A Transcendent Experience
It's been a long time since I've ... well, reviewed, I guess, or maybe a better word is discussed? ... a fanfic here, mostly because I haven't read anything that inspired me to write, especially in HP. But over the Thanksgiving weekend I decided, somewhat halfheartedly, to give A Wizard Song by Telanu (somniesperus a shot (it can be found on her website). Oh, wow. There's nothing half about my heart anymore. And I have a whole, whole, whole lot to say about it.
WARNING: When I say "a whole lot," I mean a whole lot. Superlatives and overuse of italics and wordiness and gushing ahead. Proceed at your own risk -- you have been warned!
First let me explain that I did not go into this fic with high expectations or, for that matter, with much of an open mind. For me, AWS had, well, more than a few things stacked against it right from the start, even though I think Telanu is a particularly talented author, and I like a number of her HP fics quite a lot. But there were a bunch of reasons I was prepared to not be too impressed. Like:
1) AWS is not the final installment in the Tea series -- Telanu has said there are two more stories to come. I generally avoid WIPs or unfinished series like the plague. I hate sad endings (read: endings in which the slash pairing does not end up happily together), and I deal very poorly with suspense. I prefer being "spoiled" as a rule; I need to know whether the ending is going to be satisfying -- and in the case of fanfic, at least, basically happy -- before I can enjoy a story (for example, I purposely spoiled myself before even purchasing OotP, and even so, I read the end first). I'm very bad at filling in "blanks" myself, so an unfinished WIP might as well not have been started -- if it isn't finished I block it out of my mind, and I have no capacity or willingness to appreciate it for what it is. And it's quite difficult for me to get any real sense of how much I like something that's unfinished, since so much of my opinion ultimately will depend on how -- or, god forbid, if -- it is finished.
2) I generally don't like Harry/Snape stories in which Harry is still in school. I do like Harry/Snape -- but I prefer Harry to be older, like in the Lost Feelings series by Minx (miraminx) or Clipped Wings by Theresa Ann Wymer (tekalynn) or Do As You Like by Merri Todd-Webster (mommybird), or Telanu's own Coffee series. I mean, there's something a bit ... squicky about a grown man lusting after, or having sex with, someone so young. Chan is most definitely not my kink, and sure, sex with a 16 year old maybe isn't really chan, but I still have some residual unease. Also, I like my slash couples to end up together forever, and it's difficult to believe that a 16 year old knows what he wants "forever," or that a relationship begun at the age of 16 will be the one that lasts "forever."
Moreover, I think young-Harry/Snape is a very difficult pairing to tackle because of all the issues that need to be addressed if a story is to work. Over the age of consent or not, Harry is a student, and Snape is his teacher, and Snape is old enough to be his father. These facts have all sorts of implications -- like, to name a few, exploitation and the power imbalance, the need for secrecy and deception, the risk of public opprobrium or worse. And Harry's future looks to be filled with all sorts of grimness -- if you write a young-Harry/Snape fic, you've got to deal with the fact that Voldemort is still out there and both Harry and Snape are at risk. It's an ideal setup for angst, and consequently, many of the better fics tend to be long, complicated, angsty, and depressing, or at least bittersweet -- think Cybele's If You Are Prepared or Nym's Sins of Omission series. If the issues raised by the relationship are acknowledged, the possibility of unhappy or messy endings and consequences looms large. I hate unhappy or messy endings, and I intensely dislike being depressed by my fanfic. Real life is messy, angsty, and depressing enough for me, thank you very much. (I talked about this more in my discussion of If You Are Prepared, here.)
And perhaps even worse than the angsty young-Harry/Snape fics is the plethora of mediocre "true love" stories which elide all the difficult issues. Again, it's just amazingly difficult for me to buy Harry finding true love at the age of 16 -- with his professor, no less. Even so, some of these fics, if well written, can be fun and enjoyable, but most tend to be stupid or unbelievable and to skip over the implications of the relationship in a way that is hard for me to buy. I mean yeah, I want a happy ending -- but ending is the key word here; if there's angst inherent in the situation, I want it to be confronted and dealt with during the course of the story, not swept under the rug. I'm not asking for utopia -- happy endings often come only after angst and pain and the surmounting of obstacles, and that doesn't keep me from enjoying the fic. In fact, it's often better that way.
3) I've become somewhat disillusioned with and depressed about HP fandom and fanfic. It's been so long since I've read anything I really like. There are good writers out there, but the fact that a fic is "good" doesn't mean I'll like it. Literary merit and good writing simply aren't enough for me in a fanfic (though it's unlikely that I'll really like a story that is not well written) -- I need to like the story, it needs to make me feel good, I need to want to re-read it. That's always been rare for me in HP, but recently it seems even rarer -- especially because, since OotP came out, it seems to me that the fanfic has gotten darker and darker (I didn't really like OotP, for reasons I tried to explain here) . I don't like rape and noncon, I don't like extreme violence, I don't like pain, I don't like endless explorations of grief. Juxian Tang's (juxiantang) recent fic, Damage Control, which has been lauded in a number of venues, is a good example. It literally turned my stomach; I profoundly wish I'd never laid eyes on it, it disturbed me so much (this is a comment on my preferences and issues, not the quality of the fic). But clearly there's a reasonably large HP contingent that finds chan and noncon and pain appealing or even arousing (see, e.g., a significant number of the responses to Telanu's LJ post here). And there's another probably larger contingent -- the squee! contingent -- that likes fics I consider vapid, schmoopy, and just plain bad.
On top of that, the fandom itself -- as opposed to the fanfic -- has elements and aspects that I find less than appealing, particularly a kind of pseudo-intellectualism and pretentiousness for which I have very little tolerance and which, for whatever reason, seems to me to afflict HP far more than the media-based fandoms that are my "natural" home (which is not to suggest that those don't have their own issues at times -- just not this one, or at least not to this extent).
All these things have made me wonder a little whether I can fit into this fandom at all, and at times I've contemplated abandoning it entirely. So I haven't been too excited about HP fic recently.
****
So with all these things floating around in my mind, it kind of goes without saying that I picked up A Wizard Song with, shall we say, low expectations. The odds were heavily stacked against my liking it. Yes, it's been highly recommended -- but just about all the fics I read are listed on my site, which means they've been recommended somewhere, and I like about 1 percent of them, if that. But I figured, what the hey, I'll give it a shot, and at least it's long -- it'll pass the time -- and I know Telanu's a good writer. So I printed it out to bring with me to the beach over Thanksgiving anyway. And ....
Drum roll, please ...
Now. For today's entertainment let's all just sit back and watch Justacat eat crow. Happily. Eagerly, even. AWS turned everything I'd previously thought about this kind of fic on its head and made me a true believer. I'll worship at the shrine of Telanu, with AWS as my scripture, anytime. I'd say I'm beyond words, but given the length of this posting (and my general tendency toward ... um ... thoroughness, shall we say), I doubt anyone would believe me.
Where to even begin? It would be impossible for me to catalogue in a single post -- or even many -- the levels on and ways in which this fic worked for me and the things I loved about it. Even as long as this post is, there are so very many things that struck me that I haven't even mentioned here. I keep remembering more that I want to rave about and gush about, more wonderful passages or scenes or lines that stick in my mind, that I want to share. And yet no matter what I write, I won't be able to adequately convey its beauty or explain how very much I loved it. I simply cannot do it justice, cannot convey the magnificence of this remarkable piece of fic. But I feel a huge and compelling need to try, even if no one else ever reads this post.
First of all, the writing was magnificent. It was like -- no, it was better than -- reading the books themselves. Picking up another highly-recommended fic that shall remain nameless, by a reasonably talented author who also shall remain nameless, after AWS felt liking picking up a freshman essay after reading Chaucer or Shakespeare or something. I'm quite detail-oriented and anal about things like grammar and I tend to read with a proofreader's eye -- it's hard for me not to pay attention to things like word choice and sentence structure and grammar, especially if any of those are less than satisfactory. Not this time. When I realized partway through the fic that not only had the ol' proofreader's eye had yet to even make an appearance, but also that I'd not even noticed its absence -- well, I knew I was on to something special. The quality of the writing -- its brilliance and clarity and flow -- are just ... remarkable.
But as I said before, writing alone isn't enough for me. I have to like the story. And in this case -- well, despite all the things working against it, all the reasons for me not to like it, all my skepticism and dubiosity, I was totally, completely, and thoroughly sucked in: mesmerized, absorbed, entranced, captivated, awestruck, amazed, delighted, and a whole lot of other words in the same vein. I just cannot get over how deeply affected I was by this fic.
AWS is mostly a story about Harry. Telanu's Harry is just ... wonderful. He is clearly recognizable as the Harry from canon, but he's like Harry-plus -- he's even better than the real thing, more fleshed out, more whole, more real, and certainly far more interesting. And in this fic, we get to see Harry grow up, or at least proceed well along the path. His relationship with Snape is both a significant impetus for and, by the end, convincing evidence of this process.
Harry's initial feelings for and attitude toward Snape are somewhat immature. He starts out feeling primarily physical urges, inspired by the first kiss on the balcony in Like a Glass (the third fic in the series). He wants sex with Snape and doesn't look all that much further than that desire -- he doesn't really see any reason why they shouldn't do it if Snape wants it too. And he doesn't know much about Snape, nor have much reason to care about him -- Snape's just the person who wants Harry, and who Harry is discovering he wants in return.
But gradually we see these things change. Harry becomes aware of the consequences and implications of indulging his desires. He begins to understand that every choice comes with a price -- the cost of deciding to have an affair with Snape is subterfuge and pretending and sneaking, the need to keep secrets from his friends, the necessity at all costs of keeping potential enemies from discovering the relationship -- or revealing it -- as illustrated most devastatingly by Harry's threat to expose Neville's parents when Neville threatens to reveal the relationship and get Snape thrown out. And Harry also begins to become more deeply attached to Snape, beyond the sex. Over the course of the story he comes to realize that sure he loves the sex, but just being with Snape makes him happy. And that he ... yes, loves the man, the entire man, with all his numerous flaws. One of my very favorite passages comes after Rita Skeeter's article causes Snape to cut Harry off without discussion or explanation. During their reconciliation Harry contemplates Snape:
Severus had turned a little bit and Harry could see his profile -- that big ugly nose standing out in sharp relief, the sallow, hollow cheeks, the limp, stringy hair. Harry had touched or kissed all of those unattractive things, and taken pleasure in doing so. It fitted in with everything else. It was easy to love someone for their good qualities; Harry didn't have much practice with this sort of thing, but he suspected that it was rare to love them for their faults, too. But he did love Severus for those. It was easy to admire Severus' strength and courage and intelligence. It was even easy, a little bit, to love his cruelty and his insults and his loneliness and his sheer bloody-mindedness, because those were faults everybody could see and anyway, they just reminded you of that same strength and intelligence. They reflected the good qualities, somehow. It was harder to love him for being a little bit broken -- for his pettiness, for the cowardice that had made him push Harry aside when things got difficult, for every little unsavoury thing that sometimes made him less than a human being should be.
Harry didn't like any of these things. But he did love them, because he loved the man they were a part of.
(I have to pause for a moment just to savor how perfect this is, how breathtaking. I can't find words adequate to do it justice.)
Harry's growing maturity is most clearly evident in the circumstances surrounding the reconciliation -- in particular, the fact that Harry puts conditions on the resumption of the relationship. He wants Snape back desperately, but not enough to go on the way they were before, not enough to subject himself to the possibility that Snape's pettiness and cowardice will cause him to hurt Harry again. Despite the fact that his heart feels like it's breaking, no matter how tempting it is to just fall into Snape's arms and pretend it never happened, Harry stands firm, even though the consequence might be losing Snape permanently. On the surface Snape's response to Harry's conditions is pretty hedged and oblique and unsatisfactory -- but again Harry's reaction shows his depths. On the one hand he is able to look beyond the surface of Snape's words and to recognize how difficult it was for Snape to do even what little he did, what an enormous concession this was for Snape. Yet Harry's not just going to be satisfied with crumbs -- this will do for now, he tells Snape, but as for later -- well, the implication is that his expectations might well be higher. And even after Snape's oblique apology, Harry waits a while before approaching Snape again, understanding that it wouldn't be good for him to run back into Snape's arms right away, apology or no.
After they are reconciled, Harry is incredibly happy - but he's also aware, for the first time, of the potential for pain that is part and parcel of loving someone, and he understands a little bit more about what love really means. He muses during one of their first times together after the reconciliation that:
It felt different from before: now Harry knew what kind of troubles they faced, but he also knew what it would feel like if they were pulled apart again. It was the difference between your first match of Quidditch and your second one -- you set to the first one with a will, and you approached the second one with a bit more caution, even though you were still enthusiastic. Because you knew what it was like now. You knew how far it was from your broom to the ground.
For me this passage illustrated in an incredibly insightful and gorgeous way how Harry has grown.
Harry's maturing process is also reflected in his sexual relationship with Snape. He's nervous and uncertain at first, and Telanu portrays so unbelievably poignantly and realistically a teenage boy's initial amazement and wonder at the physical reality of another person -- the wonder of being touched by a hand other than his own, the thrill of seeing someone else's response. He's tentative and inexperienced but enthusiastic and receptive, eager but also shy and self-conscious. But he's definitely intrepid, and as he gets over his initial awe -- for Snape and for sex itself -- he becomes ever more interested in providing pleasure as well as receiving it, more and more an active participant rather than a passive recipient, conscious of and eager for his lover's pleasure. He becomes more confident in his skills, his needs and desires, more able and willing to reach out; he begins to take initiative, to ask for things and to give things, and to have fun in bed. Not until the very end is he ready to let Snape actually penetrate him -- and his receptiveness to this, the way in which he asks for it and gives it, can be seen as a sign that he's reached a new level of maturity and self-confidence and inner strength, just as on the emotional level his realization that he loves Snape symbolizes the same thing.
You could argue that letting oneself be fucked isn't a sign of strength, and you might even be right in many circumstances -- but in this case I would beg to differ. Harry's not just acquiescing here -- he's consciously gifting Snape, for both Snape's sake and his own. He had been unwilling to take this step before because of his fear of being held down, invaded, subject to someone else's control, and somehow weak. Deciding to proceed is quite explicitly a reflection of his newfound confidence. He had found himself in a position to kill someone, had wanted to do it, but had made the decision not to. Surely there can be no greater power than that, he thinks, and if he was able to make that judgment, surely he need not be afraid of anything. When Snape asks if he is sure, he realizes that he is sure, that there is no fear in him anywhere. It's amazing, he thinks, "amazing to have something Severus wanted so badly, and to be able to give it to him." And that willingness, that desire, that ability to give wholeheartedly of oneself -- to me that is a sign of maturity, of someone who knows himself and knows what he wants.
Of course, Harry's gradually increasing maturity isn't limited to his relationship with Snape. One of the clear themes of AWS is choice -- the idea that growing up, being an adult, means making conscious choices and accepting the consequences thereof. Toward the end of the story, when Harry worries that threatening Neville is what caused him to "go 'round the twist," he thinks about how Neville blindly hated Snape and wanted to, was going to, hurt him, and he realizes:
He had had to choose. That was what happened when you grew up. Choices. And if it came down to Neville or Severus, of course there was no real choice at all.
He'd done what he had to do, and then Neville had made his own choice, and that was that.
And later he thinks, in the same vein,
Neville had known what he was doing, and he'd paid the price. That was how things were. Everything came with some kind of price, didn't it?
Harry thought of Severus, down in the dungeons, and wondered what he was doing, how he was feeling.
Some prices, he decided, were worth paying.
Harry weighs the costs and benefits and ultimately chooses to continue his relationship with Snape, even though he has to lie to people he cares about and whose opinion of him he values, even if the price may be the need to be ruthless and even cruel to people like Neville who threaten Snape. Toward the end of the story he gains a feeling of inner peace when he realizes that if he had to choose between Severus and Sirius, he would choose Severus -- it would be his conscious decision to give up Sirius.
Choice also comes into play when Harry finds himself faced with the undeniable fact that he is capable of great rage and violence, almost blood lust. When he has Draco powerless before him, he's almost overcome with the desire to kill him, to pay him back for all the times he hurt or insulted or endangered Harry or his friends. But at the last moment he stops himself, realizing:
What was his life worth if he let himself be as bad as Malfoy, or worse? Dumbledore had been right all along: it was about choices. Malfoy ought to pay the penalty for what he'd done, but it wasn't up to Harry to mete that out. It was up to Harry to choose to do the right thing -- to let him live.
And when Harry does that, and Malfoy rejects Dumbledore's appeal to him, Dumbledore says, "So be it, Mr. Malfoy ..... We must all make our own choices, of course." Later Harry reflects on the fact that he let Draco live, even though he hadn't had to:
Choices. Decisions. In that moment of choice, Harry had felt his own power. He had decided whether a fellow human being would live or die, and it was more than random chance, more than just saving someone else's life from some accident or danger -- he could have killed Malfoy himself, he had let Malfoy live.... Surely there was no power anywhere that was greater than that.
So Harry's not "naturally" peaceful. He has the capacity, and occasionally the desire, to hurt and even kill -- so not doing these things, not acting on his urges and giving in to aspects of his character that would make him no better than the Death Eaters, must be a choice. Making choices like these -- more, acknowledging that there are choices to be made and prices to be paid -- is part of what it means to grow up.
The way Telanu portrays this gradual growing-up process is exquisite and brilliant -- so organic, so incremental, so subtle, so much showing-and-not-telling in the best sense of that clichéd and often misconstrued (or at least misapplied) phrase, that it seems inevitable and entirely natural. There is no authorial intrusion whatsoever. We know that Harry is growing because we see him growing -- it's evident in his actions, his feelings, his behavior. It's beautiful.
****
Okay, so far so good -- and I mean so good. But now we get to the meat in the coconut. What really blew me out of the stratosphere was not the beautiful writing, the brilliant characterization, the depth of feeling, the remarkable portrayal of Harry's growth, though I could wax eloquent for hours on those points -- no, for me the ultimate feat was that she managed to create a young-Harry/Snape relationship that I not only tolerated but actually loved. How did she do this? How is it possible that with all my skepticism, she could make me truly believe in the relationship and want desperately for it to work? I still don't completely understand how it could have happened. It's partly because of the pacing, the way the relationship slowly develops, the fact that both of them, and Harry in particular, are aware of the consequences, the fact that there are consequences -- no falling into bed and immediate happily ever after. But these factors only address a few of my usual problems with the pairing; they really aren't enough in and of themselves to make me so thoroughly invested in the relationship.
More important, I think, is the fact that despite the age and power difference, I am able to see a kind of equality between Telanu's Harry and Snape, or maybe a potential for equality. As a rule I dislike unequal relationships in my slash. I gravitate toward the cop-buddy shows, like due South and Pros, in which the men are roughly the same age, same size; they're peers and equals in many senses of the word. At first blush Harry and Snape could hardly be less equal. And it remains indisputable that Snape is Harry's teacher and therefore in a position to exploit him. But the issue isn't quite so simple, because even from the beginning, and more so as the story progresses, Harry shows himself to be uniquely a match for Snape in all sorts of ways, despite the apparent power imbalance and the age difference. There are hints of this even when Harry is young -- he stands up to Snape in a way few others do. Even at the beginning Harry is never a doormat. But it becomes even more obvious throughout the story that Snape's ability to bully and intimidate stops with Harry. Harry, alone certainly among the students and probably among Snape's own peers as well, simply will not be cowed. During his estrangement from Harry, Snape is terrorizing Potions class on a whole new level -- so that even the Slytherins kept their heads down. When he sweeps up and down the aisles, sneering and shouting, everyone trembles -- except Harry, because "Snape had no more power to frighten him now than he ever had ..."
Harry's ability to hold his own with Snape goes beyond the ability to stand up to him, though. Even in gentler times he consistently takes the wind out of Snape's sails without even trying -- he pokes fun at Snape, sees through him and has to cover his smiles and eye-rolling at some of Snape's more extravagant melodramas, and simply refuses to let Snape get away with his normal power games. All of this is apparent in this wonderful exchange in Chapter 16:
"Why'd you feel like playing chess tonight?" Harry asked curiously. He didn't mind, but it had come as something of a surprise -- they hadn't played chess in months, and just recently had been much more interested in other activities, but tonight Severus had brought it up almost as soon as Harry came into the room.
"Look at what you're wearing," Severus said.
Confused, Harry glanced down at himself. He was wearing his new Weasley jumper, green as always with the big gold 'H' on the front. He plucked at it. "Yeah -- Mrs. Weasley makes me one every year," he said. "So?"
"So I refuse to debauch you while you are wearing it, that's what. I do have limits."
"It comes off," Harry said dryly.
"Take it off yourself, then, and make your move before I die of old age." Severus motioned impatiently at the board, where Harry proceeded to get his knight in a very untenable position.
"You'd think you would learn," Severus said, capturing the knight.
"I am learning," Harry said, and captured the bishop.
Oh man, what a brilliant piece of writing that is, and what an eloquent example of Harry holding his own with Snape. Certainly in my mind there would be little hope for the relationship if Harry didn't or couldn't set limits, if he let Snape get away with his petty tyrannies without calling him on it. And Harry himself realizes this -- even after Snape apologizes to him and they begin to reconcile, he knows without understanding how he knows that:
It would be unwise to forgive Snape immediately. Snape's temperament was the kind that would commit the same sins over and over if you let him off the hook; he just rode roughshod over people that way. And besides, he'd been a Death Eater and then a spy; he ought to know all about atonement anyway. Yes, that was the word, Harry decided. Snape had to atone.
Who else could possibly call Snape on his actions, force him to be accountable -- to atone? Who else has this power? The list seems vanishingly small -- Dumbledore, perhaps -- and the fact that Harry's able to do this at the age of 16 not only bodes well for the relationship over the long term, but also makes it much easier to accept right now.
Indeed, the fact that Harry has power over Snape (as well as the reverse) becomes increasingly obvious. Harry places a condition on the relationship, and Snape gives in! Snape -- Snape! -- is willing to change for Harry. And Telanu's Snape is no wishy-washy tea drinking softie-under-the-gruff-exterior (though he does drink tea on occasion). He is not warm and fuzzy, he's not kind and loving -- but nor is he an ogre. He's petty and vindictive and irritable and cruel at times, he's jealous and possessive of Harry (though the possessiveness turns out to be quite mutual), but he's human, too; he has insecurities and fears and passions, as well as a core of basic decency, an ability to care deeply about things, and apparently, at least when it comes to Harry, a great -- though well hidden -- depth of tenderness and gentleness and patience. Yes, the relationship might seem on the surface, if you looked only at the age and position of the parties involved, to be entirely unequal -- but Harry has a power that no one else has to bring this man to his knees. "You destroy me," Snape writes to Harry, and it is true -- Harry is destroying his lifetime worth of hard-won control and lovelessness, Harry shakes him to his foundations, Harry upends all that he thought he knew about himself. For Harry he will apologize, however obliquely; for Harry he will give Gryffindor a point, however grudgingly; for Harry he will risk not just his job, but his life, should he be thrown out and forced to leave the protection of Hogwarts. As he says in a moment of "weakness," Harry is all that he wants, and this makes him vulnerable to Harry. One of the most subtle but moving moments in the fic is when, after their reconciliation, Harry tells him "You can't leave again," and he whispers, so low that Harry's not even sure he hears, "No, I can't ... Next time it will be your turn."
This power that Harry has over Snape, then, is more than just sexual power or a kind of extortionate power -- the power that any junior person in an unequal and illicit relationship has to destroy the other's life by exposing the relationship. It comes instead from the odd and inexplicable bond between them, from Harry's own strength of character and personality and unique insight into Snape -- he seems to sense the real feeling behind Snape's crustiness almost from the beginning -- and from Snape's surprising and perhaps unwelcome, but entirely undeniable, depth of feeling for him. But Harry has another kind of power that also makes it easier for me to accept his relationship with Snape -- magical power. Somehow, after taking the Somniesperus (and who are those three women who visit him in his dream -- Furies, perhaps? it's not clear yet), Harry begins to come into what appears to be a phenomenal magical ability. There are hints that he has power far beyond anyone's imagination. Even before he begins his illicit nighttime studies of dark magic in preparation for the battles he anticipates, he is able to resist every one of Ron's attacks in Defence class effortlessly, without even knowing how he does it -- he "senses" the magic coming at him and simply diverts it, while Ron can barely block any of Harry's spells even when Harry casts them without using much power at all. After his nighttime studies begin (prompted, perhaps, by the subconscious urges of the powers he invoked inadvertently with the Somniesperus), his power grows exponentially. Harry discovers he has the capacity to "feel" magical forces, particularly Snape's; at various times, particularly during sex, he can reach out and sense and even touch Snape's magic, though Snape doesn't seem to sense it in the same way. There's definitely a foreshadowing that this ability might play an important role in subsequent events. The implications of all these things remain to be explored, but for now, the important point is that the power imbalance between the two isn't what it seems at first blush.
It's true that AWS could be read simplistically and superficially as an illustration of what is bad about this kind of student/teacher relationship. Snape gets sex, while Harry has to sneak around and lie to his friends and gradually become more and more distant from them in many ways. His friends are having normal teenage romances with their normal dramas and problems, they can hold hands and kiss and, as Harry says to George, waltz together, while Harry is having a sordid sexual affair with a man old enough to be his father. And yet -- maybe it's not as simple as it seems. Yes, Snape is getting sex, but certainly there are easier and safer ways to do this; not just his job but his life is put at risk by this illicit affair. And though it's true that Harry doesn't get to have a "normal" teenage romance like his friends, by the same token, Harry's friends have normal teenage worries and issues while Harry is battling Voldemort, seeing unspeakable acts of evil and watching his friends die horribly. In other words, regardless of whether he's having sex with Snape or not, it is simply indisputable that Harry is special and different, as much as he'd like not to be. He simply is not just another Hogwart's student.
From a broader perspective, Harry's relationship with Snape in AWS is simply another manifestation of this. It seems clear from canon (though nothing in canon is really clear, in my opinion) that Harry is to be quite alone in his suffering and in his battle with evil. He is girding his loins, so to speak, for the ultimate challenge, and no one can take this burden from him -- it appears to be his destiny. And in AWS, Harry appears to be on the verge of becoming a tremendously, perhaps uniquely, powerful wizard. How could another 16 year old possibly understand or relate to this? Given what Harry has had to face, and what he anticipates facing in the future, in light of what he's seen, what he knows, who he is, a normal teenage romance seems so inadequate, so meaningless, so ... childish. How could it possibly be enough? A relationship with another teenager could hardly help but make Harry feel more alone, more estranged and isolated and different from his peers.
But Snape ... Snape is something else entirely. Snape in AWS isn't a father figure or a pal, isn't someone to whom Harry can or will go for sympathy or comfort in the way that he might go to Sirius. He's not going to make anything easy for Harry. What he is is a companion in the fight, a fellow soldier, someone who understands without Harry having to explain. Snape gets it, in a way that one could hardly imagine someone like, say, Cho Chang, or even Ron, getting it. Snape is no Remus Lupin -- he's not someone who Harry cares for because he is kind or caring or sympathetic. Harry's respect and affection for Snape come from somewhere else, somewhere different from his feelings for others, somewhere deeper. As Harry thinks to himself when comparing his feelings for Sirius and Snape - Severus is ... Severus.
Of course, this is looking at it all from Harry's perspective -- why Harry might want a relationship with Snape. The situation looks slightly different from Snape's side. Like I said before, it's hard to deny that there is something slightly ... squicky, maybe, or at least questionable, about the idea of an older professor lusting after a 16 year old boy -- and in this case the attraction dates at least back to Harry's third year at Hogwarts when Harry is about 13 (see the first story in the sequence, A Most Disquieting Tea), and Snape first kisses Harry when he's only 15 (see the third story, Almost, at Times, a Fool, and the Fourth, Like a Glass). Certainly, if you are someone who thinks a 30-something man's attraction to a 16 year old boy is "wrong" as a rule, it is unlikely that anything in the fic will change your mind -- Telanu doesn't appear to be on a mission to justify such relationships or to convince you that they're "right" in any larger sense.
But for me -- well, for better or for worse I have always been a moral relativist and a believer that all things are possible under earth and sky; there are no "nevers." And though, as I said before, I often can't get into young-Harry/Snape stories, AWS seems to be the exception that proves the rule (and I've got to say, it's going to be damn hard for anything else to live up to this standard). Telanu has created a situation in which Snape's attraction doesn't squick me, in which I am able to buy into this thirty-something man's attraction to this 16 year old boy. Not just buy into -- become totally emotionally invested in. It's not that the fact that Harry is less than half Snape's age is irrelevant or minimized in the fic -- quite the contrary. It's just that, when reading the fic, I didn't care -- I believed in the relationship and wanted it to work even though Snape is Harry's much older professor.
Maybe part of the reason for this is that it's pretty clear that Snape doesn't want to feel attraction to Harry. He's no pedophile -- he knows that Harry's too young, he believes that seducing a child would make him a "monster," he realizes that this could be the stupidest thing he's ever done. But Harry seems to exert an almost magnetic attraction, one for which Snape is willing to risk his reputation and even his life. He's drawn to Harry in a way that is confusing, conflicting, and somewhat terrifying for him -- he seems not to know what's hit him sometimes, he's overwhelmed by his own intensity of feeling. So I want to believe -- Telanu made me believe -- that however sordid and detestable such an affair might be if it were any other two people, Harry and Snape are different, and this relationship, this attraction, is something special, something rare, something precious and beautiful -- something that at times seems almost inevitable and certainly right. How else to explain their somewhat inexplicable attraction toward each other -- not to mention, for example, the way Harry senses Snape's magic "swirling all around him, caressing against his own magic, touching and mixing and dancing" and "lighting up with bright and beautiful flares wherever their bodies touched"; or, for that matter, Dumbledore's mysterious tolerance of the relationship.
Harry and Snape both know what it's like to be alone. Harry observes that "Severus probably didn't have a lot of people who loved him, just as Harry didn't have a lot of people to love. They fitted each other in strange ways ...." They've both had so little for so long -- I want them to have each other. This is what Telanu has done to me. Do I actually believe that a 16 year old and a grown man can find "true love"? It's hard for me, still. But there are no "nevers" in real life. And anyway, ultimately the issue here isn't "real life" -- whether a "real" 16-year-old and his 30-something professor could make a relationship work. Slash is fantasy for me. No, the real issue is whether Telanu has succeeded in making me believe that this relationship could work. And she has. If it was going to happen, it would happen this way. She has made me a believer.
And I can hardly review this fic without mentioning that the relationship she's made me believe in is hot -- not just hot, but blistering. Yeah, let's get superficial now -- but hey, this is slash after all; if I wanted curtain blowing -- which I most assuredly don't -- I'd read something else. For better or worse, sex -- smut -- is a really important element of my enjoyment of slash. Unlike many HP fans, I don't find chan arousing in the slightest, and I'm generally uncomfortable with sex between people of widely varying age and experience. But just as she does with the relationship in general, Telanu makes the sex work. Work -- what am I talking about? Hell, she doesn't just make it work, she makes it flame. This is scorching stuff. Telanu has a gift for writing sex, and in AWS she simply outdoes herself. The sex scenes in AWS are truly among the best I've ever read. Part of what makes them so good, in fact, is that they're not just "scenes." The sex is completely integrated and integral, inseparable from the story, an essential part of the story; and the characters are totally and entirely themselves in bed. The sex gives us insights into the characters -- we understand them better, care for them more, after seeing them in bed together. And did I mention that it's hot? Particularly memorable for me was the description of the first time Snape ... fucks (not a word they use in this fic, but I can't seem to come up with a better one) Harry. It's just breathtaking -- hot and beautiful and deep and sweet and sexy. How can Telanu so effectively and (seemingly) effortlessly and perfectly convey the emotions and the physical feelings? There's no awkwardness or tediousness or repetitiveness whatsoever. As I say, she has a gift, and in AWS it shines.
So what Telanu has managed to do, despite my resistance, is to lure me into becoming hugely emotionally invested in this relationship -- a state I'm not entirely comfortable with. What I want is for the Tea series ultimately to be a relationship story (always my favorite kind). Of course there's Voldemort, and Death Eaters, and other plot-stuff that I haven't mentioned, even though it's all engrossing and wonderfully written. These things are important, don't get me wrong. But what I want is for this entire series of fics to be, in the end, a story of Snape and Harry coming together. This doesn't mean there can't be obstacles and angst along the way, and I have a strong feeling there will be -- Telanu all but tells us that Harry will leave Snape for a while, though it's not clear what that will mean. But I want the ending to be happy insofar as Harry and Snape are concerned -- and by that I mean not that I want everything to be perfect, but simply that I want them to be together.
The thing is, though, I can't know if that's going to happen, because it is not finished. I have a great deal of anxiety and trepidation about this, and indeed, part of me is fighting hard to minimize my emotional investment, saying hey, don't get yourself too involved here, the risk is too great. Because what if one of them dies, as in Cybele's If You Are Prepared sequence? Or what if neither dies, but they don't end up together? For me either outcome would be crushing, and what's more, I'd never be able to pick up the stories again, no matter how brilliantly written or conceived they are.
Or equally horrifying -- what if she doesn't finish? I don't ever do well with suspense, as I noted above, and with an unfinished series like this it's not like I can read ahead and eliminate it. Works in progress leave me in the highly uncomfortable position -- one in which I often find myself, being someone who not only is constitutionally not a writer, but also seems unable to use my own imagination to fill in gaps left by others -- of being at the author's mercy, of my emotional state being subject to something that I cannot control or even affect. Obviously this is my own problem, not Telanu's; but it occurred to me after reading AWS that maybe I should have waited to read it, because now, having become deeply emotionally invested, the potential for pain and disappointment is so great.
But no, on second thought, I simply can't regret it. AWS is so gorgeous and so unforgettable on so many levels, such a remarkable accomplishment, so brilliant and exquisite, that it sings in my mind. I'm far, far more eager for the last two Tea stories than I am for the last two JKR books, far more interested in knowing how these stories turn out than in knowing what happens to Harry in canon. As difficult as it is for me to be hopeful -- I'm definitely a glass-half-empty kind of gal, which is probably why I like, no, need those happy endings so much -- I'm going to make the attempt; I'm going to force myself to believe, or at least hope, that Telanu will finish and that the ending will be the type I want. If not I'll have to revise all my views; but in the meantime, I want to bask in its magnificence for a while.
As usual, I've gone on for way too long, and I definitely wouldn't blame anyone who gave up somewhere in the middle. But I just couldn't stop myself; there was so very much I wanted to say, needed to say (and this wasn't the half of it!). What an amazing accomplishment AWS is. What a gift Telanu has given us with this fic. How awed I am by her amazing talent, and how grateful for the pleasure she's given me. It feels greedy to want more, but I do. I will pray to the fannish gods (and I'd even beg shamelessly, if it would help) that she will find the will and desire to continue.
WARNING: When I say "a whole lot," I mean a whole lot. Superlatives and overuse of italics and wordiness and gushing ahead. Proceed at your own risk -- you have been warned!
First let me explain that I did not go into this fic with high expectations or, for that matter, with much of an open mind. For me, AWS had, well, more than a few things stacked against it right from the start, even though I think Telanu is a particularly talented author, and I like a number of her HP fics quite a lot. But there were a bunch of reasons I was prepared to not be too impressed. Like:
1) AWS is not the final installment in the Tea series -- Telanu has said there are two more stories to come. I generally avoid WIPs or unfinished series like the plague. I hate sad endings (read: endings in which the slash pairing does not end up happily together), and I deal very poorly with suspense. I prefer being "spoiled" as a rule; I need to know whether the ending is going to be satisfying -- and in the case of fanfic, at least, basically happy -- before I can enjoy a story (for example, I purposely spoiled myself before even purchasing OotP, and even so, I read the end first). I'm very bad at filling in "blanks" myself, so an unfinished WIP might as well not have been started -- if it isn't finished I block it out of my mind, and I have no capacity or willingness to appreciate it for what it is. And it's quite difficult for me to get any real sense of how much I like something that's unfinished, since so much of my opinion ultimately will depend on how -- or, god forbid, if -- it is finished.
2) I generally don't like Harry/Snape stories in which Harry is still in school. I do like Harry/Snape -- but I prefer Harry to be older, like in the Lost Feelings series by Minx (miraminx) or Clipped Wings by Theresa Ann Wymer (tekalynn) or Do As You Like by Merri Todd-Webster (mommybird), or Telanu's own Coffee series. I mean, there's something a bit ... squicky about a grown man lusting after, or having sex with, someone so young. Chan is most definitely not my kink, and sure, sex with a 16 year old maybe isn't really chan, but I still have some residual unease. Also, I like my slash couples to end up together forever, and it's difficult to believe that a 16 year old knows what he wants "forever," or that a relationship begun at the age of 16 will be the one that lasts "forever."
Moreover, I think young-Harry/Snape is a very difficult pairing to tackle because of all the issues that need to be addressed if a story is to work. Over the age of consent or not, Harry is a student, and Snape is his teacher, and Snape is old enough to be his father. These facts have all sorts of implications -- like, to name a few, exploitation and the power imbalance, the need for secrecy and deception, the risk of public opprobrium or worse. And Harry's future looks to be filled with all sorts of grimness -- if you write a young-Harry/Snape fic, you've got to deal with the fact that Voldemort is still out there and both Harry and Snape are at risk. It's an ideal setup for angst, and consequently, many of the better fics tend to be long, complicated, angsty, and depressing, or at least bittersweet -- think Cybele's If You Are Prepared or Nym's Sins of Omission series. If the issues raised by the relationship are acknowledged, the possibility of unhappy or messy endings and consequences looms large. I hate unhappy or messy endings, and I intensely dislike being depressed by my fanfic. Real life is messy, angsty, and depressing enough for me, thank you very much. (I talked about this more in my discussion of If You Are Prepared, here.)
And perhaps even worse than the angsty young-Harry/Snape fics is the plethora of mediocre "true love" stories which elide all the difficult issues. Again, it's just amazingly difficult for me to buy Harry finding true love at the age of 16 -- with his professor, no less. Even so, some of these fics, if well written, can be fun and enjoyable, but most tend to be stupid or unbelievable and to skip over the implications of the relationship in a way that is hard for me to buy. I mean yeah, I want a happy ending -- but ending is the key word here; if there's angst inherent in the situation, I want it to be confronted and dealt with during the course of the story, not swept under the rug. I'm not asking for utopia -- happy endings often come only after angst and pain and the surmounting of obstacles, and that doesn't keep me from enjoying the fic. In fact, it's often better that way.
3) I've become somewhat disillusioned with and depressed about HP fandom and fanfic. It's been so long since I've read anything I really like. There are good writers out there, but the fact that a fic is "good" doesn't mean I'll like it. Literary merit and good writing simply aren't enough for me in a fanfic (though it's unlikely that I'll really like a story that is not well written) -- I need to like the story, it needs to make me feel good, I need to want to re-read it. That's always been rare for me in HP, but recently it seems even rarer -- especially because, since OotP came out, it seems to me that the fanfic has gotten darker and darker (I didn't really like OotP, for reasons I tried to explain here) . I don't like rape and noncon, I don't like extreme violence, I don't like pain, I don't like endless explorations of grief. Juxian Tang's (juxiantang) recent fic, Damage Control, which has been lauded in a number of venues, is a good example. It literally turned my stomach; I profoundly wish I'd never laid eyes on it, it disturbed me so much (this is a comment on my preferences and issues, not the quality of the fic). But clearly there's a reasonably large HP contingent that finds chan and noncon and pain appealing or even arousing (see, e.g., a significant number of the responses to Telanu's LJ post here). And there's another probably larger contingent -- the squee! contingent -- that likes fics I consider vapid, schmoopy, and just plain bad.
On top of that, the fandom itself -- as opposed to the fanfic -- has elements and aspects that I find less than appealing, particularly a kind of pseudo-intellectualism and pretentiousness for which I have very little tolerance and which, for whatever reason, seems to me to afflict HP far more than the media-based fandoms that are my "natural" home (which is not to suggest that those don't have their own issues at times -- just not this one, or at least not to this extent).
All these things have made me wonder a little whether I can fit into this fandom at all, and at times I've contemplated abandoning it entirely. So I haven't been too excited about HP fic recently.
****
So with all these things floating around in my mind, it kind of goes without saying that I picked up A Wizard Song with, shall we say, low expectations. The odds were heavily stacked against my liking it. Yes, it's been highly recommended -- but just about all the fics I read are listed on my site, which means they've been recommended somewhere, and I like about 1 percent of them, if that. But I figured, what the hey, I'll give it a shot, and at least it's long -- it'll pass the time -- and I know Telanu's a good writer. So I printed it out to bring with me to the beach over Thanksgiving anyway. And ....
Drum roll, please ...
Now. For today's entertainment let's all just sit back and watch Justacat eat crow. Happily. Eagerly, even. AWS turned everything I'd previously thought about this kind of fic on its head and made me a true believer. I'll worship at the shrine of Telanu, with AWS as my scripture, anytime. I'd say I'm beyond words, but given the length of this posting (and my general tendency toward ... um ... thoroughness, shall we say), I doubt anyone would believe me.
Where to even begin? It would be impossible for me to catalogue in a single post -- or even many -- the levels on and ways in which this fic worked for me and the things I loved about it. Even as long as this post is, there are so very many things that struck me that I haven't even mentioned here. I keep remembering more that I want to rave about and gush about, more wonderful passages or scenes or lines that stick in my mind, that I want to share. And yet no matter what I write, I won't be able to adequately convey its beauty or explain how very much I loved it. I simply cannot do it justice, cannot convey the magnificence of this remarkable piece of fic. But I feel a huge and compelling need to try, even if no one else ever reads this post.
First of all, the writing was magnificent. It was like -- no, it was better than -- reading the books themselves. Picking up another highly-recommended fic that shall remain nameless, by a reasonably talented author who also shall remain nameless, after AWS felt liking picking up a freshman essay after reading Chaucer or Shakespeare or something. I'm quite detail-oriented and anal about things like grammar and I tend to read with a proofreader's eye -- it's hard for me not to pay attention to things like word choice and sentence structure and grammar, especially if any of those are less than satisfactory. Not this time. When I realized partway through the fic that not only had the ol' proofreader's eye had yet to even make an appearance, but also that I'd not even noticed its absence -- well, I knew I was on to something special. The quality of the writing -- its brilliance and clarity and flow -- are just ... remarkable.
But as I said before, writing alone isn't enough for me. I have to like the story. And in this case -- well, despite all the things working against it, all the reasons for me not to like it, all my skepticism and dubiosity, I was totally, completely, and thoroughly sucked in: mesmerized, absorbed, entranced, captivated, awestruck, amazed, delighted, and a whole lot of other words in the same vein. I just cannot get over how deeply affected I was by this fic.
AWS is mostly a story about Harry. Telanu's Harry is just ... wonderful. He is clearly recognizable as the Harry from canon, but he's like Harry-plus -- he's even better than the real thing, more fleshed out, more whole, more real, and certainly far more interesting. And in this fic, we get to see Harry grow up, or at least proceed well along the path. His relationship with Snape is both a significant impetus for and, by the end, convincing evidence of this process.
Harry's initial feelings for and attitude toward Snape are somewhat immature. He starts out feeling primarily physical urges, inspired by the first kiss on the balcony in Like a Glass (the third fic in the series). He wants sex with Snape and doesn't look all that much further than that desire -- he doesn't really see any reason why they shouldn't do it if Snape wants it too. And he doesn't know much about Snape, nor have much reason to care about him -- Snape's just the person who wants Harry, and who Harry is discovering he wants in return.
But gradually we see these things change. Harry becomes aware of the consequences and implications of indulging his desires. He begins to understand that every choice comes with a price -- the cost of deciding to have an affair with Snape is subterfuge and pretending and sneaking, the need to keep secrets from his friends, the necessity at all costs of keeping potential enemies from discovering the relationship -- or revealing it -- as illustrated most devastatingly by Harry's threat to expose Neville's parents when Neville threatens to reveal the relationship and get Snape thrown out. And Harry also begins to become more deeply attached to Snape, beyond the sex. Over the course of the story he comes to realize that sure he loves the sex, but just being with Snape makes him happy. And that he ... yes, loves the man, the entire man, with all his numerous flaws. One of my very favorite passages comes after Rita Skeeter's article causes Snape to cut Harry off without discussion or explanation. During their reconciliation Harry contemplates Snape:
Severus had turned a little bit and Harry could see his profile -- that big ugly nose standing out in sharp relief, the sallow, hollow cheeks, the limp, stringy hair. Harry had touched or kissed all of those unattractive things, and taken pleasure in doing so. It fitted in with everything else. It was easy to love someone for their good qualities; Harry didn't have much practice with this sort of thing, but he suspected that it was rare to love them for their faults, too. But he did love Severus for those. It was easy to admire Severus' strength and courage and intelligence. It was even easy, a little bit, to love his cruelty and his insults and his loneliness and his sheer bloody-mindedness, because those were faults everybody could see and anyway, they just reminded you of that same strength and intelligence. They reflected the good qualities, somehow. It was harder to love him for being a little bit broken -- for his pettiness, for the cowardice that had made him push Harry aside when things got difficult, for every little unsavoury thing that sometimes made him less than a human being should be.
Harry didn't like any of these things. But he did love them, because he loved the man they were a part of.
(I have to pause for a moment just to savor how perfect this is, how breathtaking. I can't find words adequate to do it justice.)
Harry's growing maturity is most clearly evident in the circumstances surrounding the reconciliation -- in particular, the fact that Harry puts conditions on the resumption of the relationship. He wants Snape back desperately, but not enough to go on the way they were before, not enough to subject himself to the possibility that Snape's pettiness and cowardice will cause him to hurt Harry again. Despite the fact that his heart feels like it's breaking, no matter how tempting it is to just fall into Snape's arms and pretend it never happened, Harry stands firm, even though the consequence might be losing Snape permanently. On the surface Snape's response to Harry's conditions is pretty hedged and oblique and unsatisfactory -- but again Harry's reaction shows his depths. On the one hand he is able to look beyond the surface of Snape's words and to recognize how difficult it was for Snape to do even what little he did, what an enormous concession this was for Snape. Yet Harry's not just going to be satisfied with crumbs -- this will do for now, he tells Snape, but as for later -- well, the implication is that his expectations might well be higher. And even after Snape's oblique apology, Harry waits a while before approaching Snape again, understanding that it wouldn't be good for him to run back into Snape's arms right away, apology or no.
After they are reconciled, Harry is incredibly happy - but he's also aware, for the first time, of the potential for pain that is part and parcel of loving someone, and he understands a little bit more about what love really means. He muses during one of their first times together after the reconciliation that:
It felt different from before: now Harry knew what kind of troubles they faced, but he also knew what it would feel like if they were pulled apart again. It was the difference between your first match of Quidditch and your second one -- you set to the first one with a will, and you approached the second one with a bit more caution, even though you were still enthusiastic. Because you knew what it was like now. You knew how far it was from your broom to the ground.
For me this passage illustrated in an incredibly insightful and gorgeous way how Harry has grown.
Harry's maturing process is also reflected in his sexual relationship with Snape. He's nervous and uncertain at first, and Telanu portrays so unbelievably poignantly and realistically a teenage boy's initial amazement and wonder at the physical reality of another person -- the wonder of being touched by a hand other than his own, the thrill of seeing someone else's response. He's tentative and inexperienced but enthusiastic and receptive, eager but also shy and self-conscious. But he's definitely intrepid, and as he gets over his initial awe -- for Snape and for sex itself -- he becomes ever more interested in providing pleasure as well as receiving it, more and more an active participant rather than a passive recipient, conscious of and eager for his lover's pleasure. He becomes more confident in his skills, his needs and desires, more able and willing to reach out; he begins to take initiative, to ask for things and to give things, and to have fun in bed. Not until the very end is he ready to let Snape actually penetrate him -- and his receptiveness to this, the way in which he asks for it and gives it, can be seen as a sign that he's reached a new level of maturity and self-confidence and inner strength, just as on the emotional level his realization that he loves Snape symbolizes the same thing.
You could argue that letting oneself be fucked isn't a sign of strength, and you might even be right in many circumstances -- but in this case I would beg to differ. Harry's not just acquiescing here -- he's consciously gifting Snape, for both Snape's sake and his own. He had been unwilling to take this step before because of his fear of being held down, invaded, subject to someone else's control, and somehow weak. Deciding to proceed is quite explicitly a reflection of his newfound confidence. He had found himself in a position to kill someone, had wanted to do it, but had made the decision not to. Surely there can be no greater power than that, he thinks, and if he was able to make that judgment, surely he need not be afraid of anything. When Snape asks if he is sure, he realizes that he is sure, that there is no fear in him anywhere. It's amazing, he thinks, "amazing to have something Severus wanted so badly, and to be able to give it to him." And that willingness, that desire, that ability to give wholeheartedly of oneself -- to me that is a sign of maturity, of someone who knows himself and knows what he wants.
Of course, Harry's gradually increasing maturity isn't limited to his relationship with Snape. One of the clear themes of AWS is choice -- the idea that growing up, being an adult, means making conscious choices and accepting the consequences thereof. Toward the end of the story, when Harry worries that threatening Neville is what caused him to "go 'round the twist," he thinks about how Neville blindly hated Snape and wanted to, was going to, hurt him, and he realizes:
He had had to choose. That was what happened when you grew up. Choices. And if it came down to Neville or Severus, of course there was no real choice at all.
He'd done what he had to do, and then Neville had made his own choice, and that was that.
And later he thinks, in the same vein,
Neville had known what he was doing, and he'd paid the price. That was how things were. Everything came with some kind of price, didn't it?
Harry thought of Severus, down in the dungeons, and wondered what he was doing, how he was feeling.
Some prices, he decided, were worth paying.
Harry weighs the costs and benefits and ultimately chooses to continue his relationship with Snape, even though he has to lie to people he cares about and whose opinion of him he values, even if the price may be the need to be ruthless and even cruel to people like Neville who threaten Snape. Toward the end of the story he gains a feeling of inner peace when he realizes that if he had to choose between Severus and Sirius, he would choose Severus -- it would be his conscious decision to give up Sirius.
Choice also comes into play when Harry finds himself faced with the undeniable fact that he is capable of great rage and violence, almost blood lust. When he has Draco powerless before him, he's almost overcome with the desire to kill him, to pay him back for all the times he hurt or insulted or endangered Harry or his friends. But at the last moment he stops himself, realizing:
What was his life worth if he let himself be as bad as Malfoy, or worse? Dumbledore had been right all along: it was about choices. Malfoy ought to pay the penalty for what he'd done, but it wasn't up to Harry to mete that out. It was up to Harry to choose to do the right thing -- to let him live.
And when Harry does that, and Malfoy rejects Dumbledore's appeal to him, Dumbledore says, "So be it, Mr. Malfoy ..... We must all make our own choices, of course." Later Harry reflects on the fact that he let Draco live, even though he hadn't had to:
Choices. Decisions. In that moment of choice, Harry had felt his own power. He had decided whether a fellow human being would live or die, and it was more than random chance, more than just saving someone else's life from some accident or danger -- he could have killed Malfoy himself, he had let Malfoy live.... Surely there was no power anywhere that was greater than that.
So Harry's not "naturally" peaceful. He has the capacity, and occasionally the desire, to hurt and even kill -- so not doing these things, not acting on his urges and giving in to aspects of his character that would make him no better than the Death Eaters, must be a choice. Making choices like these -- more, acknowledging that there are choices to be made and prices to be paid -- is part of what it means to grow up.
The way Telanu portrays this gradual growing-up process is exquisite and brilliant -- so organic, so incremental, so subtle, so much showing-and-not-telling in the best sense of that clichéd and often misconstrued (or at least misapplied) phrase, that it seems inevitable and entirely natural. There is no authorial intrusion whatsoever. We know that Harry is growing because we see him growing -- it's evident in his actions, his feelings, his behavior. It's beautiful.
****
Okay, so far so good -- and I mean so good. But now we get to the meat in the coconut. What really blew me out of the stratosphere was not the beautiful writing, the brilliant characterization, the depth of feeling, the remarkable portrayal of Harry's growth, though I could wax eloquent for hours on those points -- no, for me the ultimate feat was that she managed to create a young-Harry/Snape relationship that I not only tolerated but actually loved. How did she do this? How is it possible that with all my skepticism, she could make me truly believe in the relationship and want desperately for it to work? I still don't completely understand how it could have happened. It's partly because of the pacing, the way the relationship slowly develops, the fact that both of them, and Harry in particular, are aware of the consequences, the fact that there are consequences -- no falling into bed and immediate happily ever after. But these factors only address a few of my usual problems with the pairing; they really aren't enough in and of themselves to make me so thoroughly invested in the relationship.
More important, I think, is the fact that despite the age and power difference, I am able to see a kind of equality between Telanu's Harry and Snape, or maybe a potential for equality. As a rule I dislike unequal relationships in my slash. I gravitate toward the cop-buddy shows, like due South and Pros, in which the men are roughly the same age, same size; they're peers and equals in many senses of the word. At first blush Harry and Snape could hardly be less equal. And it remains indisputable that Snape is Harry's teacher and therefore in a position to exploit him. But the issue isn't quite so simple, because even from the beginning, and more so as the story progresses, Harry shows himself to be uniquely a match for Snape in all sorts of ways, despite the apparent power imbalance and the age difference. There are hints of this even when Harry is young -- he stands up to Snape in a way few others do. Even at the beginning Harry is never a doormat. But it becomes even more obvious throughout the story that Snape's ability to bully and intimidate stops with Harry. Harry, alone certainly among the students and probably among Snape's own peers as well, simply will not be cowed. During his estrangement from Harry, Snape is terrorizing Potions class on a whole new level -- so that even the Slytherins kept their heads down. When he sweeps up and down the aisles, sneering and shouting, everyone trembles -- except Harry, because "Snape had no more power to frighten him now than he ever had ..."
Harry's ability to hold his own with Snape goes beyond the ability to stand up to him, though. Even in gentler times he consistently takes the wind out of Snape's sails without even trying -- he pokes fun at Snape, sees through him and has to cover his smiles and eye-rolling at some of Snape's more extravagant melodramas, and simply refuses to let Snape get away with his normal power games. All of this is apparent in this wonderful exchange in Chapter 16:
"Why'd you feel like playing chess tonight?" Harry asked curiously. He didn't mind, but it had come as something of a surprise -- they hadn't played chess in months, and just recently had been much more interested in other activities, but tonight Severus had brought it up almost as soon as Harry came into the room.
"Look at what you're wearing," Severus said.
Confused, Harry glanced down at himself. He was wearing his new Weasley jumper, green as always with the big gold 'H' on the front. He plucked at it. "Yeah -- Mrs. Weasley makes me one every year," he said. "So?"
"So I refuse to debauch you while you are wearing it, that's what. I do have limits."
"It comes off," Harry said dryly.
"Take it off yourself, then, and make your move before I die of old age." Severus motioned impatiently at the board, where Harry proceeded to get his knight in a very untenable position.
"You'd think you would learn," Severus said, capturing the knight.
"I am learning," Harry said, and captured the bishop.
Oh man, what a brilliant piece of writing that is, and what an eloquent example of Harry holding his own with Snape. Certainly in my mind there would be little hope for the relationship if Harry didn't or couldn't set limits, if he let Snape get away with his petty tyrannies without calling him on it. And Harry himself realizes this -- even after Snape apologizes to him and they begin to reconcile, he knows without understanding how he knows that:
It would be unwise to forgive Snape immediately. Snape's temperament was the kind that would commit the same sins over and over if you let him off the hook; he just rode roughshod over people that way. And besides, he'd been a Death Eater and then a spy; he ought to know all about atonement anyway. Yes, that was the word, Harry decided. Snape had to atone.
Who else could possibly call Snape on his actions, force him to be accountable -- to atone? Who else has this power? The list seems vanishingly small -- Dumbledore, perhaps -- and the fact that Harry's able to do this at the age of 16 not only bodes well for the relationship over the long term, but also makes it much easier to accept right now.
Indeed, the fact that Harry has power over Snape (as well as the reverse) becomes increasingly obvious. Harry places a condition on the relationship, and Snape gives in! Snape -- Snape! -- is willing to change for Harry. And Telanu's Snape is no wishy-washy tea drinking softie-under-the-gruff-exterior (though he does drink tea on occasion). He is not warm and fuzzy, he's not kind and loving -- but nor is he an ogre. He's petty and vindictive and irritable and cruel at times, he's jealous and possessive of Harry (though the possessiveness turns out to be quite mutual), but he's human, too; he has insecurities and fears and passions, as well as a core of basic decency, an ability to care deeply about things, and apparently, at least when it comes to Harry, a great -- though well hidden -- depth of tenderness and gentleness and patience. Yes, the relationship might seem on the surface, if you looked only at the age and position of the parties involved, to be entirely unequal -- but Harry has a power that no one else has to bring this man to his knees. "You destroy me," Snape writes to Harry, and it is true -- Harry is destroying his lifetime worth of hard-won control and lovelessness, Harry shakes him to his foundations, Harry upends all that he thought he knew about himself. For Harry he will apologize, however obliquely; for Harry he will give Gryffindor a point, however grudgingly; for Harry he will risk not just his job, but his life, should he be thrown out and forced to leave the protection of Hogwarts. As he says in a moment of "weakness," Harry is all that he wants, and this makes him vulnerable to Harry. One of the most subtle but moving moments in the fic is when, after their reconciliation, Harry tells him "You can't leave again," and he whispers, so low that Harry's not even sure he hears, "No, I can't ... Next time it will be your turn."
This power that Harry has over Snape, then, is more than just sexual power or a kind of extortionate power -- the power that any junior person in an unequal and illicit relationship has to destroy the other's life by exposing the relationship. It comes instead from the odd and inexplicable bond between them, from Harry's own strength of character and personality and unique insight into Snape -- he seems to sense the real feeling behind Snape's crustiness almost from the beginning -- and from Snape's surprising and perhaps unwelcome, but entirely undeniable, depth of feeling for him. But Harry has another kind of power that also makes it easier for me to accept his relationship with Snape -- magical power. Somehow, after taking the Somniesperus (and who are those three women who visit him in his dream -- Furies, perhaps? it's not clear yet), Harry begins to come into what appears to be a phenomenal magical ability. There are hints that he has power far beyond anyone's imagination. Even before he begins his illicit nighttime studies of dark magic in preparation for the battles he anticipates, he is able to resist every one of Ron's attacks in Defence class effortlessly, without even knowing how he does it -- he "senses" the magic coming at him and simply diverts it, while Ron can barely block any of Harry's spells even when Harry casts them without using much power at all. After his nighttime studies begin (prompted, perhaps, by the subconscious urges of the powers he invoked inadvertently with the Somniesperus), his power grows exponentially. Harry discovers he has the capacity to "feel" magical forces, particularly Snape's; at various times, particularly during sex, he can reach out and sense and even touch Snape's magic, though Snape doesn't seem to sense it in the same way. There's definitely a foreshadowing that this ability might play an important role in subsequent events. The implications of all these things remain to be explored, but for now, the important point is that the power imbalance between the two isn't what it seems at first blush.
It's true that AWS could be read simplistically and superficially as an illustration of what is bad about this kind of student/teacher relationship. Snape gets sex, while Harry has to sneak around and lie to his friends and gradually become more and more distant from them in many ways. His friends are having normal teenage romances with their normal dramas and problems, they can hold hands and kiss and, as Harry says to George, waltz together, while Harry is having a sordid sexual affair with a man old enough to be his father. And yet -- maybe it's not as simple as it seems. Yes, Snape is getting sex, but certainly there are easier and safer ways to do this; not just his job but his life is put at risk by this illicit affair. And though it's true that Harry doesn't get to have a "normal" teenage romance like his friends, by the same token, Harry's friends have normal teenage worries and issues while Harry is battling Voldemort, seeing unspeakable acts of evil and watching his friends die horribly. In other words, regardless of whether he's having sex with Snape or not, it is simply indisputable that Harry is special and different, as much as he'd like not to be. He simply is not just another Hogwart's student.
From a broader perspective, Harry's relationship with Snape in AWS is simply another manifestation of this. It seems clear from canon (though nothing in canon is really clear, in my opinion) that Harry is to be quite alone in his suffering and in his battle with evil. He is girding his loins, so to speak, for the ultimate challenge, and no one can take this burden from him -- it appears to be his destiny. And in AWS, Harry appears to be on the verge of becoming a tremendously, perhaps uniquely, powerful wizard. How could another 16 year old possibly understand or relate to this? Given what Harry has had to face, and what he anticipates facing in the future, in light of what he's seen, what he knows, who he is, a normal teenage romance seems so inadequate, so meaningless, so ... childish. How could it possibly be enough? A relationship with another teenager could hardly help but make Harry feel more alone, more estranged and isolated and different from his peers.
But Snape ... Snape is something else entirely. Snape in AWS isn't a father figure or a pal, isn't someone to whom Harry can or will go for sympathy or comfort in the way that he might go to Sirius. He's not going to make anything easy for Harry. What he is is a companion in the fight, a fellow soldier, someone who understands without Harry having to explain. Snape gets it, in a way that one could hardly imagine someone like, say, Cho Chang, or even Ron, getting it. Snape is no Remus Lupin -- he's not someone who Harry cares for because he is kind or caring or sympathetic. Harry's respect and affection for Snape come from somewhere else, somewhere different from his feelings for others, somewhere deeper. As Harry thinks to himself when comparing his feelings for Sirius and Snape - Severus is ... Severus.
Of course, this is looking at it all from Harry's perspective -- why Harry might want a relationship with Snape. The situation looks slightly different from Snape's side. Like I said before, it's hard to deny that there is something slightly ... squicky, maybe, or at least questionable, about the idea of an older professor lusting after a 16 year old boy -- and in this case the attraction dates at least back to Harry's third year at Hogwarts when Harry is about 13 (see the first story in the sequence, A Most Disquieting Tea), and Snape first kisses Harry when he's only 15 (see the third story, Almost, at Times, a Fool, and the Fourth, Like a Glass). Certainly, if you are someone who thinks a 30-something man's attraction to a 16 year old boy is "wrong" as a rule, it is unlikely that anything in the fic will change your mind -- Telanu doesn't appear to be on a mission to justify such relationships or to convince you that they're "right" in any larger sense.
But for me -- well, for better or for worse I have always been a moral relativist and a believer that all things are possible under earth and sky; there are no "nevers." And though, as I said before, I often can't get into young-Harry/Snape stories, AWS seems to be the exception that proves the rule (and I've got to say, it's going to be damn hard for anything else to live up to this standard). Telanu has created a situation in which Snape's attraction doesn't squick me, in which I am able to buy into this thirty-something man's attraction to this 16 year old boy. Not just buy into -- become totally emotionally invested in. It's not that the fact that Harry is less than half Snape's age is irrelevant or minimized in the fic -- quite the contrary. It's just that, when reading the fic, I didn't care -- I believed in the relationship and wanted it to work even though Snape is Harry's much older professor.
Maybe part of the reason for this is that it's pretty clear that Snape doesn't want to feel attraction to Harry. He's no pedophile -- he knows that Harry's too young, he believes that seducing a child would make him a "monster," he realizes that this could be the stupidest thing he's ever done. But Harry seems to exert an almost magnetic attraction, one for which Snape is willing to risk his reputation and even his life. He's drawn to Harry in a way that is confusing, conflicting, and somewhat terrifying for him -- he seems not to know what's hit him sometimes, he's overwhelmed by his own intensity of feeling. So I want to believe -- Telanu made me believe -- that however sordid and detestable such an affair might be if it were any other two people, Harry and Snape are different, and this relationship, this attraction, is something special, something rare, something precious and beautiful -- something that at times seems almost inevitable and certainly right. How else to explain their somewhat inexplicable attraction toward each other -- not to mention, for example, the way Harry senses Snape's magic "swirling all around him, caressing against his own magic, touching and mixing and dancing" and "lighting up with bright and beautiful flares wherever their bodies touched"; or, for that matter, Dumbledore's mysterious tolerance of the relationship.
Harry and Snape both know what it's like to be alone. Harry observes that "Severus probably didn't have a lot of people who loved him, just as Harry didn't have a lot of people to love. They fitted each other in strange ways ...." They've both had so little for so long -- I want them to have each other. This is what Telanu has done to me. Do I actually believe that a 16 year old and a grown man can find "true love"? It's hard for me, still. But there are no "nevers" in real life. And anyway, ultimately the issue here isn't "real life" -- whether a "real" 16-year-old and his 30-something professor could make a relationship work. Slash is fantasy for me. No, the real issue is whether Telanu has succeeded in making me believe that this relationship could work. And she has. If it was going to happen, it would happen this way. She has made me a believer.
And I can hardly review this fic without mentioning that the relationship she's made me believe in is hot -- not just hot, but blistering. Yeah, let's get superficial now -- but hey, this is slash after all; if I wanted curtain blowing -- which I most assuredly don't -- I'd read something else. For better or worse, sex -- smut -- is a really important element of my enjoyment of slash. Unlike many HP fans, I don't find chan arousing in the slightest, and I'm generally uncomfortable with sex between people of widely varying age and experience. But just as she does with the relationship in general, Telanu makes the sex work. Work -- what am I talking about? Hell, she doesn't just make it work, she makes it flame. This is scorching stuff. Telanu has a gift for writing sex, and in AWS she simply outdoes herself. The sex scenes in AWS are truly among the best I've ever read. Part of what makes them so good, in fact, is that they're not just "scenes." The sex is completely integrated and integral, inseparable from the story, an essential part of the story; and the characters are totally and entirely themselves in bed. The sex gives us insights into the characters -- we understand them better, care for them more, after seeing them in bed together. And did I mention that it's hot? Particularly memorable for me was the description of the first time Snape ... fucks (not a word they use in this fic, but I can't seem to come up with a better one) Harry. It's just breathtaking -- hot and beautiful and deep and sweet and sexy. How can Telanu so effectively and (seemingly) effortlessly and perfectly convey the emotions and the physical feelings? There's no awkwardness or tediousness or repetitiveness whatsoever. As I say, she has a gift, and in AWS it shines.
So what Telanu has managed to do, despite my resistance, is to lure me into becoming hugely emotionally invested in this relationship -- a state I'm not entirely comfortable with. What I want is for the Tea series ultimately to be a relationship story (always my favorite kind). Of course there's Voldemort, and Death Eaters, and other plot-stuff that I haven't mentioned, even though it's all engrossing and wonderfully written. These things are important, don't get me wrong. But what I want is for this entire series of fics to be, in the end, a story of Snape and Harry coming together. This doesn't mean there can't be obstacles and angst along the way, and I have a strong feeling there will be -- Telanu all but tells us that Harry will leave Snape for a while, though it's not clear what that will mean. But I want the ending to be happy insofar as Harry and Snape are concerned -- and by that I mean not that I want everything to be perfect, but simply that I want them to be together.
The thing is, though, I can't know if that's going to happen, because it is not finished. I have a great deal of anxiety and trepidation about this, and indeed, part of me is fighting hard to minimize my emotional investment, saying hey, don't get yourself too involved here, the risk is too great. Because what if one of them dies, as in Cybele's If You Are Prepared sequence? Or what if neither dies, but they don't end up together? For me either outcome would be crushing, and what's more, I'd never be able to pick up the stories again, no matter how brilliantly written or conceived they are.
Or equally horrifying -- what if she doesn't finish? I don't ever do well with suspense, as I noted above, and with an unfinished series like this it's not like I can read ahead and eliminate it. Works in progress leave me in the highly uncomfortable position -- one in which I often find myself, being someone who not only is constitutionally not a writer, but also seems unable to use my own imagination to fill in gaps left by others -- of being at the author's mercy, of my emotional state being subject to something that I cannot control or even affect. Obviously this is my own problem, not Telanu's; but it occurred to me after reading AWS that maybe I should have waited to read it, because now, having become deeply emotionally invested, the potential for pain and disappointment is so great.
But no, on second thought, I simply can't regret it. AWS is so gorgeous and so unforgettable on so many levels, such a remarkable accomplishment, so brilliant and exquisite, that it sings in my mind. I'm far, far more eager for the last two Tea stories than I am for the last two JKR books, far more interested in knowing how these stories turn out than in knowing what happens to Harry in canon. As difficult as it is for me to be hopeful -- I'm definitely a glass-half-empty kind of gal, which is probably why I like, no, need those happy endings so much -- I'm going to make the attempt; I'm going to force myself to believe, or at least hope, that Telanu will finish and that the ending will be the type I want. If not I'll have to revise all my views; but in the meantime, I want to bask in its magnificence for a while.
As usual, I've gone on for way too long, and I definitely wouldn't blame anyone who gave up somewhere in the middle. But I just couldn't stop myself; there was so very much I wanted to say, needed to say (and this wasn't the half of it!). What an amazing accomplishment AWS is. What a gift Telanu has given us with this fic. How awed I am by her amazing talent, and how grateful for the pleasure she's given me. It feels greedy to want more, but I do. I will pray to the fannish gods (and I'd even beg shamelessly, if it would help) that she will find the will and desire to continue.