attackfish | No Difference: Chapter Thirty

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No Difference: Chapter Thirty

This is in response to a challenge up at

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Disclaimer: Do I have to say it? I'm not making any money off this, because I own none of it.

Prompt: #17 (round 8) Through time travel, Harry is Snape's biological father. Severus really isn't happy to find that out. (Must be drama - not comedy.)
Summary: After Harry talks to Dumbledore in Deathly Hallows, he takes a little detour to Spinner’s End, back before it was Snape’s house, back when it belonged to a woman named Eileen Prince. Snape couldn’t be angrier.

Chapter Thirty: Detentions and Deliberations

The mid-afternoon sun glinted off the lake water and the damp made the air heavy and still. Hermione kissed Ron’s cheek and languidly made her way towards his mouth, twisting her fingers into his own. He rested his other hand against the curve of her spine. There were times, he decided, when two people just had to be alone.

A snotty chuckle broke through their quiet closeness, and they turned abruptly to face the irritatingly familiar sound. Without Crabbe, Goyle looked unbalanced standing next to Malfoy, like a very large planet rotating around a very small star. Ron and Hermione never took their eyes off the pair as they slipped their wands out of their pockets and held them tensely at their sides. “Well well,” Malfoy drawled, “I’m surprised to see Potter’s lackeys without him.”

“You always were one to mistake friends for lackeys,” Ron snarled.

Hermione smiled kindly, with a pointed look at Goyle, “Or lackeys for friends.” Goyle grunted and cracked his knuckles menacingly, shifting his shoulders to appear even larger. “Did I hit a nerve?”

Malfoy grabbed his own wand and jabbed it into the empty air between them, holding Goyle back with his other hand. “I suppose you two would have to kiss each other, because otherwise no one else would lock lips with either of you.”

“Why so cranky, Malfoy?” Ron demanded, “Are you jealous, can’t get Goyle to stop living in your pocket long enough to snog a girl?”

Hermione glanced at the opening in Malfoy’s shoulder bag. “It could be that you’re ashamed of your Muggle books,” she remarked thoughtfully. “It’s really annoying when you can’t get away to read, isn’t it?”

Goyle rushed forward to tackle them at the same time that Malfoy fired a whipping jinx at Ron. “Petrificus Totalus!” Hermione shouted, pointing her wand a Goyle and feeling like a first year, but the curse knocked him backwards onto the ground and she twisted around to face Malfoy with Ron. Ron stood up gasping and flinching “Conjunctivito,” he shouted, slashing his wand through the air.” Malfoy howled, rubbing his eyes franticly. Taking advantage of Malfoy’s distraction, Ron pointed his wand at his own chest and muttered “Finite Incantuatum.”

Squinting through crusted eyelashes, Malfoy pointed his wand at Hermione. “Incarcerous,” he bellowed, and Hermione did her best to dodge the vine-like tendrils of rope, but one twined around her ankle and pulled her backward. The ropes wrapped around her, tying knots as soon as they had her tightly in their grasp, but her wand remained in her hands.

“Furnunculus,” she roared, and watched in satisfaction as his pointy face erupted in boils.

Ron didn’t even wait for her spell to hit him before he fired his own, “Expelliarmus.” He caught the wand deftly while Hermione untangled herself from the ropes. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it into the lake.

Malfoy watched his wand bob in the water for a moment with a shocked expression plastered across his boil covered face, and then scrambled for the wand in Goyle’s hand. Hermione remembered the spells in Snape’s potion book with a hint of irony. Levicorpus, she thought without expression, and she and Ron started back towards the castle.

Malfoy surged into the air upside down with a squawk. “Put me down, Granger! Ron and Hermione’s hands found each other as they kept walking, ignoring him as he fussed and wriggled behind them. “Granger! Weasley! Get back here!” The two decided to walk very slowly.

As soon as they were back inside, Hermione waved Harry over. “I hung Malfoy up by his ankle,” she told him, and he raised his eyebrows. “He’s out by the lake. Could you let him down in about a half an hour?”

Harry nodded. “What did he do?”

Ron scoffed. “He was Malfoy, isn’t that enough?”

Harry flushed, “N-”

“He and Goyle attacked us,” she slapped her forehead. “I forgot; Goyle’s petrified too.”

Harry pulled on his cloak. “Can’t you let them stew for a bit?” Ron whined.

“No,” Harry said, shaking his head and pushing the Fat Lady’s portrait out into the hall.

He sprinted down the first set of stairs before he had to stop and catch his breath. The rest of the way out of the castle, he dragged his feet, but he raced through the grass as soon as he crossed the threshold to the outside. “Potter!” he heard “Potter, get me down!”

Harry grinned. “Hang on, Malfoy, I’m coming.” Malfoy’s bag lay on the ground, his books scattered on the ground. He gathered the books together and put them bag in the bag, spying a yellowed copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and an open notebook with “The Sphinx’s Rage: Chapter One” scrawled in Malfoy’s own loopy flowing script before he pulled his wand out of his pocket and pointed it at him. Liberacorpus, he thought, and his target plummeted to the ground, landing with a furious snarled string of obscenities. He fell to his knees and didn’t bother rising to his feet, but crawled over to Goyle and snatched his wand. Harry wasn’t looking. He had turned back to the castle and began jogging back to the castle.

“Stupify!” Malfoy yelled, brandishing his wand.

Harry dodged aside and pointed his wand directly at his attacker and shouted “Expelliarmus!” and then when he missed grabbing Malfoy’s wand, he called without thinking, “Accio Malfoy’s wand.” The wand knocked out of Malfoy’s hand didn’t fly to Harry. Instead, a faint splash heralded the wand’s rise out of the depths of the lake. It zoomed into the palm of his hand, and Harry tried again. “Accio Goyle’s wand.” He held them together in his left hand. “What was that for Malfoy?” he shouted, irate. “I got you down!”

“Yeah, but your friends put me up there in the first place, didn’t they?” he raged. “Give me back my wand, Potter, or I’ll-”

“I think you can do more damage to me with your wand,” Harry responded. “I want your word that you won’t curse me if I give these back to you.”

“What? No!” Malfoy howled. “Give me back my wand!”

“Promise me that you won’t hex me while I’m going back to the castle,” Harry reiterated, “or I won’t give you back your wand.” At last, Malfoy nodded, and Harry turned and fled back to the castle before Malfoy could renege and accost him again.

~*~

Severus shelved the last of Belby’s stolen notes, his completed catalogue pasted to the top of the cardboard box in which he stored them. He had placed a dot next to each potion Belby had published, and the important ones were underlined, but he rested his head in his hands, unwilling to deal with Belby’s scheming any longer. The fourth year essays on why the Unforgivable Curses were unforgivable sat unmarked on his desk, and he knew he needed to finish them before class the next day, but he didn’t have the energy to do that either. He slumped against the wall next to his bookcase, his eyes closed, rubbing the bridge of his nose where a headache was forming. Before he realized it, he had drifted off to sleep.

A knock at the door woke him with a start. “What?” he demanded irritably.

“Can I come in?” Potter’s voice echoed, muffled by the walls and door.

“No,” he spat, eyes opening into slits.

“Alright then,” he heard, and closed his eyes again, satisfied until he heard the door swing open.

“Detention, Potter!” he roared, standing up to his full height and marching toward him, a murderous glint in his eyes.

“McGonagall sent me to tell you that she wants to talk to you this evening about what books you want to assign next year,” Potter hurriedly told him.

“Professor McGonagall,” he corrected automatically, nonplussed.

“Yeah, I know,” Potter muttered, annoyed. “Hey, maybe you’ll be the first Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for more than fifty years to teach for two years in a row.”

He sneered, “Don’t tell me you believe in the curse, Potter.”

He expected Potter to tell him he hadn’t started teaching for the next year yet, but instead, the young man’s head came up sharply. “There was a curse; Voldemort cast it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he derided, “The Dark Lord didn’t do everything.”

“Dumbledore wouldn’t hire him right out of school, and no one has lasted more than a year since,” Potter murmured. “Dumbledore told me himself. Of course, he was still Tom Riddle then.”

Severus colored, chagrined. “Tell Professor McGonagall that I’ll be there in an hour.”

Potter turned to leave, his hand on the doorknob, “It’s kind of fitting, isn’t it, that I defeated him, and you get to be Defense Against the Dark Arts professor again because of it,” he mused before he shut the door.

“My heritage has nothing to do with anything,” he snapped too quickly. “It makes no difference.”

Potter shook his head slowly, lingering in the doorway. “You really are a hypocrite sometimes, aren’t you?” he said without bitterness, even a little amusement. “It matters that I’m James Potter’s son, but it doesn’t matter that you’re mine.”

“The situation’s are entirely different,” he glowered.

“How? He didn’t raise me either,” Potter’s eyes were wide and his voice low.

Severus growled, unwilling to acknowledge the validity of the point. With an uncaring wave of his hand, he dismissed his student.

Potter paused before he left. “Do I still have detention?”

“No,” Severus muttered sulkily.

Potter’s feet clip clopped down the hall, and he was out of sight before Severus realized that they hadn’t shouted at each other for the first time. The realization so shocked him that he almost called the boy back to rail at him.

~*~

The wadded parchment soared past Ginny and hit the pudgy “new” first year in a Ravenclaw bow in her hair square in the small of her back. “Nice shot,” a girl strolling behind Ginny proclaimed.

“Aw, not that good,” her friend who had thrown the parchment demurred. “It’s hard to miss a target that big.”

The Ravenclaw girl spun around and ducked her head to the side as another parchment wad nearly hit her in the face. “Wow,” the first girl exclaimed, “I didn’t know something that big could move that fast.”

Ginny pivoted on her heel, surprised that she recognized the two girls as “old” Gryffindor first years who had spent a lot of the year previous defying Snape and the Carrows and playing gallant. They finished the year in the Room of Requirement and she’d played exploding snap with them once. She didn’t hesitate, but walked between the two girls grimly, and stood behind her. Digging her elbows into the tops of their skulls, she folded her hands and rested her chin on top of them. “I’m a lot bigger,” she grinned, “And I move a lot faster.”

“Ginny Weasley!” the girl who had thrown the first parchment ball panted. Ginny racked her brain for her name. She lifted her elbows off of their heads and grabbed their red and gold ties, pulling them around to face her.

“Cox, Jenkins,” she said mock sweetly, recalling their names at last. “If I see you doing anything like that, I’ll tell Professors Flitwick and Switch, and you wouldn’t like that, would you? Switch doesn’t like it when his students are mean to other students just because they can, and Flitwick really doesn’t like it when people make fun of the kids in his house.”

Jenkins stared at her, shocked, with something like betrayal in her expression. “Is that all you’re going to do, tell on us?”

The Ravenclaw girl watched her out of half closed eyes, chewing the bottom part of her lip. Ginny transferred Cox’s tie to the other hand and used her newly free hand to play with her wand. “If I hexed you, I’d be acting like a bully.” The two girls shivered, and when she dropped their ties, they sauntered off as quickly as they could.

When Ginny looked up, the Ravenclaw girl was still watching her, so Ginny walked across the corridor to her. “I could have taken care of myself,” the girl muttered furiously.

“Hey, they make my house look bad, that’s all.” Ginny folded her arms and leaned back on her heels, rocking back and forth. “I never said you couldn’t.”

“Yeah, well, next time, stay out.”

“Hey, they’re still making my house look bad.”

The girl rolled her eyes and flounced off down the hallway, the ends of her bow flapping as she moved. Ginny caught sight of Luna gliding past. She fell in beside her, and through an arm over her shoulder. Her feet took up Luna’s floating steady pace as Luna let her keep her arm around her shoulders. It almost seemed as if she didn’t notice it was there.

~*~

The redcap was gone, a Grindylow in its place. It swam lazily through seaweed fronds and a fake rock dome of the sort that might have been found at a Muggle pet store, only much larger. When it saw Ginny, it extended its spindly fingers and pressed its palms flat against the glass walls of its tank. Ginny sent it a dark look and stood in front of Snape’s desk with her hands on her hips. “So what do I have to do today?”

“Follow me,” he ordered, sweeping out from behind his desk and swooping out of his office. Ginny trailed behind him glumly as he made his way through the hallways to the Transfiguration classroom. “Your head of house has graciously allowed us to use his classroom. You should thank him.” He conjured a scraper, a wash cloth, and a bucket of soapy water and handed them to her. “There is gum on the underside of the desks,” he said flat voiced. There was always gum on the underside of desks; Ginny thought Snape might be running out of ideas. By the time she had finished the fourth desk, she began to wonder if the creators of Droobles Best Blowing Gum had collaborated with former professors of Snape’s mould to create a product that they could legitimately tell their students in detention that it could only be cleaned by hand. She thought about chewing a whole package of the stuff and chucking it at Snape’s back during class, one point if it stuck to his robes, five if it caught in his pony tail. For a brief moment, she glanced up at him and pondered what he would look like if he had to cut his hair. It didn’t bear thinking about; he’d look too much like Harry.

Snape watched her as she worked, his arms folded across his chest, staring down the short, straight nose he had inherited from Harry and Ginny did her best to ignore him. “Have you rethought your plans of vengeance on behalf of your young swain?” He asked, his voice flat.

She set the bucket down on the top of the closest desk, darkly amused. “I think Harry taught you a lesson on his own.”

Snape’s head snapped up. “Explain that statement, Miss Weasley.” He enunciated his words sharply, elongating the consonants and shortening the vowels.

Ginny hid a smirk, unperturbed. “I’ll let you off this time, but if you ever say anything that horrible to him again…” She trailed off threateningly, unwilling to give him anything to prepare for. He smiled nastily, choosing to take her lack of specifics as a lack of imagination. Ginny fumed, scraping the last of the gum off the last desk and had to stop herself from throwing the bucket at his face. She wrung the wash cloth out into the bucket and vanished the washcloth and the scraper. With a scowl, she vanished the water as well, leaving lumps of detached gum at the bottom of the bucket. Conjuring a piece of parchment, she dumped the gum into it and wrapped them up before throwing them away. At last, she vanished the bucket too. “Done,” she told him with a broad smile, and rushed off to wash her hands.

She caught up with the professor halfway back to his office, her hands still dripping. “Stop following me, Miss Weasley,” he growled, “You are dismissed.”

She wiped her hands on her robes. “I’m not following you; I’m just going to the same place.”

He sped up incrementally and Ginny sped up with him. Each time she matched his speed, he walked faster until he was almost running down the corridor, Ginny still at his heels. “Do you want another detention?”

She smiled sweetly and batted her eyes. “Afraid you’ll miss me now that I don’t have detention with you? I’m flattered, but really-”

“Shut up.” Her teeth closed with a satisfied click.

Harry waited at Snape’s office door with a plate of pilfered pastries from the kitchens and a glittering foil covered paper gift bag in the other. Ginny waved at him gleefully while Snape jerked his office door open with a sour expression. Holding the bag out to her, Harry smiled. “Congratulations on being done with detention.”

She took it with a snort. “He just ran out of things for me to do. He had me cleaning Switch’s classroom.” When she turned the bag over, a bag of stink pellets fell out into her palm. Pocketing it, she wrinkled her nose with a wry smile. “Most boys get their girlfriends sweets.”

His face fell. “Yeah, I know.”

She pulled him into a kiss and one of the pastries toppled off the plate. One handed, she caught it and took a bite, getting icing on the tip of her nose. Harry wiped it off, headless of Snape watching them.

~*~

Severus stood in the doorway to his office as the two made their way through the pastries and Potter sent the plate floating back to the kitchens. She looped her arm around Potter’s waist and pulled him close as they strolled down the corridor. Potter’s hand touched her hair tentatively, rubbing her ponytail with the pad of his thumb, before settling his arm around her shoulders. She had a brass barrette with green and blue rhinestones holding half of her hair back.

Cursing his own maudlinness, he almost swore he could see a soft golden glow around them. From behind in the dim light of the torches in sconces along the walls, Miss Weasley might have been Lilly Evens. It was with some small horror that he realized he had been carrying a torch for her for more than twenty years. That she was his grandmother merely compounded his disquiet.

The two lovers spoke to each other to quietly for him to hear, and Miss Weasley whispered something into Potter’s ear making him laugh. He shook his head smiling at her and Severus snorted derisively. The younger Potter would have taken Lily place better than Miss Weasley, which was itself a disconcerting thought.

He shut the door and put his head into his hands.

Epilogue

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I really don't like Ginny either, and I think one of my biggest mistakes I made with this fic was trying to maintain canon ships in it instead of saying to hell with them. I didn't like her in canon, and since I don't have any particular shipping feelings, I must conclude it's just because I think she's manipulative and a reflection of Harry's need for home. He wants to marry the Weasleys, not her. I'm willing to forgive her for being horrible to Snape though, but only because her sixth year was spent there under Voldemort's rule, fronted by Snape. I'm sure there were really really nasty things going on she has no idea about. Pranks she plays before she knows who he is... not so much, and certainly not the way she treats Harry. I had a whole divorce scenario post Literary Minds planned out, but lost interest in writing it.

yeah I... I dunno, I just didn't like Ginny. And I'm not sure about Draco - I actually LIKE him, but I'm confused by how he's treating snape and so on. I guess I'm seriously influenced by other Dracos in fandom (like Maya's draco, who is a softie on the inside but his outside is seriously hard to penetrate by the casual onlooker).

And it's like NONE of them seemed to have learned that pranks aren't fucking funny. At all. Only to the pranker - if she didn't know who Snape was? That's still not funny because she's playing pranks on a total stranger.

I like Maya's Draco (I'm a big fan of Maya's stories, and after losing half my original novel, the thing that hit me hardest about my last computer dying was losing her collected fic. However, I've always seen Draco as a Not very good person. He isn't evil, but he's certainly a little slimeball. There is no soft moral core in mine the way there is in Maya's. On the other hand, he's redeemable.

That's what I mean. I can forgive her for the pranks she plays on him after she finds out who he is, because she's only playing them because she can't fight him in the war. Before that, they're a sign of her thoughtless petty cruelty.

While the war speeded along parts of Harry's maturation, it delayed big parts in Ginny. Her pranking, in a much more vicious form and her tendency in black and white terms was very useful in the war, so she didn't grow out of it.

Though I always thought that Draco was a mean angry person - he could have a moral core, but he doesn't have to be nice about it. It's why I like Snape - he's bitter and vicious and not a nice person, but he's strongly moral, which is why I like him. And he still gets short shift in the books. If you want I have Maya's PDF of fanfic. >.> I can email it to you if you want.

The thing is how Haarry had to apologise to her. He wasn't wrong. Why did he have to tell them Snape's secret? Why does Ginny get to judge him? she needs to grow up - she has no right to judge him about previous boyfriends/grilfrirends, just liek he has no right to judge her about any relationships she develops during the war or after it. or anything, really.

Thank you! my email is attackfish@comcast.net. Have you read her book yet? It's wonderful. Full of that signature sense of humor of hers.

My favorite character in the series is Snape, followed closely by Neville, because they both have hidden depths. Snape I think tries very hard to be even nastier than he might be otherwise. His morality is extremely uncomfortable in a way it isn't for the others in the story. Draco on the other hand, I can't make myself like.

Harry didn't have to apologize to her, and he wasn't in the wrong, but he wanted things to go back to normal. Apologizing was the fastest way to do that.

my favourite is Snape too!

:D He's the most complex character I always thought - on the goodguy's side but he had chosen the bad for some reason, and now decided again. He was the one who chose, unlike Harry who just happened to be. His morality is hard - and he's making a hard choice every day, every time he breathes. And yet he's not nice about it - why should he be anyway? No one's actually been nice to him. Everyone just wants to use him.

Draco, I liked because he was potentially interesting. He was the one born to the bad-side, and yet isn't given a real second chance. Harry keeps hating him all the time and Draco's not really allowed to redeem himself - that's what I disliked about how JKRowling handled him. This is why I loved Maya's handling of him - he's far more complex than he was in the books.

Neville - well, I didn't see much of him, but he has a lot of potential. I read a fic where it's called Harry Potter and the Year of Darkness, which was actually about Neville and how he handled the resistance in Hogwarts on the Seventh Year. Now that one, that one was good. Though I didn't like how the girls were percieved as eternally delicate and pretty. but at least they fought, at least they had brains.

Mostly I thought Harry shouldn't have had to apologise - and what's more, I thought at least Harry should have realised that. Because it seemed that he felt he was wrong, in the end.

Whenever JKR writes Harry making the "choice" to do right, it always fell a little flat. It wasn't as if it was ever in his character or worldview to help the man who killed his parents. Because it's all so uncomplicated for him, he's internally relatively content. He angsts about things that are happening, not about himself. Snape on the other hand is a seething tangle of unhappiness and guilt that Dumbledore takes shameless advantage of and no one else trusts. And then he has people like me torturing him.

JKR never made Draco very interesting or complex. Fandom did that, and fandom could do that because he didn't show how low he could really sink until the sixth book. Since I didn't discover fandom until after book 6 had come out and was already firmly convinced Malfoy was a cowardly little snot, I found fanon Draco hopelessly ooc. I make an exception for Maya, because her writing is just that damn good.

He did feel he was wrong, a bit, because he tends to think subconsciously that anything that goes wrong is his fault. Ginny takes advantage of this. This subplot wasn't supposed to be satisfying. It's supposed to illustrate that Harry is in some ways as unhealthy in how he interacts with people as Snape is. Still, I don't think she's pure evil anymore than fanon Draco, just very young, thoughtless, and self indulgent.

I still don't like Harry - he's the shiny boy who got to be a hero because he was a hero. Not because of anything he actually did, or because of himself. But just because of his parents. (That whole mother's love makes me want to scream, because the ultimate weapon is mother's love? how... nice. it reinforces the idea that if your mother didn't love you, you're such a bad kid. And it also guilts women who don't love their kids, or can't love their kids, or who don't want kids)

JKR... never did well with anyone really. Except maybe Snape, but then made it turn out he did it all for Lily. Which was ANNOYING. Why couldn't he do it because it was right? Because he wanted to? Because hed reasoned it all out that this was the right thing to do? That's why I prefer fandom Snape. And usually there's a reason why he actually favours Draco (other than him being Lucius' son, or him being in slytherin), and I actually like fanon Draco a lot more than the canon, ifonly because fans tried ther best to give him some depth.

I don't think Ginny's evil, just ... selfish. Selfish and immature and really doesn't get it. Black and white thinking worked in that environment, I guess, but in other war situations, and other types of things, it doesn't. If the war wore on even longer, and she finally realised the reasons why anyone did fight, she'd eventually learn how to see in Grey. But she never did, and she probably wouldn't, not right now, or at least till she grew the hell up and hit the 'real' world and tried to settle down.

I guess I'm one of the few readers who really actually likes Harry. He's not my favorite character, but he's right up there. Mostly because I read it when I was a very angsty teen. He's more complex than most of fanon gives him credit for.

Oh I know, JKR"S PORTRAYALS OF LILY AND ALMOST EVERY OTHER WOMAN IN THE BOOKS MADE ME WANT TO THROW THINGS SO BAD! Er, you get the idea. The reason I read so much slash in this fandom is that aside from Luna, and well written Lily, I can't stand any of the girls in there. And Lily's sacrifice fit so well into the whole "the mightiest thing a woman can do is sacrifice herself for the ones she loves" norm that I could throw up. That's why in my Parchment Underground series I have her fight Voldemort (Who is there to kill her) and take a few pieces out of him before she goes down.

Not every character in a story has to have depth. JKR had a huge cast with plenty of well developed characters. Malfoy wasn't one of them and he didn't need to be. He was there to be a schoolboy antagonist and a bridge between Hogwarts and the nasty stuff going on outside.

Ginny has a lot of growing up to do, and after I gave up on my divorce fic, I'd like to think she got around to it eventually. Give her time. She's only seventeen.

Well, I don't like Harry. XD I guess I read the series when I was bout 14 or a bit older, and I never actually hit the angsty teenage stage. I was more or less quite taken by Snape and his complexity (I was already searching for complex characters in my story lines, not black-and-white, good and evil), so Harry rarely interested me because he's just like every other hero out there.

Women, on the other hand. ARGH. McGonagell! I like her! She was no-nonsense!

And watch her get so little screentime. I liked Molly at first, then... bwah. ALL ABOUT BEING A MOTHER.

Cho was just about being a love-interest briefly, and even then I wanted to smack something because it's so not a Chinese name and it's more like JKR just yanked asian-ish names out of a hat just to make it look Asian-ish. Not because she actually spent time thinking about it, let alone any characterisation.

I didn't read any of Luna in the books because I hated book 4 (it was all about making giant word counts and pulling the story out and not about actual, you know, quality) that I never actually met her. But I've seen some really good stories with Luna, and I quite like her. Of course, she has not much development.

I liked the idea of Tonks - a female Auror in a male dominated world... and guess what? SHE DIED. AFTER HAVING A BABY. OF COURSE.

Lily... well, she was always this perfect mother. Until Harry saw some of Snape's thoughts, then yeah, she was sort of on Snape's side. Sort of. but she didn't get much development. Hermoine was the only one to get any real development, but she's... I dunno, just not really given the right sort - the boys only ever use her for her smarts, and not much else.

He gets more complex in the fifth book. He also develops a very bleak sense of humor. I was an odd angsty teen, because I really had something to angst about (being very very sick and very very lonely, having had a close friend commit suicide, and having a stalker and a drug addicted brother among other things) so I kinda felt for him and his whole "EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG! I WILL ANGST" in the fifth book. Until then, I was really only reading the series because everyone in my school was, and I read anything I could get my hands on.

I liked McGonagall too. Too bad we really didn't see much of her, though I loved her coming to Trelawney's defense against Umbridge.

JKR took her minor characters and kept a strict demographic of England ratio with them. She didn't do it very well. I think they stayed background characters partly because she didn't know what to do with non WASPs.

I liked the idea of Tonks. I didn't like the execution one bit.

Part of Lily I think was that we saw so little of her (being as she was dead) and her real purpose was to motivate Harry and Snape. Talk about being refrigerated.

The problem with keeping a strict demographic is... ignoring the fact that there are different concentrations of people in different partsof the country. So on and so forth.

Sometimes it makes me wonder - how she would have done if Harry was Harriet. How would she have been recieved. Somehow I doubt Harriet would have been quite as well recieved as Harry. I know someone once pointed that out - the whole expectations of male and female main-characters are different even if the things they do and the motivations are exactly the same.

Tonks and McGonagall and Lily - such potential for strong characters. And Tonks and Lily were reduced to being mothers and wives. Lily was hinted at being an auror , wasn't she? Instead she's remembered for being mother of Harry, lover of Snape.

FUN TIMES.

Thing is, I like Harry if handled right. Maya does him beautifully, fleshes out his angst and emo and his humour (and contrasts him with sparkly, bright, too-sharp Draco). There's other fics I've read too, with Harry and Draco in Hufflepuff - or time-travelling or other sorts of things. Hell, some Harry/Snape. (Though I have a fondness for people Snape's own age, mainly because the power dynamics between Snape and someone much younger is just... squicky. I kind of like Snape with Bill Weasley, or Charlie. :P as well as the marauders et al). But JKR didn't deal with him well enough for me to want to read past book 4.

Doesn't apply to Hogwarts, which draws from all of the UK. It's really coincidental, though.

This is why there is a lot of genderflipped HP fics. Harry generally loses what badassness he has along with his boy parts.

Finally someone else who is squicked by transgenerational shipping! I frequently make an exception for Snarry, because there's some really good stuff out there, and it's my favorite kind of character interaction when done right, but... no. Time travel can make it all better, though. Still, Snack is where it's at for me, even if my current ficcish tendencies involve throwing Snape in a metaphorical small room and watch them interact in a gennish way.

According to JKR, neither Lily or James was employed. They were the independently wealthy patrons of the Order. I'm sure they kicked ass in that capacity, however. Take that all of you James as Auror fic writers!

just odd that there is only ever three Asian (one East Asian, two South-Asian) characters in the whole of a school, which apparently is one of the best schools in UK.

Ah well.

I've seen bad-ass done well, actually, I mean, i've seen some anime fanfic writers who genderflipped the main characters and still keep the bad-assery. But Harriet would have a hell of a time.

Snarry - well, he'd have to grow up first! :P Otherwise, I still am mildly squicked, though the bickering and personality conflict is pretty tasty.

Yay for being wealthy patrons! If you attack the order, you should cut the money first.

There's also another East Asian girl in JKR's notes in Harry's year in Ravenclaw, it's just Harry's limited perspective keeps us from meeting her. We also see almost no one from other years unless they're Weasleys or in Quiditch, and each year has only forty people total.

There's some fantastic genderflipped Avatar stuff, but the girls and boys in Avatar were pretty evenly badass. There are also one or two really awesome "harry accidentally gets turned into a girl" fics out there... the rest don't work, but the ones that do... Then there's this one where Sirius and pregnant Lily accidentally switch bodies. James and Remus are hilariously squicked.

Even if he's forty and Snape's sixty, Snape still used to be his teacher. And there's still a twenty year gap. And Snape still went to school with his parents. It is only the "oh, love the dynamic" factor that keeps me from printing copies of all snarry to burn.

Good bye purse strings...

oh Avatar. >.> I love Zuko, and genderflipped Zuko is just as angsty and emo as male!Zuko is. XD

(then there's the whole Jetko and... mmmmmm)

I've read some good Snarry fics. Usually it's after harry graduates and leaves and there's some really good development of Harry getting Snape not to see him as a student anymore.

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