Deserving Chapter 30
Chapter 30, as befits its milestone number, is a real corker.
The three men turned expecting to see Millicent beam with happiness but instead they found her face contorting into horror before she fled to the kitchen.
She had realised what a Sue she'd become.
“Sir, all these things are true but what you and Mr. Sly fail to remember is that Millicent is a married woman,” explained Severus.
Harry blinked trying to bring his world into focus again. Millicent was married, Millicent married to her Guide, Millicent was married to Joseph Lang, how?
Because that's how the whole "Guides" business works. That's why you're married to someone who has a cock, remember?
Why? No! were all thoughts swirling in Harry’s head.
He had also realised how OOC he was. Canon reasserted itself. The End.
“She will petition a divorce,” proclaimed Harry.
Harry would walk 500 miles to get out of this fic.
It wasn’t fair. Millicent had never hurt a fly
From Millicent's only major canon appearance on page 144 of Chamber of Secrets: "... Millicent had Hermione in a headlock and Hermione was whimpering in pain." I mean really. Of all the characters to choose as her delicate flower of Sueness, she goes with Millicent Bulstrode.
But Severus saw no way around it. Millicent was a married witch. She could not marry another while still married to Lang.
Tell that to LoPEF, who had Harry and Hermione get married before evil!Ron had been legally declared dead.
Sly took her in his arms. “Millicent, I promised you I would take care of everything that I would make everything all right.”
“No, you can’t kill him. You are not like them. You are not like him. Please, tell me you are not like them,” she said with tears falling yet again.
Those words shook Sly to the core. No, he could not kill the man that kept him from his family. Yes, they were his family. He may have no legal claim on Millicent and Mathew but they were his family and their respect meant everything to him. He kissed her forehead.
“No, love, I will not kill him. We will find a way. There has to be a way.”
Of course they'll kill him. He's seemingly the big bad of this fic, not that we've seen much of him lately. Aside from his elite attack wizards who go around casting Tara's narmful bondage on anything that moves, and I really don't think much to their terrifying might.
Severus was in the bedroom when Harry came back and to his relief Harry arrived with a grin on his face.
“Apparently they can have a union ceremony. One that will be accepted and respected by their peers,” recited Harry. “According to Hermione, if the community in which they live accepts them as a couple, then to all effects they are married to that community. Does that make sense to you?” he asked his husband.
“Yes, sir it does. I believe that it happened when Australia and the Americas were being colonized. People, that were already married but had no hope of reuniting with their spouses made unions with new partners.”
Yay bigamy! I don't think colonial history is taught at Hogwarts, but what do I know?
Harry looked at his sitting room full of friends carrying gifts for the couple. One by one he smiled at those present: Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, George and Charlie, Bill and Fleur, Percy and Penelope, Ron and Hermione, Kings and Draco, Minerva, Hagrid and Poppy, and finally Mr. Creevy and Dennis. Then he turned to speak to his husband.
A big CWID for keeping Percy with Penelope. I know it's not canon, but dammit if I still don't have a soft spot for that ship.
“We are all here to celebrate your love,” explained Snape.
“Yeah, we are your peers and we acknowledge your love and union,” added Harry.
Again they turned to Snape.
“Mrs. Hermione Weasley found that it is an old practice done in extreme cases such as yours,” offered the professor.
Who, as the author pointed out in the previous chapter, is no longer a professor. Besides, haven't we already had this exposition?
Millicent looked at him lost for words. Was this really happening? Was she about to be Mark Sly’s partner in life?
Yes, because it's been foreshadowed with all the subtlety I expect from this author.
And then it all came back to her: Mark Sly had been married to one of the most beautiful witches of our times and without knowing the words tumbled out of her mouth: “… she was so beautiful.”
But not as beautiful as Millicent-Sue.
Millicent looked up at Harry. “Tell him.”
Harry had no idea what she was on about. “Sorry?”
“Tell him how I was the ugliest girl in our class,” demanded Millicent of Harry.
Harry had to blink a couple of times in order to process the words coming out of her mouth. Ugly? What in the world made her think she was ugly? All of a sudden ugly seemed such a childish word to him. She was not ugly. She was amazing. She had been through so much and survived. She was a survivor.
More to the point, she was a Sue.
“But you know I am…”
“Amazing,” interjected Snape, making everyone in the room smile warmly at her.
There's a thing about interjections. If it's not an interjection you look silly saying it is, but if (as in this case) it actually is you don't need to tell us that it is because it's obvious.
Richard called out to Mathew.
“Look, Baby, you got Dada,” he said, pointing at Sly.
Richard knows what's going on. Make a note of this rather advanced - one might even go so far as to say Stu-like - level of development for later.
Two weeks later Harry was at work when he overheard two Aurors speaking about a Marked One who had escaped. What really captured his interest was the name: Vincent Crabbe.
“Vincent Crabbe?” Harry said, not realizing he was saying it out loud.
“Yeah, that’s right, Harry, you know him?” asked one of his coworkers.
“Yeah, we went to school together. Last time I saw him he looked as if he was at the doors of death. Can’t believe he is still alive.”
Canon-wise he shouldn't be at all, but whatever.
“Well if you can call having sex with an elf in order to survive, life then I guess he has one.”
This image of Crabbe in flagrante delicto with a house-elf would be disgusting if it wasn't so hilarious. The mind boggles. It really does.
“Yeah, it’s happening all the time. The Marked Ones know that the elves are the only ones capable of taking them to safety so they enamor them in order to gain their freedom. It’s really quite cruel. The poor elf lives in constant agony once they have taken their Marked Ones to safety. The whole going against their master bit,” explained the second Auror.
Not to mention the whole, you know, having sex with a human. I don't even want to contemplate the mechanics of that.
These words were whirling around in Harry’s head. Can an elf and wizard really have a relationship? And then it struck him like lightning, Kreacher!
Cast your mind back to Chapter 2:
I wouldn't put it past this writer to ship Snape/Kreacher.
Now this isn't actually happening, but when a silly joke manages to accidentally foreshadow a major plot development the story has problems. Harry confronts Severus:
“Where were you?”
“At the glade,” answered Snape, having no idea where his husband’s anger was coming from.
“Glade? What glade?”
“It is Tuesday. It is Kreacher’s day off.”
“Yeah, well, I noticed it isn’t his day off from you.”
Severus was still lost.
“On his days off and weather permitting, Kreacher always takes us to a glade in the Forbidden Forest.”
“I don’t recall ever given you permission to go to any glade,” countered Harry with anger seeping through his words.
Yes, but he never denied permission either. The idea of the Forbidden Forest as Severus' Happy Place is self-evidently ridiculous, but that's beside the point.
Snape had to think fast. He did not remember Harry giving him permission but he knew he would not have done it without his consent and he had been doing it for almost three years now. Then it all came back to him.
Almost three years, which means that Richard is two years and three months old. His level of development is all over the place.
“You told me I was to do anything Kreacher told me to do,” explained Severus once the memory was clear in his mind.
“I DID NO SUCH THING!” roared Harry.
ALLCAPS are go!
Severus closed his eyes, trying to not give into the shouting match.
“First morning I was here and I wanted to help with the chores, you told me it was up to Kreacher and I was to do everything he told me,” said Snape in a whisper.
“You totally took that out of context,” accused Harry.
Like totally, dude!
“Really, there is an elf suffering un-imaginable pain just to keep your little snake safe.”
“You cannot be falling for lies put out by Single to further disgrace MY snakes,” said Snape in what felt to Harry as a demand.
Harry doesn't need Single's help to find Severus' snake disgraceful.
“You are going to stand there and tell me that Kreacher would not do it for you if you asked it of him. That you haven’t ensured that he cares for you enough to live a life of agony in order to make you happy.”
Severus was gasping, be it for air or for words, he could not say, but both were evading him.
“Kreacher… Kreacher is a noble servant…” and making a conscious decision to let it all out, “whom I would be more than flattered to have him have any feelings for me, but as you have said over and over again I am but an ugly, worthless, no good, scum of the earth, who cannot ever hope to be loved,” Severus said as he turned and went up the stairs.
Is this implying that Severus would like to get it on with Kreacher given half the chance? D:
Harry was usually clueless
No arguments there.
Kreacher, who had heard the conversation from the nursery and so popped onto the staircase for a better listen, groaned in disgust. What elf would ever find it appealing to couple with a human?
Kreacher is once again the sanest character in the fic.
That night when Harry flew into his room he found it empty, but of course he knew where to look. Sure enough, Snape was in the kitchen wearing his purple nightgown with the violet roses imprinted on it, reading a book.
“Snape, I am not sleeping on the floor. You have no reason to take this attitude. I simply wanted to know where my family was. I have the right, don’t I?’
But Snape did not answer.
Severus is acting the petulant child.
“Snape!”
Snape lifted his head out of the book and very methodically turned to look at Harry.
“Shall I go up and prepare myself for YOUR pleasure?” asked Snape with piercing black eyes.
Harry was enraged by Snape’s attitude. He approached him and took him by the arm. Severus was struggling so Harry did not dare and apparate them. He was dragging Severus through the sitting area: “I will not put up with you. I have all the right in the world to question who you’ve been with and where.” Severus was not arguing but he was trying to get his husband’s hands off of him when he heard the little voice.
“Bad Dada, Bad Dada,” said Richard extending his little fingers and shooting twinkles. “No, hurt my Papa,” he demanded, casting more feeble twinkles.
Richard understands the situation and knows what to do about it. Why? He's fucking two! Tell me this kid isn't a Gary Stu in the making.
“Dada is yelling at you,” said a very angry Richard.
“No, Dada is just being obnoxious. Can you believe he wants me to go flying with him on his broom?”
Richard looked at his dada with a wicked smile across his face and laughed.
“Dada take Papa up, up, up. Zoom, zoom, zoom,” he babbled, moving his hand in an upward movement.
The author can't keep track of his level of development and corresponding lexical register within the same scene. One moment he's talking in perfect grammar and the next he lapses into baby-talk. It's like Sophisticated As Goo-Goo.
“Yay!” cheered Richard.
You know the drill.
Continued...
The three men turned expecting to see Millicent beam with happiness but instead they found her face contorting into horror before she fled to the kitchen.
She had realised what a Sue she'd become.
“Sir, all these things are true but what you and Mr. Sly fail to remember is that Millicent is a married woman,” explained Severus.
Harry blinked trying to bring his world into focus again. Millicent was married, Millicent married to her Guide, Millicent was married to Joseph Lang, how?
Because that's how the whole "Guides" business works. That's why you're married to someone who has a cock, remember?
Why? No! were all thoughts swirling in Harry’s head.
He had also realised how OOC he was. Canon reasserted itself. The End.
“She will petition a divorce,” proclaimed Harry.
Harry would walk 500 miles to get out of this fic.
It wasn’t fair. Millicent had never hurt a fly
From Millicent's only major canon appearance on page 144 of Chamber of Secrets: "... Millicent had Hermione in a headlock and Hermione was whimpering in pain." I mean really. Of all the characters to choose as her delicate flower of Sueness, she goes with Millicent Bulstrode.
But Severus saw no way around it. Millicent was a married witch. She could not marry another while still married to Lang.
Tell that to LoPEF, who had Harry and Hermione get married before evil!Ron had been legally declared dead.
Sly took her in his arms. “Millicent, I promised you I would take care of everything that I would make everything all right.”
“No, you can’t kill him. You are not like them. You are not like him. Please, tell me you are not like them,” she said with tears falling yet again.
Those words shook Sly to the core. No, he could not kill the man that kept him from his family. Yes, they were his family. He may have no legal claim on Millicent and Mathew but they were his family and their respect meant everything to him. He kissed her forehead.
“No, love, I will not kill him. We will find a way. There has to be a way.”
Of course they'll kill him. He's seemingly the big bad of this fic, not that we've seen much of him lately. Aside from his elite attack wizards who go around casting Tara's narmful bondage on anything that moves, and I really don't think much to their terrifying might.
Severus was in the bedroom when Harry came back and to his relief Harry arrived with a grin on his face.
“Apparently they can have a union ceremony. One that will be accepted and respected by their peers,” recited Harry. “According to Hermione, if the community in which they live accepts them as a couple, then to all effects they are married to that community. Does that make sense to you?” he asked his husband.
“Yes, sir it does. I believe that it happened when Australia and the Americas were being colonized. People, that were already married but had no hope of reuniting with their spouses made unions with new partners.”
Yay bigamy! I don't think colonial history is taught at Hogwarts, but what do I know?
Harry looked at his sitting room full of friends carrying gifts for the couple. One by one he smiled at those present: Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, George and Charlie, Bill and Fleur, Percy and Penelope, Ron and Hermione, Kings and Draco, Minerva, Hagrid and Poppy, and finally Mr. Creevy and Dennis. Then he turned to speak to his husband.
A big CWID for keeping Percy with Penelope. I know it's not canon, but dammit if I still don't have a soft spot for that ship.
“We are all here to celebrate your love,” explained Snape.
“Yeah, we are your peers and we acknowledge your love and union,” added Harry.
Again they turned to Snape.
“Mrs. Hermione Weasley found that it is an old practice done in extreme cases such as yours,” offered the professor.
Who, as the author pointed out in the previous chapter, is no longer a professor. Besides, haven't we already had this exposition?
Millicent looked at him lost for words. Was this really happening? Was she about to be Mark Sly’s partner in life?
Yes, because it's been foreshadowed with all the subtlety I expect from this author.
And then it all came back to her: Mark Sly had been married to one of the most beautiful witches of our times and without knowing the words tumbled out of her mouth: “… she was so beautiful.”
But not as beautiful as Millicent-Sue.
Millicent looked up at Harry. “Tell him.”
Harry had no idea what she was on about. “Sorry?”
“Tell him how I was the ugliest girl in our class,” demanded Millicent of Harry.
Harry had to blink a couple of times in order to process the words coming out of her mouth. Ugly? What in the world made her think she was ugly? All of a sudden ugly seemed such a childish word to him. She was not ugly. She was amazing. She had been through so much and survived. She was a survivor.
More to the point, she was a Sue.
“But you know I am…”
“Amazing,” interjected Snape, making everyone in the room smile warmly at her.
There's a thing about interjections. If it's not an interjection you look silly saying it is, but if (as in this case) it actually is you don't need to tell us that it is because it's obvious.
Richard called out to Mathew.
“Look, Baby, you got Dada,” he said, pointing at Sly.
Richard knows what's going on. Make a note of this rather advanced - one might even go so far as to say Stu-like - level of development for later.
Two weeks later Harry was at work when he overheard two Aurors speaking about a Marked One who had escaped. What really captured his interest was the name: Vincent Crabbe.
“Vincent Crabbe?” Harry said, not realizing he was saying it out loud.
“Yeah, that’s right, Harry, you know him?” asked one of his coworkers.
“Yeah, we went to school together. Last time I saw him he looked as if he was at the doors of death. Can’t believe he is still alive.”
Canon-wise he shouldn't be at all, but whatever.
“Well if you can call having sex with an elf in order to survive, life then I guess he has one.”
This image of Crabbe in flagrante delicto with a house-elf would be disgusting if it wasn't so hilarious. The mind boggles. It really does.
“Yeah, it’s happening all the time. The Marked Ones know that the elves are the only ones capable of taking them to safety so they enamor them in order to gain their freedom. It’s really quite cruel. The poor elf lives in constant agony once they have taken their Marked Ones to safety. The whole going against their master bit,” explained the second Auror.
Not to mention the whole, you know, having sex with a human. I don't even want to contemplate the mechanics of that.
These words were whirling around in Harry’s head. Can an elf and wizard really have a relationship? And then it struck him like lightning, Kreacher!
Cast your mind back to Chapter 2:
I wouldn't put it past this writer to ship Snape/Kreacher.
Now this isn't actually happening, but when a silly joke manages to accidentally foreshadow a major plot development the story has problems. Harry confronts Severus:
“Where were you?”
“At the glade,” answered Snape, having no idea where his husband’s anger was coming from.
“Glade? What glade?”
“It is Tuesday. It is Kreacher’s day off.”
“Yeah, well, I noticed it isn’t his day off from you.”
Severus was still lost.
“On his days off and weather permitting, Kreacher always takes us to a glade in the Forbidden Forest.”
“I don’t recall ever given you permission to go to any glade,” countered Harry with anger seeping through his words.
Yes, but he never denied permission either. The idea of the Forbidden Forest as Severus' Happy Place is self-evidently ridiculous, but that's beside the point.
Snape had to think fast. He did not remember Harry giving him permission but he knew he would not have done it without his consent and he had been doing it for almost three years now. Then it all came back to him.
Almost three years, which means that Richard is two years and three months old. His level of development is all over the place.
“You told me I was to do anything Kreacher told me to do,” explained Severus once the memory was clear in his mind.
“I DID NO SUCH THING!” roared Harry.
ALLCAPS are go!
Severus closed his eyes, trying to not give into the shouting match.
“First morning I was here and I wanted to help with the chores, you told me it was up to Kreacher and I was to do everything he told me,” said Snape in a whisper.
“You totally took that out of context,” accused Harry.
Like totally, dude!
“Really, there is an elf suffering un-imaginable pain just to keep your little snake safe.”
“You cannot be falling for lies put out by Single to further disgrace MY snakes,” said Snape in what felt to Harry as a demand.
Harry doesn't need Single's help to find Severus' snake disgraceful.
“You are going to stand there and tell me that Kreacher would not do it for you if you asked it of him. That you haven’t ensured that he cares for you enough to live a life of agony in order to make you happy.”
Severus was gasping, be it for air or for words, he could not say, but both were evading him.
“Kreacher… Kreacher is a noble servant…” and making a conscious decision to let it all out, “whom I would be more than flattered to have him have any feelings for me, but as you have said over and over again I am but an ugly, worthless, no good, scum of the earth, who cannot ever hope to be loved,” Severus said as he turned and went up the stairs.
Is this implying that Severus would like to get it on with Kreacher given half the chance? D:
Harry was usually clueless
No arguments there.
Kreacher, who had heard the conversation from the nursery and so popped onto the staircase for a better listen, groaned in disgust. What elf would ever find it appealing to couple with a human?
Kreacher is once again the sanest character in the fic.
That night when Harry flew into his room he found it empty, but of course he knew where to look. Sure enough, Snape was in the kitchen wearing his purple nightgown with the violet roses imprinted on it, reading a book.
“Snape, I am not sleeping on the floor. You have no reason to take this attitude. I simply wanted to know where my family was. I have the right, don’t I?’
But Snape did not answer.
Severus is acting the petulant child.
“Snape!”
Snape lifted his head out of the book and very methodically turned to look at Harry.
“Shall I go up and prepare myself for YOUR pleasure?” asked Snape with piercing black eyes.
Harry was enraged by Snape’s attitude. He approached him and took him by the arm. Severus was struggling so Harry did not dare and apparate them. He was dragging Severus through the sitting area: “I will not put up with you. I have all the right in the world to question who you’ve been with and where.” Severus was not arguing but he was trying to get his husband’s hands off of him when he heard the little voice.
“Bad Dada, Bad Dada,” said Richard extending his little fingers and shooting twinkles. “No, hurt my Papa,” he demanded, casting more feeble twinkles.
Richard understands the situation and knows what to do about it. Why? He's fucking two! Tell me this kid isn't a Gary Stu in the making.
“Dada is yelling at you,” said a very angry Richard.
“No, Dada is just being obnoxious. Can you believe he wants me to go flying with him on his broom?”
Richard looked at his dada with a wicked smile across his face and laughed.
“Dada take Papa up, up, up. Zoom, zoom, zoom,” he babbled, moving his hand in an upward movement.
The author can't keep track of his level of development and corresponding lexical register within the same scene. One moment he's talking in perfect grammar and the next he lapses into baby-talk. It's like Sophisticated As Goo-Goo.
“Yay!” cheered Richard.
You know the drill.
Continued...