The Hall of Heroes: Part 3

[dolorous_ett]

Being the third part of my Snape-goes-to-Valhalla fic. In which Snape gets to see how the other half lives, and makes a decision about his future. Which really isn't that hard.

It's been a while since I've posted fic of any kind, and over 6 weeks since I updated "The Hall of Heroes", so if you can't remember how Snape got there, Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 here.

I've given Snape the benefit of the doubt here, even though I'm not sure he deserves it. Next time I write him into a fanfic, I will try to make him genuinely evil, by way of compensation.

Oh well, on with the show.

____________________________________________________________

The silence seemed to go on and on.

"What are you going to do?" asked Snape at last. "Are you going to send me away? Where am I supposed to go?"

"I don’t know," Gunilla replied, in something close to a wail, which contrasted strangely with her statuesque, warlike build. "I’m only new - this was my first Ride - how was I supposed to know this was going to happen?"

She stared at him for a minute, deep in thought. Then she picked up the heavy skirts of her robe and set off at a run.

"Don’t move, and don’t do anything silly!" she shouted over her shoulder. "I’ll be back as soon as I can!"

Snape slumped back to the table with a groan. He should have known it was too good to last. In his foolish weakness, he had actually had the temerity to believe in the hero’s welcome he had received in this place, and - poor, gullible booby that he was - he had welcomed and enjoyed it, in spite of instincts honed over the course of a lifetime of deception and rejection. Severus Snape, traitor and spy, useful to so many but despised by all, an honoured guest in the Hall of Heroes? The very thought was absurd - laughable in fact.

Well, he had been well and truly taken in - but no more. He would face whatever punishment was coming his way with dignity, and whatever awaited him next with courage. Torment and misery, no doubt - people like him were entitled to no more. He might have known that he would have to pay for his presumption sooner or later.

The most mortifying thing of all, he reflected, was how much the thought of leaving all that warmth and good cheer hurt.

***

A hand descended on his shoulder. Snape turned round anxiously, thinking it must be Gunilla bearing judgement on his fate, but instead he found himself staring into the face of a large, ferociously scarred male Giant in a suit of heavy plate armour, wielding a terrifying-looking club in each hand. A dozen or so other giants stood behind him, some armoured, some in robes or roughly cured hides, a couple naked, but all armed for battle.

With a terrifying scowl, the Giant waved both his clubs in mid-air, bared his teeth and roared something unintelligible. Even before the minstrel from the night before shouldered his way through the group to translate: "This hero, he wishes a duel", Snape knew nothing good was going to come of it.

A lesser man - especially one lost in existential self-doubt as Snape had been - might have been paralysed at the sight of a gargantuan, battle-scarred warrior bearing down on him, surrounded by friends. But Severus Snape’s battle reflexes had been developing since his childhood, and he reacted almost without thinking. He kicked his bench aside, slipped under the table, scrambled past the astonished Giants at the other side, crawling over their feet and causing them to spill their mead, straightened up, took his heels and ran.

For a second, Snape thought he was going to make it, but the faster he ran, the more Giants joined in the chase, hooting and cheering. By the time they finally cornered him in an angle between the tables and the wall, they were almost a hundred to one, and Snape knew that the time for flight was past. Well, so be it - in the Hall of Heroes he should face them like a hero, whatever the outcome. He palmed his wand beneath the voluminous sleeves of his robe, and waited in silence as his assailant approached, until he could see the whites of his eyes. At that moment he pointed his wand straight at the Giant’s eyes, yelling "Stupefy!"

With the slow, silent inevitability of an avalanche, the Giant fell face-forward onto the half-eaten dinner on the table in front of him in a shower of mead and gravy. There was a short, stunned silence, and then, with a collective growl, the rest of the giants closed in on him. Snape shut his eyes and waited for death.

In the scrum that ensued, it took Snape several minutes and a particularly loud-voiced interpreter to realise that the mob of Giants were attempting not to beat him death but to clap him on the back. He was picked up from the middle of the scrum, huge hands dusted him off, the horned helmet was returned to him and a horn of ale thrust into his hand. It appeared that his nerve under pressure and the cold desperation of his last stand had met with approval, and the Giants were particularly fascinated by his magic wand - or, as they insisted on describing it, "his tiny stick" (Unfair! thought Snape, it’s a full twelve and a half inches - a very respectable size for a wizard of my age!). Giants are impervious to magic, but have no magical culture of their own. These were most impressed by the Reparo he performed on the broken table, and he was overwhelmed with questions about its use and function, in mimes and broken English. In the meantime, the minstrel had upended a keg of beer over Snape’s fallen adversary, who had now managed to sit up, and was being teased unmercifully about his defeat at the hands of such a tiny foe. Another Giant, who had been tuning an enormous war-harp, plucked out a thunderous chord and burst into throaty song. It was a catchy tune, and soon the rest of the company were beating on the tables and joining in the chorus. The minstrel from the previous night whispered in his ear that Rawh-turrh-guugg, famous composer of drinking songs, was improvising a new piece: The Ballad of Severus the Small and his Tiny, Tiny Stick. He translated the words for Snape as the song progressed - by the time Gunilla showed up at the table it had reached a total of seventeen verses, twelve of which were very rude.

Snape, who had so far forgotten himself under the influence of all that mead and friendliness as to be on the point of attempting to join in the final rousing chorus, abruptly sobered up. He got up and followed Gunilla to a quieter part of the Hall where they could talk undisturbed.

"It is very strange," she said to him. "I have consulted the Tomes of Lore, and your name is entered with full honour in the Roll of Heroes - no-one could dispute your right to be here in any case, not if The Ballad of Severus the Small and his Tiny, Tiny Stick is anything to go by. However, your life must have been even more complicated than I realised, as your name also appears in the lists of the Garden of Paradise and a newly created hell. All of these places are open to you - it remains only for you to choose. Personally, I hope you will stay, as you will be most appreciated here - almost all our kind are dead now, and we so seldom see new heroes in this place. Of course, you will miss your own people - but with time you will learn our language, and perhaps with proper nourishment you may even grow a little… well… taller…"

Snape swallowed. "How do I choose?" he asked.

"Most of us get bored with feasting - yes, even the fighting - after a decade or two, and we turn to other matters: art, philosophy, science or the more practical arts," she said. "Mugh-phaa-rrawh, the famous warrior who battled a dragon for twenty days and twenty nights without rest has turned his hand to astronomy, and created a device rather like what you would call a telescope. I do not understand the principles, but he tells me that you may observe the other afterlives through his lenses, and make your own decision. He is waiting by his machine. Will you come?"

***

Gunilla led him through the Hall of Heroes, which was even larger than it had appeared from the outside. This time, Snape noticed doors leading off the main hall, some of which were ajar, and through which he could glimpse vast libraries, a theatre, huge workshops where giants carved enormous sculptures in stone or blew delicate glass vessels as light as thistledown, a laboratory full the most intriguing glass tubes and crucibles…

At last they passed through the main doors and out into the starlight. This time, though, they walked parallel to the side of the building, past the stables, where a bunch of cheerful but bloodstained Giants on horseback were returning from what seemed to be a hunt, judging by the huge, tentacled monstrosity strapped to the back of the largest horse. They called out cheerily, indicating by gestures that they were going to roast their prize in the Great Hall, and Gunilla and Snape should drop by and taste it later on. They passed a battle-scarred warrior with a shield strapped to his back watering a bed of superb peonies, a Giantess in a leather apron beating out a red-hot sword on an anvil and a delicate wind chime that tinkled and rustled as they passed. When they finally came to the telescope, a huge bronze and crystal structure, adjusted by an interlocking set of enamelled cogs, Snape had seen so many wonders that he was almost ready to forego his chance to see Paradise on the spot. However, the telescope’s creator (a craggy young male in an uncured sheepskin loincloth) greeted him with such enthusiasm, and put so much effort into the correct pointing and focussing of the machine that there seemed no polite way to refuse.

***

At last, the telescope was ready, and Snape put his eye to one of its eyepieces. At first he could see nothing, but gradually his eyes started to focus, and pictures began to form, blurred at first, but quickly becoming more distinct. Then came a buzzing noise by his ear, which became louder, and he began to distinguish definite sounds, and finally words.

He saw a verdant garden, full of blooming plants, sunlight, birdsong, soft greenery and trees heavy with fruit or blossom. His heart caught in his throat as he saw Albus Dumbledore walking under an alley of Cheering Cherry Trees in full bloom, arm in arm with Emmeline Vance and a dazed-looking Kate Sprout. The trees hooted and shook their branches as the two passed, showering them with soft, fragrant petals until Dumbledore put a finger a warning finger to his lips, at which point the branches furled themselves neatly, and Dumbledore continued what he was saying.

"…No, my dears," he was saying. "Poor Severus was never an easy man - we all know he could be very trying at times - but everything he did was done at my command. You didn’t see him in the final battle: he crossed the Hogwarts barrier by night, risking his life so that we would be ready for Voldemort’s forces when they came. He led the final charge where the danger was greatest, even though he was already wounded in half a dozen places, first from escaping the Death Eaters’ lair, then by our side when Lord Voldemort’s forces attempted to gain access to the castle. And then, after all that, to take the Aveda Kedavera curse meant for Hagrid, just because of a fleeting memory of kindness shown to him as a boy...

"So," Dumbledore concluded, "whatever else Severus Snape may be, he died a hero, not a traitor. In fact, I’m surprised not to have seen him already, to tell you the truth - no doubt he’ll be along shortly."

"Rubbish," said Kate Sprout. "The wretched man was a turncoat, pure and simple - cared for nothing but his own skin. I was against him coming back, even under observation, and I don’t care who knows it! And how you can stick up for him after what he did to you I’ll never know…"

"Quite right," said Emmeline Vance, with some heat. "He sicced the Death Eaters onto me, and don’t think I don’t know! They never got a word about the Order’s plans out of me - but believe me, it wasn’t easy! Hero’s death, my foot - Snape didn’t even have the stones to take me on in person, the nasty little rat."

"Snape?" asked a younger voice, and the head of that silly Quidditch player who had bought it in three years ago in the Triwizard Tournament popped up from behind a bush, where he had been gorging himself on its ripe berries. "No sign of Snape here, thank the lord - imagine - stalking around, handing out detentions and unpleasant remarks left, right and rat’s ramble - dreadful type… I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?"

"Cedric!" Sprout cried blissfully, clasping the youth to her bosom with a squish. "Oh, Cedric, I might have known I’d see you in Paradise! A credit to our House - I always said as much! - Bless you, dear boy!" She brushed away a tear.

"Oh, really," said the youth, looking sickeningly bashful, "it was nothing…"

Snape had had enough.

"I don’t think I need to see any more," he said, and stood back from the telescope.

***

"And that’s where I should have ended up?" Snape said after a long pause. "That garden was Paradise?"

"I must say I’m surprised," Gunilla replied. "It seemed a lot more your kind of place when I read about it in the Tomes of Lore - much nicer people, for a start. I’d have thought they’d have been a bit more respectful about you, after all your bravery and sacrifice!" she continued in tones of deep disapproval. "Do these people have no standards at all?"

"Well, I did kill the kindly old man they all worshipped as a saint and loved as a father, to be scrupulously fair…" said Snape, rubbing the back of his neck and feeling very awkward.

"So?" Gunilla shrugged her huge shoulders. "You were at war. Here, we follow the Old Way, where you are judged by valour alone, not by the petty moralities of the weak. No, perhaps to them that place would seem a great reward - but it is not for you."

"And that’s it, then?" said Snape, feeling obscurely let down. "All clear, all understood? No more mystery, no intriguing moral ambiguity? No more is-he-evil-or-isn’t-he? You must appreciate that this comes as something as a shock to the system. I did kill a kindly old man who was fighting to save us all when he was sick and disarmed, you know - really I did."

"So you keep saying," Gunilla replied patiently. "And I’ve been doing my best to explain to you that for us a valiant death wipes out all wrongs. Really, if you want to be consigned to a Hell, there are still plenty of vacancies in the new one your precious Dark Lord created. Perhaps you’d care to take a look? I promise you won’t like it any better. Even though most of the people there still think it’s a Heaven."

Snape did his best not to look intrigued, apparently without much success, as Gunilla gestured to the giant working the great telescope, who set to again with a will. With much creaking and groaning, the apparatus swung round to a new position, and when Snape looked through the eyepiece again, he found himself surveying a very different scene.

Anything less like a hell it would have been hard to imagine. Snape saw a long room whose floors, walls and ceilings were all of the finest polished white marble. Torches burned with clear white flames in gilded sconces supported by cherubs and decorated with elaborate carvings of overflowing cornucopias of fruit and great swags of carved marble drapery. White columns in a vaguely Greek style held up the ceiling, and mirrors in heavy gold frames threw back the torchlight into the centre of the room. Between the mirrors, wine was gushing in bubbling amber torrents into cockle-shell basins balanced on the backs of prancing sea-serpents.

At one end of the long chamber was a dais, on which Voldemort sat enthroned in a great chair carved from a single block of blood-red marble into the shape of a rearing cobra, heavily engraved with runes of power and signs of the Zodiac. He wore a heavy toga of the most magnificent purple velvet, and was crowned with a bulky garland of gilt laurel leaves. Beneath the wreath, his pale, bald head turned slowly from side to side as his red eyes surveyed the scene below him with immense satisfaction.

Extending away from the throne in a long line was a series of low marble tables, heavily decorated with gold leaf and flanked by two rows of gilt and marble chairs, elaborately carved, the arms in the shapes of intertwined wands and serpents. In each gilded chair was seated, rather stiffly, a male Death Eater in a toga of pure white, their hair loose and clean about their shoulders. White-clad women in Roman-style robes of finest silk, clasped at the shoulder with serpentine brooches of solid gold, were gliding between the seated men, bearing delicate gilded trays.

Bellatrix Lestrange was the first to bend the knee, heavy dark hair falling over her face, and a huge chalice of solid diamond held in her upraised hands.

"Drink, my lord!" she cried. "Taste the wine of victory that is rightfully yours!"

"Wine of victory?" muttered Snape to himself. "Some victory - you’re all dead!"

Voldemort took the cup with ponderous satisfaction, raised it to his lips, paused and nodded in approval. Bellatrix rose to her feet, and Snape saw her sister Narcissa kneel in her place, head bowed, the tray in her hands raised high. She spoke in the soft, refined tones that had graced a thousand elegant dinner parties:

"Canapé, O great one?"

The spindly white fingers reached out, closed around a small pastry case stuffed with some kind of pale, prawn-based substance, and popped it into the lipless slit of a mouth. Another pregnant pause followed, and then Voldemort graciously inclined his head.

"Delightful, my dear," came the high, cold voice. "A good omen indeed. Ladies - you may go to your tasks."

An audible sigh of relief went up, and there was a visible relaxation of tension in the room - in so far as the hard, heavily carved chairs allowed. Narcissa and Bellatrix advanced with more goblets and nibbles on the table closest to Voldemort’s throne. At the same time, the few other female Death Eaters were carrying similar fare to the lower tables. Low murmurs of "Sparkling wine?" and "Canapés?" filled the room, together with mutters of thanks.

Snape wondered what was going through Bellatrix’s head at that moment, as she bent submissively towards her brother-in-law and one-time rival for the Dark Lord’s favour, encouraging him in the tones of the most perfect gentility to accept a goblet brimming with sparkling wine. Was it his imagination, or did a vindictive smirk flash briefly over her sister’s face?

There had never been many female Death Eaters, so it worked out quite well from the point of view of staffing - a couple of women to each long table. Snape had not noticed it before, but the tables had been arranged in a strict hierarchy, and he distinctly saw Hetty Crabbe, who had been one of the Devonshire Flints before marriage, engaged in a silent but vicious shoving match with Priscilla Malfoy, whose grandfather had been a Birmingham weevil breeder, over who got to serve vol-au-vents to the better of two tables. And over there was Messalina Edgecombe, who in life had ruled over the Department of Internal Strife at the Ministry of Magic with a rod of iron, serving sausages on sticks to Walden McNair, who had started his career as her tea boy. She had schooled her face to a mask of dutiful politeness, but the expression in her eyes was murderous. If they had been still alive, Snape would not have given a Knut’s worth of Leprechaun gold for McNair’s life.

Even more interesting were some of the gaps in the ranks: no Marcus, Aurelius or Cletus Flint; no Millicent Bulstrode, Draco Malfoy or Vincent Crabbe (though Gregory Goyle was sitting stiffly between Augustus Rookwood and Rabastan Lestrange, looking bored and fractious); no Horace Slughorn or Rosmerta Spinks; neither of the Casaubon twins nor a single member of the Parkinson family. Now he came to think of it, one of the things that gave the room an uncomfortable, temporary feel was the sense that it had been designed to hold many more occupants than it actually contained, and that tables had been concealed or moved out of the way in a hurry.

A part of Snape wanted to keep watching, taking in every last detail: Jepthah Nott and Rupert Thatcher jockeying for position over the head of the fourth table; Sophrona Goyle telling her husband in a furious undertone to remember where he was and not embarrass himself after too much wine the way he had at Gregory’s first Dark Ritual… but another part of Snape recalled that he was now a member of the Hall of Heroes, and that he had certain new standards to keep up. He removed his eye from the eyepiece of the telescope, stretched and straightened up.

"I’m quite ready to go back to the Hall of Heroes now," he stated. "I am forced to conclude that I don’t belong with the Death Eaters either, thank you very much."

Gunilla looked quizzically at Snape.

"I agree with you. And despite all my years of study, I do not understand your race. For this, they were prepared to turn against your human morality and duty? Not for glory, honour or valiant death, but for sparkling wine and dainty seafood nibbles?"

Snape considered for a minute before replying:

"I suppose that to many of them, this is elegance and taste, the way their forefathers lived and a return to traditional values - inasmuch as they ever considered the matter. I think it likely that they were too caught up with hatred of others to consider the idea of what was actually good." said Snape, sobered as he spoke by the knowledge that he could have been describing his eighteen-year-old self. "Though it seems to me that this lack of foresight is something they will live to regret - if you’ll pardon the expression. Especially if that performance is typical of their existence."

"Not altogether," said Gunilla. "I believe that tea and scones are served in the afternoons."

"Dear me," said Snape with a smirk. "Still, presumably when they realise what a tasteless, tedious hell they have created for themselves, they will be at liberty to leave, just as I would have been allowed to leave here if I had not come to my senses in time…"

"I’m afraid not," replied Gunilla. "That hall is technically classified as a hell, after all - and that means of course that it is not supplied with exits of any kind. Still, after a few hundred years of internal feuding and rebellion they may yet make something of it - it’s happened before."

"Well, since there’s nothing to be done for them," said Snape, "perhaps we should be getting back to the Hall. One of your fellow-residents was saying something about a Monster of the Deep roasting in one of the firepits…"

"You mean, one of our fellow-residents," corrected Gunilla with a smile.

"Indeed," said Severus the Small.

Comments

Right, Then.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

That's ... sodding brilliant, actually.

Shades of Sprague de Camp and of Jack Lewis's Great Divorce, actually.

Utterly brill.

Re: Right, Then.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your kind words!

The comments about Sprague de Camp and the like were very perceptive - when I first started reading science fiction, stories by people like him were my first point of contact, and while I seldom read them now they seem to have imprinted on me...

[swythyv.livejournal.com]

You have a gift. A demented, darling, phenomenal gift. Thank you so much. Nuts to JKR, I want you writing the ending. ;D

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Nuts to JKR, I want you writing the ending. ;D

It's very kind of you to say so - but I don't think I'd be much good at that. She's the only real creator - once she's done with the creator I scuttle in through the cracks and latch on, like the parasite I am...

And thanks for the correction - will deal with it before I send it off to Fiction Alley.

[ignipes.livejournal.com]

"his tiny stick" (Unfair! thought Snape, it’s a full twelve and a half inches - a very respectable size for a wizard of my age!)

Just for that you win at writing and life and the universe and everything. You are the queen.

But for the rest of this, also. I loved the peek at the different places that are open to Snape.

Now I want to see The Ballad of Severus the Small and his Tiny, Tiny Stick. That would be a drinking song worth passing down through the ages.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your kind words, and on your plug in your LJ. Much appreciated.

Now I want to see The Ballad of Severus the Small and his Tiny, Tiny Stick. That would be a drinking song worth passing down through the ages.

I don't think I could, honestly. But if you want to write it, it's yours.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

That is fantastic. First of all, the descriptions of Paradise and Hell were perfect. Canapés indeed! Though my favourite bit by far was 'The Ballad of Severus the Small and his Tiny, Tiny Stick'. Am I a bad person if my first thoughts when that line came up involved...umm...compensation?

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Thank you for spotting the canapes - one of my personal favourite bits.

Am I a bad person if my first thoughts when that line came up involved...umm...compensation?

No, I think you're a fairly normal person. Certainly, Snape is remarkably prickly and insecure about something...

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

:: grins :: So THAT'S why you wanted advice on tasteless architecture. I should have known :)

I'm glad Snape gets the benefit of the doubt (under the Old Way, if not Rowling's own system of morality), and I'm inclined to think he does deserve it.

And I second the request for "The Ballad of Severus the Small and His Tiny, Tiny Stick" -- although on second thought, much like my own "His Hair is as Brown as Freshly-Mixed Mud," it may be one of those songs best left to the imagination.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

:: grins :: So THAT'S why you wanted advice on tasteless architecture. I should have known :)

Yes, that's why. And since we're in a private forum, can I now be a bit more honest and thank you for the hysterical link to the university where everything is designed to look like something Biblical? Does this extend to things like wheelie bins (designed to look like the firey chariots of the hosts of Heaven) and drinks machines (Streams of Living Waters)?

It's just too bad that the idea didn't fit the basic structure of the hell I'd already designed - but I'll get it into something, somehow.

Tend to agree with you about "The Ballad of Severus the Small and His Tiny, Tiny Stick" - sometimes things get less funny if you try to be more specific. Besides, it just doesn't work so well in translation...

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Does this extend to things like wheelie bins (designed to look like the firey chariots of the hosts of Heaven) and drinks machines (Streams of Living Waters)?

I don't know, but if -- as I am beginning to suspect -- the only academic job I can get is at such a place*, I will certainly let you know.

*Actually, there's not much chance of this; even if I managed to hold my tongue about being an atheist, I have been blessed with a first-and-last-name combo that is blatantly Irish in origin, so they'll probably figure I'm one of them Evil Death-Cookie-Eating Catholics. So I'm screwed either way, really.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Don't be so down on yourself - all those jobs located in buildings that are designed simply to look like buildings have to go to someone, after all. I got one!

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

you'd be surprised how much fun you can have tag-team writing those (we tried it with "Wizards do it with their wands" one day. Total blast.)

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Well, the idea's in the public domain now - if anyone (or any group of someones) wants to make a real Ballad out of it I'd be very happy.

I can believe it could be a great laugh - as (not that I dare compare myself to the great Terry Pratchett) all those versions of the Hedgehog Song would suggest...

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Lovely! I thought you worked in new canon brilliantly - "All clear, all understood? No more mystery, no intriguing moral ambiguity? No more is-he-evil-or-isn’t-he? You must appreciate that this comes as something as a shock to the system. I did kill a kindly old man who was fighting to save us all when he was sick and disarmed, you know - really I did.". How much did you have to change?

I was very happy to see Snape be able to choose an afterlife where he will be able to change and learn, and not have to fight the judgements and preconceptions of others (as is the case in different ways, in the other two afterlives). Just what he needs - and I reckon he just might deserve it, as well.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

How much did you have to change?


Not very much, surprisingly. I've made a few changes in the "manuscript" version on my PC - got in a reference or two to the Princes and that's about it. That's the version that's going to Fiction Alley after the final edit. But to be honest you'd never spot the minor changes if you weren't looking for them.

When I first read The Awful Thing That Snape Did in HBP I thought this story was unworkable... and then large parts of the fandom became so insistent that Snape was not guilty in any meaningful way that I thought I could still get away with it.

I was very happy to see Snape be able to choose an afterlife where he will be able to change and learn, and not have to fight the judgements and preconceptions of others (as is the case in different ways, in the other two afterlives).

I love it when people understand what I was trying to say as well as this! The wretched man is obsessed with letting down and being let down - not least because he's never had a chance to wipe the slate clean in his whole life (or none that we've heard). Actually there are certain obvious problems with this solution too (language, culture gap etc), but at least he won't be bored.

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAA. That was EXCELLENT, and I am proud to call it one of the two fics i've read in the last month. The lesson is traditional but well-learned and brilliantly executed (traditions are traditions for a reason after all.)

Snape's character is pittiless and superbly crafted, although I'd love to see your "evilSnape" as well. His resignation, his ultimate decision. MUAH!

I agree with whomever asked where the heck you come up with this stuff. It's supercalafragilisticexpiallidocious.

Oh, the one reccomendation I have: if you haven't already posted it at one of the big archives (FA, skyhawke, ff.net) link from one section to the other in your posts. It just makes it hella easier to read. :)

OMG officially supercalafragilisticexpiallidocious!

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad you liked this, and I'm dead chuffed that you made the time to read it in the first place, since you have so little time off from the Great Love of your Life right now.

I agree with whomever asked where the heck you come up with this stuff.

This plot bunny was actually started by a reviewer who felt sad that I'd rather arbitarily put Snape among the body count after the final battle in "Furious Wielder of Storms", my Grawpfic. I attempted to console him or her with the idea that Snape was probably having a nice time in Valhalla - and the whole idea jumped up and headed for the hills.

In general, I quite deliberately search out things that have never been done before - it cuts down on the competition. Of course, all the really big holes in canon have already been plugged, but there are still some odd little corners left.

Oh, the one reccomendation I have: if you haven't already posted it at one of the big archives (FA, skyhawke, ff.net) link from one section to the other in your posts. It just makes it hella easier to read. :)

Guilty as charged. I've not figured out how to edit the LJ tagging for links... though realistically it can hardly be that difficult. I've just sent the whole thing off to FA as a one-shot, though, which is a much more satisfactory format. Should be up in about a week, all being well.