notes:
Third Time's the Charm (now with expletives!)
[This is the thirdish try at this, and the reason it didn't go up with the story initially is because I keep sounding like such a pompous jackass, you have no idea.]
This story was started in roughly October of 03 [when I wrote the first section up to the potion not working, and one or two interhouse picnic bits, and then abandoned it until mid-March], and I think of it as my response-to-OotP, from which you can probably see that the stuff that stuck with me was the Snape's-mental-anguish business. One thing about writing in HP is that
there are certain problems built in to the universe. At the basic level, from chapter one, how are we to read Harry's treatment at the Dursley's hands: as real Cinderella myth-building, or as call-child-protective services? This sort of tension informs the rest of the books, which is part of
the reason I've chosen to mostly ignore Remus' obvious dereliction of duty in PoA - because I tend to think that character faults that result from the need for the plot to take a certain shape are unfair, in a way. If Remus went right to Dumbledore and said "hey, that's my man Sirius," well. There fucking goes all of PoA, and so, for the purposes
of this story, I've chosen to treat it as JKR treats it: as kind of non-existent, since everyone seems to still think Remus is a fantabulous guy, post PoA.
By this I mean: How do you write around/accomodate some very very fucked up shit plotwise?
aka - the question I asked myself many, many times - why the christ did I decide that the world needed a romantic comedy set a year after Sirius Black's death? I do regret greatly not having been successful at writing a
Death Eater meeting that wouldn't throw the whole thing off. Somehow, once they started killing muggles, it kept not being funny.
My thanks to kel, aka throughadoor
for the advice and cecilia, aka cecilia
for cogent comma stylings [sorry about that thing you hate] and, as always, the Shirley to my Laverne,
schuyler. Also, resonant,
from whom I (v. obviously, and unrepentantly) stole the doorkeeping portraits, although I'd plead collective unconscious in the matter.