all took full advantage of. The neighbors’ association claimed it and cultivated it into bright rows of daisy and daffodils, marigolds and roses. Every season, within the walls, we had lush little harvests of tomatoes, strawberries, green beans, turnips and cabbages. They coaxed apple and pear trees into giving up their fruit. And they threatened us with murder as we chased through around them nicking samples as we played hide and seek.

Yes, we lived in London. But we lived surprisingly well. We certainly cut into our grocery bills. And thanks to what magic our parents could conjure up, we kids had space and sunlight and trees and grass, fresh food and fresh air – all safe and secure from Muggles.

Not this…how could he grow up here?

The air itself felt leaden and it was hard to imagine anything escaping the gravitational pull of that place. Is this what Muggles mean when they say “toxic half-life?”

Is THIS what gives him his crackling, sulfuric aura? Is THIS why he believes he’s ugly? Because he believes this toxicity is not just skin deep but in his blood?

If nothing else, I think I can understand his secrecy and ferocity better. If he can’t be loved – and to convince someone that they’re ugly is to convince them that they can’t be loved – then at least he can damn well make sure he’s feared. At the very least it keeps the faculty from trying to devour him.

And his closed-mouth stance on his origins is the only thing that stands between him and parents like Lucius Malfoy discovering his origins and killing him stone dead – or at least having him fired, which in my tax bracket amounts to the same thing. Even my mother would turn up her nose if she knew. True we lived on my grandfather’s charity. But it was a neat and tidy charity. It was respectable charity. No pureblood or his child would ever tolerate jumping to the orders of such a low-born, smog-stained upstart.

And I can’t have him. Not if he comes from this. I have to do better, not worse. Yes, we need the magical power. But we also need the social protection. I can’t risk losing Uriah just to move down in the world. It’s not just me here.

Mum can’t work forever. True, I’m out of the house. And my sister Daphne has finally – praise Merlin! – gotten a wedding date out of that killjoy boyfriend of hers, Cadmus. But that’s only because he demanded she give up a solid position as junior seamstress at Titania’s Bridal Shop in Silk Alley to help him start his furniture-making business. She told him she’d do it…eventually.

It’ll be more like never if I have anything to do with it. We’re not the kind of family that can afford to start – and most likely lose – a business. Neither is Cadmus’. And they’ll wind up right back in the flat with Mum, stressing themselves and her over mounting debts.

No. I can’t have that.

Which means I can’t have Severus.

Because in addition to – yet again! – steering Daphne away from trouble, I need to marry enough money to clean up the mess she’ll eventually let Cadmus drag her into.

At least, that’s what I thought before I saw his OTHER house.

I left Manchester with a heavy heart that day, my hopes crashing around me.

I spent an entire fortnight disappointed and forlorn before the knut dropped.

Malfoy knew.

I hadn’t considered, not then, not until days after seeing Severus’ dirty little Manchester secret, that Malfoy HAD to know. He sits on the Board of Governors. He’d gone to school with Snape, for Merlin’s sake. And he has access to almost everything in the personnel files.

And yet he’d approved Severus’ appointment to head Slytherin House. He let his precious heir jump to Severus’ orders. He kept up a more than cordial relationship. What few comments I heard him make to and about Severus were all complimentary.

Malfoy knew and approved.

What in Merlin’s name could explain that?

And that’s what triggered my memory.

I went diving through my files to pull out the latest letter from Gringotts. There. Dated the same day I came back my foolish hopes shattered by the desolate reality of what I’d seen in Manchester which was why I’d missed it. My eyes skimmed the document and I let out a shuddering breath. This was it. This was my clue to explaining the disconnect between Severus Snape growing up in working class Manchester squalor and Lucius Malfoy, pureblood supreme, placing his precious little son and heir under Snape’s care.

I felt a hopeful flutter in my chest and my hand actually shook as I read the parchment.

It was an accident. My finding out about it - that is, the information being revealed to me. I still would have overlooked it but for my pondering the hierarchical mismatch of his origins and his position as Head of Slytherin.

Who says accounting is boring?

You can uncover more secrets tracking someone’s money than you can tracking who goes into and out of their bedroom.

That certainly hold true for Uriah and me. I have never been to bed with Uriah. I know he’d like that to change. And I’d be willing to let him – if it weren’t for Snape. Not that I’ve tipped my hand about that to Uriah. Yes, I suppose you could say he’s trying to court me - relentlessly. Sometimes he’s like devil’s snare - when he’s in town. But we’re not committed to each other so there’s no shame in me hedging my bets.

I may not know exactly what Uriah and I have but I still know everything else about him. I know where he was born, where he grew up, and what schools he attended BEFORE AND AFTER Cornwall. I know his parents’ names and THEIR parents’ names. I know the worth of what he stands to inherit. And – unbeknownst to him – exactly how much he makes every year.

I know entirely too little about Snape despite the Manchester revelation. And he works hard to keep it that way. Still. Handing the faculty their galleons every month confers a distinct advantage.

I know exactly how much he’s earned at Hogwarts for the 5 years I’ve been here AND for the years I wasn’t.

I know how much he spends – officially – on potions ingredients, cauldrons, jars and what have you. I know the budget for Slytherin House – always submitted on time and with no unexplainable or unjustifiable shortfalls. Gryffindor by contrast is frequently and defiantly over budget. Although more apologetic about it, Hufflepuff is the same – usually because they’ve loaned funds to Gryffindor. I refuse to even acknowledge Prof. Flitwick’s latest money-saving mathematical matrix. Cornwall taught Numerology NOT Artihmancy. And trying to decode abstract Ravenclaw ramblings just gives me a headache.

I know the worth of Severus Manchester house – 3000 galleons on the open market. My grandad’s flat is worth more than that. A decent wizard house costs at least 10,000.

And, because I deposit his pay there every month, I know the number of Snape’s Gringotts vault.

THAT’S how I found out about his other house.

The goblins, bless their steel-bolted, tight-fisted little hearts, screwed up.

It doesn’t happen often. In fact, it’s SO rare I’d had half a mind to check and see if that perpetually pissed Trelawney hadn’t actually sobered up and seen it coming. In any case, I grabbed onto it like a lifeline.

Again, I know Severus’ Gringotts vault number. The reason I know it is because the house heads are paid differently than the rest of the faculty. Ordinary faculty, like Muggle Studies professor Charity Burbage or Astronomy’s Prof. Sinistra receive galleons in hand to spend, secure or owl post as they please. The house heads and the masters however – Charms Master, Potions Master, Transfiguration Mistress and Defense Against the Dark Arts Instructor – are paid first and have their galleons directly deposited into their vaults.

Everybody knows this.

What is NOT commonly known is that each house head has a letter of credit sent from Hogwarts on their behalf to Gringotts. Sealed by the Headmaster himself, each letter allows house heads to purchase whatever they need for their classes or house expenses from whichever wizard merchant they need to patronize. Once Dumbledore has signed them, I send the letters myself. Gringotts keeps them on file for merchants to reference as needed and of course Gringotts keeps me abreast of the purchases so I can reconcile Hogwarts’ accounts.

During a house head’s probationary period, Gringotts sends quarterly requests for confirmation that the letters are still valid. Once a head is past that period, Gringotts send them every 6 months. Once they have been here 5 years, the requests are only sent annually and practically rubber stamped.

That doesn’t mean they have free rein however – although you’d never know it when it comes to Hooch and her Quidditch ( and since the deputy head mistress is her partner in crime I don’t have much to say on THAT score ). Hogwarts is NOT a charity. And to keep the house heads honest, each faculty member who can do so must submit their most recent Wizard Inland Revenue form with the initial letter in the off chance – although not necessarily all that off when it comes to the DADA instructors – that the Headmaster must discipline them for financial malfeasance. For the same reason, they must also disclose ownership of any property that could be attached in the event of a lawsuit.

I know all about Minerva’s share in the rambling old house she inherited along with her sister as well as her sole ownership of a sunny little seaside cottage. I know all about Pomona’s relative infested farmhouse in the Cotswolds and Filius’ Left Bank love nest. So, as I said, of course I know about Snape’s house in Manchester. And, like clockwork, that address appeared in Gringotts’ annual request for confirmation of the letter of credit renewal.

Except this year.

THIS year the address read:

Raven’s Wake

Old Grove Walk

Augury Lane

Quilton, Yewberry

Ravenham-on-Wode, Yorkshire, RV3 1YD

I’d sent the approval before I’d even noticed the address change. Or the quantitative difference – 374,400 galleons.

It was wondering about Malfoy’s support of a Manchester slum-raised wizard that made me go back and look. I suppose the change had made an impression in the back of my mind, and, like a clock chiming, had gone off while I was pondering the paradox of a Muggle slum-raised wizard coming to head the pureblood reserve of Slytherin House.

As I said I have NO idea how the goblins could have made such an error. And I knew it wouldn’t be long before they caught it. What the consequences would be I didn’t know. It’s not as if I wasn’t already bound by my witch’s oath not to reveal any personal financial information. Nor was I inclined to.

But the worth of the property listed was over 10 times that of Spinners End. The goblins are notorious for their fiduciary controls. And the huge quantitative difference would generate an automatic investigation. ( I found that out when I was studying for my ill-fated Gringotts interview.) Which wasn’t good for me since I had confirmed the renewal without noticing the error myself.

In the best case scenario, the goblins would send a corrected request along with a sharply worded communiqué insulting my name, my common wizard lineage and my meager magical prowess. After all I sent the erroneous request back with Hogwarts’ approval. I’m sure the way they’d see it, it was my fiduciary responsibility to the school to catch their error. So in their minds, I was the guilty party, not them. Without a doubt, they would threaten to ask Dumbledore to sack me from my job. But since the Headmaster had more important things on his mind – Quidditch scores, the price of lemon drops, and the most efficient way to give Gryffindor enough points to steal the house cup AGAIN this year – I doubt they’d even get a reply.

And more importantly, Severus would never know.

The WORST case scenario would see my body buried under the dungeons in the off chance I managed to somehow break the Obliviate I’m sure Snape would hex me with after he finished reading the Goblins’ update on the situation.

And no I’m not exaggerating.

I mean what have we heard of this property? Nothing. Not a word. Not a whisper.

Clearly he values his privacy more than his property.

Which meant I was probably taking my life – or at the very least my well being – into my hands going out to see it.

Yes I was checking up on him again. I admit it.

But in for a knut…

*~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**

It’s located in the Yorkshire dales on the edge of a tanglewood approximately 50 miles from the city of Ravenham and half that distance from Yewberry Village.

I decided to floo from Hogsmeade to Yewberry. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going but I didn’t hide it either. I didn’t have to. Like towns all over England, Yewberry had a sizable wizard community hidden peacefully and discretely within it. I stepped carefully out of the fireplace in the storeroom of what turned out to be Wodeson’s Medicinals – the local chemist-cum-potions brewer – and slipped out down the narrow, Romanesque alley behind it.

As I came around the front and merged into pedestrian traffic, I could see that, as with the Leaky Cauldron, the shop had been treated to a powerful notice-me-not charm to repel the passing Muggles. And when I took the time to suppress my magical senses and view the building as if I were a Muggle, I could see the structure stood as a boarded up stone derelict. I frowned. Come to think of it, the shop had been empty when I’d arrived and the only light to breach the shadows had been the sunlight piercing the panes of the dust-coated windows. That was different. Usually a floo stop was occupied as a matter of course if only so that someone could report any problems to the Floo Commission.

Then again, Yewberry WAS a bit off the busier floo circuits. I mean it seemed to have a full enough population. There were open shops and taverns, light street traffic, people buzzing along in those Muggle cars. It wasn’t crowded but it was busy. Still, it lacked much of those odd, beeping, electricky things the more modern Muggle cities had. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the wizards simply floo’d straight from their homes into Ravenham proper. Why make a stop to a slow backwater village whose most recent claim to fame – according to the town square monument - was the bumper yewberry harvest of 1711, when you could hop straight through to the city? At the very least you could find a wider and undoubtedly comfier range of food and shelter options.

I swear it took 3 weeks for that Yorkshire chill to leech from my bones. You’d think I’d be used to it after 5 years of working in sunless Scotland.

It didn’t stop me though.

I pulled my mackinaw tighter, cast the strongest warming charm I could produce and rented a bicycle.

The bicycle shop owner had warned me that the estate was a full 20-odd miles down Augury Lane. There would be no rest stops along the way until I got to the tiny hamlet of Quilton. I thanked him without blinking an eye, took my rental and set off.

Once I was out of view, I whipped open my Ministry of Magic approved version of Baedeker. There. Two miles out of Yewberry was an old fairy road. I remember granddad telling us about those. He’d been sent to the country during the last war. Portkeys were strictly rationed. And the wizards he’d lived with were so rural they didn’t have floo access. They’d used the old fairy roads instead.

Back at Cornwall, we studied fairy roads in magical cartography. It was an elective for me, a requirement for Uriah. I had taken it just to keep him company. The professors figured if you were going to spend your days shipping goods back and forth or figuring out where to locate magical rooms you’d better know your magical geography.

In the days of the Old Ways, taking a fairy road would have been suicide. You’d never come out again. Or if you did return, 50 years could have gone by and everyone you knew and loved would be dead.

Nowadays though, with the gates between the realms sealed, all the fairy roads looped back to sites in our world. So all I had to do was pick up the fairy road and keep going for a few miles. In 20 minutes, I’d be in Quilton, 5 minutes from my destination.

Just because I hadn’t needed to hide or mention my destination didn’t mean I hadn’t arrived with a good cover story. I had a thick woolen blanket, a full picnic basket and the requisite thermos of hot tea – generously fortified with a portion of Goblin brandy – all packed with my best featherweight charm. I also had my sketch book and my copy of the The Evening Craft’s late edition. Although too many of us might not admit it, we’re as eager as the next Muggle to visit the manor houses and explore the ancestral haunts of the past and present privileged class. So I decided to disappear into the throng of weekend day trippers stopping for a picnic lunch between sketches of the old piles. If the curious – or downright nosy – still had to ask me where I was going, well they were as hopeless as Longbottom and as worthy of a reply.

For a moment, I’d actually wished I’d had Filch with me. His crusty, craggy personality would have fit perfectly with the rugged ups and downs of the hills and dales I travelled. Yewberry is just outside the national park, Wode’s Wood, an ancient forest that had watched the Romans, Vikings and Saxons come and go. Apparently, the Normans hadn’t made much of a dent either for all their infamous harrowing of the North. The Wood’s claim to fame, an abundance of ancient yew tress, still stood unmolested by any but Mother Nature. One had even tumbled its way across a thin branch of the Wode River, forming a natural, if treacherous bridge.

It was while cycling past one old yew – a tree leaning so dangerously that it seemed determined to follow its brother’s fate – that I finally came across it.

As I rounded a bend, the view of it resolved before me as I wandered off the bike path, stumbled through the brush and undergrowth and parted tree branches.

It was…definitely no Spinners End.

THIS house was…wild. Feral.

I gasped as I felt the tingle of the magic prickling along my skin, insinuating itself underneath, invigorating my bones. Deliberately, I breathed in, deep. I closed my eyes, savoring the “taste.” Now this was magic.

Muggleborns don’t understand the concept of magical estates, any more than they understand the concept of deep, true magic.

They knew it once, back before the Statute of Secrecy, before the Normans came, before the Romans left. They worshiped what no modern wizard with any sense would deign to call gods and had rituals as powerful as any spells we could conjure. And there was no need to live apart, no need for us to cringe and hide.

But when the karasti came, that changed.

Their priests began a campaign of amnesia for them and annihilation for us and we were slaughtered.

Hogwarts doesn’t tell its students that.

Practically no one in the Ministry does either.

The official story is that the Statute of Secrecy was enacted to protect MUGGLES.

Bollocks.

The karasti were burning us alive.

Their priests had POWER.

Their chanting and holy books, their candles and Mass, their bells and faith beat back wizards and dark creatures alike. Their ceremonies and prayers drained the power of our spells and closed the other world gateways – our escape routes – all across the land.

We were hemmed in and hunted from one end of Britain to the other. And we were facing extinction.

It was the great estates – and, like it or not, the purebloods who owned them – that saved us.

They were the strongest of us, the ones who still had the power to hold out against the priests. And their estates became our bolt holes, our siege castles. They protected us.

I know the purebloods can be a petty, condescending, greedy and downright racist lot. But they – those with the great estates at least – are also custodians of some of the most powerful magical artifacts in Britain.

The Ministry prefers we forget THAT too.

But quite a few of us remember.

At Cornwall, they’d told us straight out how much power the Muggles once had. You’d think they’d fear the Ministry’s retribution, but they were quite open about it. I suppose since we have so little power – wizardry’s permanent second-class citizens so to speak – that the ministry assumes it doesn’t matter what WE know. After all, who with any power is going to listen to US anyway?

And if there’s one flaw the wizard world has, it’s arrogance. No one would want to believe us. It’s too terrifying. Because if the Muggles ever came to remember the power they once had over us, what’s to stop the burning from happening again?

And they wonder why You-Know-Who managed to do as well as he did…

Each manor house has some magical artifact or site it stewards and protects. Or at it least it once did. That’s how all the great manors began. Back before the priests and later the wizards themselves closed the gateways between the realms, the pureblood family that began the line formed a covenant with a daimon. They were charged to hold the site as a sacred, protected space and given a magical object as proof of the pledge. The more powerful the daimon, the more powerful the object, the more protected the space.

The Blacks apparently began with a pact with the ravenous spirit of Black Hill, inspiration for the infamous – and homicidal – Black Hunt.

The Longbottoms were guardians of the deceptively placid and deadly depths of Longbottom Lake.

And the Malfoys are rumored to have more than one which probably made them an irresistible prize for the Dark Lord. What they are nobody knows but what else could explain those idiots’ relentless hold on power?

Not every landed pureblood family managed to hold onto their legacies, though. Witness the Weasleys.

But such artifacts generated the power that shielded hundreds of us. We shivered in their custodians’ dungeons, attics, stables and other hiding places as their keepers confounded the inquisitors into leaving. Or battled them.

There’s a reason Hogwarts used to have a dueling club. And a reason that the purebloods were the loudest in protesting its removal. The Headmaster finally managed to remove a black mark on his form with them when he reinstituted it last year. Though Gilderoy Lockhart’s involvement spoke volumes.

It’s also the reason Hogwarts is in a CASTLE. Again, the Muggleborns don’t understand. From what I can tell, they never question it. They just seem to think it’s part and parcel of the magic they read about in their fairy tales. I’ve read some of those stories. They’re woefully lacking in the details of what dealing with the Fae was REALLY like. How lives shortened and body parts tended to go missing with each encounter, each bargain made. They seem to expect glass slippers under every bed and pumpkin coaches around every corner. I’ve never had the courage to ask him, but I’d love to know just how many first years ask Hagrid where he keeps his bean stalk.

They seem to miss the fact that a castle is a FORTRESS. Hogwarts is the safest magical place in Britain this side of Gringotts. And it never occurs to them to wonder why their school is housed in a fortress.

And with the Headmaster unwilling to exorcise Binns from his position teaching history of magic, they’ll never know.

It’ll never occur to them that the Founders weren’t a bunch of dotty old teachers but WARRIORS hell bent on preserving our besieged bloodlines for centuries to come.

Binns will never tell them about the pureblood estates from Wales to Cornwall, from England to Scotland that secreted whole wizarding villages for years until the danger passed. How pureblood money and magic financed resettlement for thousands of wounded families and traumatized communities.

Unless they read the right sources like the The Evening Craft – founded by a Cornwall alum, of course – or talk to the right people like the fellows of the Pythagorean College, they’ll never hear the real story. Merlin knows they’ll never set foot in Cornwall.

All they’ll hear is purebloods, Slytherins and You-Know-Who equal bad and Mugglelovers, Gryffindors and Dumbledore equal good. They’ll never learn about the deeper reasons WHY.

They’ll never know the truth.

They’ll never witness THIS.

To Muggle eyes it would be a desolate ruin of crumbling, dark grey castellan brick and stone, overrun with climbing ivy.

To MY eyes it radiates with the bittersweet beauty of abandoned magic. I could feel the magic beckoning to me like a hand held out, inviting someone, just one living sentient thing to cross its threshold and bring it to life again.

It wasn’t a castle. It wasn’t one of the palatial mansions either. It was what Uriah would call that “curious architectural amalgam, a medieval fortified manor.” It was built of stone and had battlements. But it lacked a moat. And if it had a portcullis it was raised. Nor was it as tall as I’d expected. I counted 4 stories at the most and the last story resulted from square, strategically placed towers rising above the stout walls.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps a sedate, genteel manor house such as what housed Cornwall. Perhaps an ornate, Palladian spectacle as shown in the recent Witch Weekly spread depicting Narcissa Malfoy’s latest interior design for Malfoy Manor.

Whatever it was, this wasn’t it.

For better or worse those houses were clear products of civilization.

THIS house was…wild. Feral. Its dark grey stone and smaller, nimbler dimensions gave the sense of a crouched, untamed creature, hidden in the briar and brush, waiting for its next master or its next meal. Partly this was due to its medieval walls. Uriah, with his architectural expertise, would call it late Gothic or Perpendicular. It was a style that had the sweep of the great cathedrals without the dizzyingly otherworldly pointed spires. Perpendicular buildings like the Muggle churches of York Minister and Canterbury Cathedral manage to reach out to heaven without letting their feet leave the ground. They felt anchored to earth, like mountains or deep tree roots. They were strong, immovable buildings. And, like any Viking-era monastery or Hundred Years’ War era castle, the house looked ready to withstand a siege. More: some indefinable quality gave it a spirit, made it seem quiescent yet still alive. It felt as if the slumbering stones themselves would waken and pounce on you if you weren’t quite ready, came too close. The grim color of the stones, the severe structural lines and the shrouded lancet windows lent it an air of monastic melancholy – like a fallen priest still hoping for absolution.

Sheltered behind ancient yews, I stared, frozen by its austere grandeur.

This was no mere manor house.

It’s fortress like structure, somehow redolent of both monastic abstention and Roman decadence, felt so much like Severus that it held me spellbound. It was if he stood naked before me, sans robes, sans sneer, yet clothed in impervious hauteur with all of his ancestors at his back.

It took a moment to recall how to breathe.

So THIS was what he was.

It fit.

It squared with my original notion of him as one of the privileged purebloods. And yet…

How did he go from this to Spinners End? Was Spinners End just a ruse to keep the curious – all right nosey, like myself – from looking elsewhere? Specifically here? And how was it possible he hadn’t been required to list it on his original property disclosure? I’ve seen the original paperwork. It’s not there.

I desperately wanted to get closer.

But when I retrieved my bicycle and started cycling closer, I yelped as a burst of wand fire exploded at my front tire. Before I had a chance to blink I was careening off the road and into the woods. I bumped and bumbled along the knobby forest floor. I was too battered by low-handing and thankfully spindly tree branches to have enough breath to cry out again. Until the branches abruptly cleared and I realized I was heading straight into the stream!

I screamed – an embarrassingly screechy sound that was abruptly cut off in mid-yowl as I felt myself yanked back into mid-air. Momentarily stunned, I hung like a rag doll as bicycle, picnic basket and sketchbook went flying then splashing into the water.

“Oh pardon me!” a voice said before I was gently lowered to earth. Still stunned, I only stared as a spry, middle-aged, average-looking man trotted past me to the water’s edge. With a few flicks of his wand my belongings were brought to shore and dried in a thrice. The bent bicycle took a bit more work. But he soon had that as right as rain again. Good thing too since I would have had to pay for the damage and I only had wizard money left.

Swiftly, he trotted back up to me, my things levitating along behind him. “So sorry about that,” he chirped. “Thought you were a Muggle. We don’t get a lot of wizard folk on bicycles up here.”

I glared at him.

Which obviously had no effect on him because he gave me the grand tour. By way of apology.

With all the eagerness of an underappreciated sheep dog, he awkwardly bounded up the ridge, me in tow, to give me the only tour he could.

From the higher position, he pointed out the medieval layout including 10-foot thick walls, crenellated battlements, the main entrance with its Gothic archway, the inner courtyard, the chapel and the out buildings. From the distance, it could have been a compact monastery. No wonder Snape preferred the dungeons. They were as Spartan and severe as his home.

Then my little friend gave me another possible reason for Severus’ preference.

The estate had been confiscated. Twenty years ago, at the end of the war with You Know Who, the ministry had seized it and hadn’t let go of it since.

I nodded as I felt a chill go down my spine. I could only imagine why. Snippets of Craft headlines and articles about Death Eater raids flitted briefly through my mind.

It was his job to guard the place, my keeper prattled on proudly. With a little auror help, of course, he added. The aurors patrolled weekly, always on a different day and were a bit wand happy, he explained. So he thought it best to get me out of range.

He himself wasn’t an auror, he admitted.

Bless his heart, he was a sheriff.

He volunteered that info so easily I thought he must be joking.

Officially, the sheriffs are magical law enforcement officers. Unofficially, they’re the Cornwall version of aurors – second-class citizens. Or, to put it more bluntly, second-rate aurors. They fall under what is laughingly referred to as the jurisdiction of the Court of Archaisms and Anomalies, also known as “Ark and A.”

NO ONE respects Ark and A.

And no one wants to work for them either.

At Cornwall, the students in the Land Rites and Wizard Law course dismissed it as the place where careers went to die. A Land Rites major I dated once explained why. There are 2 reasons he said: the archaisms and the anomalies.

The anomalies referred to magical offenses that were too small for Azkaban, too big to ignore, and too bizarre to explain even to ordinary wizard folk.

Archaisms – a rather forgiving word - referred to the type of people who usually committed the anomalies.

Those people were…special.

Nobody wants to admit to having a crazy aunt stuffed in the attic. You feed her. You check on her to make sure she won’t be able to burn down the place while you sleep. And you add additional locks as necessary. But you never ever admit she exists. Not to your neighbors. Not to your fiancé. Only when your betrothed has said the vows, sired or birthed your child or in some other way sealed their fate as an irrevocable member of the tribe – only when they can’t escape do you lift the veil and let them in on the family shame.

The archaisms are the wizard world’s version of the crazy aunt.

They are the hags, the hedge witches, the root doctors, the medicine men, the shamans, the covens, all the reprobates and resistors who refused to accept the Wizard Enlightenment, also known as the Rule of the Wand. Initially, they wouldn’t even accept the Statute of Secrecy. Because they had little or no use for wands and clung to the old rituals most people called them the “ritch witches.”

They refused to give up on their high or low ceremonial magic and kept to the worship of the so-called gods. Beltane was the worst. They persisted in celebrating it in the Old Way with nary a contraceptive charm in sight. So of course they created hordes of magical children with dubious heritage and equally doubtful inheritance rights. And because we haven’t yet descended to the point of actually living invisible for 24 hours a day, the Muggle world could clearly see and hear these children who, inconveniently enough had no baptismal certificates. Add in the fact that Beltane rites could be recognized as an Old form of marriage and the Ministry had a nightmare on its hands.

Well of course the ritch witches had to be brought to heel. If they had kept on openly practicing their rites and other oddities, drawing attention to themselves, and by extension, us, their stubborn backwardness would have brought the Muggles down on our heads again.

So the sheriff’s office was created. They were sent in to flush them out. They forced “conversion,” if you will, on those who surrendered, imprisoned those who wouldn’t, and put the fear of Merlin into those who were too minor to trouble with. And they were very, VERY efficient. Nowadays, you couldn’t get a hedge witch to say “boo.” And good luck finding a hag. Oh some of them have survived helping out the midwives. That kind of Old birthing magic is always useful. But the hardcore hags, the nearly feral ones who wouldn’t have hesitated, however foolishly, to curse You-Know-Who, they’re gone forever.

The sheriffs did such a good job, the Ministry snatched up most of them when it created the Auror Division. What was left…

A member of what was left nearly pitched me into the drink. So there you go.

Next, the Ministry tackled a knottier problem: land rights. We’d already put our foot on the neck of various dark and other creatures – vampires, werewolves, centaurs, giants – by trimming back their hunting grounds and habitats. Now we had to secure ours.

As I said all the great estates began as covenants with a local daimon. Land titles were based on those covenants. Well, the battle with the karasti had closed so many of the magical gateways that, aside from ghosts and poltergeists, it was damned near impossible to communicate or summon a spirit without resorting to powerful dark magic. This tossed land titles into complete chaos! When the smoke from the battles had cleared it was discovered that the purebloods who’d fought for us couldn’t even prove they owned their own homes.

Pandemonium erupted.

Purebloods suddenly found ownership of their ancestral homes challenged by any and all comers. Even Muggleborns! And they were left with no legal leg to stand on.

Well of course these battle-hardened wizards weren’t going to stand for that. So, sometime back in the 900s – or was it the 1200s? I can never remember which – the Ministry created Ark and A.

They should have just called it the clearance sale court.

That court was never really meant to resolve anything – not in substance. It was created to give a legal gloss to the purebloods’ brute force retaking of their land. Most of that was accomplished by the 1300s. After that, the court lost all purpose and usefulness. Nowadays, just like careers, cases go there to die. Everybody knows it, especially the plaintiffs and defendants. The fastest way to get out of there is to bribe your way through. Paying the clerks works best. They control the judges’ dockets and have next to no legal reputation to defend so they’re more easily corrupted. If you have a case before that court and your lawyer doesn’t advise you to try a bribe or a little blackmail get another lawyer. Or prepare to spend YEARS in Ark and A hell.

It’s an open scandal.

After a particularly scathing series of exposes in the Daily Prophet back when the paper actually gave a damn, the Ministry broke down and created the Department of Land Rites.

Gail Coventree runs it now. She’s Hogwarts bred, a Hufflepuff. But she’s no Ministry toady. Instead of just vomiting up whatever procedure she learned on the job, she actually took the unheard of step of taking the Land Rites and Wizard Law courses at Cornwall.

You heard me.

And Uriah says he’s seen her frequently in Hogsmeade and around the country actually talking to the people who actually live or work on the land.

What a concept.

The Craft has been hot on her heels ever since she took office. Whether to take her down or cheer her on, I can’t tell yet. One week there’s an article complaining about her failure to curb hag encroachment on midwifery. The next there’s another one praising her for expediting – i.e., snatching from Ark and A – yet another case. Last one I read about involved a pureblood trying to shore up his waning fortune with illegal sales of magical substances to Muggles. Idiot.

From what I can see, she’s thorough, conscientious and fair. Which means once you’re in her net you might as well stop struggling.

It almost makes me feel sorry for all those ill-favored entrepreneurial purebloods.

Almost.

She’s the Ministry’s rarest type of administrator: she makes you believe in the Ministry again. If she ever runs for Minister of Magic, I’ll happily vote for her – 2 or 3 times if necessary.

Meanwhile, the Ark and A carnival just keeps rolling along.

As I’ve said, the court’s a joke and so are its sheriffs.

And nobody does a thing about it.

I’ve always wondered about that.

And thanks to my bumbling sheriff, my curiosity came back with a vengeance.

I looked at him, weighing, considering.

Two hours, a bit of ankle, two accidentally undone buttons on my blouse, five warming charms, a picnic lunch and a thermos of liberally spiked hot tea later and I’d swear I knew everything he did about that house.

Raven’s Wake. That was its magical name. And an appropriate one too, since it almost sounds like an incantation. I could just imagine Severus or one of his ancestors raising his hands high and shouting skyward, “Ravens, wake!” Or maybe it was just the tea.

In Muggle records, it was known as Ravenskeep. And valued at £1,872,000. And that was 20 years ago. The property hadn’t been assessed since.

It was built in the 1200s and refurbished in the 1600s. Obviously, not much had been done since it still looked like monks would break out in Gregorian chant any minute.

Originally situated in the heart of Wode’s Wood, urbanization and Muggle advance had pruned back the wood until the estate now sat at its thinning border. Conservation efforts had gotten the woodland dubbed a national park. And powerful notice-me-not charms, a relatively wizard-friendly Muggle population in Yewberry, and a downright odd one in Quilton kept most Muggles away.

The wizards were another story. Over the 20 odd years since the house had been confiscated, it had been looted to the bare walls. Furniture, picture frames, mattresses, drapery, bed linens, china, rugs, tapestries, even knick knacks and keepsakes had been removed. All gone. My stomach turned over as he told me. No one could tell him if the items were in Ministry storage, stolen goods or sold to pay fines. Nor was he able to get an inventory.

I braced myself to hear the charge. It had to be serious. No landed pureblood, one who retained a magical estate, lost it for anything less than epic reasons: fiendfyre, the everflood hex, incurable dragon pox plague, excommunication between the family and its covenant daimon. And with those rumors of his former associations with You Know Who I was sure the details would be blood-curdling.

Severus’ offense?

Delinquent taxes.

Or rather that was the offense my sheriff was told was on the seizure warrant.

So he’d never seen the warrant. And it never occurs to him that if they couldn’t be arsed to show him – the court’s property guard – an inventory of the house’s goods then perhaps he shouldn’t expect to get the real story on the warrant. I mean not even Longbottom would fall for that one.

Ark and A strikes again.

I gave him the rest of my goblin brandytea and cycled back to Yewberry.

And the whole while I couldn’t help but wonder how Severus Snape, exacting potions master, indomitable Head of Slytherin House, watchful stewart of Hogwarts financially tightest-run house, the man who knew the course of every knut that circulated through his house, who always delivered his annual budget to me on time with no unexplained or unjustified shortfalls managed to lose his family estate for failure to pay his taxes.

By the time I’d gone back down the fairy road, returned the bicycle, and floo’d to Hogsmeade, I was already formulating a scheme for him to get it back.

*~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**~**

Author’s End Notes: Okay was it worth the wait? Probably not but lie to me anyway *flutters eyelashes* Pweeze? Oh heck, fine! Just leave an honest review and we’re good, lol. Oh and my apologies if I gave anyone a fright by uploading the chapter and taking it back down again. Sigh, still getting the hang up adding author’s notes, etc.

Peek a boo!

2010-03-30T00:51:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd gone forever huh?

Nope. Just got lost in the wilds of Live Journal.

Keep an eye on this space for more info coming soon.

The Drought is (Apparently) Over...

2009-10-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

...or to put it another way, my muse has finally come back home, busted in the door, dropped her bags in the livingroom and demanded to know what's for dinner. So here's what I'm cookin':

CONFESSIONS OF A CORNWALL GRAD

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yes, I'm a bad writer. I should be finishing The Healer's Apprentice or Well, Done My Good and Faithful Servant or, for any Superman fans still out there, Love's Divine. But in case you haven't figured it out by now, I am my muse's bitch. She whips me, beats me and takes away my charge card at will. Hence my erratic output. On the other hand, she does like to fill out a universe. This story takes place between the events of The Healer's Apprentice and Well Done. The rest you can figure out from the text.

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We can’t all go to Hogwarts you know.

Doesn’t mean we want to wind up making change on the Knight Bus.

We’re not squibs. Thank gods. We might not have much magic but we still have some.

We never eat in the Great Hall, where even Hagrid gets a regular seat. That’s because we’re higher than the house elves and lower than the students. Unless you were really paying attention you’d never know we were there. Which makes it that much easier for the faculty to pretend that we aren’t. Still, Filch doesn’t eat with them. We’re above Filch. I suppose that’s some comfort.

We do have our own staff room which doubles as a dining room. It’s 50-50 whether we sleep over or not. Some of us have quarters and some of us come in from Hogsmeade everyday. I think the Hogsmeade folks have a better lot. After so many years I’ve started to feel like the spinster aunt in the attic.

I did have greater ambitions than this. I had hoped to work at Gringotts. The goblins seem to prefer us. Outside of the curse-breakers they really don’t like to have much truck with humans. When they can’t avoid hiring us, they like to pick those of us who are just this side of squibs. Unfortunately, I was beat out by that witch from Leicester. I’d been certain I’d come in first! But she beat me by 2 points.

Yes we take OWLS. Not NEWTS though. After OWLS we take another year in our specialty and then we’re free to make our way. My specialty was Magical Administration and Accounting. I’ve always loved numbers. They have their own magic. You could manipulate them as dexterously as a wand and create effects just as powerful.

I liked that feeling of power. When you don’t have enough magic to get into Hogwarts you take every little advantage you can get.

But as I said I didn’t score high enough for Gringotts. Wretched goblins.

But I got lucky. Uriah Sands, who’d grown up in Hogsmeade, told me that Hogwarts needed a new bursar. The old one apparently had had too much to say about staffers spending habits as he paid the school’s bills and especially when he handed out the bags of galleons that constituted the faculty’s monthly salaries. After getting himself hexed – they suspect it was a potion in the coffee; he’d have known to duck if he’d seen a wand – he was persuaded to take early retirement and a replacement was needed. Uriah had been at Cornwall with me in the stonemasons’ course before moving on to become a fellow of the Pythagorean College so he owled me. We’ve always been friends.

It was manna from heaven.

The interview was nerve-wracking but I survived – and even impressed the Deputy Headmistress with my no-nonsense attitude, which happily mirrored her own. The Headmaster was the final arbiter though. How I survived that audience I’ll never know. He is as fey as Minerva McGonagall is practical. He gives the impression of not knowing a knut from a Muggle nickel and seeming to believe that the castle runs on air. Of course it doesn’t. Even if the elves are all but enslaved to the school, there are still salaries to pay; storerooms to fill; plumbing, stone and windows to maintain. Somebody has to know when to order classroom equipment, medical supplies, and replacement Quidditch brooms. Somebody has to reconcile the accounts when the faculty overspends their budgets. No, it’s not transfiguration, or “foolish wand waving” or a “simmering cauldron.” But it keeps the candles lit and somebody has to pay attention to these things. Magic can’t do everything you know. I suspect the Headmaster knows this but likes to pretend he doesn’t. It makes it easier to play innocent with me when I have to negotiate with a creditor thanks to some extravagance of his or provide cover when the Board of Governors complains about an expense. If I never have to be in the same room as the oily blonde slick known as Lucius Malfoy it will be too soon!

But I don’t care about the Headmaster’s peccadilloes. He could dance on the ceiling with Peeves and charge tickets for all I care. It’d probably be a great fund-raiser if he did and maybe I’ll casually drop in conversation the next time we meet to do the budgets. For now though, it’s all about pleasing him. Keeping him happy is a small price to pay for the security of employment at Hogwarts. Other than Gringotts’ there’s no safer place to be. I have free room and board, which – if I watch my sickles – leaves me with plenty of money to salt away.

I can even to splurge on the occasional treat. I prefer to indulge in a little shopping in Diagon Alley or visit a day spa in the lush, green serenity of Mint Alley. But Uriah has been pressuring me to spend time with him in Hogsmeade. His parents still live there on their tidy little farm with the snug house. Uriah’s father was a stonemason too. Uriah Sr. built the house so it’ll take an attack from You-Know-Who himself to bring it down. I know what Uriah wants. And I should accept. What are the chances that I’ll do better?

And yet…

The thing none of the students or faculty ever say about Cornwall is that it’s the last refuge of diminished expectations. If Muggles have their Harvards and vocational schools, the wizard world has Hogwarts and Cornwall. Money never stops one from going to Hogwarts. I should know. Every year, I dip into the school’s treasury for the scholarship students myself. Always under Dumbledore’s orders of course. As I said we’re never allowed into the Great Hall to eat but we’re allowed to watch the Start of Year Feast and the Sorting Ceremony. Why we’re not allowed to stand unobtrusively along the walls and observe I’ll never know. Perhaps they fear we’ll leach the magic from the room. Perhaps they think the envy and frustration will finally get the better of us and we’ll pounce on the little First Years like vampires, sinking our teeth into their tender little necks and sucking the magic out of them. Ha. If only…No it’s not money that keeps students out of Hogwarts. It’s magical power levels. I and my kind are simply not good enough to enroll here. Full stop. Perhaps we were at one point, generations back along our family lines. But somewhere along the way, the magic started diminishing, decade after decade until, unlike grandpa who got into Hogwarts by the skin of his teeth, we are simply barred. That’s the story of my family anyway.

So we never say it out loud at Cornwall. Why? It depends. Cornwall students come in two flavors: those from families like mine where the magic is slowly leaking away and those from families of squibs whose magic is finally renewing itself. That is, some students come from families that are on the way up the ladder and others come from families that are on the way down. You’d think we could meet civilly somewhere in the middle. Instead the ones on the way down look down upon the ones on the way up. Not that I feel that way about Uriah. I’ve never had a truer friend. But his mother and his grandparents on both sides are squibs. And my mother made it clear the day we finally accepted that the Hogwarts letter was never going to come that I had a responsibility to marry as well as I could. That means finding someone stronger than me magically. And Uriah is strong. He’s a Pythagorean Fellow for goodness’ sakes. And although membership depends more on technical competence and mystical knowledge more than raw magic, it’s still prestigious.

But he’s not THAT much stronger than I. And a stonemason could never compare to a potions master.

Yes, I know, he’s completely out of my sphere. Even more than the Headmaster he looks like a mage from the dark ages, still basking in the afterglow left by Merlin’s departure. He could be a magical Mordred himself. He’s cutting and cruel and an absolute terror to children and colleagues alike. But the power ripples off him in waves. I can feel it prickling along my skin when I come into the Headmaster’s office and he’s still there. For all his surliness, they are close, he and the Headmaster.

He has no lover in Hogsmeade. Or if he has I haven’t heard of it. And I’ve kept watch. I’ve discreetly asked around. Never directly myself of course. Even though Uriah travels often and his parents are often overloaded with work on the farm, it’s just too risky. I can’t be caught. I can’t even be seen.

Because as I said, he’s out of my league.

If he has needs, he’s getting them met in Diagon Alley, although with his dark power I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Knockturn Alley. I don’t care. No I do care. If he’s trolling Knockturn Alley for his pleasures he won’t be able to do it forever. No matter how much he hates it, he’s still a teacher and can’t afford to let himself be seen as morally corrupt. From what I hear about his past, he can’t afford another mistake. In fact it’s his past that opens the door for me. If he truly was, as they say, a follower of You-Know-Who, it doesn’t matter that he switched sides and was pardoned. No decent witch of his class will have him. Otherwise he’d be married already. Because I’ve seen the way the other witches look at him, the female faculty members and the women in Hogsmeade. They don’t let him know they’re doing it but they look all the same. He’s magnetic. And he has no more control over it than he does over the color of his eyes. Clearly, one of them would have made a move after all these years if they weren’t afraid of being tarred by his reputation.

Yes, I know magnets repel as well as attract. But a determined woman with a critical need and a persistent attitude wouldn’t let that stop her. It’s snobbishness, plain and simple, that has kept him alone.

Well I can’t afford to have that kind of pride.

Even if I’d had it before, Cornwall would have beaten it out of me. It’s not that the teachers are cruel. In fact, I think they coddle us a little too much. They’re oh so eager to remind us that we’re all equal, that it’s the mage’s spirit and not his or her magic that counts. Well of course they’re lying – with good intentions but still lying. That’s not how the wizard world works. After all, not even Cornwall admits squibs. And while Hogwarts shelters in a powerfully warded castle fortress as students arrive on their dedicated train line, Cornwall students occupy a modest manor house in the shadow of the ruins of Tintagel and make their way there as best they can by portkey, floo, or even Muggle transport. It’s only the first years who take the Knight bus. Once they’ve had a year for the naivety to wash off, they follow the manner of the older students who take the Knight bus only when they have to and only at night. It’s bad enough that we have to spend five years scrabbling around the remains of Camelot dreaming of a glory our families will never have or will never have again. But the Knight Bus is just too much. We may not have gotten into Hogwarts but none of us wanted to become Stan Shunpike.

Uriah never seemed to care though. He’s always been too laid back for his own good. Truthfully, he really shouldn’t be wasting his time with me. He doesn’t have to. He’s a Pythagorean Fellow. It’s not a Hogwarts certificate but it’s close enough without actually having attended. There’s a certain delicacy in the magic it takes to erect stone buildings, a certain subtlety, believe it or not. Not every wizard can master it. Those who do are quite respected. Still, I never see him casting a wandering eye over the seventh year girls when he comes for his annual inspection of Hogwarts’ foundations. He only ever seems to have eyes for me.

Such a romantic.

When he comes he always manages to meet me for lunch. And always before he goes he manages to get me to his parents’ house for dinner. His parents’ house is so…different. They’re no richer than my family, yet somehow they manage to be…happy…

I fear I will never understand Uriah.

But the sour lines on Severus Snape’s face striking face bespeak of anger; resentment; deprivation; and pain. Not just of dark, nefarious deeds but of scrabbling for far too much although equipped with far too little. The grinding frustration of years of laboring under scarcities too big crammed into rooms too small.

Him I understand.

So forgive me Uriah but I have to try. Perhaps you won’t have to. But if you never have to that means I’ve failed and I don’t intend to fail. Some needs are basic: the need for food and rest; the need for respectability and sex. The last two are the hardest to find to any satisfaction. And for this man, they’re nigh on impossible. Good. That means he’ll need me. I’m not a Hogwarts girl but then he was never going to get that anyway. And he’s too proud to be with a squib or a Muggle, not openly, not for any reason other than physical gratification, to scratch an itch. I’ll let him scratch and I’ll keep him from looking like a letcher while he does it. After all, that’s what wives are for isn’t it?

Oh yes, he’ll resist. But I’m willing to wait. And negotiate. I took a whole course on it. It was taught by a Gringott’s goblin so I learned from the best.

What’s his alternative? Prey on the seventh years? I’ve seen his eyes wander more than once to a girl in his own house. I’ve heard the faculty talking. She’s one of his favorites – apparently innocently because the faculty would never be able to sit on such a bombshell. I don’t need their corroboration though because I know two things. First, he worships the Headmaster so he’d fear to lose his trust. Second, he’s too cunning to court the headmaster’s wrath. Add in the fact that he can’t make a habit of going to Knockturn Alley and that leaves me – just a few floors above his dungeon and with a fireplace connected to the castle’s internal floo network.

Oh yes, I’ll wait as he winds himself up tighter and tighter. And I’ll look good while I’m doing it. The epitome of respectability. That was the whole point of the charitable witches and wizards who put up the donations that established Cornwall back in 1628. They had to do something with the children who had just enough magic to avoid being called squibs but not enough to go to Hogwarts. They needed to be disciplined, taught a trade, socially groomed on how to properly relate to their betters. They needed respectability.

I can’t do a simple wingardium leviosa but damned if I aren’t respectable.

Don’t hate me Uriah.

You of all people should understand.

You were at Cornwall too.

My Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

Although a rousingly entertaining yarn in the tradition of its franchise siblings, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is hardly the strongest member of the bunch. While most critics seemed to have disliked its predecessor’s shift into a darker mood, I welcomed it. It was highly appropriate in the wake of the Dark Lord’s Goblet of Fire return to finally see the shadows falling over Harry Potter. Yes, there were tonal problems in Order of the Phoenix. But those problems appeared in the early sequences featuring the creation of Potter’s ad hoc student army which offered up a jarring Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland “Let’s put on a show” gung-ho-ism that hardly made sense in the middle of that darkening epic.

Whether due to this criticism or not, the filmmakers have jettisoned much of Phoenix’s emotional context. Half-Blood viewers will enjoy its sharp humor and fast pace as well as savor the acting riches provided by the sterling adult supporting cast. Alan Rickman of course is a stand out as he creates a symphony out of frozen stillness, echoing perfectly his character Severus Snape’s tense tightrope suspension between right and wrong. Jim Broadbent mines surprising pathos from his portrayal of new potions master Prof. Slughorn, whose literary version was defined by unsympathetic moral cowardice. Michael Gambon gives his usual solid turn as Dumbledore, and Helena Bonham Carter creates serious chills as the manic Death Eater, Bellatrix. Among the younger cast, Tom Felton shines as an alternately angry and anguished Draco Malfoy, while Emma Watson turns in a funny, first-rate performance as an unexpectedly lovelorn Hermione.

However, those of you who’ve read the book, especially those who’ve read the entire series, may feel as if watching Half-Blood is the cinematic equivalent of reading Cliff Notes. True, a new cinematographer gives the film an invigorating visual immediacy. More than in any other installment, Half-Blood Prince’s vivid yet smudged palette looks as if you could reach out and touch the colors, smearing them across the screen in a stain that perfectly embodies the characters’ murky, messy human struggle to choose between right and wrong. That’s offset, though, by a cramped screen, oddly paced editing, and, worst of all, a screenplay that excises critical narrative threads, adding up to a film that feels hollow at its center. While viewers will eventually learn the identity of the Half-Blood Prince this movie will never explain why they should care. Admittedly, the book is massive and cuts for big-screen adaptation were unavoidable, even welcome. But the filmmakers’ decision not to integrate the novel’s darker themes of racism with the lighter focus on teen romance guts the moral heart of the story, creating a serious thematic continuity break in the film franchise so far. While the movie is definitely worth seeing, read the book if you want to know what’s really at stake as the first of the Deathly Hallows sequels is set to descend later this year.

-- Copyright T.L. Heard 2009

The Reviews Are In!

2009-04-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Howdy!

Clearly I'm still tripping and skipping over this blogging thing because it's been ages since I've updated. However, I thought I'd just drop a line to to say thanks to KarenDetroit and airlady for positing reviews for For the Price of My Familiar at www.restrictedsection.org.

airlady said: "This was disturbing but good."

Sometimes disturbing works; thanks for the appreciation airlady!

KarenDetroit said: "truly better than 99% of the literature. Thanks!"

No Karen, thank YOU for reading and reviewing! Reviews are the strokes that keep me going people, so if you see something you like on the site, let me know!

Meanwhile, watch this space for my next installment of the Potion Master's Payday in the next two weeks. Also, if you're interested I can post Chapter 1 of The Healer's Apprentice, a prequel to Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant which I need to get done before I can progress with Well Done. So if you want to see that chapter, let me know!

My Notes on Money in Harry Potter

2009-03-11T18:24:00.000-07:00

Potion Master’s Payday

How much money does Severus Snape make?

This is one of those topics that you can argue is both frivolous and fundamental. After all, before the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, many fans thought, based on the prejudices generally ascribed to his house, that Severus was some kind of pureblood wizard nobility. I have to admit I was rather shocked to see that he actually came from some dingy, rundown, working-class hovel with an abusive father and cowed mother. This was the last thing I expected for him.

And then I was thrilled.

I love the idea of Severus being half-blood and growing up in a working-class Muggle neighborhood. I think that set up creates such wonderful tension in his character. It also provides an emotional richness that, to me, disappears if he is a pureblood who comes from money. Also, he can be such a defensive person that the class issue seems to fit, especially in the (to my American perspective) class-conscious UK. This also provides a kind of pathos in his relationships with Lucius and Draco Malfoy. Finally, I love men who make their own way through hard work. That type of man is a fighter, a street fighter because he has so much prejudice against him already. I love the thought of Severus, this intellectual, scholarly man, having to be as tough as a brawler in order to make it. Neither Lucius nor Draco could ever understand that and the fact that Lucius remains Severus’ friend and Draco adores his house head throws a really complimentary light on all three characters.

But the underlying point of that pathos is that class matters even between friends. As a half-blood who has subjected himself to Voldemort’s pureblood tyranny and claims Lucius Malfoy as a friend, Severus above all knows that class matters. And while class isn’t solely determined by money, money goes a long way toward determining how mobile one can be. Knowing how much money Severus makes can tell us just how much freedom he has in the still class-conscious, even down right racist (in terms of Muggle-born vs. half-bloods vs. purebloods) magical society.

Which brings us back to the question: how much money does Severus make?

I want to know in both wizard terms and real world terms, preferably in UK and US currency. After searching the Internet, the only reliable sources I could find were articles posted on the Harry Potter Lexicon and Wikipedia web sites. Happily, the Lexicon lists some wizard-world salaries. Based on that information I’ve come up with an amount. With so little to go on, I used the entry-level salary for a Department of Ministry hit-witch or wizard listed in the Lexicon. It’s 700 galleons per month or 8,400 galleons per year. I used this amount because it’s for a government position and, as Hogwarts is a quasi-governmental institution (the Ministry seems to have oversight even though the school has a board of governors), I assumed the salaries might be structured on a similar scale.

So a hit-witch or wizard would make:
8,400 galleons per year (that’s 700 times 12 months equals 8,400)[1]

In British pounds that would be:
₤42,000 per year (using an exchange rate of ₤5 per 1 galleon)

In American dollars that would be, depending on the exchange rate (I am using two rates, the one quoted in the Lexicon article on wizard money and the one I got in February 2009 using the Lexicon’s currency converter):
$81,900 per year (if we use $9.75 per galleon)
$84,588 per year (if we use $10.07 per galleon)

That’s not a bad chunk of change in this economy. In U.S. terms we’d slice off 30% to account for state and federal taxes, social security, and unemployment insurance contributions. That leaves (again depending on exchange rates):
$57,330 in annual net
$59,211.60 in annual net

I don’t know what British or wizard taxes (if any) are like so I can’t account for those. Nor do I know whether they are required to carry their own medical insurance or if such a thing exists in the wizard world. The UK does have national health care, however I don’t know how it is funded so I don’t know how much, if any, of the average paycheck it claims. Of course, Hogwarts’ teachers presumably have free access to the infirmary. It’s not unheard of as, according to the Lexicon, a hit-wizard has his own “dedicated bed” at St. Mungo’s, so presumably, that’s a kind of medical insurance. If goblins can run a bank and lose money on a potions market (see the first Ministry of Magic scene in the Order of the Phoenix movie) then I’m sure there’s a goblin somewhere making money on selling medical and life insurance. However, I can’t estimate the cost of that at the moment so I’m leaving it out.

This is still a respectable salary for a young, entry-level wizard. I don’t know whether Severus has to pay for room and board or meals. I assume living space is provided for little or no fee since all of the teachers are required to live on the campus for the duration of the school year. I make similar assumptions about meals. Of course he bears responsibility for his own wardrobe, which appears to consist entirely of black – very cost effective. Aside from personal books, floo powder (or perhaps a broom), or specialized potion ingredients that he can’t find in the Hogwarts’ stores, Severus’ expenses should be very few. In America, he would be squarely in the middle class for the equivalent of a single, college-educated adult.

But there’s a problem. The hit-wizard’s salary is for a 12-month period. Hogwarts, however, is only in session from September 1 through the second week of June. That’s 10 months and two weeks, not a full year. Now Severus may or may not put money aside to tide him over the two months and two weeks he is not required to teach. The point is there’s a period of time when he doesn’t have to teach and hence when he doesn’t have to be paid. How does that affect his income?

It’s simple. If we multiply 700 times 10 months (7,000 galleons) and add in 2 weeks or half of a month’s pay (7,000 plus 350 galleons) we can say that Severus’ original starting salary at age 21 was:

7,350 galleons per year

If I use the exchange rate of 5 British pounds to one galleon we get:

₤36,750 per year in UK currency

If I convert to American dollars using either $9.75 or $10.07 per galleon, then I get the following amounts:

$71,662.50 per year (at the 9.75 rate) in U.S. currency
$74,014.50 per year (at the 10.07 rate) in U.S. currency

Of course, that’s not the whole story. Severus is no longer a strapping twentysomething. He’s a seasoned professor with roughly 10 or more years of experience when we meet him. He is also the Head of Slytherin House. But he’s also a former Death Eater, a fact that is public knowledge. How do these factors affect his income?

I’ll discuss that in my next entry.

[1] “Money” article posted on the Harry Potter Lexicon web site http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizworld/money.html

Did It Again!

2009-02-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

I finished another story. Whoo-hoo!

(And holy moly that I haven't posted in over a month. Yipe! Gotta work on that...)

Here it is. This is the first draft. I might revise it. But right now I just want to appreciate the fact that I've finished writing my second story. Feels good...

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Answers to Nothing

Summary: Severus Snape makes an unscheduled visit to Tobias’ grave.

“I guess the joke was on you.”

He stood motionless as the bare bones trees stood sentinel with him, their bark occasionally scraped, like his chilled skin, by dry leaves blasted by the wind. Severus Snape stared down at the gravestone. The northerly gale blowing across the gray sky would normally have made his robes billow about him but he wasn’t wearing them. He wore a Muggle suit, gray like the dreariness above him. Black was the color of mourning and, he thought scornfully, there was nothing here to mourn.

His eyes stayed steadily on the granite marker. Modest as it was, it was still much too grand for the likes of what lay beneath it, Severus thought. Silently he read the inscription: Tobias Snape, born April 5, 1943, died July 10, 1977. Severus closed his eyes briefly as the memories of the night of July 10 returned to him. His hand moved to his collar, rubbing absently. He still had the scar. But this time he’d won.

And now, for the first time in 20 years he’d returned for a bonus round.

“Did you know?” he asked quietly. “Is that why you hated us?” He cocked his head to one side. “I would understand if you did,” he added, surprised.

Abruptly he hunkered down. An onlooker might have thought he was taking shelter from the wind. Instead, he peered even closer at the marker. Husband of Eileen Snape (nee Prince), father of Severus, he read further. He waited inside himself for a reaction: a lurching of his stomach, a sudden burning rush of anger up his spine, an impulse to kill. None of that came.

Tentatively, he stretched out a hand to touch the stone, his fingertips lingering on the word “father.” He now knew that word meant nothing to him with regard to Tobias Snape. Fate had already done what he’d thought he’d accomplished that sweltering July night and freed him of any further connection to Tobias Snape. Feeling Tobias’ life bleed out all over his hands that night had been one of the sweetest triumphs of his then life. It wasn’t until a decade later, after he’d taken the Dark Mark and then renounced it, after he’d licked Voldemort’s boots and then fled to Albus Dumbledore that he’d realized in horror that he’d only been playing a shell game. He’d replaced one father figure with another and still another, always looking for shelter from the storm, for someone strong enough to truly defeat the monster of his childhood. And then without warning the cord had been cut.

He wasn’t Tobias’. He never had been. The Half-Blood Prince didn’t exist.

“Is that why you punished us,” he whispered, the words torn from him as if sucked by the wind. “Like I punished Lily?”

He had become the monster, after Tobias’ death. He’d admitted as much when he’d thrown himself on Dumbledore’s mercy. He’d confessed his sins, though not all of them, only the ones he’d thought mattered. How could Dumbledore possibly have cared whether he had seduced James Potter’s wife? Life and death had been the issue, not marital failures. Not the twisted needs of a tortured man who’d still needed to best his rival. Not the pathetic need to take vengeance on an ex-lover because that was the only way he could still get to touch her.

For the first time that day, crouched in the bitter wind, he shivered.

At the time, he’d thought it was another triumph, seducing Lily Evans, now Lily Evans Potter, in her and James Potter’s bed. At the time it had been a game to him, a brutal, nasty game. So she loved James Potter, did she – and years later he could see now that she did – let’s just see how much, he’d decided. It had been shockingly easy to do. The timing had been everything. Although the wedding had been a celebration, people in the Potter circle were still tense. Lily especially had been anxious for she knew that Potter would be in the first line of any defense. The first time Potter had had to go away on assignment, Severus hadn’t struck. He’d merely watched the house, watched Lily’s movements and her moods. The second time…

Whenever he looked back on that night, he tried to tell himself that some unconscious magic from inside him had wound itself around her and lured her to him. For he remembered casting no spells, wordless or otherwise. He remembered feeling her tension, even from his wary position standing at her gate, as her anxiety wrapped itself around the house. He remembered placing his hands on her door and her opening it. He remembered baiting her, in vicious, childish ways and her falling for none of it. And he remembered lying on her bed and in her body, restarting what should never have stopped.

He remembered wishing he’d needed to use magic to make her do this. For if he could so easily make her betray a husband she loved, surely she must still love Severus. And if she did, then he could only blame himself for losing her.

He remembered, even as he released himself inside her, vowing to find a way to hurt her as deeply as she’d hurt him.

And he had.

He chuckled coldly. “I made her pay and you,” he said grimly. “How did it feel?” The image of emerald eyes, Lily’s eyes, in another face appeared in his mind. Eyes he’d sired. Eyes he’d stolen from James Potter who, true to form, had stolen right back with audacious application of the glamour charm, a spell he was only now beginning to learn how to unravel. For years, without knowing it, he’d looked into revenge’s eyes in his potions class every single day. He bowed his head.

“How badly did it hurt?” he added, “because I need to know.”

“Who let you in?”

The harsh Manchester accent cut through the wintry wind to land harshly on Severus’ ears and nerve-endings. He covered his surprise by rising in one fluid motion and turning slightly to glare imperiously down at the woman who’d startled him.

Instead of being intimidated, she took a step forward. Her eyes narrowed as she rudely examined him. “You’re Eileen’s boy aren’t you? What the hell are you doing here?”

Severus had stepped back at her first sentence, stunned at being recognized by a Muggle. His hand had instinctively reached for his wand. But then his mind registered her words, Eileen’s boy. Although his childhood home had frequently been invaded by Tobias’ relatives, he’d never been close to him. They were nothing more than variations on the violent theme that was Tobias. To them he was never Severus, or, as Lily used to call him, Sev or even, as one of their neighbor’s once dubbed him, Rus. He was never more than “boy” or more usually “Eileen’s boy” as if he’d wandered uninvited into their gene pool and polluted it.

His eyes took in the dry, pinched mouth, shellacked steel-gray hair, tatty woolen coat, fraying scarf and scuffed shoes. Then his eye fell on the cane. A solid, rounded rod of polished, brass-handled, dark mahogany, it was clearly the most expensive thing she had on her person. Although it was pitted and pocked with the wear of age, it could almost have been a wand it was so beautifully fashioned. For a moment, he was transfixed by it. With a suppressed shudder of distaste, he mentally sorted through a catalog of childhood recollections. Finally, reluctant memory placed the image of the woman before him.

When he was younger, before Hogwarts, before grammar school, she’d come to the house. When his mother had been too sick – i.e. too broken and bruised – to cook Tobias’ fry up or straighten the house, she had taken over. Despite having a permanent limp, she’d blown through the house with more vigor of a whirlwind, eyes like Tobias’ and a temper to match. Tobias had preferred a belt or his fists. She had preferred her cane.

Feeling oriented again, he addressed her. “Aunt…Celeste?”

The woman harrumphed as if realizing the offense had shifted in Severus’ favor. Reflexively, almost instinctively, she raised her cane, high, as high as Severus’ chest, as if to strike. “What’s it to you?” she barked.

He smiled slightly, politely, coldly. His eyes had followed every elevating degree of motion of that cane even as his hand tightened on his wand. She was so aggressively focused on blustering in front of him that she never noticed his slight hand motion. “Nothing anymore,” he said simply.

Heedless of her confusion he turned on the spot and vanished.

“Oh!” she gasped. The flower pot she’d carried in her other hand crashed to the ground. She stared hard at the emptiness where Severus used to be. She sliced her cane across the space, peering hard into nothing. Then, looking around guiltily, she caught herself. “Heathen devil,” she muttered, “Just stay away from here.” Straightening her coat, she grasped her cane hard as she slowly lowered herself before her brother’s grave. Pieces of broken pottery lay scattered at her feet. With a resigned sigh, she brushed the shards aside and grasped the now bedraggled carnations. As she laid them on the grass her eye fell on gravestone and out of habit she read its epitaph. With a cry, she dropped to the ground as the flowers slid from her slack hands.

The stone read: Tobias Snape, born April 5, 1943, died July 10, 1977 Husband of Eileen Snape (nee Prince), father of…nothing.

Fin

I Did It!

2009-01-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

Wow.

Here's a Happy New Year gift to me: I just finished a story.

Wait a minute now, you don't understand. I haven't FINISHED a piece of fiction since [checks watch, flips calendar page, adjust sundial] approximately 1995. THIRTEEN FREAKIN' YEARS PEOPLE! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Pauses. Takes a breath]

And here are the details:

1. It's a Harry Potter fan fiction featuring Severus and Dumbledore.

2. The title is: For the Price of My Familiar.

3. Logline: The more powerful the wizard, the more potent his familiar, and the revered phoenix is the strongest of all. But nothing so dearly desired comes without a price, even in the Wizard world. So what Faustian bargain did Dumbledore make to acquire Fawkes? And whose lives were trampled on – for the greater good, of course – in the process?

4. You can find it on Fan Fiction at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4782241/1/. I would have posted it here but it's 30 pages and over 11,000 words long.

5. It happens in the Marauders Era but it's not about them.

6. I hadn't planned to write it. I was trying to write Chapter 4 of Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant. But I realized I just didn't have enough narrative background to anchor that chapter. So this came out.

Hallelujah! Thank You, Lord! I FINISHED SOMETHING!!!!!!!!

Konichiwa Snape-san

2008-12-30T16:56:00.000-08:00

Howdy!

Happy New Year!

I'm still pecking away at chapter 4 of Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant. However, I still have a bunch of random thoughts rattling around in my brain which I have to express or my head will explode. ...Okay not literally but you get the picture.

Samurai Snape: I've been reading ObsidianEmbrace's excellent fan fic Lily's Charm and Rieve's equally riveting Ghosts and Unfinished Games as well as a whole variety of Severitus fan fic and they've got my brain churning. I've been trying to understand Snape, to figure out his basic psychology. From an astrological standpoint, he's got deeply Scorpionic and Saturnine tendencies. But today it occurs to me: Snape is what you get if you asked William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens to come up with a baby wizard, gave him a loving kiss from Faust and handed him over to a samurai to raise.

His ability to handle the extremes of terror and pain is breathtaking. His ability to handle them with stoicism and haughty disdain is equally so. I am not well educated on Japanese tradition or customs. However, like millions around the world, I am fascinated by the samurai. To me, they were larger than life, bespeaking a nobility that I can hardly conceive of in my comparatively hedonistic Western existence. No, that's not necessarily an objective sentiment, but that's how I feel. To me, the samurai were the type of men who could look the worst possible scenario in the eye and not flinch. When death was the only way out, they didn't fold or beg. They went out as strongly, proudly and unrepentantly they stormed in.

To me, that's Severus Snape.

On another note: Rieve also has an excellent short story called Beltane which is absolutely fantastic. In fact, it's given me an idea on how to handle Snape in my story, Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant. Chapter 4 remains delayed because I had an amazing brainstorm partially inspired by Beltane the story and the custom. If you've read Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, you'll have some idea of where I'm headed. That idea is forcing me to revise Chapter 4. So please hang in there with me. I'm still plugging away.

Super Friends and Rice Krispy Elves

2008-12-28T16:49:00.000-08:00

Hi all!

Happy Belated Christma-hanu-kwanza-kuh Solstice!

The beginning of Chapter 4 of Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant continues to elude me (and I live in fear of being hunted down by the folks looking for the next installment of my Superman fan fic Love's Divine). So I just thought I'd share some random thoughts.

1. Are Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall the Super Friends of Hogwarts? I mean think about it. Dumbledore is the leader, not to mention the only wizard Voldemort ever feared. And if you saw Order of the Phoenix you'd know why. So he's the strongest. The nifty blue robes don't hurt. And although he's not all that into solitude, his office does have a fortress-y quality about it. Not to mention he always prefers to think the best of people. He is clearly Superman.

Snape of course is a no-brainer. He's Batman. His black robes billow out around him like bat wings. He's dark and grim and thinks the worst of everyone. He always seems like he's capable of some pretty lethal violence. And he hangs out with Death Eaters for crying out loud! Okay he's got no utility belt, but he's got a wand and he's always fiddling around with potions; Batman loves a good toxin, especially the ones that knock out the bad guys. And no he doesn't have a Batmobile, but he lives in the dungeons. If we were honest about it, his "bat cave" is bigger than Batman's.

McGonagall, of course, is Wonder Woman. She's a mite older; she could be Wonder Woman's mother's mother. But at least she gets to keep her butt cheeks covered! Sure Wonder Woman gets to do that nifty ballet spin from Diana Prince to Wonder Woman but McGonagall can turn into a cat. Take that Amazon Princess!

So if they're the Super Friends, what does that make Voldemort? Lex Luthor? The Joker? Well he's bald like Luthor. But come on! That face had to come out of somebody's joke kit. Let's just say he's a seriously creepy combo of the two with a pinch of Charles Manson and leave it at that.

2. What the heck is a Hufflepuff?

I mean you say Slytherin, I think of snakes and cunning. You say Gryffindor, I think of lions and courage. You say Ravenclaw, I think of ravens and wisdom. But you say Hufflepuff and I think "Huffle-what?" Sounds like a breakfast cereal. (Would you like whole or skim milk with your Hufflepuffs?) Now don't get me wrong. I love the underdog and the Hufflepuffs are the underdogs of Hogwarts. Even their Head of House gets no respect. Madame Sprout never sits in on Dumbledore's war councils. Oh sure they needed her in the Chamber of Secrets for her mandrakes but did anybody see hide or hair of her after that movie? Heck Hagrid gets more screen time than she does and he never even graduated! And don't try to say Flitwick is equally ignored. He isn't. He at least gets to direct the students' musical performances. And he shows up in the Great Hall for meals. Where does Sprout eat? With the house elves?

Nobody really gives a crap about Hufflepuff do they? It’s hard to make a mark when you’re seen as a bunch of happy little Rice Krispy elves. It’s harder to claw your way out from under a pile of sugar. Cedric Diggory tried and look where it got him: he was Voldemort’s pre-resurrection appetizer. Was that not the saddest, briefest moment of House glory in Hogwarts' history?

But I wouldn't count Hufflepuff completely out. Sure, they can't promise the thrills of Gryffindor, the intrigue of Slytherin or the intellect of Ravenclaw. But keep your eye on them. After all, what did Shakespeare write? “We do sugar oe’r the devil himself.” There’s GOT to be more going on in that sweet little house than meets the eye. Hopefully some creative fan fic writer will invent a sugary devil or two.

Chapter 3 Is Ready!

2008-12-15T23:23:00.000-08:00

Well shockeroo, I've written Chapter 3 of my little fan fic, Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant. Whoo-hoo! See what you can do when you binge on Harry Potter movies all day? Of course, my Superman fan fic, Love's Divine, still languishes. In the unlikely chance anyone besides myself is reading this AND is interested in Love's Divine, don't fear. I've actually started rewriting the start of Chapter 4. Once that's done, I will post it rather than wait until I write all 5 scenes of that chapter.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the latest installment of Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant.

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Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant

Chapter 3

Summary: In reward for service, Voldemort gives Snape something he’s desired seemingly forever.

Disclaimer: Original characters are mine, all else is the glorious property of J.K. Rowling. I make no money from my use of her characters.

Rating: R -- Includes implied violence and sexual situation. Not suitable for readers under 17. You have been warned. Please do not read if this type of material offends you. Thank you.
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It had been a long night.

Voldemort was nothing if not thorough – a trait Severus shared, which perhaps went some way to explain the Dark Lord’s infernal favor towards him. Voldemort had not dismissed the potions master until the first rays of dawn began slicing across the sky.

Severus slowly lifted himself off of his student. She wasn’t conscious. With hands trembling from exhaustion and emotions that self-preservation refused to let him name, he sought and found his discarded clothing and began to dress.

Most of the other Death Eaters had long since abandoned the place after Voldemort had given them leave to find their own amusement. A few stragglers remained, sprawled on the grass. They lay sleeping where they’d fallen after groping then servicing each other, inspired by the previous night’s exhibition.

Severus closed his eyes as his stomach lurched. Reflexively, his mind began sorting though the contents of his potions stores. Dreamless Sleep. Bottled Obliviate. Trauma Release. Aura Re-sealer. He mentally made a note to replenish the stock. None would last the day, not if he ever hoped to sleep again.

Voldemort himself had only just left. He’d spent the night lounging on his now empty “throne” as Bellatrix danced attendance. If he wanted food she brought it. If he was thirsty, she held the cup as he drank. If he needed other pleasures, she provided those too with a relish that would have revolted Severus if he hadn’t already exceeded his limits.

He fastened the last button at his collar and bent to retrieve his cloak. He shook the dust and dirt from it and spread it wide as he advanced on Ophelia. There was no question of leaving her here. It was understood that he would take her with him. Voldemort would expect Severus to personally see the Dark Lord’s plan fully executed. So for the next nine months Ophelia was his.

Nothing flickered on his face as his gaze caught the gray-mottled bruises and jagged red edges of dried cuts against her white skin. She was still breathing. But then that had been the plan. He spread the cloak over her and gathered her up. Her body fell limply into his arms.

For a split-second, the memory of his mother’s old rag doll flashed through his mind. It had been a memento, a prize won for her during her courtship with the Muggle man, his father, whose marriage to his mother had caused her wizard family to disown her. The summer Severus had returned from his first year at Hogwarts, his head buzzing with notions of pure-blood sanctity, he’d stolen the doll and thrown it into the alley behind the house. That hadn’t satisfied him though. So he’d gone back out later that night and tossed it around before discarding it once more. When the loss was discovered, his mother had been so distraught that he’d slunk outside yet again to retrieve it. And he had found it. The arms and legs had been dangling by threads, three strands of yarn hair hung from its torn cloth scalp, and wads of stuffing had trickled sadly from the holes ripped in its body.

He’d brought the thing back to her, little more than a pile of scraps in his thin hands. For one horrified, guilty moment he’d nearly laughed as he’d handed it to her. His mother was weeping over scraps. He knew she would try, use all her non-wizard skill – for his father had forbidden doing magic in the house – to salvage it. But he knew it was hopeless. If she hadn’t been crying so hard, he would have told her so. But his throat had closed and the words wouldn’t come. So he’d said nothing and retreated to his room, his blurred vision making him stumble along the way.

Holding Ophelia close, he blinked but his eyes remained clear.

They remained so when he stepped out of the fireplace with her into Dumbledore’s office. Nothing changed as he faced the startled headmaster and gave the briefest possible report before floo’ing with her again, Dumbledore on his heels, to Madame Pomfrey’s infirmary. They remained hard and cold and clear as he answered Pomfrey’s questions.

“Yes, she has the Feratu Cuts,” he said quietly.

Pomfrey gasped and instantly erected the magical shield she’d need to treat them, even as he assured her that the school also had the requisite supply of Aura Re-sealer.

“Were you the only one?” Pomfrey asked as she continued running her diagnostic spells.

“No, there were several who sampled her.”

From the corner of his eye, Severus could see Albus blanch and stare at him. Severus ignored him.

“No I mean for the other…” Pomfrey said grimly.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I was the only one.”

She nodded once and continued working.

The two men stood in silence as she worked. The infirmary was empty. Severus didn’t recall Albus warning Pomfrey of the need for discretion but he could think of no other reason for the absence of the usual post-weekend Quidditch casualties. He exhaled gratefully. He had no mental energy left to rebuff the curiosity of a stray student and explanations would have been impossible.

Without comment, Pomfrey closed the cuts and spoke the spell that would begin to heal them. She summoned a bottle of Aura Re-sealer and began dabbing it on Ophelia’s wounds, shaking her head worriedly. “I’ve never treated such dark magic cuts,” she muttered distractedly. She waved her wand again, pulled the blanket over Ophelia then stepped away, pulling the bed curtains closed.

She faced the two men. “Her energy is still bleeding out of her,” she said. “If the Re-sealer doesn’t stop it in the next hour, we’ll have to move her to where she can be protected. I won’t be able to shield her here.”

Severus and Albus nodded, neither able to summon a verbal reply.

Pomfrey stared at them for a moment. “Headmaster, you look unwilling and Prof. Snape looks unable, so I’m assuming that I won’t get a full explanation of how Miss Broomall was…injured, is that correct?”

Severus’ lips parted but no sound came out.

Dumbledore came to his rescue. “I think not, Poppy,” he said softly. “At least not today.”

Pomfrey nodded. “Well then,” she said briskly. “If you’ll just step this way professor.” She reached for the potions master.

“No!”

The nurse and headmaster stared in surprise as Severus all but jumped back, his black eyes glittering dangerously. Belatedly catching himself he spoke calmly if coldly. “Thank you, Madame Pomfrey, I am fine. I am in no need of assistance.”

“Forgive me, Severus, but I must disagree,” Dumbledore countered gently.

Severus almost winced at the effort it took to meet Dumbledore’s calm blue gaze. With a start he realized his eyes were hot and that, without realizing it, he had backed himself against a wall.

“Severus,” Dumbledore continued. “You and your student have suffered extensive exposure to very dark, and, if my suspicions are correct, very old magic. I would be remiss in my duty as headmaster if I didn’t see that both of you received adequate medical care.”

The headmaster stepped closer, extending a hand but taking care not to touch. “Please let Poppy examine you.”

“I’m not a child, Albus,” Severus snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

Dumbledore and Pomfrey exchanged a glance. Dumbledore took another step closer. “Yes, Severus, you are,” he said soothingly. “Far too young to understand an old man’s fetches but could you at least humor me? Please?”

“Headmaster!” Pomfrey hissed worriedly.

Dumbledore shook his head sharply, his gaze still focused on the wary potions master. ”Please, Severus?” he repeated.

Severus stared at the frail-looking old man. He knew from hard experience that Dumbledore was anything but frail. In its own way, the force of Dumbledore’s will rivaled Voldemort’s. He could feel that force weighing on him now. Pressure settled in his chest and throat and he could feel sweat breaking out across his skin. Foolishly, childishly, he flattened himself against the wall as if he could evade it. As if a wall could stop Dumbledore.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, but the air seemed to grow drier and hotter until it hurt to draw breath. Where was his occlumency training? He had used legilimency on Ophelia the night before. Had the process somehow made him forget how to do the opposite?

Beside Dumbledore, he could see Pomfrey had her wand outstretched and aimed at him but the headmaster’s arm barred her.

Why couldn’t he focus? His eyes narrowed at her. He felt a rush of anger – or was it heat? – surge through him. Was she bewitching him?

Dumbledore’s voice pulled Severus’ attention back toward the headmaster.

“Please, Severus,” he coaxed. “Let Poppy look at you.”

This was foolish, Severus thought. Dumbledore would simply pester him until he agreed. He pulled away from the wall, drawing himself up in an attempt project some semblance of dignity.

“Fine,” he snapped, then blinked as Dumbledore’s hand closed on his own. When had the headmaster gotten close enough to touch him, he wondered.

And then he screamed.

0oo00oo00oooo

Pomfrey and Dumbledore leapt forward as Severus fell to his knees. With surprising strength the nurse and old man attempted to pull the younger man to his feet, but it was no use. Severus folded in on himself, writhing and crumpling as if bespelled by the Cruciatus curse.

Mutual fear synchronized Pomfrey and Dumbledore’s motions as they waved their wands simultaneously. Pomfrey threw a sleeping spell at him as Dumbledore muttered “Leviocorpus.” Abruptly, the screams stopped, Severus went limp, and his body rose, floated toward one of the hospital beds and landed gently on its surface.

For a moment, Dumbledore and Pomfrey stared at him, breathing heavily from their exertions.

“I tried to tell you,” Pomfrey said finally. “He’s burning.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes. “I know.”

2008-12-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Archetypes and

Severus Snape

Well I'm still working on Chapter 3 but that doesn't mean I don't have anything to say -- whether it amounts to anything worthwhile is another matter entirely.

I am currently still on my Snape binge courtesy of my ongoing home-bound Harry Potter film fest. I've been watching all five movies on DVD for the last week. (Today's TV sucks anyway.) My favorite character, of course, is the inimitable Severus Snape, Harry's nemesis and the series' anti-hero according to J.K. Rowling. And as I watch the movies I can't help but think about how to define Snape's character.

First, kudos to actor Alan Rickman for his portrayal. From his delicious voice, to his restless, articulate hands, to his stinging sarcasm and his confounding charisma, Rickman's Snape is simply riveting. In my wildest dreams he'd have his own movie. But the closest we're going to get to that is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which comes out next July.

Second, kudos to the hair and costume department. They have transformed fair-haired, hazel (I think his eyes are hazel; I know they're light-colored) eyed Alan Rickman into the black-haired, black-eyed potions master whose costume echoes the ethos of several ages. The button-down cuffs of the trousers he wears in the first movie evoke the Victorian age of Dickens. The high-collar, gathered sleeves and rows of buttons adorning the front and sleeves of his tunic seem to recall the Puritan dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. Both the Victorians and the Puritans were known for their public piety while underneath engaging in all sorts of sensual sins and debaucheries. How could Severus, the closet Death Eater/double agent and rejected suitor of Lily Evans, be any different?

I guess that's why I love him so.

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Possible Fictional and Historical Inspirations for Snape:

1. Oliver Cromwell, the brutal Puritan military dictator who deposed and beheaded King Charles I and established the English Commonwealth in the 17th century. Snape killed Dumbledore. 'Nuff said. (And if you didn't know that you didn't read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; so what the heck are you waiting for?!)

2. Roger Chillingworth, husband to adulteress Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece novel, The Scarlet Letter, set in Colonial America. Chillingworth made it his business to hunt down his wife's lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, the clergyman who fathered Hester's child. James Potter never had to worry about Snape pulling a Dimmesdale, but damn it, he should have been. After all, who's to say Lily didn't have few tricks up her sleeve? That's what the Severitus fan fic writers assume anyway. Thank God! 'Cause really James Potter was a prat. Harry's daddy should have been Snape.

3. Richard III, reviled English king who deposed his nephew Edward V and reigned from 1483 to 1485 before being killed by Henry VII's army at the end of the Wars of the Roses. Richard has come down through history as the supposed murder of his nephew Edward and Edward's younger brother Richard, Duke of York. However, scholars are now divided on whether he was actually guilty of that sin. Say what you want, but Snape never bumped off anyone's kids...that we know of. He did however, take over the throne, so to speak from Dumbledore. The man's got style!

Honorable Mentions:

1. Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. 'Cause, as the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus would say, "you never expect the Spanish Inquisition!" And you know Snape would have all those little Hogwarts brats -- especially Harry and his fellow Gryffindors -- on the rack, confessing their sins at every opportunity. As Filch would say "God! I miss the screaming."

2. Any of the prosecutors from Arthur Miller's McCarthy-era play, The Crucible, about Puritans rooting out witches in Colonial Salem, Massachusetts. Cause the next step after the rack? Burning at the snake, er, I mean stake.

3. Joan Crawford, male version with nobler purposes and a snarkier vocabulary (she had the better shoulder pads though).

4. Any Renaissance-period alchemist (although one wonders if he could have given Faust a run for his money).

(Note: The photo is not my creation; I found it on the web.)

More Harry Potter Fan Fiction

2008-12-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

Well I guess that wasn't the end.

I've written another installment of this story. I don't know how many chapters it will contain. I'm just following my muse -- and my love of Snape! I still haven't figured out where this story would fit in the canon time scale. But it assumes the information regarding the relationship between the potions master and Lily Evans is true.

Hope you like it. (Heck, hope you find it.) And if you're feeling so generous please leave a review.

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Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant
By Librasmile

Summary: In reward for service, Voldemort gives Snape something he’s desired seemingly forever.

Disclaimer: Original characters are mine, all else is the glorious property of J.K. Rowling. I make no money from my use of her characters.

Rating: R -- Includes implied violence and sexual situation. Not suitable for readers under 17. You have been warned. Please do not read if this type of material offends you. Thank you.

Chapter 2

It was an art, this.

In the Dark Lord’s world, the giving and receiving of pain was a high art, and Severus knew its most adept practitioner was measuring his every step as he advanced on his “gift.”

With a whisper of sound the black fabric of his cloak slid from his shoulders as he walked. He left it discarded on the ground. He moved deliberately with the prowling gait he used to intimidate his students. Years of espionage had made it almost soundless but no less menacing. His mind began the automatic ritual of dividing itself. With no conscious effort, he mentally hived off the battered, bruised but still human part of himself that shouted, pleaded, begged him to stop. Then he brought forward the detached, coldly clinical observer to which he retreated in order to perform his most heinous tasks. Of course, an assignment from Voldemort was never just a task. It was usually an atrocity, an ordained sin. He began to unbutton his collar.

His hands shook.

That physical fact almost stopped him. He faltered for a moment, the briefest moment, then continued, but he was sure Voldemort noticed the lapse. There was no cure for it but to keep moving. So he did.

As he approached the altar he stopped. Slowly, like a jeweler considering the precise point at which to start cutting the diamond, he circled the stone. Behind and around him, he heard the murmurs of his fellow Death Eaters as their level of anticipation rose. Aside from his status as one of the Dark Lord’s most loyal servants, Severus knew he had a reputation among them for having a certain macabre flair. He had earned it thanks to the exacting and bloody work he’d made of Voldemort’s victims in those damning years before he’d found his way back to the light. He had not always needed to kill, but when he did it had been shamefully easy for him. He was thorough. He’d made an art of it. A clean art.

While some of Voldemort’s followers made a habit of toying sexually with their prey before killing them, he had always abstained. Unable to leave until an assignment was completed, he had stood aside and watched, unable to mask his distaste. He had never had the courage to really examine why they had let him get away with this. No matter. The tables had turned. Now Severus would be the one to play while they watched. He knew his fellow Death Eaters were practically salivating at the prospect of watching him take her. If he did well, then they would at least see their smug colleague brought down to their level. If not, Voldemort would kill him and open up a space for someone else to advance. Either way, they were certain to be thoroughly entertained. There was a rustling as some of the Death Eaters moved closer, unwilling to miss a second of the performance.

As he completed his circuit, Severus’ eyes skimmed over Ophelia’s body. He noted the blood. There was a cut. Several. Just enough to give pain but not to kill. His gaze followed the seeping trails back to their original wounds. Ah. They had made the Feratu Cuts. Of course. And she was a pureblood. The temptation would have been too much to resist. Mesmerized, he extended his hand. He trailed a finger though her blood then brought it to his mouth. Inside himself, his shackled humanity howled. Outside, he shivered and closed his eyes, savoring the taste. The magic imbued in the salty fluid jolted his tongue. How many of his audience had already tasted her, he wondered. Only the select few would be allowed, he knew. But the full meal would be his.

Opening his eyes, he studied her face. Her profile was still. Long tendrils of her hair obscured it. He moved closer. He needed to see her eyes. He climbed atop the altar. She was either too dazed or too tightly bound to resist. Straddling her on his hands and knees, he brought his face level to hers. The panels of the dark high-collared coat he’d unbuttoned hung on either side of him, brushing against her. He could see the pulse fluttering in her throat. He brushed her hair away. She flinched. So. She was still awake in there. She turned her face from him. He grabbed her chin and forced her back. Her eyes, only half open, closed.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

She squeezed her lids tighter.

The palm of his open hand cracked against her skin. She gasped as the force of the blow whipped her head in the opposite direction. Malicious laughter rippled among the crowd around them. He heard Bellatrix’ manic, high-pitched peal among them. Again, he forced Ophelia to face him.

“Look at me.”

She opened her eyes.

And then he felt it. The power in the stone. He’d felt it humming with energy from the second he’d touched it. He’d assumed the dark magic of the Feratu Cuts was doing its work, draining her energy for others to consume. But nothing wizard-invoked could be this powerful. Gods, what more was his master planning? His eyes flicked up and away from Ophelia’s face to find Voldemort’s. The Dark Lord’s smile widened. Severus suppressed a shudder and returned his gaze to the woman beneath him.

Ophelia was watching him.

For a moment he was impaled by the intensity in her eyes.

In the last year he had become afraid to look directly into her eyes for too long. It was embarrassing really. He was an expert Occlumens. He had no excuse for his weakness. But it was hard to erect mental walls against the very thing you most wanted to touch. And he had too many secrets he feared he could not hide. The fire with which he’d incinerate Marius Bentlow if his conscience would let him. The raw, still bleeding wound that held his grief over Lily. The hollow knowledge that he was – and most likely would end his life, sooner rather than later – alone.

Worst of all there was his unfilled hunger for her. The shameful acceptance that this craving would have made the man he used to be abandon his self-imposed restrictions and pounce before Voldemort could even think to issue a command. And the bitter comprehension that no amount of repentance or longing could ever make him the kind of man to whom a woman could safely pledge her life. Ultimately, Lily knew this, he realized, although they had never gone this far. No matter. Here lay the proof before the argument could even have been made. He had hid from Ophelia because he was afraid she would see too much of his charred soul.

But he could not hide now…even as her eyes still speared him.

Lily had looked at him like that. For each step he’d taken when he’d gone down the dark path, he could recall the anguish in Lily’s eyes. He could recall perfectly the times and the places he’d seen it, feel the invisible burns it had left on him. How many times had he seen that look before she had finally given up on him? He swallowed audibly, the sound thankfully lost beneath the clamor of the mob. Voldemort had served him up another feast of loss.

Belatedly he realized he had settled his body on Ophelia’s. She was pinned, although the bonds on her wrists made that a redundancy. His hands had begun undoing her clothing. It was Muggle style. So they had snatched her outside of Hogwarts then. He saw the goose flesh rise on her skin as he exposed her to the cool night air. Her breath quickened and terror etched itself across her face but she didn’t look away. He no longer needed to force her. She didn’t want to risk him hitting her again. Ever the quick student.

He slid his hands across her bare flesh. She shivered. So did he. Somewhere inside himself, something dark he’d failed to subdue crawled forward to savor the sensation, heedless of whatever evil brought it. He leaned down to kiss her and, despite her fear, she closed her eyes. He saw her muscles tense as she braced herself for another hit. Instead he whispered against her mouth. “Keep them open.” She obeyed.

Without warning he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. She winced but he couldn’t spare her even a hint of reassurance. These ghouls wanted pain. They wanted blood. Beneath him, he could feel Ophelia’s breathing escalate; she was hyperventilating. He fastened his teeth onto her throat. At that she cried out. The crowd around them roared their approval. That’s why he almost didn’t hear her when she spoke, gasping and choking out the words.

“Please,” she begged. “I’m not Lily. I’m not Lily!”

He stared at her in horror. Gods, could she hear his thoughts? And why would she think…That dark thing in his mind, that repellent, starving thing that was enjoying this, spoke quietly, malevolently. You know why. The words reverberated through his mind, bouncing off the confines of his own skull, crashing into each other until they hit their mark. He did know. He didn’t want to. But he did.

He started to shake. Then, with a ruthless effort he made himself stop.

It didn’t matter, he realized coldly, huddling inside himself.

Crudely, he placed his hand over her face, gripping her jaw, covering her mouth. He could stop her words, he noted dully. And other things as well. Her eyes widened. His gaze drilled into hers. He drew a breath to say the spell.

“Legilimens,” he whispered.

To Be Continued?

My Harry Potter Fan Fiction

2008-11-23T11:45:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm still surfing the unemployment blues. During this enforced hiatus I've finally gotten around to reading the entire Harry Potter series. Wow! Now I see what the fuss was all about. I am totally stoked for the next movie and I'm thoroughly enamored of Snape. In fact I've been sooo fiending for Snape that I had to troll the 'Net looking for Snape fan fiction. I went on a fan fiction binge this weekend and finally decided to write my own little story posted below.

This story takes place after the Half-Blood Prince, I think. I'm really weak on keeping things in canon so it's probably a free for all in my story, lol.

Enjoy!
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Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant

Summary: In reward for service, Voldemort gives Snape something he’s desired seemingly forever.

Disclaimer: Original characters are mine, all else is the glorious property of J.K. Rowling. I make no money from my use of her characters.

Rating: R -- Includes implied violence and sexual situation. Not suitable for readers under 17. You have been warned. Please do not read if this type of material offends you. Thank you.

Among his sixth or seventh year advanced students there is a favorite of Snape’s. Her name is Ophelia Broomall. She should have been in Ravenclaw. But he’s very pleased she wound up in his house. She is a joy to teach. And joy is not a word Snape would use lightly even in his own head. Like Hermione Granger, she’s a brilliant potions student. Unlike Hermione she doesn’t feel the need to let everyone know it. She is a quiet girl, a pureblood who, like Tom Riddle, wound up in a Muggle orphanage. She was sent to Hogwarts on scholarship.

Snape not only considers her one of his favorite students…he’s developed feelings for her. He doesn’t dare name them. But the last time he felt anything like this was when Lily Potter was alive. And that terrifies him. So he’s very careful to keep a proper distance. But she is an orphan and a very gifted student. So when she comes to Hogwarts in little more than rags and is sorted into Slytherin he takes the initiative to ask Professor McGonagall to help her find some decent clothes. And when she shines in his class he always makes a point of saying “Well done, Miss Broomall.” No more than that, mind you. He’s even careful to then follow up with another challenge just so that no one can accuse him of playing favorites.

But in his mind, he’s christened her his little Raven.

She’s now in his NEWTS class. And it’s the consensus of the faculty that she would make an excellent healer. The younger Slytherins are always chasing her down when they have minor stomach upsets or nosebleeds, usually from something they shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. Rather than go to Madam Pomfrey and risk being reported to Snape, they go to her. She never tells unless it’s absolutely serious. He turns a blind eye.

The older Slytherins are not quite as trusting. In fact, they don’t trust her at all. When she first came to Hogwarts, she had all the traits of a student who would wind up in Ravenclaw. She had their insatiable curiosity, their keen intelligence and intellectualism, their expansive imaginations, and their tendency toward the abstract. Yet, the sorting hat put her in Slytherin, the house of ambition and arrogance and no little fascination with the Dark Arts. Everyone was shocked, including Snape. And when she joined the Slytherin table her table mates glared at her with suspicion. Since then they’ve treated her like the enemy. The Slytherins in her own year tend to bully her and Snape has had to suspend several in punishment. Fortunately for her, none have ever been expelled on her account. He feared it would go extremely badly for her if anyone had. And Snape can’t monitor her 24 hours a day.

So Snape makes it his mission to do as much as he can to make sure she has a secure future. If she were a boy he might not be quite as protective. But a young lady with no family to protect her is particularly vulnerable. He would hate to see anything happen to her. So Snape recommends her for further studies at St. Mungo’s and asks Dumbledore to recommend her as well. Dumbledore happily does so. She is accepted before she even graduates Hogwarts. Her professional future is set.

And, loathe though he is to admit it, so is her personal future.

She has found a suitor in one of the Slytherin prefects. He’s a good boy of respectable family and an excellent student although not in his Raven’s league. When Snape became aware of this he came up with a pretext to haul the boy into his office and have a talk with him about how to treat young ladies. Ophelia’s name was never mentioned but they both knew what they were talking about. To his relief and disappointment, the boy gave him every indication and assertion that he would treat Ophelia as she deserved; he believed him.

Snape rested secure in the conviction that he had done everything he could to ensure Ophelia’s future.

And then it all goes down in flames.

Voldemort summons Snape to a meeting of the Death Eaters. He wishes to conduct an experiment and he requires Snape’s service. Of course Snape bows his head, “Whatever my lord requires,” is his response. “Good, good” Voldemort says silkily. Accompanied by Belletrix Lestrange, he leads Snape to a dark chamber filled with Death Eaters. As usual they are in a circle. Curiously, there is a pool of light in the center of the circle and what looks like a long stone altar. As he approaches, he hears snickering and Belletrix gets a fiendish gleam in her eyes. And then he sees her.

Ophelia, his Raven, tied to the block of stone.

He wants to fall down. He wants to throw up. He wants to kill them all and snatch her off that stone and away to safety. He can’t do any of these things. He can’t even blink an eye. He has to remain as detached and cold as he always is among the Death Eaters. They must think she is nothing to him. Or, if she is anything, she is a toy he’d like to play with.

And then he realizes: that’s it. Someone knows. Not what he does for Dumbledore but what she is to him. How they know he can’t fathom. Automatically his mind races through the possibilities and with an effort he stops it. Now is not the time to think of that. Now he has to find a way to free Ophelia without letting Voldemort and his followers think he cares anything about her.

He doesn’t even want to spare a thought as to what they might have done to her. If he, even for one second contemplates those possibilities, he will fling himself howling onto Voldemort and do his best to kill him.

So he remains still. And before he can speak, Voldemort saves him the effort of having to come up with something innocuous.

“I have not forgotten your fidelity, Snape. I reward those who serve me well. Of course, any reward must serve the greater purpose.”

Nothing, not an eyebrow, flickers on Snape’s face, though his eyes never move from the sight before him. “Of course, my lord.” His mind kicks in; perhaps Voldemort will reveal a weakness. “How may I serve your purpose?”

“I require a body.”

Discreetly, Snape swallows past the bile in his throat.

“A female body, my lord?” he chances to ask. “Not even grown. Of what use can she be to you my lord?”

Voldemort smiles. Beside him so does Belletrix. Snape can feel her gaze poring over every detail of his face, looking for…something.

“I should clarify,” Voldemort says. “I require a child.”

The minutest of frowns appears on Snape’s face. Beside him he can hear Belletrix’ swift intake of breath. The sound is like an invisible breeze, too far away from the other Death Eaters to register it. But Snape hears it.

His mind is racing. A child? If that’s what he needs why hasn’t he procured one instead of taking Ophelia? Then his stomach lurches. He swears Belletrix can sense it. He wants to sire a child. Oh gods, oh gods…But it isn’t possible. Voldemort has a body but it isn’t fully functional yet. He could hardly stand, let alone father a child.

Beside him, in his peripheral vision, he can see Belletrix, still staring at him, as she licks her lips and bares her teeth.

“To what end, my lord?” Snape says finally.

“The Boy Who Lived remains a plague on my soul. I created him, to my cost, the only thing that can threaten me. If I can create one, I can create another.”

And then Snape turns his head to look at Voldemort, astonishment clearly written on his face.

“And this one, will be mine.”

Beside him, a maniacal grin erupts across Belletrix’ face.

“Look at her. She’s beautiful,” Voldemort observes.

Belletrix’ smile falters and she glances nervously back at Voldemort who ignores her.

“A pureblood,” Voldemort continues. “A worthy mother. Who requires a worthy father.”

And now Voldemort returns Snape’s gaze. His smile sends tendrils of fear snaking through Snape’s blood. And then Snape utters the rarest of phrases for him.

“I don’t understand.” But the truth is he understands perfectly. The Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter, is the only thing that can defeat Voldemort. And Voldemort himself created him by attacking him as an infant. His mother lost her life shielding her son from that blast and put on him the charm that protects him from Voldemort even now. And now he knows, as Snape has always suspected, that some part of Voldemort went into Harry; Voldemort’s attack placed it there. If Voldemort can create one powerful threat, surely he can create another. Impregnate the mother with the seed of a servant loyal to him, who can be counted on to stand aside, to throw the mother into the path of Voldemort’s wand when the Dark Lord comes to kill.

The truth is he understands. He simply does not wish to believe.

“You will create a weapon for me, Snape, one that I shall raise and train to serve me well.”

Snape’s mind is spinning faster than almost he can follow and yet he manages to say, “Forgive me, my lord, but the time frame. A baby cannot fight a war. Potter is a threat now.”

He almost blanches as Voldemort’s eyes narrow. “Do you doubt my ability to defeat Potter?”

Immediately Snape bows his head. “Never my lord. But may I not serve you better immediately than to wait nine months for the birth of a child who must be nurtured for yet again at least seven more years before he is of any use to you?”

Voldemort smiles almost fondly. “Loyal Snape. ” He reaches out a cold hand and lifts Snape’s chin so that the Slytherin Head Master meets his gaze. “Fear not. I have more immediate efforts in the making for which I will summon you. But for now, do my bidding and allow me to reward my faithful servant even as he helps me to achieve my ends.”

Snape turned his head back to where Ophelia lay.

And if he doesn’t allow Voldemort to “reward” him, his mind asks. What then? He suppressed a shudder. He knew what the Death Eaters did to those who were no longer of use. That Ophelia still breathed, that her body, what he could see of it, was relatively unscathed, was nothing short of a miracle. But then she was still of use to Voldemort. Are there not any worthier candidates, my lord? The question arose in his mind and he quashed it. If he asked, he opened the door to Voldemort actually considering another candidate. At that point Ophelia’s life would last as long as it took to find someone else. Which still didn’t explain why Voldemort had chosen Ophelia. Gods, why her of all people?! Voldemort’s “rewards” were never simple, never straightforward. There was always a sting in the tail.

As he gazed at Ophelia, he saw her suddenly heave once as if struggling to breathe. He betrayed no emotion. But he knew it was unlikely, undamaged as she appeared to be, that the Death Eaters would have left her entirely unmolested. Unmolested. His stomach lurched at that word.

“Snape.”

As if in a trance, he turned back to Voldemort.

“Have you not desired her from the beginning?” he asked, almost kindly.

Snape turned back to Ophelia. Oh but she had blossomed this year! The skinny child with over large eyes and too heavy hair had finally filled out and grown into her own beauty. The bullying of her Slytherin classmates had declined as her attractiveness grew. He had feared it would start again as she rebuffed their sexual advances. But her relationship with Marius Bentlow had drawn her under his protection. They might grumble, but they’d never dare lay a finger on Marius’ girl. Whether they had become intimate he did not know. He’d refused to let his mind dwell on the possibility. He knew though that it was likely to happen sooner rather than later. As it should. She was a young woman, with a bright future. And if she’d had any family to weigh in on the issue, he felt sure that they would have urged her to find a potential spouse at Hogwarts. A Hogwarts graduate, after all, came with a certain cachet, the wizarding world’s stamp of approval as it were. And how many marriages occurred within the years of graduation? He had lost count. Nor were the faculty above encouraging such matches. A marriage between Hogwarts students more frequently than not led to the enrollment of yet more Hogwarts students as the couples sent their offspring to the school where they’d found their happiness.

He’d refused to even consider letting his own desire impede that natural progression.

Never mind that he’d destroyed half his potions cabinet when he’d learned she was dating Marius. Nor would he remember how he’d tossed and turned with dreams he’d be too ashamed to recall even to himself until he’d broken down and pulled from its hiding place the photo of Lily Evans. If Ophelia had had red hair instead of black and green eyes instead of blue, he would have understood his desires better. For she had the same intelligence, the same wit, the same sparkle as Lily. But she looked nothing like Lily. She was not Lily. And yet, just by her presence, she’d unwittingly reopened old wounds, brought him face to face again with the longing and the loss he thought he’d buried for good. He never thought he’d feel that warmth again. And then the Sorting Hat had sent it straight to Slytherin House.

In no reality had he ever expected her to be his.

Why hadn’t he thought about this nightmarish possibility?

“Yes. I want her.”

Beside him Belletrix’ smile widened again at the naked hunger that roared to life in his eyes.

Voldemort smiled almost benevolently. “Then my servant, do my bidding.”

Snape turned back to the altar stone. And then he saw him. There, among the Death Eaters standing opposite, Marius Bentlow, his face unmasked.

He was not surprised. How odd, he thought. Perhaps it was because some small part of him had always thought, no feared, that it was too good to be true, the détente between Ophelia and her fellow Slytherins, the appearance of a fiancé. No one’s life is that easy, Snape knew, even if they’re receiving help from the highest ranks of Hogwarts’ faculty.

In another time and place, he would curse the blood from Marius’ body.

But this time and place demanded a choice from him. He could refuse Voldemort’s command and seal both his and Ophelia’s death sentences as well as endanger Potter, Dumbledore and the entire Order of the Phoenix. Or he could do his master’s will and, Merlin willing, buy Ophelia nine more months of life.

He started walking toward her, discarding his robe as he moved.

O, my Raven, forgive me this evil I’m about to do to you.

The End?

I Like Sarah Palin

2008-10-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'm a staunch Democrat.

Nope, I won't be voting for John McCain.

But, from my viewpoint as a shameless pop culture fan, I like Sarah Palin. She is the most entertaining politician we've had since Bill Clinton. Yeah Bill screwed us over with NAFTA and welfare reform. But damn he was entertaining! I mean you couldn't have made that stuff up. (How you doin' Monica?)

We could say the same thing about Sarah.

I mean, love or hate her ideology, this chick's life is screaming out for a TV movie. (Come on, Lifetime, you know you wanna!). She's a former beauty pageant contestant who became a small town mayor in Alaska (what is this, Men in Trees meets She's the Sheriff?) before vaulting into the governor's office. Wow. If I had written something like that I would have laughed myself out of town. Her interview with Katie Couric, of which I only saw excerpts, has become a political pop culture classic. We'll be seeing that on You Tube for years. Schweet. And last Thursday's debate with Joe Biden...What can I say? I only saw the last half hour and you know, it looked the Senator and the Avon Lady.

But then I'm a Democrat. I would say that...

Oh yeah, this is gonna be a fun ride.

I Want the REAL Superman to Return!

2008-09-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

What has Warner Brothers been smoking?

Or maybe what I should be asking is what the heck is wrong with the American movie-going audience?

Superman Returns was a fantastic film. Okay, full disclosure: I saw it on DVD rather than in the theater. However I REALLY regret that because I loved the film after I saw it. And I loved Brandon Routh. The request for a darker Superman is really short-sighted. It tells me people don't really have faith in goodness anymore. It also tells me that Warner Brothers didn't do their homework. There was plenty of darkness in Superman Returns. And if they thought about it long enough, they'd realize there's plenty of darkness in Superman period.

You want a dark Superman? I'll give you a dark Superman.

Read my Superman fan fiction, Love's Divine, at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4315080/1/Loves_Divine.

Let me know what you think.

Now Where Was I...

2008-09-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

...Oh yeah that was a long nap! It's been more than a year since I've posted anything on this blog. I thought it might have been deactivated by the powers that be. But God bless 'em they kept it up. Many thanks :^)

What have I been doing in the interim? I've started a novel, This Could Be Heaven, and put it on hold because the project was overwhelming. Then I started another fiction project as a dress rehearsal/work out before going back to my novel. This project is a Superman fan fiction called Love's Divine. You can find it online at www.fanfiction.net in the Movie section. More on that another time...

Meanwhile, I don't want to make any promises because we know how promises go. But now that I've been laid off (that's right!) it looks like I'll have more time to post.

So watch this space.

See you 'round the 'net!

The Murder of Princess Diana

2007-08-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of Diana-watch.

Here's another hard truth that people aren't willing to hear: Diana was not as significant as people want to believe. The Lifetime movie, The Murder of Princess Diana, strives to say she was. It adapts the non-fiction book of the same name by Neil Botham into a fictional tale of a female journalist cottoning onto the "conspiracy" surrounding Diana's death. The movie seems to want to say that Diana was a female version of Kennedy.

While the production values are fine, the basic premise is not. While Diana had matured professionally and brought much to the institution of monarchy, there simply wasn't enough time for her to gain the kind of stature this movie asserts she had. Diana remained mostly a pop cultural figure, not a state figure, not even as solidly a humanitarian figure as Mother Theresa was. If she had had enough to time form a relationship with an organization similar to what the Princess Royal has with Save the Children, she might have reached that status. Unfortunately there was no time. Moreover, Diana's reckless disregard for the monarchy as an institution embodied by her in-laws showed that she still had more professional maturing to do.

More tomorrow.

Princess Diana

2007-08-27T18:01:00.000-07:00

This week marks the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

It's an odd sort of anniversary for me. Although I was a huge fan of hers from the time she burst onto the scene wearing (figuratively) the glass slippers, my feelings had undergone a complete reversal by the time of her death. Well I guess a lot changes between 13 and 38.

I want to post at length later in the week, but here are some random thoughts:

1. I knew Diana's fate was sealed when, during the Panorama interview, she intimated that the succession should bypass Charles and go directly to William.

2. The paparazzi have been blamed. Henri Paul has been blamed. But the truth is, as other authors have written, Diana would never have died in Paris if she had kept her British security detail with her because they never would have allowed her driver to go at that speed.

3. Charles has been unfairly blamed for Diana's psychological problems. It is one of the toughest things in the world to live with a mentally ill spouse who refuses to get help or admit they have a problem. A look at the fault lines in the Spencer family architecture provides ample evidence of where the cause of Diana's troubles really lay. The Spencers created the problem. Charles got stuck cleaning it up.

4. I was appalled at Earl Spencer's funeral address and remain appalled. A man who could not treat his own, now ex-, wife with dignity and kindness has the nerve to lecture the Royal Family on how to behave? And in public? Please.

5. The memory of the real Diana remains obscured behind the glare of the public's projections. In general people can't handle difficult truths. The public doesn't want to believe that Diana was genuinely mentally ill and required serious treatment.

6. I can't respect the fact that she tried to tear down the institution that she wanted her son to head one day. That is colossally irresponsible.

7. No matter how you spin it or what motives you assign, they way Frances Shand-Kydd left Diana's father -- to be with another man -- was a catastrophic mistake. It was something Frances could never admit when she was alive, apparently and a point most writers, whether pro- or anti-Diana, seem to gloss over. But this one action, which kicked off all the consequences that followed, seems to have forever destroyed Diana's ability to be whole. Please don't believe I'm saying Frances should have stayed with an abusive husband. I've known women who had abusive husbands. They didn't wait around for a man to rescue them. They left. The scooped up their babies, left their belongings, and left. Maybe they would get their belongings later. Maybe not. But they knew what their priorities were. Their children. Everything else was just stuff. I don't understand why a woman, who allegedly had her own money, didn't just grab her children and run. And even if you say she was afraid to do it alone, then I say fine, find a friend or find a man who isn't married. When Frances became involved with Peter Shand-Kydd she made herself vulnerable to being branded an adulteress and losing custody of her children. Which is what happened. While I hope she and Diana are both at peace now let's not let sentiment blind us to the truth.

But that's enough for one night.

More later in this anniversary week...

Happy Friday!

2007-08-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Is there no better day of the week? Of course not.

So in honor of Friday, I'm taking the weekend off.

P.S. Thanks for posting SagBoy!

And keep watching this space.

Running on Empty

2007-08-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

I'm running on empty tonight. Don't have much to say.

One note: I've made some progress on my novel. Yes, I'm one of those--I'm a wannabe novelist. I've been nationally published as an entertainment writer but not as a fiction writer. My goal is to finish my manuscript in the next year. Currently I'm struggling over chapter 1. The book is called "This Could Be Heaven" after the title of the song by Seal. Perhaps I'll post some scenes at some point. Not yet though.

Not as if it matters to anyone but me -- yet.

As always, watch this space!

My First Outside Comment!

2007-08-22T17:20:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of my good buddy Tara.

Thanks Tara!

With your master's degree in women's history don't think I won't be tapping your brain for some more comments at some point. I don't just want to ramble on. I also want to interview people. So be prepared!

As for America's Got Talent, I was hoping the Glamazons would win too but I suspected they wouldn't for the obvious reasons.

But they were cute! MUCH prettier than the Pussycat Dolls.

If it's any consolation, I think they'll have an extended career because of this.

America's Got Talent Winner...

2007-08-21T18:57:00.001-07:00

...is Terry Fator????? Holy cr#p!!! Boy can I not pick 'em! I started watching tonight's show thinking Butterscotch or Julie would win. Then I couldn't believe my eyes when they dumped Julie and Butterscotch. After that I felt sure Cas would win. After all he's got the best story: the wife, the kid, the daddy theme. He sang the cool drinkin' song with UB40 (Where the hell have they been? Do they still have a career?)

But nope.

I could say this is an example that proves America's Got Talent -- but no taste.

But that would be wrong.

Terry Fator is great. I honestly love the puppets. The music. The comedy. The voices. You own me Terry!

And it just goes to show, if you sing to America with Kermit the Frog by your side, you're bulletproof.

Congratulations Terry!

Hit and Run (Redux)

2007-08-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Okay this is fun. My computer ate my original post so I have to write it again. Doncha' just love it?

Hit and run.

This is how I'm going to have to manage this blog until I'm settled in and writing steadily. I'll just slap a few slogans on the cyber-wall and see if they stick before I come back to develop them at a later date. I want to talk about pop culture, culture, and society to begin with. So expect some of that in the near future. For now, here goes...

...Reality TV: What the hell? Is it just me or is the glut of reality TV an unforeseen by-product of government disinterest in the public welfare and disinvestment in the public sphere? Oh I'm not saying this is more important than bridges falling down or levees failing. But there seems to be this idea out there that you somehow have to pimp yourself for the TV viewing masses in order to get your basic needs met. Got no music education in your school? Go on American Idol. Need your home renovated but can't afford the loan? Go on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Too fat? Need to lose weight? Don't waste time at your doctor's office or the gym. Try to become The Biggest Loser. Or go on a Fat March.

I mean, if we had music education in the public schools, a national housing policy that really worked to get people into solidly built homes and universal health care, would there be a market for these kind of life-improvement/make me famous shows?

Just askin'.

Still moving in...

2007-08-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

...it will take me a while to get ramped up and posting regularly. My head is overflowing with ideas. Coming soon: my profile and, possibly, The Handma(i)d(e)'s Ta(i)le (with apologies to Margaret Atwood).

Keep watching this space!

I'm He-ee-ee-reee!

2007-08-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Kicks the tires.

Looks around.

Not bad.

All righty then folks. Here I am. I think I'll try it on for size and see how it fits.

Watch this space.

More to come.

Peace.