Deserving Chapter 51
The latest instalment has a rather rushed feel to it, which as one of the reviewers pointed out does actually add to the sense of urgency. If this was indeed intentional then it works to enough of an extent that I'd give credit where it's due, but as we'll see that comes at the expense of continuity. On a similarly positive note, the author appears to be sick of epithets and is back to using everyone's names. I wonder if the now-departed beta was responsible for those, or the author just learned better.
We open with Harry and Ron discussing Serena-Sue's birthday party on the Featureless Plain of Disembodied Dialogue.
“Did you see Arthur's face? Did you?”
“Yes, Harry, Dad had a blast at Serena’s party,” responded Ron rolling his eyes.
Harry had been talking about the party all morning. Ron couldn’t understand what Harry and King’s obsession with birthday parties was.
Deserving is obsessed with birthday parties, to the extent that it appears as though the children haven't aged if a party isn't shown, and has one of its occasional flashes of self-awareness that are quite jarring against the backdrop of a fic that normally takes itself painfully seriously even when characters are spewing lines like "I HATE THAT YOU HAVE A COCK!" I doubt Harry would call Mr Weasley Arthur in conversation with Ron either.
“All Aurors must report to Diagon Ally immediately,” came the booming voice within the Aurors headquarters.
So are they in the Auror headquarters, or outside and the voice coming from within, and whose voice is it?
Harry and Ron reacted on their training. Soon the floos at the Ministry were being inundated by Aurors.
Must be very loud if they can hear it from anywhere they'd have to take the Floo from, but then again this is a Potterverse in which people Apparate rather than walking up and down stairs. Of course, if the voice were that of Deserving!Kingsley he wouldn't need any magical assistance to be heard wherever he wanted to be. POTTERRR!
On second thoughts I think, though the description is vague, that the author means that the Floos are being inundated with Aurors trying to get in rather than emerge from.
They did not have to touch the brick wall it was open to all the Aurors that were responding to the call. No sooner had they passed the wall did they see the great big screen in the middle of the street way above all the stores. It rivaled the one at the Quiddtich World Cup.
It's weird that Harry, Ron or whoever the current POV character is calls on that memory as a referent, because I know I think of sporting events when I've been summoned to an emergency meeting. That said, the author gets points for remembering the existence of Quidditch.
There before their eyes Ron and Harry could see Richard, Nicky and Matthew standing in a row. They seemed quite upset when all of a sudden they raised their hands and out of thin air they made brooms appear. The crowed “ooo and aaaaa” at what they were seeing on the giant screen.
The misplaced quotation marks make it look as though they're literally saying "ooo and aaaaa", like some kind of strange chant. That aside: it's propaganda, not a firework display.
Soon the three boys were flying over a pond. They were not wearing the same clothing but the crowed did not seem to notice the minor discrepancy.
This fic has the better part of two thousand +++++ ratings on the Uber-Pit testifying that there's a lot of people who don't notice continuity errors.
These were little children between the ages of 4 and 5 and they were doing magic that most grown up wizards could not achieve. You accio a broom you don’t make it appear.
You don't Accio a broom either. That's a tactic Harry devised to get past the Hungarian Horntail, not a standard operating procedure.
“Yes! My fellow citizens. What we are witnessing is scary. I myself tremble to see the children of these Death Eaters growing in power. In Black and Dark Magic!”
Which are two different things, apparently.
“Lies!” yelled Harry without thinking of his actions. “You are lying. You took those out of context. My son can’t make a broom appear nor more than any of us can. It was a reducto spell.
It really wasn't.
That is all. Any of us could have done that.”
“Any of our four year olds?” asked Single with a smirk.
Where did he suddenly appear from? I love how scant lines after the author drops in an actually quite funny reference to continuity errors, her own continuity goes up the wall.
“My husband is an innocent man. Without his help the light would…”
INNOCENT MAN!” roared Single.
The author has now written her own character OOC, insofar as that's possible, because Single has hitherto been one of the few characters in the fic who's not prone to fits of ALLCAPS. He's been the smug officious type, kind of like an evil Sir Humphrey only nowhere near as awesome, and every inch the perfect Slytherin were it not for the fact that he hates the entire house and everything about it.
Wait, I've just unearthed the next plot twist, haven't I? Of course Single will turn out to have been in Slytherin. I mean there's no other house that fits. He's a coward, so no Gryffindor; loyal only to himself, so no Hufflepuff; doesn't seem especially intellectual so probably no Ravenclaw; and not a Gary Stu so no Sparklypoo.
When they looked up at the screen they saw little Serena in her pretty birthday outfit one scene and turning into a fawn the next scene.
I hope this was an ESL issue and the author honestly didn't know what "birthday suit" means in English.
“Do you really want children of Malfoy, Snape and Goyle growing up to become the next Dark Lords?
Wait, Goyle? Wasn't his arse-baby's death infamous within the Deservingverse and the trigger for the entire marriage law? How the holy hell does Single expect to convince the crowd that Matthew né Sin is Goyle's kid? Because this is Deserving and everyone's a complete idiot, of course. Single might have been in Ravenclaw after all, because someone must be and it's not like he's got much competition.
“Harry, you’ve got to get your family to safety. Kings already on it. Luckily, the idiot thinks Matthew is Goyle’s child so he will have no clue to where to start looking and I have just the place to take them.
Single honestly thinks that Matthew is Goyle's dead arse-baby? I take it back: he's just as stupid as everyone else. He's only the Ministry official tasked with registering the births of the Marked Ones' kids, after all.
“Forbidden Forest, Forbidden Forest. Why does it always have to be the Forbidden Forest,” cried Ron as he resized his broom and took off to Hagrid’s hut.
That's Ron actually being in character. I remain sceptical about the resizing brooms, no less now that the practice seems to have spawned an entire plot point. Does the author actually believe that everyone in the Potterverse carries a pencil-sized broom in their pocket at all time rather than storing them full size in the broom shed like the books seem to imply?
“Severus! Severus where are you?” Harry yelled as soon as he entered his sitting room.
Severus walked down the steps. “Sir, why are you here so early. Is there something wrong?”
Why's he still calling him Sir? CONTINUITY DAMMIT!
But Harry had no time to explain. He had a plan and was barking orders left and right. “Kneel!”
This isn't going where you might think, which is probably just as well. It's been so long that we're probably due an especially lulzy round of buggery in Chapter 52.
“Accio Severus’ wand.”
Severus had no idea what was going on. Why did Harry call for his wand?
Because he was too lazy to go upstairs and pick it up.
In all the years that they had been together the wand was barely mention much less summoned.
He's been more interested in his other wand. And hating that he has it.
“I Harry James Potter give you, Severus Snape, your magical powers back. ”
I wonder if the sudden advancement of the plot has anything to do with the ex-beta pointing out that even she thinks the story's been in neutral for the past however many chapters.
Severus body began to shake and soon he fell to the ground unconscious. Harry felt his heart stop beating.
The End.
It was a way too familiar scene, one that he did not care to relive.
Call-backs are more effective when there's actual continuity, you know.
“Harry… I… I don’t understand. Why?”
Harry was so happy to see his husband responding but he had little time for explanations.
“Severus I will explain once we get to safety,” he said lifting his husband up with him. “Start using your wand to pack the children’s things.
It actually makes sense that they'd use magic here, because they are in a hurry and a packing spell would accomplish it quicker than doing it normally.
All of the sudden he saw the floo flair up. They both pointed their wands at it and they were amazed to see that no one came through but there in the fireplace was a small beaded handbag. Harry recognized it at once. He picked it up. “Thank you, Hermione,” and he gave it to Severus. “It’s a bottomless pit. She spelled it so you could fit a small country in there. Go! Pack as much as you can.”
Nice Deathly Hallows reference, but what about continuity? If Ron has gone straight to the Forbidden Forest and Harry went straight home, who's told Hermione that they need to use her handbag?
“Kreacher!”
Snap!
I thought "pop" was the noise house-elves made. They'll be crackling next.
“Kreacher is doing this right away,” said the elf with great pride.
“No, listen, you must get your things together we may never be able to come back. Single is going to get himself elected as Prime Minister. Do you understand what that means?”
It means that canon has left the building. There's no Prime Minister in the wizarding world: the Minister for Magic is in charge. I wonder how and when Single built up a strong enough support base to run for the top job.
Soon Richard came down running. “Papa! Papa! Is it true are we going to the…” but he stopped when he saw his Harry. “Never mind, Serena, Dada is home early. We’re not going,” he said showing his disappointment.
“Oy, why can’t we go to the glade?” asked Harry.
Richard looked at his Dada with a stunned look on his face. “But you never come with us to the glad.”
Harry considered his son’s words. In two months he would turn five and he was right.
How is he nearly five? The timeline of this fic is complete bollocks.
Harry had never taken a Tuesday off to go to the glad with his family but this was no time for regrets. “Well, there is always a first time.”
The floo started to flair and Harry and Severus pointed their wands at it. Each casting protective spells so no one could come through.
“Papa! You have wand!” said Richard in amazement.
So is Richard (however old he is!) baby-talking or not?
Harry noticed as Richard clung to Severus’ trousers. He was visibly frighten and it was pulling at Harry’s heart. “Richard, I need a favor from you. We are going to have to travel in two brooms and you know how Papa doesn’t do brooms.”
Richard turned to look at is Dada following his train of thought and shook his head.
“I am going to need you to fly the broom for Dada. Do you think you can keep up with me?”
For Papa, surely? Even the author can't remember which is which, apparently.
“Now, Richard, I know you are a great flyer
We shouldn't, in the wake of Serena being revealed as the epic Sue she is, forget that her elder brother is almost as bad. He might not be an Animagus at a ludicrously young age, but he's a good enough broom pilot to be trusted on a mission of life and death importance.
“Let’s go,” said Harry mounting Richard on his fastest broom. When Severus got on Harry placed the cloak over both of them. Severus pulled it off. “NO!”
“Perfect, Richard, you must be quiet no matter what you see. Is that understood?”
“Yes, dada,” and quickly brought his hand to his mouth realizing he had spoken.
Oh, that old gag. Not scraping the barrel so much as stripping it down and running the bottom through an industrial pressure washer.
“Let’s go,” said Harry guiding his son up the stairways and out of the gable in the attic. Soon Single and his men were hot on what seem to be only Harry’s broom.
Single's there himself? Since when was he a hands-on action villain?
Harry had hoped that they would have more of an advantage. He would have to rely on his abilities on the broom to get rid of Single and his men but to Harry’s dismay they were all on brooms as fast as Harry’s. Harry felt a spell that missed him by an inch. They were too close and this was getting too dangerous. He would have to surrender and hope that Severus would have the good sense to go on without him.
I say "action", but the thrilling conclusion of Dark Secrets is positively epic next to this. So Harry has now been caught by Single and his cronies, who are all completely useless anyway because they only know one spell that only affects Marked Ones and elves. Even if they weren't total wusses, the author must realise how cheap it would be to kill off the defeater of Voldemort at the hands of a maddened secretary. So we're left with not so much a cliffhanger as a gentle slope.
Continued...
We open with Harry and Ron discussing Serena-Sue's birthday party on the Featureless Plain of Disembodied Dialogue.
“Did you see Arthur's face? Did you?”
“Yes, Harry, Dad had a blast at Serena’s party,” responded Ron rolling his eyes.
Harry had been talking about the party all morning. Ron couldn’t understand what Harry and King’s obsession with birthday parties was.
Deserving is obsessed with birthday parties, to the extent that it appears as though the children haven't aged if a party isn't shown, and has one of its occasional flashes of self-awareness that are quite jarring against the backdrop of a fic that normally takes itself painfully seriously even when characters are spewing lines like "I HATE THAT YOU HAVE A COCK!" I doubt Harry would call Mr Weasley Arthur in conversation with Ron either.
“All Aurors must report to Diagon Ally immediately,” came the booming voice within the Aurors headquarters.
So are they in the Auror headquarters, or outside and the voice coming from within, and whose voice is it?
Harry and Ron reacted on their training. Soon the floos at the Ministry were being inundated by Aurors.
Must be very loud if they can hear it from anywhere they'd have to take the Floo from, but then again this is a Potterverse in which people Apparate rather than walking up and down stairs. Of course, if the voice were that of Deserving!Kingsley he wouldn't need any magical assistance to be heard wherever he wanted to be. POTTERRR!
On second thoughts I think, though the description is vague, that the author means that the Floos are being inundated with Aurors trying to get in rather than emerge from.
They did not have to touch the brick wall it was open to all the Aurors that were responding to the call. No sooner had they passed the wall did they see the great big screen in the middle of the street way above all the stores. It rivaled the one at the Quiddtich World Cup.
It's weird that Harry, Ron or whoever the current POV character is calls on that memory as a referent, because I know I think of sporting events when I've been summoned to an emergency meeting. That said, the author gets points for remembering the existence of Quidditch.
There before their eyes Ron and Harry could see Richard, Nicky and Matthew standing in a row. They seemed quite upset when all of a sudden they raised their hands and out of thin air they made brooms appear. The crowed “ooo and aaaaa” at what they were seeing on the giant screen.
The misplaced quotation marks make it look as though they're literally saying "ooo and aaaaa", like some kind of strange chant. That aside: it's propaganda, not a firework display.
Soon the three boys were flying over a pond. They were not wearing the same clothing but the crowed did not seem to notice the minor discrepancy.
This fic has the better part of two thousand +++++ ratings on the Uber-Pit testifying that there's a lot of people who don't notice continuity errors.
These were little children between the ages of 4 and 5 and they were doing magic that most grown up wizards could not achieve. You accio a broom you don’t make it appear.
You don't Accio a broom either. That's a tactic Harry devised to get past the Hungarian Horntail, not a standard operating procedure.
“Yes! My fellow citizens. What we are witnessing is scary. I myself tremble to see the children of these Death Eaters growing in power. In Black and Dark Magic!”
Which are two different things, apparently.
“Lies!” yelled Harry without thinking of his actions. “You are lying. You took those out of context. My son can’t make a broom appear nor more than any of us can. It was a reducto spell.
It really wasn't.
That is all. Any of us could have done that.”
“Any of our four year olds?” asked Single with a smirk.
Where did he suddenly appear from? I love how scant lines after the author drops in an actually quite funny reference to continuity errors, her own continuity goes up the wall.
“My husband is an innocent man. Without his help the light would…”
INNOCENT MAN!” roared Single.
The author has now written her own character OOC, insofar as that's possible, because Single has hitherto been one of the few characters in the fic who's not prone to fits of ALLCAPS. He's been the smug officious type, kind of like an evil Sir Humphrey only nowhere near as awesome, and every inch the perfect Slytherin were it not for the fact that he hates the entire house and everything about it.
Wait, I've just unearthed the next plot twist, haven't I? Of course Single will turn out to have been in Slytherin. I mean there's no other house that fits. He's a coward, so no Gryffindor; loyal only to himself, so no Hufflepuff; doesn't seem especially intellectual so probably no Ravenclaw; and not a Gary Stu so no Sparklypoo.
When they looked up at the screen they saw little Serena in her pretty birthday outfit one scene and turning into a fawn the next scene.
I hope this was an ESL issue and the author honestly didn't know what "birthday suit" means in English.
“Do you really want children of Malfoy, Snape and Goyle growing up to become the next Dark Lords?
Wait, Goyle? Wasn't his arse-baby's death infamous within the Deservingverse and the trigger for the entire marriage law? How the holy hell does Single expect to convince the crowd that Matthew né Sin is Goyle's kid? Because this is Deserving and everyone's a complete idiot, of course. Single might have been in Ravenclaw after all, because someone must be and it's not like he's got much competition.
“Harry, you’ve got to get your family to safety. Kings already on it. Luckily, the idiot thinks Matthew is Goyle’s child so he will have no clue to where to start looking and I have just the place to take them.
Single honestly thinks that Matthew is Goyle's dead arse-baby? I take it back: he's just as stupid as everyone else. He's only the Ministry official tasked with registering the births of the Marked Ones' kids, after all.
“Forbidden Forest, Forbidden Forest. Why does it always have to be the Forbidden Forest,” cried Ron as he resized his broom and took off to Hagrid’s hut.
That's Ron actually being in character. I remain sceptical about the resizing brooms, no less now that the practice seems to have spawned an entire plot point. Does the author actually believe that everyone in the Potterverse carries a pencil-sized broom in their pocket at all time rather than storing them full size in the broom shed like the books seem to imply?
“Severus! Severus where are you?” Harry yelled as soon as he entered his sitting room.
Severus walked down the steps. “Sir, why are you here so early. Is there something wrong?”
Why's he still calling him Sir? CONTINUITY DAMMIT!
But Harry had no time to explain. He had a plan and was barking orders left and right. “Kneel!”
This isn't going where you might think, which is probably just as well. It's been so long that we're probably due an especially lulzy round of buggery in Chapter 52.
“Accio Severus’ wand.”
Severus had no idea what was going on. Why did Harry call for his wand?
Because he was too lazy to go upstairs and pick it up.
In all the years that they had been together the wand was barely mention much less summoned.
He's been more interested in his other wand. And hating that he has it.
“I Harry James Potter give you, Severus Snape, your magical powers back. ”
I wonder if the sudden advancement of the plot has anything to do with the ex-beta pointing out that even she thinks the story's been in neutral for the past however many chapters.
Severus body began to shake and soon he fell to the ground unconscious. Harry felt his heart stop beating.
The End.
It was a way too familiar scene, one that he did not care to relive.
Call-backs are more effective when there's actual continuity, you know.
“Harry… I… I don’t understand. Why?”
Harry was so happy to see his husband responding but he had little time for explanations.
“Severus I will explain once we get to safety,” he said lifting his husband up with him. “Start using your wand to pack the children’s things.
It actually makes sense that they'd use magic here, because they are in a hurry and a packing spell would accomplish it quicker than doing it normally.
All of the sudden he saw the floo flair up. They both pointed their wands at it and they were amazed to see that no one came through but there in the fireplace was a small beaded handbag. Harry recognized it at once. He picked it up. “Thank you, Hermione,” and he gave it to Severus. “It’s a bottomless pit. She spelled it so you could fit a small country in there. Go! Pack as much as you can.”
Nice Deathly Hallows reference, but what about continuity? If Ron has gone straight to the Forbidden Forest and Harry went straight home, who's told Hermione that they need to use her handbag?
“Kreacher!”
Snap!
I thought "pop" was the noise house-elves made. They'll be crackling next.
“Kreacher is doing this right away,” said the elf with great pride.
“No, listen, you must get your things together we may never be able to come back. Single is going to get himself elected as Prime Minister. Do you understand what that means?”
It means that canon has left the building. There's no Prime Minister in the wizarding world: the Minister for Magic is in charge. I wonder how and when Single built up a strong enough support base to run for the top job.
Soon Richard came down running. “Papa! Papa! Is it true are we going to the…” but he stopped when he saw his Harry. “Never mind, Serena, Dada is home early. We’re not going,” he said showing his disappointment.
“Oy, why can’t we go to the glade?” asked Harry.
Richard looked at his Dada with a stunned look on his face. “But you never come with us to the glad.”
Harry considered his son’s words. In two months he would turn five and he was right.
How is he nearly five? The timeline of this fic is complete bollocks.
Harry had never taken a Tuesday off to go to the glad with his family but this was no time for regrets. “Well, there is always a first time.”
The floo started to flair and Harry and Severus pointed their wands at it. Each casting protective spells so no one could come through.
“Papa! You have wand!” said Richard in amazement.
So is Richard (however old he is!) baby-talking or not?
Harry noticed as Richard clung to Severus’ trousers. He was visibly frighten and it was pulling at Harry’s heart. “Richard, I need a favor from you. We are going to have to travel in two brooms and you know how Papa doesn’t do brooms.”
Richard turned to look at is Dada following his train of thought and shook his head.
“I am going to need you to fly the broom for Dada. Do you think you can keep up with me?”
For Papa, surely? Even the author can't remember which is which, apparently.
“Now, Richard, I know you are a great flyer
We shouldn't, in the wake of Serena being revealed as the epic Sue she is, forget that her elder brother is almost as bad. He might not be an Animagus at a ludicrously young age, but he's a good enough broom pilot to be trusted on a mission of life and death importance.
“Let’s go,” said Harry mounting Richard on his fastest broom. When Severus got on Harry placed the cloak over both of them. Severus pulled it off. “NO!”
“Perfect, Richard, you must be quiet no matter what you see. Is that understood?”
“Yes, dada,” and quickly brought his hand to his mouth realizing he had spoken.
Oh, that old gag. Not scraping the barrel so much as stripping it down and running the bottom through an industrial pressure washer.
“Let’s go,” said Harry guiding his son up the stairways and out of the gable in the attic. Soon Single and his men were hot on what seem to be only Harry’s broom.
Single's there himself? Since when was he a hands-on action villain?
Harry had hoped that they would have more of an advantage. He would have to rely on his abilities on the broom to get rid of Single and his men but to Harry’s dismay they were all on brooms as fast as Harry’s. Harry felt a spell that missed him by an inch. They were too close and this was getting too dangerous. He would have to surrender and hope that Severus would have the good sense to go on without him.
I say "action", but the thrilling conclusion of Dark Secrets is positively epic next to this. So Harry has now been caught by Single and his cronies, who are all completely useless anyway because they only know one spell that only affects Marked Ones and elves. Even if they weren't total wusses, the author must realise how cheap it would be to kill off the defeater of Voldemort at the hands of a maddened secretary. So we're left with not so much a cliffhanger as a gentle slope.
Continued...