And my SSHG Exchange fic was...
Dec. 8th, 2011 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reynardoTime for a Change, which was gifted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teddyradiator as a pinch-hit thankyou.
For them as doesn't hang around these communities, it means that the person for whom I was originally writing dropped out and didn't write a gift for their participant. Soteddyradiator bravely stepped up and wrote a replacement gift, and my story was given to Teddy, who liked it!
Ahem
The story:
It's over 20 years since the Last Battle of Hogwarts. Hermione has just become the new Arithmancy Professor, and Severus thinks he owes her a large debt.
Based on the prompt "Hermione is the newest teacher at Hogwarts and thus has no idea what is Proper Protocol for Hogwarts professors. Severushaving been coerced by Minerva graciously offers his assistance."
I also used Hermione's just at that age. She's working a well-paying, marginally fulfilling job at the Ministry and bored out of her not-inconsiderable mind. All around her people are feeling their biological clocks ticking and are becoming progressively more desperate by the day. [Mental Scourgify, restraining orders, anyone?] The paps won't stop reporting her latest non-scandal and she hasn't hexed anyone in months. [There is something apparently very wrong about that.] Enter Severus. I started with writing the scene where Hermione walked out of the Ministry and was explaining to Rose (over a nice hot cup of tea) why she left (and wondering what she'd do now). When it came to putting the story together, I realised this was a whole superfluous chapter, and dropped it. There are little references to it through the rest of the story.
And that was a good bit of discipline for me - I've never been able to drop a whole chapter before. My chapter, my sweet, hard-worked-on chapter, my poor little chapter...
The original recipient left me some notes about their preferences too - they wanted snarky!Snape, nerd!Hermione and some of the lovely bromance-style interaction between the teachers. Most of all they did not want a super romantic Victorian flowers-and-chocolates Snape who was a total sex god.
And that's why the prologue. I was in a very naughty mood, and I wanted the prologue to sound like I'd specifically written something they didn't want ... and then for them to find out later that it was something quite different instead.
So there you are. If you're one of the people who read it as part of the exchange anyway, that's why I did it that way. That's why the intriguing prologue, and the premise for how Severus and Hermione get together in the end.
As for the rest of the story, the tragedy, I decided to weave in the tale of how Snape survived, and it turned into a mystery. One of the things that's usually a part of an SSHG is "how did Snape survive?", and I wanted that part to be an essential theme to the story. Some authors manage to stay in canon, some just assume he survived anyway... I wanted to not leave that part unanswered.
So that's how and why. Or maybe not - the whole "WHY THE HELL DOES SHE DO IT????" may never be answered :-)
On the other hand, leni_jess wrote the story I requested, Muggle Studies for Mature Students. leni_jess lives in Canberra, and I wish I'd got to know her when *I* was there! The story is a fascinating wander through Glasgow as Lucius Malfoy tries to learn how Muggles work, supervised by Hermione and Severus. I want to go and see Mackintosh chairs now.
teddyradiator as a pinch-hit thankyou. For them as doesn't hang around these communities, it means that the person for whom I was originally writing dropped out and didn't write a gift for their participant. So
teddyradiator bravely stepped up and wrote a replacement gift, and my story was given to Teddy, who liked it!Ahem
The story:
It's over 20 years since the Last Battle of Hogwarts. Hermione has just become the new Arithmancy Professor, and Severus thinks he owes her a large debt.
Based on the prompt "Hermione is the newest teacher at Hogwarts and thus has no idea what is Proper Protocol for Hogwarts professors. Severus
I also used Hermione's just at that age. She's working a well-paying, marginally fulfilling job at the Ministry and bored out of her not-inconsiderable mind. All around her people are feeling their biological clocks ticking and are becoming progressively more desperate by the day. [Mental Scourgify, restraining orders, anyone?] The paps won't stop reporting her latest non-scandal and she hasn't hexed anyone in months. [There is something apparently very wrong about that.] Enter Severus. I started with writing the scene where Hermione walked out of the Ministry and was explaining to Rose (over a nice hot cup of tea) why she left (and wondering what she'd do now). When it came to putting the story together, I realised this was a whole superfluous chapter, and dropped it. There are little references to it through the rest of the story.
And that was a good bit of discipline for me - I've never been able to drop a whole chapter before. My chapter, my sweet, hard-worked-on chapter, my poor little chapter...
The original recipient left me some notes about their preferences too - they wanted snarky!Snape, nerd!Hermione and some of the lovely bromance-style interaction between the teachers. Most of all they did not want a super romantic Victorian flowers-and-chocolates Snape who was a total sex god.
And that's why the prologue. I was in a very naughty mood, and I wanted the prologue to sound like I'd specifically written something they didn't want ... and then for them to find out later that it was something quite different instead.
So there you are. If you're one of the people who read it as part of the exchange anyway, that's why I did it that way. That's why the intriguing prologue, and the premise for how Severus and Hermione get together in the end.
As for the rest of the story, the tragedy, I decided to weave in the tale of how Snape survived, and it turned into a mystery. One of the things that's usually a part of an SSHG is "how did Snape survive?", and I wanted that part to be an essential theme to the story. Some authors manage to stay in canon, some just assume he survived anyway... I wanted to not leave that part unanswered.
So that's how and why. Or maybe not - the whole "WHY THE HELL DOES SHE DO IT????" may never be answered :-)
On the other hand, leni_jess wrote the story I requested, Muggle Studies for Mature Students. leni_jess lives in Canberra, and I wish I'd got to know her when *I* was there! The story is a fascinating wander through Glasgow as Lucius Malfoy tries to learn how Muggles work, supervised by Hermione and Severus. I want to go and see Mackintosh chairs now.
