Deserving Chapter 8
Are the 1600+ people who voted Deserving 5/5 on the Uber-Pit reading a different version, in which everyone was in character, Harry hadn't Imperiused Severus to wank into a bottle for no reason at all and nobody got compared to the victims of the Holocaust? The Snarry mpreg and the forced marriage thing I can kind of see, unaccountably popular as those plot elements seem to be, but the rest? Are there really that many insane people in the fandom?
Sadly, I fear I know the answer to this.
Harry wants to deny Severus a magical epidural because he doesn't want to be soft on crime. Now there's a sentence you don't type every day. Apparently that's not the Daily Prophet he's reading, it's the Daily Mail. Part of the rehabilitation process for the Marked Ones is evidently being denied the right to basic medical care, and Harry is perfectly fine with this. Even though he knows that this might kill Severus and that the arse-baby he wants so much will die without its mother to feed it.
This fic makes no fucking sense. Really it doesn't.
They stepped into the sitting room in complete silence. It was up to Severus to disturb the peace.
“Shall I go to the kitchen or your bedroom, Sir?”
“We need to talk.”
That's not even an answer. Now Harry is afraid that Kreacher will give Severus the potion, because:
I think he believes you’re an overgrown elf. You surely are ugly enough to be one.
Yet you were okay with, you know, shagging him. Does that mean that Harry secretly wants to buttfuck Kreacher?
Ow, my fucking brain. D:
The following day was Saturday. Potter ate a light breakfast and left. He came back around midday with a young wizard that Severus recognized as a former student. A Gryffindor if he was not mistaken.
And I bet the author is going to describe someone as "the Gryffindor" and leave us with no fucking clue who she's talking about. Again.
“Snape, this is Rob.
No relation to yours truly, I promise. At least this OC gets a name and a background.
The following Monday Severus was knitting in the sitting room when he saw the floo stir and without permission Mr. Carty walked into the sitting room.
How the hell long has he been knitting now? I don't recall him actually completing anything, so I guess we now know where the Fourth Doctor got his scarf.
“Oh sorry, Professor, I didn’t know you were here. Mr. Potter said I could come today to get my measurements.”
[snip redundant exposition of things we already fucking know]
“Mr. Carty, if I am not mistaken, I was less than kind to you while at Hogwarts. I would have thought that this was a key ingredient in your qualifications for this job.”
Rob smiled a naughty smile, “Yeah, I think Harry thought so also. What he doesn’t know and I didn’t care to submit was the fact that I fell in love and married a beautiful Slytherin.”
Holy contrived coincidence, Batman!
“So what is that phrase? ‘When the cat’s away the rats are at play’? Given the fact that Potter isn’t here I don’t see why you can’t show me the room.”
But Severus shook his head. He would not go against his guide.
He lifted the Imperius, you silly tart!
What follows is a mind-numbing (even by Deserving standards) breakdown of how Severus would set up the nursery. Severus Snape: the Potterverse's answer to Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen.
“This is his first child,” excused the tall man.
Who excused the tall man?
Two weeks later Rob came to the house on a Saturday and announced that the room was ready. Harry was rushing towards the stairs when he noticed that Rob was not following.
“Shouldn’t the Professor see the room also?”
“Look, around here you can call him Snape or snake or greasy git. He is no longer a Hogwarts’ Professor. He lost his respectability when he killed Dumbledore, and no, he has no say in my child’s room.”
Rob curled his fist trying not to blow his cover. He closed his eyes and remembered his wife and children. He needed this money to keep them safe but it was harder than he thought it would be.
Now Rob's story is actually quite interesting. The contrived coincidence of Harry's pet Slytherin-hater being secretly married to a Slytherin aside, I can't fault this subplot. Even the dialogue is bearable, and I can see an improvement over the stilted conversations of the earlier chapters. The intrigues of the wizarding world and the efforts to rebuild a society torn apart by a civil war make for good fanfic fodder.
Harry had to agree that Snape needed to know the layout of the room if he was going to go in during the night to feed his child.
But the author still hasn't got the hang of consistent POV.
When they walked into the nursery both Severus and Harry were blown away. Harry loved everything about the room and had the liberty to say so unlike Severus who had to look and keep his feelings to himself.
I've got whiplash here.
“Wow! The colors are perfect.”
“Yes, the blues and the greens are very serene,” he said talking to Harry but looking at Severus.
“Oh, look at all these beautiful children’s books. They are awesome!”
“Aren’t they?” continued the designer not moving his eyes away from his ex-professor.
Not doing a good job of trying to maintain his cover, is he?
The following Sunday they got the news:
Mr. Shacklebolt and Mr. Malfoy would like to announce the arrival of their son Nicolas Adams Shacklebol:t
Does the colon signify anything?
a healthy little wizard that has come to bring joy and happiness to his fathers. Father and baby are doing just fine.
Harry gave the piece of parchment to Snape, who had trouble hiding his contentment. The news read “little wizard.” Wizard, that was great news to his soul.
Poppy had mentioned that none of the children of the Marked Ones were being born with the blue light that was indicative of a magical child.
One has to wonder how this affects Muggle-borns. If there's an almighty blue flash when a magical baby is born, how is it that Muggle parents of wizards, like the Grangers, never suspected anything until the Hogwarts letters arrived?
She was unable to fill him in on more details because his guide had walked in late, claiming that his duties as an Auror had kept him away. It had been torture to hear just that snippet of information without any rational behind it. How could children, of two healthy magical people, not have magic?
This has no canonical precedent of course.
When Harry got to work Monday morning he caught a glimpse of Kings’ office. It was crowded with old friends with gloomy looks on their faces. Shouldn’t they all be celebrating the birth of Kings’ son? He could see Ron, Hermione, Percy, Mr. Weasley but no Shacklebolt in sight. Where was he? He was almost rammed over by the answer. Kings was storming into his office. He began to shout when Ron went to the door
POTTERRR!!!
I really don't know how she manages to get Kingsley quite so wrong. Harry and Severus are both very complex characters and frankly both need to be OOC for an mpreg forced marriage plot to work at all, but from what we see of Kingsley it's quite clear that he's a calm, controlled kind of guy not given to crazed outbursts, a safe pair of hands for the postwar Ministry. Yeah, my mad!OOC!Kingsley icon is getting a lot of mileage.
“Wow” said Kings’ secretary, bringing Harry back from his thoughts, “The Minister must have chewed him a new one. He was in there for almost an hour and Layla, the minister’s personal secretary,
"As you know, your father, the king..." Yeah, I think Harry knows who's who in the place he's worked for... this fic's timeline is fuzzy from all the time skips and the fact that we don't know how long Harry had been at the Ministry before he and Snape were dragged down to the Department of Buggery, but the better part of a year at least, assuming that male pregnancies still take the regulation nine months.
Two hours later Harry was called into Kings’ office.
“Close the door, please, and would you mind casting a silencing spell? I have no energy,” said the head of his department.
Who's Harry's head of department? Is it Kingsley, because I thought he became Minister after the war? This, dear author, is why characters have names. Whoever it is seems to be out of MP.
He looked defeated. He looked weak and, somehow, smaller. How could Kings let the idiot minister get to him this way?
So Kingsley isn't the Minister. Fair enough.
Harry had no idea and could not see why Kings was telling him about the incident. Didn’t he remember that Harry was no longer part of the clan?
He'd been kicked out for botting.
“He called me because I was naive enough to send him an announcement of my child’s birth.”
He still was making no sense to Harry.
“You see, Mr. Potter, the announcement declared that my child was a wizard.” Again he stopped to look into Harry’s eyes.
Harry was still clueless.
Can we assume that once you've told us that Harry was clueless that he remains so until we're told otherwise?
There's a conspiracy afoot:
“It seems that a child of a Marked One is to have no magic. He was appalled that I had not taken Draco to St. Mungos like all the other Marked Ones. It is apparent that in St. Mungos they are making sure that the children a born without magic.”
Harry’s eyes had gone to an impossible size. “Kings you must have heard wrong. The Ministry would never deny children their magic,” was the most convincing answer the Chosen One could give.
Kingsley looked at him, staring deep into the emerald eyed kid before him.
I assume she means that he stared deep into the emerald eyes of the kid (he's called Harry Potter, by the way - it's the title of the series, not that hard to remember) rather than actually into the kid himself. Unless this meeting doubles as a medical check-up.
“Kings, this makes no sense, no sense at all.
Harry says what we're all thinking. Listen to him, author.
Why would the Ministry not want the children to have magic?”
“Because, Harry, they are the children of the Dark Side and they will grow to be evil as their birthing parent once were.”
So having just defeated Voldemort, the Ministry adopts his philosophy that blood determines character. Either the author is making a subtle point that evil is never defeated, or she's not thought this through. Given her relationship with subtlety, I know which I'm inclined to believe.
“But Kingsley we are the fathers. You and I, we both fought for the Light and we are in charge. We will raise decent kids. What is the Ministry on about? Don’t they know what a good upbringing can do? This is madness, I tell you, madness.”
Madness? THIS! IS! DESERVING!
Sorry, I couldn't resist such an obvious set-up.
But Harry straightened up and looked right back at him. “The truth, my child will have magic, but he will not be raised by a marked one. I will inform the Ministry that Snape will only be in my child’s life until he has been weaned. Then I will raise a good and noble wizard.”
Kingsley began to clap in a slow and awkward fashion, “Wow, Mr. Potter, did you think of all that crap on your own? I am impressed.”
Kingsley has been living with Draco too long, because that sounds exactly like Draco's reaction to this would be.
Put that way, Harry no longer felt so confident. What if the Ministry did take his child and stripped him of his magic? Harry shook his head. That could never happen could it?
In this fic? Anything could happen.
It was Harry’s birthday and Kreacher had prepared his favorites for breakfast. Severus was sitting at the table but was unable to eat. He was feeling quite uncomfortable. They both turned to see the floo flare up in the sitting area. Harry’s face lit up as soon as he saw that it was Dennis and granted passage at once.
“Happy Birthday Harry,” smiled the young blond.
I'm positive I've said this before, but you cannot smile a line of dialogue. You can smile whilst saying something, but smiling itself does not produce words.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about him. He has had an easy pregnancy.
Says the guy who's never going to be pregnant. Obviously the narcolepsy and the compulsive wanking escaped your notice. Why does Chrome not recognise "narcolepsy"?
“You’re not still sleeping on the kitchen floor? Not in you condition,” protested the young Gryffindor.
Which one, goddammit?
“Harry, shouldn’t we make sure he is all right?” he said,
He said! Mark this on your calendar, Deserving actually used "said" for once!
“Severus’ baby is coming now. Severus is needing the healer,” exclaimed an even more angered elf.
ETA: Just occurred to me on a reread. This reads as though there's another elf just entered the scene who's even more angered than Kreacher.
Harry had to act quickly or Dennis’s presence would ruin his plan. There was no way he was going to make life easy for the killer of his parents.
Harry is the proud owner of the world's biggest idiot ball. Yeah, don't get any medical assistance for the guy who's giving birth to the kid you want so much!
Severus was breathing heavily and was sweating even more.
“Sir, I can not do this. I thought I could but it is too much. Please, Sir, I will die if I do not take the potions,” pleaded the man that never did.
Harry sat next to him on the bed, “You listen to me Snape. I know you can do this. You are a strong man and a little labor pain isn’t going to do you in. Woman have been dealing with it for ages and very few die…”
You know why so few women die in childbirth? Medicine, that's why. Without modern medicine (or the wizarding equivalent, which if anything is slightly better than ours, though we don't know much of how healing magic works in relation to childbirth) as many as half of women died in childbirth. And as the male body didn't evolve to bear children, if it were made possible for a man giving birth the risks would be even greater.
And if Severus dies, so does the arse-baby.
How's the moral event horizon treating you, Harry?
Continued...
Sadly, I fear I know the answer to this.
Harry wants to deny Severus a magical epidural because he doesn't want to be soft on crime. Now there's a sentence you don't type every day. Apparently that's not the Daily Prophet he's reading, it's the Daily Mail. Part of the rehabilitation process for the Marked Ones is evidently being denied the right to basic medical care, and Harry is perfectly fine with this. Even though he knows that this might kill Severus and that the arse-baby he wants so much will die without its mother to feed it.
This fic makes no fucking sense. Really it doesn't.
They stepped into the sitting room in complete silence. It was up to Severus to disturb the peace.
“Shall I go to the kitchen or your bedroom, Sir?”
“We need to talk.”
That's not even an answer. Now Harry is afraid that Kreacher will give Severus the potion, because:
I think he believes you’re an overgrown elf. You surely are ugly enough to be one.
Yet you were okay with, you know, shagging him. Does that mean that Harry secretly wants to buttfuck Kreacher?
Ow, my fucking brain. D:
The following day was Saturday. Potter ate a light breakfast and left. He came back around midday with a young wizard that Severus recognized as a former student. A Gryffindor if he was not mistaken.
And I bet the author is going to describe someone as "the Gryffindor" and leave us with no fucking clue who she's talking about. Again.
“Snape, this is Rob.
No relation to yours truly, I promise. At least this OC gets a name and a background.
The following Monday Severus was knitting in the sitting room when he saw the floo stir and without permission Mr. Carty walked into the sitting room.
How the hell long has he been knitting now? I don't recall him actually completing anything, so I guess we now know where the Fourth Doctor got his scarf.
“Oh sorry, Professor, I didn’t know you were here. Mr. Potter said I could come today to get my measurements.”
[snip redundant exposition of things we already fucking know]
“Mr. Carty, if I am not mistaken, I was less than kind to you while at Hogwarts. I would have thought that this was a key ingredient in your qualifications for this job.”
Rob smiled a naughty smile, “Yeah, I think Harry thought so also. What he doesn’t know and I didn’t care to submit was the fact that I fell in love and married a beautiful Slytherin.”
Holy contrived coincidence, Batman!
“So what is that phrase? ‘When the cat’s away the rats are at play’? Given the fact that Potter isn’t here I don’t see why you can’t show me the room.”
But Severus shook his head. He would not go against his guide.
He lifted the Imperius, you silly tart!
What follows is a mind-numbing (even by Deserving standards) breakdown of how Severus would set up the nursery. Severus Snape: the Potterverse's answer to Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen.
“This is his first child,” excused the tall man.
Who excused the tall man?
Two weeks later Rob came to the house on a Saturday and announced that the room was ready. Harry was rushing towards the stairs when he noticed that Rob was not following.
“Shouldn’t the Professor see the room also?”
“Look, around here you can call him Snape or snake or greasy git. He is no longer a Hogwarts’ Professor. He lost his respectability when he killed Dumbledore, and no, he has no say in my child’s room.”
Rob curled his fist trying not to blow his cover. He closed his eyes and remembered his wife and children. He needed this money to keep them safe but it was harder than he thought it would be.
Now Rob's story is actually quite interesting. The contrived coincidence of Harry's pet Slytherin-hater being secretly married to a Slytherin aside, I can't fault this subplot. Even the dialogue is bearable, and I can see an improvement over the stilted conversations of the earlier chapters. The intrigues of the wizarding world and the efforts to rebuild a society torn apart by a civil war make for good fanfic fodder.
Harry had to agree that Snape needed to know the layout of the room if he was going to go in during the night to feed his child.
But the author still hasn't got the hang of consistent POV.
When they walked into the nursery both Severus and Harry were blown away. Harry loved everything about the room and had the liberty to say so unlike Severus who had to look and keep his feelings to himself.
I've got whiplash here.
“Wow! The colors are perfect.”
“Yes, the blues and the greens are very serene,” he said talking to Harry but looking at Severus.
“Oh, look at all these beautiful children’s books. They are awesome!”
“Aren’t they?” continued the designer not moving his eyes away from his ex-professor.
Not doing a good job of trying to maintain his cover, is he?
The following Sunday they got the news:
Mr. Shacklebolt and Mr. Malfoy would like to announce the arrival of their son Nicolas Adams Shacklebol:t
Does the colon signify anything?
a healthy little wizard that has come to bring joy and happiness to his fathers. Father and baby are doing just fine.
Harry gave the piece of parchment to Snape, who had trouble hiding his contentment. The news read “little wizard.” Wizard, that was great news to his soul.
Poppy had mentioned that none of the children of the Marked Ones were being born with the blue light that was indicative of a magical child.
One has to wonder how this affects Muggle-borns. If there's an almighty blue flash when a magical baby is born, how is it that Muggle parents of wizards, like the Grangers, never suspected anything until the Hogwarts letters arrived?
She was unable to fill him in on more details because his guide had walked in late, claiming that his duties as an Auror had kept him away. It had been torture to hear just that snippet of information without any rational behind it. How could children, of two healthy magical people, not have magic?
This has no canonical precedent of course.
When Harry got to work Monday morning he caught a glimpse of Kings’ office. It was crowded with old friends with gloomy looks on their faces. Shouldn’t they all be celebrating the birth of Kings’ son? He could see Ron, Hermione, Percy, Mr. Weasley but no Shacklebolt in sight. Where was he? He was almost rammed over by the answer. Kings was storming into his office. He began to shout when Ron went to the door
POTTERRR!!!
I really don't know how she manages to get Kingsley quite so wrong. Harry and Severus are both very complex characters and frankly both need to be OOC for an mpreg forced marriage plot to work at all, but from what we see of Kingsley it's quite clear that he's a calm, controlled kind of guy not given to crazed outbursts, a safe pair of hands for the postwar Ministry. Yeah, my mad!OOC!Kingsley icon is getting a lot of mileage.
“Wow” said Kings’ secretary, bringing Harry back from his thoughts, “The Minister must have chewed him a new one. He was in there for almost an hour and Layla, the minister’s personal secretary,
"As you know, your father, the king..." Yeah, I think Harry knows who's who in the place he's worked for... this fic's timeline is fuzzy from all the time skips and the fact that we don't know how long Harry had been at the Ministry before he and Snape were dragged down to the Department of Buggery, but the better part of a year at least, assuming that male pregnancies still take the regulation nine months.
Two hours later Harry was called into Kings’ office.
“Close the door, please, and would you mind casting a silencing spell? I have no energy,” said the head of his department.
Who's Harry's head of department? Is it Kingsley, because I thought he became Minister after the war? This, dear author, is why characters have names. Whoever it is seems to be out of MP.
He looked defeated. He looked weak and, somehow, smaller. How could Kings let the idiot minister get to him this way?
So Kingsley isn't the Minister. Fair enough.
Harry had no idea and could not see why Kings was telling him about the incident. Didn’t he remember that Harry was no longer part of the clan?
He'd been kicked out for botting.
“He called me because I was naive enough to send him an announcement of my child’s birth.”
He still was making no sense to Harry.
“You see, Mr. Potter, the announcement declared that my child was a wizard.” Again he stopped to look into Harry’s eyes.
Harry was still clueless.
Can we assume that once you've told us that Harry was clueless that he remains so until we're told otherwise?
There's a conspiracy afoot:
“It seems that a child of a Marked One is to have no magic. He was appalled that I had not taken Draco to St. Mungos like all the other Marked Ones. It is apparent that in St. Mungos they are making sure that the children a born without magic.”
Harry’s eyes had gone to an impossible size. “Kings you must have heard wrong. The Ministry would never deny children their magic,” was the most convincing answer the Chosen One could give.
Kingsley looked at him, staring deep into the emerald eyed kid before him.
I assume she means that he stared deep into the emerald eyes of the kid (he's called Harry Potter, by the way - it's the title of the series, not that hard to remember) rather than actually into the kid himself. Unless this meeting doubles as a medical check-up.
“Kings, this makes no sense, no sense at all.
Harry says what we're all thinking. Listen to him, author.
Why would the Ministry not want the children to have magic?”
“Because, Harry, they are the children of the Dark Side and they will grow to be evil as their birthing parent once were.”
So having just defeated Voldemort, the Ministry adopts his philosophy that blood determines character. Either the author is making a subtle point that evil is never defeated, or she's not thought this through. Given her relationship with subtlety, I know which I'm inclined to believe.
“But Kingsley we are the fathers. You and I, we both fought for the Light and we are in charge. We will raise decent kids. What is the Ministry on about? Don’t they know what a good upbringing can do? This is madness, I tell you, madness.”
Madness? THIS! IS! DESERVING!
Sorry, I couldn't resist such an obvious set-up.
But Harry straightened up and looked right back at him. “The truth, my child will have magic, but he will not be raised by a marked one. I will inform the Ministry that Snape will only be in my child’s life until he has been weaned. Then I will raise a good and noble wizard.”
Kingsley began to clap in a slow and awkward fashion, “Wow, Mr. Potter, did you think of all that crap on your own? I am impressed.”
Kingsley has been living with Draco too long, because that sounds exactly like Draco's reaction to this would be.
Put that way, Harry no longer felt so confident. What if the Ministry did take his child and stripped him of his magic? Harry shook his head. That could never happen could it?
In this fic? Anything could happen.
It was Harry’s birthday and Kreacher had prepared his favorites for breakfast. Severus was sitting at the table but was unable to eat. He was feeling quite uncomfortable. They both turned to see the floo flare up in the sitting area. Harry’s face lit up as soon as he saw that it was Dennis and granted passage at once.
“Happy Birthday Harry,” smiled the young blond.
I'm positive I've said this before, but you cannot smile a line of dialogue. You can smile whilst saying something, but smiling itself does not produce words.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about him. He has had an easy pregnancy.
Says the guy who's never going to be pregnant. Obviously the narcolepsy and the compulsive wanking escaped your notice. Why does Chrome not recognise "narcolepsy"?
“You’re not still sleeping on the kitchen floor? Not in you condition,” protested the young Gryffindor.
Which one, goddammit?
“Harry, shouldn’t we make sure he is all right?” he said,
He said! Mark this on your calendar, Deserving actually used "said" for once!
“Severus’ baby is coming now. Severus is needing the healer,” exclaimed an even more angered elf.
ETA: Just occurred to me on a reread. This reads as though there's another elf just entered the scene who's even more angered than Kreacher.
Harry had to act quickly or Dennis’s presence would ruin his plan. There was no way he was going to make life easy for the killer of his parents.
Harry is the proud owner of the world's biggest idiot ball. Yeah, don't get any medical assistance for the guy who's giving birth to the kid you want so much!
Severus was breathing heavily and was sweating even more.
“Sir, I can not do this. I thought I could but it is too much. Please, Sir, I will die if I do not take the potions,” pleaded the man that never did.
Harry sat next to him on the bed, “You listen to me Snape. I know you can do this. You are a strong man and a little labor pain isn’t going to do you in. Woman have been dealing with it for ages and very few die…”
You know why so few women die in childbirth? Medicine, that's why. Without modern medicine (or the wizarding equivalent, which if anything is slightly better than ours, though we don't know much of how healing magic works in relation to childbirth) as many as half of women died in childbirth. And as the male body didn't evolve to bear children, if it were made possible for a man giving birth the risks would be even greater.
And if Severus dies, so does the arse-baby.
How's the moral event horizon treating you, Harry?
Continued...