A-M-N-E-S-T-Y
Aug. 23rd, 2003 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusOkay, this was gacked from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
keelywolfe. Here's the rules: you post bits of unfinished fics that you know will never see the light of day. Readers cannot complain, beg for more, or otherwise try to make the author finish them.
Tastes Like Rain
by Icarus
"You have a bit of mayonnaise on your chin."
"Huh?" Harry looked up at Percy, the new Head Boy, with a puzzled blink. He wiped at his chin, but of course, missed.
"Here." Percy brushed at the soft angle of Harry's lips with his thumb, just below the corner.
It was a strange, motherly sort of thing to do, but Percy didn't notice as he examined his handiwork, his thumb brushing under Harry's chin. Gryffindors needed to represent themselves well, most of all Harry, who was so much in the public eye after all.
"Thanks," Harry mumbled.
"Don't mention it," Percy said primly. Harry was very important to Gryffindor, and might just become Head Boy himself one of these days, or so Percy thought. If Ron's influence didn't drag him down. But Harry was very different from Ron or any Percy's brothers; quiet, where they blustered, his skin cool and rather dry and not at all sweaty. Soft. Very clean. Apart from the mayonnaise. Percy watched Harry trot away from the dining table in the Great Hall with a sense of proprietary pride.
Having no handkerchief on hand, without thinking Percy touched his thumb to his lips. It tasted of Harry, although taste was really about ninety percent smell, now wasn't it? Because he shouldn't really be able to taste Harry, or rain, or Quidditch, or a slight gingery salt that wasn't mayonnaise at all -
"Hey - Percy? You listening?"
Percy startled out of his reverie and bit back a rather sharp response, carefully moulding it something socially acceptable. "Yes?" he said patiently.
"Wake up," Oliver said. "We need to go over the Quidditch schedules - we don't have nearly enough practice time, and if you could just talk to the teachers and explain! I'm sure -"
Blah, blah, blah, Quidditch, blah, blah. As Percy suspected, Oliver's interruption was of no importance whatsoever, and certainly didn't enlighten him as to why Harry Potter would taste like rain.
~*~*~*~
Percy was neater than the last Head Boy, and he had rearranged the furniture in his private room to his satisfaction. His clothes were arranged in crisp lines in the wardrobe - not a large assortment, but all neatly pressed - and the bed dominated the room now, where he had moved it to just under the window. The window curtains draped it either side in a soft, red canopy. Everyone agreed it was a much nicer arrangement, though a few of the guys pointed out that having the bed just under the window might be awkward for - uh. Nobody finished that thought of course, but they all knew he was seeing Penelope.
Ridiculous. No one but a vampire bat would be able to see into the turret room, unless you counted a balcony on the neighboring tower that was only present on the new moon. Besides, he and Penelope went to her room. Fewer brash comments that way. Their time together was pleasant, but he preferred not to be grilled and made a public spectacle of, thank you very much.
A Deserving Man
by Icarus
The walls of the dungeons dripped with moisture, the humidity of summer sank and cooled, pooling in the cracks and crevices. While outside it was sunny -- probably -- daylight never touched these rooms of ancient stone, older than any other part of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. One could almost feel the ponderous weight of the old fortress bearing down on the walls.
A distant drip of water interrupted the only other sound in the room: a delicate, hesitant scratching of quill on parchment. The scribbling sound paused; then renewed with a kind of erratic staccato rhythm, before it stopped again suddenly.
Those familiar with young Severus Snape's handwriting knew the results would be a tiny jagged scrawl, written at great speed and virtually illegible.
Severus chewed the end of his quill, then bent once more over his task in the potions classroom; his black hair narrowly missed being dipped in the inkwell. Already his desk was littered with half-opened scrolls and crumpled strips of parchment, which appeared to have many scratch-outs and corrections.
The first page had only one word: Syllabus.
'Professor' Snape threw down his quill, ignored the resulting blotch, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. His Syllabus for seven years of classes was due, like homework, by the last staff meeting before the school year. Truth be told, nothing in his previous nefarious career had prepared him for anything like this. 'Professor' Severus Snape. He thought of the title in quotes, as some sort of cosmic joke played on him by an unkind god. He had just turned twenty, yet the misery of his teens had come back to haunt him, manacled him to his past. To his mind, the empty Quidditch pitch still echoed with undeserved cheers for a Head Boy who was now a year dead. Certain hallways made his jaw clench with remembered bullying and cruel pranks - though the worst offender, Sirius Black, was in Azkeban. A sweet thought. At least this one thing in his life had gone well.
The Great Hall still set his teeth on edge. Slytherins bumping into the dark, skinny Prefect -- until he made it perfectly clear he was willing to abuse his authority, flagrantly, to pay them back. It didn't make him popular, that was for the likes of Potter and his crew, but it did earn him a grudging respect, or at the very least cautious distance. Which was close enough.
Fortunately, the potions classroom had no particular memories beyond the burbling of cauldrons and a successful N.E.W.T. exam.
Teaching. Severus winced, and tried not to think which Slytherins, his soon-to-be students, would remember him from his seventh year. While teaching was an honor to Ravenclaws, a duty to Hufflepuffs, and a noble profession to the Gryffindors, any Slytherin knew the truth: it was the mark of a has-been, the last refuge of those whose dreams had come to nothing.
At twenty. And he had nowhere else to go.
Severus reached for the Muggle pack of cigarettes in his top drawer, though he didn't light one, merely rolled it between his fingers. He had purchased the quasi-contraband in Knockturn Alley in a fit of rebellion. This teenage habit of his had deliberately flown in the face of everything his pureblooded family exemplified, though true, it was fairly common amongst the Slytherins of his generation. This 'Muggle' habit was the first thing the Death Eaters had made him abandon. He slipped the pack back into the drawer, telling himself he didn't know how tobacco would react to the residual potion fumes, and returned to his attempt to become a teacher.
Hours later, the sun outside had set, though the potions dungeon remained the same. Severus had given up on being creative and was searching for something, anything, the prior Professor had left behind. He'd found a syllabus. From ten years before. It was out of date, but who cared really? He didn't know why he was trying so hard at this.
The door squeaked open, and Severus glanced up over the candles. His lip curled at this visitor in a combination of embarrassment and anger. If it were Professor Dumbledore -- no, Albus now, he insisted -- checking up on his progress…
The bins pushed through the door first, edged it open further. The rest of the cart followed, and the hideous head of Argus Filch poked around the door.
"Eh. Didn't 'spect anyone in here," he said.
Severus returned to his mangled syllabus. "Yes. One usually finds unattended candles burning in empty rooms."
Filch ignored that and squinted at him, a gesture which made his scars even more grotesque than usual. "You? Young Severus Snape is the new Potions Professor?" he chortled.
Severus favoured him with a steady glare. This echoed his own train of thought far to closely. He decided to pull rank, or else this demon of past detentions would never let him be. "That's Professor Snape to you."
But Filch continued to gurgle gleefully. "Heeheehee… teacher… Professor Snape to me… oh-ho, that's rich." He nearly choked with laughter. "We'll be seeing the backside of you right soon enough." He continued trundle his garbage bins into the room.
"Albus," he deliberately used the first name, "seems to think me qualified. What is it you do around here again? Oh, yes... you are the janitor."
Filch's grin faltered, then returned with renewed malice. "Qualified. Albus has a charity project a year. They never last." He began emptying garbage bins, by hand. Severus wondered at that. It was easy enough levitate bins across the room. Was Filch the back-to-the-land sort, the kind of wizard that insisted they had grown too dependent on magic? "There's a bet on how long you'll last. Minerva," Filch emphasized the first name, "gives you till Christmas."
He rolled his cart back to the door, which he yanked open. "Good luck to ye, Mister Snape. Y'gonna need it."
The door thumped shut behind him.
So. His loving colleagues welcomed him to his face, and placed bets behind his back. That stung. And surprised Severus, more than it should have. He didn't doubt Filch was telling the truth; he wasn't known for his imagination. And it fit with Severus' experience of human nature.
He had thought there was nothing more humiliating than being doomed to be a teacher. He was wrong. Being fired as a teacher, with nowhere else to turn, was infinitely, mind-bogglingly worse. The picture of Dumbledore's soulful, apologetic face came to mind, "My dear boy," he would say, "I have done what I could, but, much as I would like to keep you on..."
Severus set to work feverishly. Dumbledore wanted a syllabus? Well, he would give him a syllabus beyond his wildest dreams.
Finis.
****
The rest of the story was supposed to be about Snape's utterly impossible syllabus, his discovery that he was teaching children, who waved wands around (don't they know these are weapons? Wands can cast Cruciatus!) and stuck them up their noses. His life as a teacher hinging on the success of his sullen pupils.
That's it. Which is a pretty damned good track record of finishing what I start, especially considering I've written over 400 pages in Harry Potter alone. There's only one other typed unfinished story (yes, Brodie, you know what it is) but that I'm determined to finish.
EDIT: I decided to finish that Snape chapter.
keelywolfe. Here's the rules: you post bits of unfinished fics that you know will never see the light of day. Readers cannot complain, beg for more, or otherwise try to make the author finish them.Tastes Like Rain
by Icarus
"You have a bit of mayonnaise on your chin."
"Huh?" Harry looked up at Percy, the new Head Boy, with a puzzled blink. He wiped at his chin, but of course, missed.
"Here." Percy brushed at the soft angle of Harry's lips with his thumb, just below the corner.
It was a strange, motherly sort of thing to do, but Percy didn't notice as he examined his handiwork, his thumb brushing under Harry's chin. Gryffindors needed to represent themselves well, most of all Harry, who was so much in the public eye after all.
"Thanks," Harry mumbled.
"Don't mention it," Percy said primly. Harry was very important to Gryffindor, and might just become Head Boy himself one of these days, or so Percy thought. If Ron's influence didn't drag him down. But Harry was very different from Ron or any Percy's brothers; quiet, where they blustered, his skin cool and rather dry and not at all sweaty. Soft. Very clean. Apart from the mayonnaise. Percy watched Harry trot away from the dining table in the Great Hall with a sense of proprietary pride.
Having no handkerchief on hand, without thinking Percy touched his thumb to his lips. It tasted of Harry, although taste was really about ninety percent smell, now wasn't it? Because he shouldn't really be able to taste Harry, or rain, or Quidditch, or a slight gingery salt that wasn't mayonnaise at all -
"Hey - Percy? You listening?"
Percy startled out of his reverie and bit back a rather sharp response, carefully moulding it something socially acceptable. "Yes?" he said patiently.
"Wake up," Oliver said. "We need to go over the Quidditch schedules - we don't have nearly enough practice time, and if you could just talk to the teachers and explain! I'm sure -"
Blah, blah, blah, Quidditch, blah, blah. As Percy suspected, Oliver's interruption was of no importance whatsoever, and certainly didn't enlighten him as to why Harry Potter would taste like rain.
~*~*~*~
Percy was neater than the last Head Boy, and he had rearranged the furniture in his private room to his satisfaction. His clothes were arranged in crisp lines in the wardrobe - not a large assortment, but all neatly pressed - and the bed dominated the room now, where he had moved it to just under the window. The window curtains draped it either side in a soft, red canopy. Everyone agreed it was a much nicer arrangement, though a few of the guys pointed out that having the bed just under the window might be awkward for - uh. Nobody finished that thought of course, but they all knew he was seeing Penelope.
Ridiculous. No one but a vampire bat would be able to see into the turret room, unless you counted a balcony on the neighboring tower that was only present on the new moon. Besides, he and Penelope went to her room. Fewer brash comments that way. Their time together was pleasant, but he preferred not to be grilled and made a public spectacle of, thank you very much.
A Deserving Man
by Icarus
The walls of the dungeons dripped with moisture, the humidity of summer sank and cooled, pooling in the cracks and crevices. While outside it was sunny -- probably -- daylight never touched these rooms of ancient stone, older than any other part of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. One could almost feel the ponderous weight of the old fortress bearing down on the walls.
A distant drip of water interrupted the only other sound in the room: a delicate, hesitant scratching of quill on parchment. The scribbling sound paused; then renewed with a kind of erratic staccato rhythm, before it stopped again suddenly.
Those familiar with young Severus Snape's handwriting knew the results would be a tiny jagged scrawl, written at great speed and virtually illegible.
Severus chewed the end of his quill, then bent once more over his task in the potions classroom; his black hair narrowly missed being dipped in the inkwell. Already his desk was littered with half-opened scrolls and crumpled strips of parchment, which appeared to have many scratch-outs and corrections.
The first page had only one word: Syllabus.
'Professor' Snape threw down his quill, ignored the resulting blotch, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. His Syllabus for seven years of classes was due, like homework, by the last staff meeting before the school year. Truth be told, nothing in his previous nefarious career had prepared him for anything like this. 'Professor' Severus Snape. He thought of the title in quotes, as some sort of cosmic joke played on him by an unkind god. He had just turned twenty, yet the misery of his teens had come back to haunt him, manacled him to his past. To his mind, the empty Quidditch pitch still echoed with undeserved cheers for a Head Boy who was now a year dead. Certain hallways made his jaw clench with remembered bullying and cruel pranks - though the worst offender, Sirius Black, was in Azkeban. A sweet thought. At least this one thing in his life had gone well.
The Great Hall still set his teeth on edge. Slytherins bumping into the dark, skinny Prefect -- until he made it perfectly clear he was willing to abuse his authority, flagrantly, to pay them back. It didn't make him popular, that was for the likes of Potter and his crew, but it did earn him a grudging respect, or at the very least cautious distance. Which was close enough.
Fortunately, the potions classroom had no particular memories beyond the burbling of cauldrons and a successful N.E.W.T. exam.
Teaching. Severus winced, and tried not to think which Slytherins, his soon-to-be students, would remember him from his seventh year. While teaching was an honor to Ravenclaws, a duty to Hufflepuffs, and a noble profession to the Gryffindors, any Slytherin knew the truth: it was the mark of a has-been, the last refuge of those whose dreams had come to nothing.
At twenty. And he had nowhere else to go.
Severus reached for the Muggle pack of cigarettes in his top drawer, though he didn't light one, merely rolled it between his fingers. He had purchased the quasi-contraband in Knockturn Alley in a fit of rebellion. This teenage habit of his had deliberately flown in the face of everything his pureblooded family exemplified, though true, it was fairly common amongst the Slytherins of his generation. This 'Muggle' habit was the first thing the Death Eaters had made him abandon. He slipped the pack back into the drawer, telling himself he didn't know how tobacco would react to the residual potion fumes, and returned to his attempt to become a teacher.
Hours later, the sun outside had set, though the potions dungeon remained the same. Severus had given up on being creative and was searching for something, anything, the prior Professor had left behind. He'd found a syllabus. From ten years before. It was out of date, but who cared really? He didn't know why he was trying so hard at this.
The door squeaked open, and Severus glanced up over the candles. His lip curled at this visitor in a combination of embarrassment and anger. If it were Professor Dumbledore -- no, Albus now, he insisted -- checking up on his progress…
The bins pushed through the door first, edged it open further. The rest of the cart followed, and the hideous head of Argus Filch poked around the door.
"Eh. Didn't 'spect anyone in here," he said.
Severus returned to his mangled syllabus. "Yes. One usually finds unattended candles burning in empty rooms."
Filch ignored that and squinted at him, a gesture which made his scars even more grotesque than usual. "You? Young Severus Snape is the new Potions Professor?" he chortled.
Severus favoured him with a steady glare. This echoed his own train of thought far to closely. He decided to pull rank, or else this demon of past detentions would never let him be. "That's Professor Snape to you."
But Filch continued to gurgle gleefully. "Heeheehee… teacher… Professor Snape to me… oh-ho, that's rich." He nearly choked with laughter. "We'll be seeing the backside of you right soon enough." He continued trundle his garbage bins into the room.
"Albus," he deliberately used the first name, "seems to think me qualified. What is it you do around here again? Oh, yes... you are the janitor."
Filch's grin faltered, then returned with renewed malice. "Qualified. Albus has a charity project a year. They never last." He began emptying garbage bins, by hand. Severus wondered at that. It was easy enough levitate bins across the room. Was Filch the back-to-the-land sort, the kind of wizard that insisted they had grown too dependent on magic? "There's a bet on how long you'll last. Minerva," Filch emphasized the first name, "gives you till Christmas."
He rolled his cart back to the door, which he yanked open. "Good luck to ye, Mister Snape. Y'gonna need it."
The door thumped shut behind him.
So. His loving colleagues welcomed him to his face, and placed bets behind his back. That stung. And surprised Severus, more than it should have. He didn't doubt Filch was telling the truth; he wasn't known for his imagination. And it fit with Severus' experience of human nature.
He had thought there was nothing more humiliating than being doomed to be a teacher. He was wrong. Being fired as a teacher, with nowhere else to turn, was infinitely, mind-bogglingly worse. The picture of Dumbledore's soulful, apologetic face came to mind, "My dear boy," he would say, "I have done what I could, but, much as I would like to keep you on..."
Severus set to work feverishly. Dumbledore wanted a syllabus? Well, he would give him a syllabus beyond his wildest dreams.
Finis.
****
The rest of the story was supposed to be about Snape's utterly impossible syllabus, his discovery that he was teaching children, who waved wands around (don't they know these are weapons? Wands can cast Cruciatus!) and stuck them up their noses. His life as a teacher hinging on the success of his sullen pupils.
That's it. Which is a pretty damned good track record of finishing what I start, especially considering I've written over 400 pages in Harry Potter alone. There's only one other typed unfinished story (yes, Brodie, you know what it is) but that I'm determined to finish.
EDIT: I decided to finish that Snape chapter.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-23 06:04 pm (UTC)Icarus
The drabbles...
Date: 2003-08-23 06:16 pm (UTC)Mac and cheese? Not a bad craving. I sometimes want Van deKamps fish sticks. And tater tots. And beer to wash it down.
Re: The drabbles...
Date: 2003-08-24 01:56 pm (UTC)I actually finished that chapter, just because the Filch part was still so clear in my mind and demanded it. Yeah, dad is a Harry Potter fan. I got him into it. He's a very harsh critic, but I sent him my (rare) gen stuff, and he liked it. I wrote a drabble/cookie for MartianHouseCat when she was in a frustrating job search called 'A Opening' and sent it along to him. He said hopefully, "Are you going to finish this?"
The response to this has been positive enough that I may just go ahead and work on it. After I finish SNAFU (damn it, why is SNAFU eluding me?).
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2003-08-23 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-24 02:05 pm (UTC)Icarus
A Deserving Man
Date: 2003-08-23 09:28 pm (UTC)What better way than to make a syllabus that would fry everybody's mind?
Well done.
Re: A Deserving Man
Date: 2003-08-24 02:12 pm (UTC)Given what you've said, and the fact that I've written so few Gen fics... I may just continue this, though I have a policy of not posting WiPs until I have at least two-thirds of it done. (Thus guaranteeing I'll finish, heh. Reunion is my only exception to that rule.)
Icarus
A Deserving Man is fine as it is
Date: 2003-08-24 02:23 am (UTC)Congratulations on the high finish factor - wish I could do the same. More practice, perhaps. More unrelenting hard work disguised as fun.
Leni Jess
who posts her stories on Fiction Alley
Re: A Deserving Man is fine as it is
Date: 2003-08-24 02:24 pm (UTC)Actually, when I first posted this in LJ, I had only the part up to just before Filch's appearance, so it was very incomplete. But.. I just couldn't resist finishing the chapter. Annnnd, due to your kind words, I may just have this beta read and sent to Fiction Alley. I'm certainly going to send it to Dad.
Thanks! There are three reasons why I have a high finish rate.
The first: I've made a policy of not posting WiPs (okay, I have one exception) until they're at least 2/3s finished. That makes it easy for me to finish what I start.
Second: most of my long peices were written while I was gainfully unemployed. I could write 18 hours a day. That made it easy.
Third: I write my stories, outline them, in one of those 'composition notebooks.' I only count as unfinished those stories that have gone from the notebook to being typed. If you count what's in the books, the unfinished rate suddenly goes waaaaaaaaaaaay up. *g*
Icarus
Re: A Deserving Man is fine as it is
Date: 2003-08-25 06:48 pm (UTC)Yes, I post my stuff under 'Leni Jess' (and Jess is a surname, not another first name). Go read it! Some of it's slash, some not. In fact the balance between the posted stories would make people think I focus on slash, but the long WIPs are both het. If I struggle hard enough I'll get them finished, I've been loafing lately.
Leni Jess
for stories see htttp://thedarkarts.org/authorLinks/Leni_Jess/
(all Lucius-centric, some het, some slash); email leni_jess@yahoo.com.au