Dystopia
Let's check the official definition of the word.
“Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, various forms of active and passive coercion.”
SSHG authors take that definition and twist and turn it into all sorts of stories. Whichever way the war went, things aren't quite what everyone had hoped for afterwards.
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EDT. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
The Essence of Sunset by shefa
Dark Ages by Aurette
The Fine Art of Fine Print by mundungus42
House of Fallen Angels by Rilla
The Long Black Coat by bloodcult
Looking For Magic in all the Right Places by savageland
Back in Black by ubiquirk
And Loyal Hope Survives by stasia
Burn Out the Sun by curia_regis
Tyranny (of the Majority) by tribunicianveto
Little White Lies by darkheartwalsh
Towards a Brighter Future by curia_regis
1. We are responsible for each other.
No, it's more than that, she said to herself. She was drawn to him in a way she'd never before experienced, not even towards someone in pain. To his power, to his intensity, his persistence, and even to his isolation. In her world, she had never met anyone as passionate or as alone-who had to fulfil so massive a task with nobody beside him, nobody to support his efforts. Bravery and quiet persistence in the face of opposition were qualities she'd never before considered, but ones she found incredibly compelling.
She looked up at the wand, Godric Gryffindor's Elder Wand, and thought about the appeal of focused power and individual initiative-qualities that were most definitely discouraged here, in her universe.
What's best for the collective. The motto they lived by.
No one is greater than the sum of us all. Another.
2. That was the absolute dizzy limit. Hermione fixed her professor with a poisonous look.
‘Do you realise that raising a draught like that could have ruined my analysis?’ she snapped.
Snape stopped dead, staring at Hermione in disbelief.
‘Not that it would matter if it were ruined,’ she muttered, turning back to her parchment. ‘It’s all bollocks anyway.’
‘I take it,’ said Snape, his voice very low, ‘that your work is not going well.’
Hermione sighed and turned to look at him, wearily pushing loose tendrils of hair back from her face. 'If I’m lucky, I’ll master a few rudiments. But I won’t be able to blunder around a real lab'--she accented those words with a sarcasm worthy of Snape--'without making an idiot of myself. There’s so much more I need to know, and so much I can’t possibly hope to learn in this--ruined pile of a school!'
3. "Finally," Hermione muttered. The air in the room was stifling. She wanted nothing more than to get out of there and forget about this whole insane idea of meeting once every few days to plan this revolution.
"Gamp has a dark history," Snape said abruptly. "We need to expose it."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Tell me something I don't know," she said. They'd been dancing around this topic for the last week or two.
"You can pull up public records on Gamp without arousing suspicion," Snape told her flatly. "There might be something within the records."
Hermione stared at him. "There might," she said cautiously, "but I can't very well requisition every file on Gamp. That's not even peripherally relevant to any of my current cases."
"So make it relevant," Lucius told her.
"How do we know there's anything even in there? I mean, if it's on public record then somebody would have seen it by now," Hermione argued.
"Maybe nobody's looked," Snape said softly. "You can't just flirt with revolution, Hermione. You need to dive in and get your hair wet."
4. Snape went out three more times, always bringing back meat. One time a deer so large he'd had to tie it between two ponies, another time, a sheep. The rumors didn't gain energy until he brought down a boar. It hadn't been wild, just a feral pig, but a feral pig wasn't to be taken lightly.
Each time, there had been no wounds on the carcass.
The cavern had filled with the delicious aroma of roast pork and the whispers that Snape could still do magic. Hermione refused to allow herself to believe them.
Cormac hadn't been pleased at all. He was starting to see that he'd never had loyalty, only fear, and the favor of the people was shifting slowly on its unseen axis. He grew more needy as he pawed at her in the night.
Looking back, she realized that the length of Cormac's remaining life could have been measured by the distance between her bedding and Snape's. Each night, he would unroll his blankets a few inches closer, and each night, he would glare at her as Cormac rutted away.
5. The press of bodies around me grows denser, and I’m pushed along with the crowd to one side of the lane. I’m unable to move more than a few inches in any direction, and my breath comes in quick, shallow pants. My heart speeds to synchronize with the sound of rapid footfalls.
The stomping grows louder and is joined by a second noise. Overall, it’s a strange combination of the quick thud of boots one can’t take long strides in coupled with the squeak of stiff leather that never seems to break-in because doing so would sacrifice shape.
As they stomp/squeak into view, I’m torn between the desire to flee in terror or laugh hysterically. It leaves me feeling a bit light-headed.
At some point in time, someone, perhaps Umbridge herself, had the idea that a police force would look more commanding in leather. But to disguise the fact that it was a militaristic unit, they decided the leather should be Pink - Pink #5 to be exact. When that still didn’t pass muster, the leather was changed to patent leather.
Every footfall is synchronized, every arm swing in harmony. From far enough away, they look like the inevitable flood of an alien river - a river on a technicolor world that most likely exists in an alternate dimension where the laws of physics as we know them are regularly violated.
6. "I'm sending you to Hogwarts."
The nascent sneer on Hermione's face faded.
He continued, encouraged by her silence. "I want you to do a survey of Hogwarts and make a comprehensive map of the entire castle and grounds, including enchanted rooms and areas protected with passwords. I want a complete catalog of everything that's hidden there, and I want to know how to access every part of the castle."
Whatever Hermione was expecting, this wasn't it. She stared at her friend for a moment before responding. "Why?"
"Well, it'll be a good test of your device, won't it?"
7. Breakfast was a pitiful affair, consisting of the remnants of what appeared to be bread and a tin of baked beans scrounged from the cupboard. It seemed the Ministry had yet to furnish the house with something edible.
She ate in silence, contemplating her next move. The deadline for recall was three weeks away, which, she thought, should give her enough time to at least run through the basics of potion making. There had to be something within that curriculum that would trigger recall; he’d taught first-year potions for over a decade. Something in there would click. It had to.
Hermione didn’t like to think of what the Ministry would do to her should she fail, but here, alone under the fluorescent lights of the kitchen, she couldn’t help it. It crept into her mind, banishing the dream and filled it with far more unwholesome thoughts.
8. The first time he saw it was in the men's toilets at the Three Broomsticks. Gazing at the wall aimlessly, as a man is wont to do while standing at a urinal, he saw that just at shoulder-height someone had affixed a sticker or transfer to the tiles. He leaned forward carefully. The thing itself was perhaps the same diameter as a Galleon and its design greatly resembled Muggle no-smoking signs. Instead of a cigarette beneath the red bar, the words 'Detention Without Charge' were printed in purple lettering.
'Huh,' he said involuntarily, startling himself. Fortunately, he was the only person using the facilities at the time, and he was wise enough to give no further sign that he'd noticed the sticker.
9. Severus never knew how hard it had been for the Grangers to accept him. They had got to know him when he was at his absolute worst. First he'd been dealing with the tail end of the war and the Reconstruction, and then he'd been utterly destroyed by Hermione's death. He'd had no reason to hold his tongue and no thought to controlling his acidic words.
There were two reasons they didn't hate him for everything he said and did. One, he was clearly devastated by their daughter's death, devastated to the point of becoming completely self-destructive. It was hard to despise someone who loved their daughter that much.
The second reason was one they never mentioned to him.
He'd almost convinced them that he was the hateful, evil man he wanted to believe himself to be. Then, late one night they'd heard odd sounds coming from the baby monitor set up in what had been Hermione's room. They eyed each other and crept silently down the hall.
Peeking carefully into the baby's room, they saw Severus in Hermione's old rocking chair, Ariel in his lap. He was holding the baby bottle for the baby and was humming. They recognized the song as an extremely old tune, one they'd heard Hermione singing when she was pregnant. She had said it was an old Wizarding lullaby, a spell to bring peaceful sleep. While he hummed and cradled the baby, he allowed tears to fall down his cheeks. Quietly, the two older parents walked back to their room to listen to the soft sounds coming from the baby monitor.
Severus was gone by the time Mrs. Granger went in for Ariel's morning feed and changing. She picked up the baby and cooed at her. As she cleaned and wrapped the baby, a baby she'd never expected to see, she laughed as Ariel kept trying to capture the exotic and elusive Feet that were waving around just beyond reach.
10. Thank you, Miss Granger," I tell her as I insert the needle. I keep a sharp eye on her vital signs. At the beginning, I had accidentally drawn too much from a patient who had ended up disintegrating before my eyes.
I'm surprised when she's silent throughout the entire procedure. She used to talk more at the beginning. The machine hums away as it filters her blood through and extracts the essence of her magic to be bottled and sold. I'm proud of the invention-it's allowed the unwanted, the undesirable to become useful, productive members of our society. The Minister finds the fact it's a machine slightly distasteful. He would prefer a potion or a spell, but I have yet to perfect an alternative method.
"You're always so polite," she says faintly.
“Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, various forms of active and passive coercion.”
SSHG authors take that definition and twist and turn it into all sorts of stories. Whichever way the war went, things aren't quite what everyone had hoped for afterwards.
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EDT. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
The Essence of Sunset by shefa
Dark Ages by Aurette
The Fine Art of Fine Print by mundungus42
House of Fallen Angels by Rilla
The Long Black Coat by bloodcult
Looking For Magic in all the Right Places by savageland
Back in Black by ubiquirk
And Loyal Hope Survives by stasia
Burn Out the Sun by curia_regis
Tyranny (of the Majority) by tribunicianveto
Little White Lies by darkheartwalsh
Towards a Brighter Future by curia_regis
1. We are responsible for each other.
No, it's more than that, she said to herself. She was drawn to him in a way she'd never before experienced, not even towards someone in pain. To his power, to his intensity, his persistence, and even to his isolation. In her world, she had never met anyone as passionate or as alone-who had to fulfil so massive a task with nobody beside him, nobody to support his efforts. Bravery and quiet persistence in the face of opposition were qualities she'd never before considered, but ones she found incredibly compelling.
She looked up at the wand, Godric Gryffindor's Elder Wand, and thought about the appeal of focused power and individual initiative-qualities that were most definitely discouraged here, in her universe.
What's best for the collective. The motto they lived by.
No one is greater than the sum of us all. Another.
2. That was the absolute dizzy limit. Hermione fixed her professor with a poisonous look.
‘Do you realise that raising a draught like that could have ruined my analysis?’ she snapped.
Snape stopped dead, staring at Hermione in disbelief.
‘Not that it would matter if it were ruined,’ she muttered, turning back to her parchment. ‘It’s all bollocks anyway.’
‘I take it,’ said Snape, his voice very low, ‘that your work is not going well.’
Hermione sighed and turned to look at him, wearily pushing loose tendrils of hair back from her face. 'If I’m lucky, I’ll master a few rudiments. But I won’t be able to blunder around a real lab'--she accented those words with a sarcasm worthy of Snape--'without making an idiot of myself. There’s so much more I need to know, and so much I can’t possibly hope to learn in this--ruined pile of a school!'
3. "Finally," Hermione muttered. The air in the room was stifling. She wanted nothing more than to get out of there and forget about this whole insane idea of meeting once every few days to plan this revolution.
"Gamp has a dark history," Snape said abruptly. "We need to expose it."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Tell me something I don't know," she said. They'd been dancing around this topic for the last week or two.
"You can pull up public records on Gamp without arousing suspicion," Snape told her flatly. "There might be something within the records."
Hermione stared at him. "There might," she said cautiously, "but I can't very well requisition every file on Gamp. That's not even peripherally relevant to any of my current cases."
"So make it relevant," Lucius told her.
"How do we know there's anything even in there? I mean, if it's on public record then somebody would have seen it by now," Hermione argued.
"Maybe nobody's looked," Snape said softly. "You can't just flirt with revolution, Hermione. You need to dive in and get your hair wet."
4. Snape went out three more times, always bringing back meat. One time a deer so large he'd had to tie it between two ponies, another time, a sheep. The rumors didn't gain energy until he brought down a boar. It hadn't been wild, just a feral pig, but a feral pig wasn't to be taken lightly.
Each time, there had been no wounds on the carcass.
The cavern had filled with the delicious aroma of roast pork and the whispers that Snape could still do magic. Hermione refused to allow herself to believe them.
Cormac hadn't been pleased at all. He was starting to see that he'd never had loyalty, only fear, and the favor of the people was shifting slowly on its unseen axis. He grew more needy as he pawed at her in the night.
Looking back, she realized that the length of Cormac's remaining life could have been measured by the distance between her bedding and Snape's. Each night, he would unroll his blankets a few inches closer, and each night, he would glare at her as Cormac rutted away.
5. The press of bodies around me grows denser, and I’m pushed along with the crowd to one side of the lane. I’m unable to move more than a few inches in any direction, and my breath comes in quick, shallow pants. My heart speeds to synchronize with the sound of rapid footfalls.
The stomping grows louder and is joined by a second noise. Overall, it’s a strange combination of the quick thud of boots one can’t take long strides in coupled with the squeak of stiff leather that never seems to break-in because doing so would sacrifice shape.
As they stomp/squeak into view, I’m torn between the desire to flee in terror or laugh hysterically. It leaves me feeling a bit light-headed.
At some point in time, someone, perhaps Umbridge herself, had the idea that a police force would look more commanding in leather. But to disguise the fact that it was a militaristic unit, they decided the leather should be Pink - Pink #5 to be exact. When that still didn’t pass muster, the leather was changed to patent leather.
Every footfall is synchronized, every arm swing in harmony. From far enough away, they look like the inevitable flood of an alien river - a river on a technicolor world that most likely exists in an alternate dimension where the laws of physics as we know them are regularly violated.
6. "I'm sending you to Hogwarts."
The nascent sneer on Hermione's face faded.
He continued, encouraged by her silence. "I want you to do a survey of Hogwarts and make a comprehensive map of the entire castle and grounds, including enchanted rooms and areas protected with passwords. I want a complete catalog of everything that's hidden there, and I want to know how to access every part of the castle."
Whatever Hermione was expecting, this wasn't it. She stared at her friend for a moment before responding. "Why?"
"Well, it'll be a good test of your device, won't it?"
7. Breakfast was a pitiful affair, consisting of the remnants of what appeared to be bread and a tin of baked beans scrounged from the cupboard. It seemed the Ministry had yet to furnish the house with something edible.
She ate in silence, contemplating her next move. The deadline for recall was three weeks away, which, she thought, should give her enough time to at least run through the basics of potion making. There had to be something within that curriculum that would trigger recall; he’d taught first-year potions for over a decade. Something in there would click. It had to.
Hermione didn’t like to think of what the Ministry would do to her should she fail, but here, alone under the fluorescent lights of the kitchen, she couldn’t help it. It crept into her mind, banishing the dream and filled it with far more unwholesome thoughts.
8. The first time he saw it was in the men's toilets at the Three Broomsticks. Gazing at the wall aimlessly, as a man is wont to do while standing at a urinal, he saw that just at shoulder-height someone had affixed a sticker or transfer to the tiles. He leaned forward carefully. The thing itself was perhaps the same diameter as a Galleon and its design greatly resembled Muggle no-smoking signs. Instead of a cigarette beneath the red bar, the words 'Detention Without Charge' were printed in purple lettering.
'Huh,' he said involuntarily, startling himself. Fortunately, he was the only person using the facilities at the time, and he was wise enough to give no further sign that he'd noticed the sticker.
9. Severus never knew how hard it had been for the Grangers to accept him. They had got to know him when he was at his absolute worst. First he'd been dealing with the tail end of the war and the Reconstruction, and then he'd been utterly destroyed by Hermione's death. He'd had no reason to hold his tongue and no thought to controlling his acidic words.
There were two reasons they didn't hate him for everything he said and did. One, he was clearly devastated by their daughter's death, devastated to the point of becoming completely self-destructive. It was hard to despise someone who loved their daughter that much.
The second reason was one they never mentioned to him.
He'd almost convinced them that he was the hateful, evil man he wanted to believe himself to be. Then, late one night they'd heard odd sounds coming from the baby monitor set up in what had been Hermione's room. They eyed each other and crept silently down the hall.
Peeking carefully into the baby's room, they saw Severus in Hermione's old rocking chair, Ariel in his lap. He was holding the baby bottle for the baby and was humming. They recognized the song as an extremely old tune, one they'd heard Hermione singing when she was pregnant. She had said it was an old Wizarding lullaby, a spell to bring peaceful sleep. While he hummed and cradled the baby, he allowed tears to fall down his cheeks. Quietly, the two older parents walked back to their room to listen to the soft sounds coming from the baby monitor.
Severus was gone by the time Mrs. Granger went in for Ariel's morning feed and changing. She picked up the baby and cooed at her. As she cleaned and wrapped the baby, a baby she'd never expected to see, she laughed as Ariel kept trying to capture the exotic and elusive Feet that were waving around just beyond reach.
10. Thank you, Miss Granger," I tell her as I insert the needle. I keep a sharp eye on her vital signs. At the beginning, I had accidentally drawn too much from a patient who had ended up disintegrating before my eyes.
I'm surprised when she's silent throughout the entire procedure. She used to talk more at the beginning. The machine hums away as it filters her blood through and extracts the essence of her magic to be bottled and sold. I'm proud of the invention-it's allowed the unwanted, the undesirable to become useful, productive members of our society. The Minister finds the fact it's a machine slightly distasteful. He would prefer a potion or a spell, but I have yet to perfect an alternative method.
"You're always so polite," she says faintly.