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| longroot | 2007.06.24 - 11:59PM | 7: Wrong Either Way | Anonymous |
| I particularly love this chapter! Author's Response: Thanks :)) | |||
| lunafish | 2007.05.06 - 09:32PM | 7: Wrong Either Way | Signed |
| Oh, you convey so heartbreakingly all the hopelessness & frustration of Snape's situation. I want to damn DD for playing God, but who else is there? So he's a loving God, who nonetheless demands sacrifice because "justice" demands it. JKR got it all wrong when she said it was bad-boy syndrome that makes Snape appeal to us. We feel for him because we sense the depth of his plight and can help but sympathize with him just as readers have for years sympathized with Milton's Satan. Author's Response: I don't see bad-boy syndrome at all in Snape's case, though it may be a factor in the widespread sympathy for Draco. Snape has long struck me as a boiling cauldron of misery, that occasionally splatters the unwary onlooker. It is his honour and his sense of responsibility that appeal, not the mistakes he made in the past, except insofar as they have placed him in this pitiable position of entrapment, where his choices narrow and narrow till he is even forced to turn wand on closest friend and mentor for the good of all. (Yes, even for the good of Dumbledore. Can anyone imagine that the headmaster would have wished another to be sacrificed on his behalf, especially when that sacrifice would have doomed everything he was fighting for?) But Snape does not want pity, only respect, and we can see that he deserves it. | |||
| xenasquill | 2007.04.14 - 07:50PM | 5: A Brilliant Student | Signed |
| Wow! I really like this story, and am saddened to see that it has not been updated since last year. I want to know what happens next - how the rest of Occlumency lessons go, how Severus survives his next Death Eater meeting, and more!
Your vision of Dumbledore and Moody both is rather darker than I picture them, but the writing is emotionally powerful and gripping. And I love your young Snape. So sad... Author's Response: Hi, I'm back and updating again :)) Thanks for the nice comments and I hope to have some new chapters (after ch 8, which is as far as I've got) written soon. | |||
| witchmom | 2006.08.11 - 09:22PM | 5: A Brilliant Student | Signed |
| Very very good!!!!!!!! Congrats on being so real in describing young Severus. Very well written. Author's Response: Thanks. This story is still a WIP, but I do hope to finish it this year sometime. Eight chapters are already written and I estimate there should be about 6 or 7 chapters after that. | |||
| maryh | 2006.07.06 - 06:42PM | 5: A Brilliant Student | Signed |
| The breathing and the imagery are good relaxation techniques, but this brings up a problem I also have with Snape's Occlumency lessons for Harry. These are relaxation techniques that people usually have to be taught. Where did Snape learn them? Or do we assume he came up with them all by himself? The big problem with Snape teaching Harry Occlumency wasn't just Harry's refusal to even try; it was also Snape's neglect to teach Harry HOW to clear his mind and relax. Author's Response: I suspect Snape came up with them himself, the more so as we now have proof from HBP that he is and was a creative thinker. Perhaps he could have done more to encourage a recalcitrant student, but he knew that Harry's ability to throw off Imperio was remarkable and since they use similar skill sets for the mind, he probably thought Harry didn't need further instruction on that score - especially since at no time did Harry ask for clarification. If you look at that first lesson, after the "control" attempt he did start to take Harry through the process: "Now I want you to close your eyes ... Clear your mind, Potter. Let go of all emotion... You will need more discipline than this ... focus now ..." and he then set him homework of practising the skill at bedtime every night. Muggle visualisation skills are probably not taught in Occlumency. I posit that every Occlumens has to find their own way to clear their mind. Perhaps Snape couldd outlined various different techniques that people use, but does he actually know any method other than his own? It's not as if he has ever been able to discuss the subject with anyone other than Dumbledore. The other Order members don't seem to know Occlumency, and the other Death Eaters don't know how skilled he is, if they know he can do it at all. | |||
| maryh | 2006.07.06 - 06:38PM | 3: Their Duty | Signed |
| Interesting hypothesis that we can infer Moody's character from the way Crouch played him in GoF. Author's Response: Some might say that that wasn't him, but my point is that no one noticed the difference so it must have been very close. | |||
| maryh | 2006.07.06 - 06:36PM | 2: A Rational Decision | Signed |
| I love your description of Snape's relationships with his Slytherin friends. I agree with your depiction that Snape was not a complete loner in his own house, and that all the Slytherins that became DE's were not "born evil." I disagree that there is widespread prejudice against Slytherins either in Hogwarts or in the world - I think Slytherins tend to gravitate toward positions of political power. I think the negative picture we get of Slytherin House is caused by viewing it through the Harry filter. However, again your picture is also compatible with canon. Author's Response: There may be no prejudice against Slytherins in thewider world, but there certainly seems to beat Hogwarts. Otherwise how can one explain that no teacher intervened at the Feast when the twins started hissing the Slytherin firsties for where they were Sorted. Hissing is a rather pentrating sound, and the Hall was relatively quiet as Sorting continued, so I doubt that it's because no one heard... | |||
| maryh | 2006.07.06 - 06:30PM | 1: Sign of Allegiance | Signed |
| I am convinced that Snape was spying for the order well before the Prophecy, and that he gave Voldemort the first part of the prophecy on Dumbledore's orders. Since anything Harry knows can get back to Voldemort, I think Dumbledore just gave him the "official story" about when Snape turned spy for the Order. I have a much different picture of young Snape, but your version also works quite well. Author's Response: I also believe that. We know that the Order were being decimated in the first war and they were making no headway. We also know that Dumbledore is perfectly willing to sacrifice unknown strangers, or as he put it in OotP, "nameless and faceless people and creatures", for the few people he cares about. In fact, we've seen him repeatedly put the entire school at risk for the sake of one person that he thinks special for whatever reason, eg saving Draco in HBP. I believe that Snape was already spying but his position was too lowly to do much good. He didn't have the personality or presentation to catch the Dark Lord's eye, and certainly all his contemporaries undervalued him (or were too ambitious to raise up a rival). SPOILERS I think his early failure is partly why Moody doesn't trust him; he probably thought he was only pretending to be on their side and was actually the Dark Lord's sleeper in their organisation instead of theirs in his. When Dumbledore heard the prophecy, he immediately realised that this could be Snape's step up into prominence that they'd been waiting for. And he probably assumed that either Voldemort wouldn't know who to target any more than they did or that it would be someone they could identify and protect. And perhaps the protection would have succeeded if the Potters and Sirius hadn't been so stupid about it. (Though one has to wonder why they chose someone other than Dumbledore as their Secret Keeper; didn't they trust him? [Why not, and how did he lose their trust?] After all, Sirius and Peter, even if faithful, couldn't have resisted Legilimency, Imperio and Veritaserum. NB Although JK mentions 3 ways in her site to conquer Veritaserum - Occlumency, throat-closing and transfiguration before swallowing - she also says that Crouch was too weakened to put them into effect. I think we can agree that someone captured by Death Eaters would be similarly weakened and unable to resist.) END SPOILERS | |||
| Lady Whitehart | 2006.07.05 - 07:27PM | 5: A Brilliant Student | Signed |
| Very nicely done! The way he used the imagery to control his thoughts was really quite interesting, especially the last one with the writing. Looking forward to your next post. =^) Author's Response: Thanks. I use visualisation myself sometimes - for example, when the dentist's drill or polisher is whining in my ear, I visualise a carpenter wood-turning a table-leg - so it was a natural choice for me. | |||
| Lady Whitehart | 2006.07.05 - 07:12PM | 4: Old Enough to Stand | Signed |
| I just saw that you posted again and found that I had missed a chapter. No arguments on Moody's behavior. You have kept him very much in character. Author's Response: I'm glad you're enjoying it. I judge Moody partly by his double's behaviour in GoF, because it was close enough to his own that no one notived anything suspicious - at a time when they had reason to be concerned that a voldemort-supporter was accessing the school. | |||
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