Valentine's Day Special!

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:31:02 GMT

Okay, it's no longer anywhere near Valentine's Day. Punctuality isn't really my thing. But just pretend.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for the "random story" feature over on SycophantHex. I could never have found half my current material without it.

Also, I now have a FAQ. More because I enjoy being able to say that I have a FAQ than because I actually merit one, but still.

Story or Series Title: Love and Deceit
Fandom: Nominally, Harry Potter.
Culprit Author's Name: DarkRoseBlood.
Full Name (plus titles if any): Hermione Granger
Full Species(es): Puella tenebrossisima, the Nicky the Goth Wants His Thesaurus Back Sue. (Snape's possession of "immoral obsidian orbs" would elevate him to the status of a Stu, but he doesn't talk enough.)
Hair Color: "Lovely waves of russet hair."
Eye Color: "[Her] eyes had seen too much in her relatively young life." Hey, haunted eyes ought to qualify as a Sue trait. But if you're one of those damned traditionalists, they're also "unforgiving pools of endless brown." And yes. They are also chocolate.
Unusual Markings: "My hands became stained with their blood as it spilled upon the vile graveyard, pooling treacherously around me!"
Special Clothing: A "flowing burgundy robe." You just can't torture somebody in tan, or periwinkle, or mint. It's got to be something snappy.
Special Possessions: Hermione: A knife. Snape: Blood.
Annoying Origin: The unholy union of Nora Roberts and Charles Baudelaire?
Annoying Connections To Canon Characters: Murdering canon characters. No, not in the usual, coyly figurative Deleterian sense. In the murdering-them-sense.
Annoying Special Abilities: The ability to get a lot of creative English past the SycophantHex admins.
Other Annoying Traits: Repeatedly personifying obsidian.

This fic takes on what is actually a very interesting question: If Snape and Hermione did become involved, and Snape subsequently were to betray her and all the Order, just what would Hermione do about it?

Unfortunately, the prose, which bleeds even more than Snape does in this fic, pretty much kills it.

Please include a small sample of the worst of this story:

A/N: Just a very weird, very dark ficlet from my twisted little sadistic mind. o.O ::smirks::
Hermione: You know, if you think you're dark and twisted, you probably aren't. The world would be a much less pretentious place if only everybody would remember that.
Snape: The emoticon strikes just the right dark note.

=x=

See: Pink.

Actually, see an interrogation chamber. Around a table, three hostages shield their eyes against the light pouring down from the ceiling: a hook-nosed man in a dingy nightshirt, a woman in a plaid dressing gown, and a girl with really bad hair. But this is an interrogation chamber papered in pink hearts, furnished with mauve chairs, trimmed with red vinyl. The table is pink. The scroll on the table is pink. The light is pink.

The man tries to hide his knees under the table without losing any dignity. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH US?"

"Who are you?" the girl demands. "Show yourself!"

Laughter. "I would rather you showed me something. Several somethings, in fact… one from each of the fanfics I'm going to give you."

"Why?" says the woman acidly.

"In 1976, the writers of 'Doctor Who' pondered the age-old question of what to do when the series is stagnating, and found the answer: Send the protagonists on a quest. Same reasoning. You will each have to use all your knowledge, all your cunning, and your own unique gifts to give me each Key: The Moral of the Story."

"That voice," mutters the woman in horrified fascination. "I know that voice…"

"No you don't, it's disguised with a charm, you moron," snaps the man.

"You're torturing us already," says the girl. "What makes you think we'll play your game?"

More demented laughter. "Oh, it's quite simple."

"Is it?"

"Very. Collect all the Keys, and I will let you go. Happy Valentine's Day!"

And then, with a cackle, the light and the voice are gone.

=x=

Love and Deceit
By: DarkRoseBlood

(Snip!

Snape, having been hexed and kidnapped, wakes to find himself in the Shrieking Shack. Here at the beginning, there's a good chunk of text devoted to establishing the ambiance for the rest of fic, and I must say that it does work. I could never have gotten such a photo-real impression of Madam Puddifoot's gone Goth on my own.)

[A]n obscured figure hidden in the forbidding shadows moved like rippling scarlet water into the lighter area of the grimy room.

Snape: I'm sort of imagining Granger as a lethifold in a Santa Claus suit.
McGonagall: It's easier that way.

“Tsk-tsk, my love, having a bit of trouble aren’t we?” asked an affectionately soft voice that seemed to be created out of rose petals and chocolate,

McGonagall: Giving Dan Brown a run for his money, are we?
Snape: Why does it not surprise me that you read that trash?

yet something else was warped unnaturally into the frighteningly sweet voice.

McGonagall: Warping something into something else is unnatural, yes. Well, actually, it's ungrammatical, but that just doesn't sound as impressive.
Snape: Philistine, will you not heed? Miss Granger is Frightening. Also, Warped. And Twisted. And Dark. Much like this Tale. We cannot be bothered with petty matters like what English verbs take prepositions; this is Tragedy. Sorry, tragedy.

Something that did not belong there. Something twisted… threatening… disturbing… even mocking…

Hermione: No, that was just me.

At the sweetly biting voice, the obsidian-eyed man snapped his head forward to peer at the elegant woman,

Snape: It's nice to see that someone still puts on makeup to torture an ex. So many women just don't make the effort these days.
Hermione (coldly): Typical. Even in torturing you, we are obliged to paint ourselves to please the opposite sex. A textbook case of the perpetuation of the subjugation of one sex as the object of gaze and the dominance of the other as the gazers.
Snape: *gazes blankly*

who appeared to be in her early twenties, approaching from the dreary room’s baleful shadows.

Snape: Shadows, of course, are generally baleful.
Hermione: Just ask Edgar Allan Poe.
Snape: It appears the narrator has already done that one too many times.
McGonagall: Under the influence of one too many substances.

(...) “How does it feel, my love, to be the prey?” the woman’s silky voice whispered through the silent room, ever so lethal and deceiving.

Hermione: Er... who, exactly, is deceived?
Snape: All of the readers who have gotten this far and still think this is PWP roleplay.

“How does it feel to be at the mercy of me, your love, your little lioness? Hmm?”

Snape: Excruciating, thanks.

With a rare sneer that was unnatural on her serene features, she flicked the dark wood wand

Snape: I'm so glad you haven't gone over to plastic.
Hermione: It is more practical, but the craftsmanship just isn't the same.
Snape: Quite.

held in her hand, and the black-eyed man’s senses immediately returned to him; now however, he could barely move a muscle as every tendon seemed to burn with blistering white-hot fire.

McGonagall: For a beginner, Miss Granger, you have a remarkable grasp of the theatrics.
Hermione: Thanks. I learned from the best.
McGonagall: Professor Snape?
Hermione: No, author notes on FFN responding to concrit.

“Hermione Granger,” hissed the raven-haired man in a menacing voice, which instantly reminded the stunning woman, whose eyes had seen too much in her relatively young life,

Snape: Why is it that no Sue, however dim, has ever seen too little?

of several more occasions when she’d heard that tone before. A forceful shudder threatened to trail down her spine but she easily suppressed it.

McGonagall: *pushes up spectacles* But it was forceful?

Fear was a weakness. And weakness was of no use to her now.

Hermione: It was a real asset before, though.

Besides, only those with something to lose had the need to fear.

Snape: Could someone make a "cliché alert!" joke for me? I can't be arsed.

Hermione Granger had nothing left to lose, not anymore at least.

Snape: I really feel it loses something with the "not anymore at least" tacked on.

“Oh, dear Severus, (...) What happened to ‘my love’ or ‘my little lioness’

Hermione (as Snape): Well, I did love a lioness once. But as it turns out, it's much more hazardous than loving horses, you see —
Snape: *changes grade to "T" with flick of his wand*

—those ever adoring names you used to call me? But, Granger, sweet beloved?

Snape: Have you always talked to me like that, sweet beloved? Because I think I might be able to mount a tenable legal defense for screwing you over if you have.

Why, you haven‘t called me Granger for so long. Since… once upon a time, isn’t that right my love?

Hermione: Such a shame to blur the distinction between the precious and the creepy.

(...) Oh, yes–” She (...) climbed onto the ancient filthy bed,

McGonagall: Thus in the unresolved conflict of the Electra complex we find the wellspring of the central theme of hatred. In selecting Professor Snape, the authority figure, as a lover, Miss Granger perpetuates her infantile desire for her father under another, too-transparent pattern. The bed then becomes "filthy," as she is stranded between child and woman, maiden and whore.
Snape: This Freudian interlude brought to you by the flower of Western thought.

straddling her quarry. “–that was before you murdered everyone dear to me.

Snape: *smacks self in forehead* Oh, right.

Yes… indeed, now I remember. That was before you handed them over to your psychotic Master. Before you played and then betrayed me, wasn’t it, my love, my sweet, you damnable bastard?”

Snape: Voilà. Le Backstory. Now in a convenient, one-a-fic tablet.

(...) “Before I watched, in front of my very own eyes, them cry out in bleeding pain as they were mercilessly tortured, isn‘t that right, my dearly loved Professor?

Hermione: Ooooh, I know what this is, my Muggle English teacher told us about it when we did poetry. It's chiasmus, it's where the sentence structure mimics what's happening in the story.

Before my hands became stained with their blood as it spilled upon the vile graveyard, pooling treacherously around me,” she hissed furiously, her nails digging angrily into the thick cloth of her former professor’s midnight black shirt.

Snape: If this gets much more melodramatic, Andrew Lloyd Webber is going to sue for copyright infringement.
Hermione: If this gets any more melodramatic, Andrew Lloyd Webber may hire her.

“Do you know what it feels like, my dear love, to watch as your world crashes and burns around you.

McGonagall: …I think so, yes.

As those you trusted with your whole life deceived you, betrayed you.

Snape: Miss Granger, I'm a paranoid double agent with a persecution complex. You're not going to be able to out-emo me. Abandon the attempt.

As you betrayed me? Do you know, Severus, my sweet, my love?!” she screamed at him, voice so silky and dangerous in all its unrepressed rage.

Hermione: *raises hand* Question. How do you keep your voice silky when you scream?
McGonagall: I don't know. Ask Wagner.
Wagner: Only I may orchestrate like this. The rest of you bitches can learn to let the singers through.

Like at dark forbidding wave that threatened to consume her vulnerable prey, her wavy locks of rich gorgeous russet cascaded down her jagged shoulders onto the smooth black cloth of her victim’s spotless robes.

Snape: I'm supposed to be afraid of her hair?
Hermione: Only if you're too uncouth to recognize that it's a subtle, sophisticated symbol weaving through the text, deftly encapsulating the key themes in one object.

Blazing with icy fire, her once kind chocolate brown eyes

Hermione: My momma always said life is like a box of chocolates.
Snape: Don't be a moron, Miss Granger. We know exactly what we're going to get.

raged heartlessly with something wild, something dangerous, hostile even—something mad, in her unforgiving pools of endless brown, and for a mere second he almost knew true fear. And how it burned.

Snape: …There isn't really anything else to say, is there?

Sadistic amusement sparkled precariously in her hauntingly fathomless chocolate irises as Hermione, with one pale slender hand, drew out a fatally curved dagger, which glimmered ominously beneath the spare moonlight that leaked in through the boarded windows, from the mysterious depths of her deep burgundy robes the color of lustrous blood. With pure, unadulterated enjoyment twisting sickly in her lovely milk-white features, she idly trailed the razor-sharp dagger down her prisoner’s chest delighting in each small pop as the steely black buttons holding his black satin-like shirt closed snapped harshly open.

McGonagall: WOW.
Snape: If you take all the adjectives and adverbs out of that paragraph, it is 34.0659% shorter. And it is still purple.

“Oh, don’t worry Hermione,“ he managed to taunt through clenched teeth into the old dusty, upper bedroom of the age-old Shrieking Shack, obsidian hues narrowed

Hermione: Hues?
Snape: I do not think it means what you… Oh, for fuck's sake, must the fish in the barrel be quite so fat and slow?

and glaring at the revengeful woman atop him. “You’re fate would have been the same as those inferior fools if you hadn’t escaped. Damn bitch.”

Snape: Pesky kids.
Hermione: "And then Professor Snape reached lazily up to pluck a tin of Villainous Oratory from the shelf…"

“But, aren’t I, my love? After all, I learned from the best, sweetheart,” she murmured softly and sardonically into his ear, the dagger currently skimming against the sickly pallid skin of his bare chest.

Hermione: Sardonic bastards are, of course, supposed to be very attractive.
McGonagall: I blame Jane Eyre.
Hermione: I blame patterns of abuse in the patriarchy.
Snape: I blame Disney.

(...) “I wonder, Severus my love, do you think it felt like this,” —she pressed the gleaming blade edge harshly and brutally into his pale flesh, vivid crimson blood instantly spurting forth—, “when you led them into your faulty trap,

Snape: If it was a faulty trap, then what are we all bitching about? Let's go home and have some bloody tea.

warped them in your disgusting lies? Do you think they felt the pain when you revealed your true malicious loyalties? Do you think they felt as if you had shoved a knife straight through their hearts, hmm, my darling Severus?”

Snape: I doubt it.

As the sharp silver dagger slid slowly down his chest, creating unknown designs on his pasty white skin, her sharp unpainted nails dug into his jaw as she jerked his face, curved angrily into a vicious snarl, closer to her own hauntingly beautiful one. Reflecting inhumanly in her once chaste, lovely features and loving chocolate eyes was the treacherous pains and misery of her past—the catastrophe as her life fell down upon her in roaring blood red flames.

jabberwanky: Pass. There just isn't a rimshot snappy enough for this.

Her smirk widened as she saw the momentary flinch of unbearable pain reflected in his black bottomless eyes as her actions contradicted harshly and agonizingly with the full body-binding spell she had placed upon him earlier.

Snape: Huh?

She reveled deeply in his torturous pain,

Hermione: But not his ticklish pain.

his ongoing

McGonagall: Redundancy?

suffering, and she laughed as she relished in the blissful feeling as his sinful Death Eater blood poured down his chest in thick juicy streams.

Snape: I am glad that my blood is robust. I sometimes worry about my iron.

And, oh, how she would become drunk in the rapturous highs that his hideous death would bring, this man who had once murmured sweet, sweet nothings

Snape: Isn't that a bit of a cliché?
Hermione: No, that's "sweet nothings." "Sweet, sweet nothings" is edgy.

of passion and devotion as he made love to her, as he fucked her against the cold stone of Hogwarts’ dungeon walls.

Snape: This up-against-the-wall stuff is ludicrously out of character. I would never put that much effort into it.

That was, all of course, before he betrayed them and her. Yet, truth be told, he had been playing with their minds all along.

Snape: Duh.

All along. Playing with her. Using her.

Snape: It sounds plausible enough, except I can't see why you'd be useful.
Hermione: You could practice your gallantry on me, Professor.

(...) “I wouldn’t know,” he said, sneering with obvious painful effort, “but I’m sure it hurt immensely as their pitiful, mudblood-loving lives left their useless bodies, don’t you think, Hermione?”

Snape: You know, you'd think that I at least would have some incentive to practice economy of words.

“Why, why, why?” (...)

“Why?” the former Potions Master scoffed through clenched teeth. “Don’t you know, Hermione dear? Sweet, know-it-all Gryffindor bitch.”

She knew it. Always and forever.

McGonagall: Also eternally, in perpetuity, till doomsday, and unto ages of ages.

A weakness.

“You played with them! All of them! Their minds, their compassion!” (...)

Contemptuously, her chocolate brown eyes suddenly flashed maliciously as she slashed the sparkling silver blade stained with spiteful blood down his chest in one ferocious swipe, causing a slow hiss to escape through her quarry’s gritted teeth.

Snape: She does understand that I'm no longer her quarry, what with my having already been caught?
Hermione: Under the circumstances, I think she may actually have meant the other kind.

No, he wouldn’t play with her mind; not today—this was her day.

Hermione: Don't you rain on my parade.

“Don’t you wish, darling Severus, my love, that you could scream?”

Snape: How did you know?

she whispered, scornfully as she slowly licked the dark ruby blood,

Snape: The sweets were bad enough. Must we really have the gems?
Hermione: Every kiss begins with Kay.

which poured down his muscled yet pasty white chest in copious rivers. “I’m sure by now you could feel the poison coursing through your veins as it ever so slowly deteriorates your muscles and flesh from the inside. And just think, soon, once the poison reaches its pinnacle, you will plead for me to take off the body-binding spell so you can claw at your flesh and eyes in sheer agony—and you will damn your useless Slytherin pride, so you can scream.”

“Going to torture me before killing me, are you now, Hermione sweet?

McGonagall: Not too swift, Severus, are you?

What happened to the little goody-two-shoes Gryffindor?” He sneered derisively, straining to repress his urge to tremble in pain as he did, indeed, feel the effects of the poison take affect. He would have laughed bitterly at the irony of it all, if he’d had the strength to, that is. After all, hadn’t it been he, himself, who had taught Hermione Granger about this particular poison.

Snape: That's some subtle irony, all right.

“You were the one who told me that we always hurt the ones we love,"

Hermione: No, that was Wilde.

(...) Her slender white hands, along with the tainted dagger,

McGonagall: Note that the dagger, the phallus, is tainted. Miss Granger takes the phallus into her own hands, thus satisfying infantile penis envy via Severus' symbolic castration.
Snape: That isn't funny.
Hermione: It is now.

roamed his chest (...).

“For I can tell you it had indeed felt like a knife plunging into my beating heart, full of naively-placed love for you,

Hermione: The knife was?

(...) I will make you feel what it’s like to have a knife plunged into your heart, lover of mine,” she hissed spitefully.

Snape: Miss Granger, kindly gag Professor McGonagall.

(...) His fathomless irises of black, (...) still mocked, still taunted even when he looked her straight in the eyes and saw death. Even when he felt death flowing through his veins like sheer acid. After all, he was Severus Snape… and that had been one of the numerous things she’d loved about him.

Hermione: I loved that he was Snape? That's sort of painting it a bit broad, isn't it?
Snape: *preens* No, apparently you love that I won't miss an opportunity to debase you at any price. That's attractive to women. I know, I read it somewhere.
Hermione (muttering): You and McGonagall should start a book club.

“They died,” she whispered sadistically.

Snape: Look, there are a lot of your current activities that you could do sadistically. Why does it have to be the whispering? It's not like you're hurting for options.

“They died the moment you betrayed all the people who had trusted you with their lives. The moment you shattered my heart and killed the Hermione Granger you knew.”

Hermione paused, her forehead coming to rest upon her former lover’s. As she looked upon the face she had once recognized as one of trust, faith, and love, her chocolate eyes once again swirled with a solemn sadness and heartache for a mere moment, even as his immoral obsidian orbs still regarded her with pure contempt.

jabberwanky: I could not make this shit up.

(Snip/Tuck)

Hermione slid down her prisoner’s body until her forehead rested in the crook of his neck and the front of her robes became soaked with her former lover’s rich ruby blood as she lay upon his chest. Her lovely russet locks also become heavy with his thick crimson blood

Snape: I don't understand the excruciating specificity. Were we expecting it to be green?
Hermione: There's probably a crossover somewhere where it is.

as they scattered out around her.

(...) “I did love you, Severus Snape, my only love.”

“Fo–foolish girl,” he was able to mutter as vivid

McGonagall: SDT violation.

ruby blood poured from his mouth. He knew in his mind the excruciating pain he felt, eating his soul alive, was nothing compared to the agony he would endure in a matter of moments as the poison hit its climax, burning the flesh off his bones.

Snape (tiredly): Let me guess: the "burning the flesh off my bones" bit is a metaphor for orgasm.
McGonagall: No. That's sick.

Hermione breathed against his pale neck and raven locks, taking in the fresh earthly smell of Severus Snape one more time, before whispering ever-so softly: “And I always will…”

Snape: Codependency is forever.

And she plunged the knife straight in his beating heart before the poison could take full effect.

“We always hurt the ones we love, isn‘t that right, my beloved husband?” she whispered to the now lifeless body.

And then she wept.

Suddenly, the pink light reappears.

Hermione: *panics* Oh, no! Oh, I haven't thought of anything! Quick, quick!
DISEMBODIED VOICE: HAVE YOU FOUND THE MORAL OF THE STORY?
Hermione: We haven't had time—
McGonagall: Burn your thesaurus?
Hermione: Don't try so hard?
Snape: There are worse things than PWP?
DISEMBODIED VOICE: *LAUGHS* IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?
McGonagall: Ah… er… suspense is harder than it looks…?
Snape: Strunk and White are looking better all the time…?

The light begins to fade. The Voice seems to be retreating.
DISEMBODIED VOICE: A PITY. IT SEEMS YOU WILL HAVE TO REMAIN HERE… FOREV…
Hermione (leaps onto her chair and screams): At least it's not Laurell K. Hamilton!
DISEMBODIED VOICE: OH, DAMN IT.

A clear chunk of plastic bearing no resemblance to a key drops out of the light.
DISEMBODIED VOICE: YOU'VE WON THIS TIME, POTTERHOUSE FIVE. BUT LET'S SEE IF YOU OUTWIT ME AGAIN.
The light fades. There is a whirlwind, a set change—and our heroes open their eyes…

TO BE CONTINUED

Love and Deceit
by DarkRoseBlood

Word Frequency Statistics: chocolate 7, obsidian 5, russet 3, fathomless 2, ruby 3, raven-haired 5, silky 3, milk-white 1 (but it seemed like so many more), tainted 1 (but this also seemed more frequent), orbs 3, sadistic 3, twisted 2, dark 7, sweet 13, blood 17, stained 4, betray/-ed/-al 5, harsh 4, hauntingly 2, treacherous 4,

Total: 2470

=x=

1. No disrespect is intended toward Poe or Baudelaire, whom I like. I was poking fun at the sort of "groupies" they sometimes get, who think their stuff sounds kinda cool and that all the bits about death and obsession and and stuff are highly fashionable, and produce journal pages that are a dead ringer for this story as a result. You know the type. You went to high school with at least one of them, possibly wearing the same backpack and eating the same lunches.

2. Chiasmus is a bit more technical than this, I think. But that's why I do prose.

3. It did occur to me that this might be a parody. My spidey-sense, and the reviews, tell me no. But if this is a parody, and the author ever finds this, congratulations. I lol'd.

=x=

Doc Lydgate

It Started with a Kiss Sporking Directory

Valentine's Day Special!

The Little Wank That Could

It Happened One Hallow's Eve Sporking Directory

Glossary of Sporking Terms

XD

The Phantom of Hogwarts Sporking Directory

Love at first mockery

Long-time reader, first-time poster...