Fic: Memory, Awake (Rating: R)

[gehayi]

Almost done with the mini-rant/mini-rave thing (which isn't very rantish, to be honest)--I only have one more to do, on either Crowley/Aziraphale or Snupin.

In other news, my beta finished beta-ing. Thank you, quinby.

The story combines three challenges from hp_literotica--an unsympathetic character (July 2004), cold weather (December 2004) and unrequited love (

Comments

[gehayi]

Thank you! ::blushing:: And yes, I hope that JKR redeems Peter as well. The poor fellow needs redemption. (Oh, no, I'm not at all bitter about Lord Voldemort, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and assorted Death Eaters, who act out of greed, sadistic cruelty, hunger for power and the wizarding equivalent of genocidal racism, being considered "cool" while Peter, whose default setting is fear, is universally vilified.)

In answer to your question:

The spells weren't undone when a bolt of magic from Harry's wand met one from Voldemort's. Copies of the people and things affected by Voldemort's spells appeared--rather like visual echoes. Smoke-like duplicates of James, Lily, Bertha Jorkins, Frank Bryce (the poor Muggle caretaker who was killed by Voldemort)and Cedric Diggory emerged from the wand and, behaving like their living counterparts, attacked Voldemort...but that didn't make the Killing Curse un-happen. They're still dead.

And it's the same with Peter's hand. A dense, smoky image of a hand flew from the end of Voldemort's wand and vanished, and small wonder. Without a mind, a personality or a will to force the hand to remain and to fight, the spell-duplicate created by Priori Incantatem simply evaporated. The silver hand itself, however, still exists.

[honorh]

Oh, no, I'm not at all bitter about Lord Voldemort, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and assorted Death Eaters, who act out of greed, sadistic cruelty, hunger for power and the wizarding equivalent of genocidal racism, being considered "cool" while Peter, whose default setting is fear, is universally vilified.

Oh, but don't you know the others are TEH SEXX0RZ!!1! and Peter's just a lumpy rat-face?

Seriously, I do think the fact that Peter is unattractive is part of it. Lucius Malfoy had the good fortune to be played by Jason Isaacs and a young Voldemort by Christian Coulson (and grown Voldemort by Ralph Fiennes). Bellatrix is also imagined to be sexy and gorgeous. Unfortunately, in an image-obsessed society like ours, that's enough to be considered sexy.

Another part of it *is* that his default setting is fear. I suppose people have more respect for a seemingly-fearless villain than for his perpetually-fearful hanger-on. I suppose they'd rather *be* Voldemort than Peter--even though the truth is, it'd be more likely to be the other way around. People despise him because they could *be* him. Isn't what we hate most in others the thing we hate most about ourselves?