Hello!!!
So good to know you are alright!! I´m sure you are going to do great at your graduation, just keep the hard work, and you would enjoy the results…
Wow, I don’t know where to start, Chapter 26 was a heavy one, and Chapter 27 broke my heart to pieces. Both chapters were so full of emotions, new clues and mysteries… you are giving us answers that lead to new questions, great work.
First Chapter 26
Poor Hermione, I can feel her anguish about the loss of her magic, but mostly about not knowing what was happening to her and the feeling that she can´t trust Snape telling her the truth because she knows that he’s keeping her in the dark about many things, and she’s angry but is incapable to express it for fear at his reaction.
Oh! and how much I despise Lupin and the Order in this story!!! They used Harry to defeat Voldemort but they didn’t help him to get better about what happened to Hermione. They claimed to love him, but they didn’t care that he rotted inside, he became an alcoholic and violent man, and nobody was there for him. And now Lupin wants to act all rightful and look down to Harry, he wants to act as if Harry’s aggressive behavior was a surprise? What a hypocritical man! Why he didn’t take Harry to St. Mungo’s? Why he didn’t make Harry face the fact that Hermione was gone? (She was absent for years, all the signs pointed that she was dead). Lupin, the Weasleys and the rest of the Order’s members are the worse kind of human beings: the ones that are in their high pedestals believing that are the epitome of goodness, but without any care besides their own agendas. Harry paid the price of their selfishness and now Hermione is another victim.
Now Chapter 27
Oh my God! What a bunch of idiots!!! I swear to God, I don’t understand what Lupin and his merry band of airheads were thinking making Hermione met Draco with Harry so close to them!!! I can understand Hermione’s desperation to meet with somebody that can really help her, and her disregard to Harry’s fury, after all, this can be her opportunity to escape but are the others so blind that they don´t see how unstable Harry is? This is another example about how simple is their view of the problem. In the long run, they are not trying to help Hermione (or Harry), they are trying to pass the problem to another person (Draco). They know that something is wrong, but they don´t take Hermione away from Harry, as they didn’t took Harry to St. Mungo’s for mental help, because they don´t want to get their hands dirty. And what was the result of this poor planed encounter? Harry losing his fragile contact with reality (he really believes that locking up Hermione was the better way to protect her) and of course Hermione captive again (next time: run Hermione, run!! And let Snape, Harry and the rest of the wizarding world go to hell, they deserve it!!!). Thanks for your invaluable help Lupin!
The memories where a great way to know what happened to convince Hermione to stay with Snape and that was heartbreaking, it was so painful to read how she begged Snape to take her to the cottage. And this is the first time that Snape acknowledges what happened to Harry and Ron as a consequence of Hermione’s disappearance, and of course he has to think that they “foolishly” ended in the Death Eater’s trap. This is one of the reasons I can’t sympathize with Snape: He have all the information, all the knowledge, all the power to prevent so many things, but his reasons changed over time and not for the better: first he said he wanted to protect Hermione and the others, that he swore to Dumbledore to save as many members of the Order as he could, but later he wanted Hermione (which don’t surprise me since he was lusting after her since she was fifteen!) and let everyone else go to hell: He was an Order member, and instead of helping, he left without interest in the fate of the magical world, he left the Order without a spy, he left Hogwarts full of Death Eaters, he left Draco (there is no way that he could have protected Draco as he promised Narcissa) and all this brought only horrible consequences: Ron is dead (he went to that raid to try to “save Hermione”, got hurt and later he needed a potion that only a Potion’s Master could do and guess what? Snape wasn’t there to help) and Harry is crazy because he was living in a limbo without closure about what happened to Hermione (Snape saved him in the hospital, but that was because he promised Hermione to do it, not because he believed in helping Harry and if we are honest it was better for Snape’s plans if Harry defeated Voldemort).
Part of me is anxious to know more, and another part of me don´t want this to end, is such a great journey!! But I need to know, what went wrong with the cure of the Urduja Curse? I mean, I suppose that something went wrong since Hermione couldn´t come back after the seven years and there is no way that, after the way her last encounter (before her voluntary captivity) with Harry was described, she just said “You know what? I don’t want to see my friends and family anymore”. Yeah, in many chapters Snape tried to convince her to never go back, but this is Hermione Granger, and she would never just forget about her loved ones.
Good luck my dear friend!! I know everything is going to be ok, and that you are going to be great in your graduation and in your recital.
Hugs
Inés
Hiii
I liked the way you set the part where Hermione sees harry for the last time.
While reading your comment I was thinking of the paryers ( we call them douaa, yep I'm muslim ) my mothers says to me whenever I'm facing an important stage in my life or going through exams or work assignments. So I'm making douaa for you from all my heart using the same words my mother uses ( they are very effective, no it's not magic hhhh, I like to think of them as positive energy your loved ones send you ) so you'll make us all proud. Keep on working hard for your dreams only you can make them true.
Good luck, send us a part of you concert in May.
All the positive energy.
Hello,
I miss you, hope everything is ok in RL and you can have a little time to let us know that you are ok.
Hugs
Inés
Chapter 24
Hello,
As always, great work!!! It’s good to see the flashbacks and know more about what happened in the past.
I’m so sad about Harry’s fate, because it seems inevitable that he ends in St. Mungo’s with Neville’s parents. He lost it, and now he thinks that replicating the cottage, Hermione would feel at home. It’s so sad and disturbing…
Still hating Snape, sorry, I know that you want to paint him in a sympathetic way, but I can’t stop feeling that he must had said something when Hermione was his captive, he could have found a way to let her loved ones know that she was alive, and let her contact the outside world (a two way mirror, an owl, her patronus, etc.), that way she wouldn’t be in direct contact with them, but can still be in touch. He could have prevented so much hurt, even some deaths (Ron is dead because he was looking for her). That make me think that he wanted her all to himself, because that was the only way he can have her heart, soul and specially her body.
As I said before, I have conflicted emotions toward Hermione, I´m frustrated with her only being a victim, refusing to see the hurt in others and refusing to tell the truth to those that were her family but wanting that everyone believe that Snape is innocent.
You let us know that Hermione wasn´t doing magic while in captivity, I wonder what she did all those years? How she lived all those years without her magic, when that was such a great part of her? In the books she always was trying to show what a great witch she was, even earning the title of the brightest witch of her age, how she become almost a muggle? How she coped with it?
I’m glad to know we are near the end, I can’t wait to see all the pieces in the puzzle together at last, I´m dying to know what would happen with Harry (would he be fine someday? Could he can have closure?), Snape (would he go to Azkaban for his other crimes? Would society accept him?) and Hermione (would she be a strong person again? Would she stop romanticizing what happened to her? Can she live in the wizarding world after being a muggle so much time?)
Thank you so much for your work and efforts, hope to see you soon.
Inés
Hi
Thank you for sharing your writing with us. I like the way you set the story line I find it interesting.
First of all does Hermione suffer from the Stockholm syndrome??
Second thing is pleaase no Dramione romance, I think that you want to give her a partner by the end of the story but do we really need it maybe draco should just be a friend to her.
The last thing I want to say is can you please finish the story faster if it were a book I would finish it in 2 days but now I have to wait and sometimes I just feel like your making it longer.
By the way I would like to salute you for your hard work I wasn't an art major but I know what it's like to have to work hard to reach your goals. I hope you'll be a great musician and writer.
Good luck with liife.
PS : please don't change the way we see Hermione for us she's a strong independent woman and sometimes it doesn't seem like it in the story, maybe she's acting like that because there's the thing we're still waiting to know and which what the story is all about but still I wanna see her make her way out of this the smart way she should.
Chapter 22
OMG!!! That was awful, really, truly awful, you made me cry!!! I have conflicted emotions for Hermione, but mostly I feel sorry for her…
First her interactions with Harry… They are both so frustrated with each other, and I can understand that she don’t want to be with someone that is so angry and that she is only with him so he didn´t hurt her or Snape, but at the same time, she´s acting just as Snape, as if Harry has no suffered at all.
She wants Harry to talk to her and tell her the truth, but she didn´t want to talk to him and tell him the truth, and that’s hypocritical of her. And when he asks her all the things that he really wants to know and she didn’t wants to talk, she reacts by slapping him! (It’s so sick and horrible because that’s what Harry did to her when he was frustrated, and it seems that violence is the “exit” of all this unwanted conversations between those two)
She tells him that Snape has done a lot for him, but she didn’t tell what that means, and hey! She had the opportunity to tell the truth and don’t be afraid if Harry like it or not because she was in a public place, but she prefers to go to a private place where she wouldn’t say a word about what really happened, she would make Harry more angry and put herself in danger? I’m starting to think that she wants Harry to be the bad guy so she can be with Snape with a clean conscience.
Did she really can’t see how frustrating can be this to Harry? I don’t understand why she can’t be more sympathetic with his suffering. She loved him once, why isn’t she more worried about what he’s gone through, all the anguish, the pain, the desperation? She didn’t loves him anymore and she thinks that she loves Snape, but weren’t they friends at least? And if everything that happened in the ten years was for Harry’s sake, why his suffering is worth so little?
Harry is not well, he’s unstable and full of anger, but why she and Snape are making him suffer more than he already has suffered? Don’t they see that their actions are making Harry crazier? Didn’t she care? That's what they want? Have she and Snape made a pact or an oath to not tell the truth unless that was something that someone asks directly? The curse demands on them to not speak directly about it?
And her interactions with Snape, the last part made me sad and sick… he raped her, he RAPED her, he pressured her to have sex. Maybe her body reacted as his ministrations (“Hermione looked away but her body was betraying her by each moment that passed.”), but she didn’t want to have sex with him (“Hermione lost her will against him as she knew that there was no use anyway”). There was something in the way that she reacted to his words, when you say that she “knew that tone too well” that made me think that she was afraid of denying him. And later when they were having sex, she was crying, and he didn’t care because he was taking what he wanted. When I read that paragraph, how he was licking her tears… I felt sick because I know how it feels that someone you care and trust touch you that way (“Don’t you love me? If I’m important to you why don’t you want me? Why don’t you let me if you know that it will be good for both of us? Don’t act as if you dont want it,”) That made a person feel dirty and sick and crazy thinking that maybe you are the one in the wrong, that you don’t have the right to say NO, and I suffered for Hermione, because she was alone with him, she didn’t have anybody to help her, and that happened in the third or fourth year… how much psychological damage she suffered after six or seven more years of the same? It wouldn’t surprise me that she was now saying that she loved him all that time as a mechanism to deny that she was a victim, “something” that he used to relieved the stress. And I don’t know if I can be more understanding if his using of her body, he raping her, was another part of the curse.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see how other surprises you are going to give us, I’m well aware about many clues now, but don’t want to talk about them in case I’m wrong. Oh, I’m so dying to know how you are going to end this.
I hope you had a nice birthday and that you can have some time to relax this weekend,
Hugs
Ines
Chapter 21
Hello and happy birthday!!!
I hope you have a great day, I send you love and good wishes in this day!!!
This chapter is full of emotions, so much angst, so much pain (you did a great balance between the physical pain and the spiritual pain!!!). Great job as always.
It’s good to see more of Draco (I told you that I’m a hard core Dramione, right?), he’s determinate to get Snape free, and it’s good to see that he has to work hard to achieve that goal, because it would not be an easy trial, a lot of people wants to see Snape in Azkaban (besides Hermione’s kidnapping, he was a Death Eater and he murdered Dumbledore) and is good to see that Draco had to have that in mind (the old assistant’s question about Draco believing in Snape’s innocence was a reminder of that).
The scene between Harry and Snape was a hard one. I can totally understand why Harry wants to hurt Snape. I mean, I don’t condone that he was using his “I’m the Chosen One” card to torture Snape, it’s totally wrong, but it’s a human reaction to want to hurt those who have made us suffer. It’s clear that Snape’s fate must be in the Wizangamot’s hands, and Harry has no right to take Justice in his hands, but Snape seems to not understand what he made Harry go through. It’s ironic that Snape thought about how Harry’s voice sounded “sinister”, there you are, in front of a man who knows that you keep his fiancé for ten years, that think that you raped her, that is so full of anger and hurt, that wants revenge more than justice and you expect him to talk to you with a normal voice? It shows how Harry’s feelings were never in Snape’s radar. In fact, it seems that Snape doesn’t care that Harry has to suffer all those years without knowing about Hermione, it was so cruel of Snape to emphasize about the ten years that Harry has to suffer without Hermione just to make his point clear about how the physical pain that he was suffering at Harry’s hands was nothing to him (because there are worst pains than a broken nose and bleeding lips and Harry has suffered those spiritual pains). It make me think that Snape really must hate Harry, well it’s not a great guess since Harry was “the boy he had loathed for so many years just because he was the spawn of his greatest rival at school” (that reinforce my idea about how Snape only wanted Hermione to get even with Potter about Lily).
The scene with Draco and his mother was so sad, I can’t imagine the anguish that must be to know that something is wrong with the only person you really loves and not knowing what it is or how you can help, and it broke my heart for Draco. But that scene also shows that Draco suspected that Snape knew where Hermione was, clever boy. Did he forgot about his suspicions when the war was over or that’s why he offered help to Harry?
Great chapter, I’m dying to know how you are going to finish this. I still want Azkaban for Snape (I’m sorry but he’s a bastard!!) and real freedom for Hermione but now I think that Harry must end in St. Mungos (he had too much anger, he needs help, don’t kill him please!!!).
I wish you a happy birthday (and cross my fingers for another chapter)
Hugs
Ines
Chapter 19
Another chapter!!! I’m so happy!!
I was amazed by this chapter, you have a really, really good way to put the feelings of the characters in display, and to make us see what is happening from their perspective and at the same moment see what happened in the big picture.
The scene in the hospital was amazing. It’s so sad to see Ginny doing her best to comfort Harry, but at the same time, you show us how the Order was manipulating Harry to keep him as the weapon to defeat Voldemort. Nobody wanted to tell him about Hermione’s possible death because “They needed him to have the will to be alive, to continue – they needed some sort of hope for him to cling into.” That was so selfish, and we kind of understand how Harry can be so broken now, he was living without closure, hoping for something that everyone else thought was impossible. That was cruel because he couldn’t carry on with his life after the war, and of course that let us see why he is so obsessed with Hermione now, he has been obsessed with her for a long time!!!
And Draco was wow, he acted the part of the lawyer, asking only the things that can be manipulated for his cause. I hated how he was acting because I think that saying that Hermione is the brightest witch of her age is not a reason to justify her imprisonment as if it was voluntary. Yes, she’s a clever woman, with an above average intelligence, but that can’t mean that her psyque didn’t suffer while she was with Snape, that she wasn’t manipulated to think that Snape was her hero and to make him her world. You said it in the last memory, she was worried for her sanity and she was afraid that if Snape dies while he was away, she was going to die in that cabin, alone and far away from her loved ones. Snape don’t even let her have a garden for Christ sake, she depended for every little thing on him, she says so in the trial, for food, shelter, clothing, to have a little garden she needed his permission, even if she wanted to read, he must give her the books, so I wonder, how after a long time she can see him as anything but her world? Especially if after a while, he painted every action as if he loved her. He made her see him as her everything and he wanted her to forget everybody else (we know this since chapter 15). I wonder if the Stockholm Syndrome made her think that after so many years she was with him by her own will? Maybe that can explain how even with everybody saying that she’s the brightest witch of her age she’s been living without her wand, she surrendered completely to Snape’s will. And if she wasn’t doing magic, what was she doing in that cabin? Waiting at Snape’s beck and call? It was so sad to see that because a part of me thinks that she’s beyond salvation, in the meaning that without real help she won’t be Hermione Granger never again.
Again, I hate how Draco asked the questions but he acted as a great lawyer, serving his client best interests, and he painted Hermione as anything but a victim, how he made it look as if Snape was a saint, taking care of the poor witch, giving her food and shelter (of course nobody mentioned about her freedom), and how he put the seed in everybody’s mind that she stayed with him because that’s what she wanted.
I have the hope that you let Hermione end really free, without Snape or Harry, making her own way to herself again and trying to construct her personality away of the nightmare that was her life all that time. I hope she can live a full life, you remembered us that she’s the brightest witch of her generation, it will be nice if she can achieve all her potential, if she can insert herself again in the wizarding world, and remember all her dreams, all her goals, all what she wanted to be, and she wouldn’t do it staying with Snape or Harry. I know, I know, this is a Snape/Hermione story, and most likely they would end together, but a girl can dream right?
Thank you so much for being patient with all my ramblings, you are very kind.
I’m waiting for the next chapter!!!
Hugs,
Ines
Chapter 18
Hello,
I’m so excited that we are close to the end and to know what really happened.
This chapter left me with so many conflicted emotions!!!
I’m sorry but I still can’t see Snape as anything but a bastard, and I must confess that it irked me some that he’s going to walk free from all this. I mean, he kidnapped her!!!! Ok, it was to save her life at the moment, but later? He just keep her from her loved ones because his selfish reasons, he didn’t care who he was hurting because even if the curse wasn’t entirely cured, he could have told someone that she was alive and well, let them have some news about her, let her write or see some of her friends, and someone else could have help her with her curse (St. Mugo’s). Besides, he has been watching Hermione since she was 16!!! And in the kitchen he was looking at her legs, invading her personal space, and all in all he was so creepy. I still think that he don’t love her, and that he thinks of her as a prize, something that he deserve for all the things he lost to the Dark and the Light, and to get back to Potter.
The scene where Hermione was in bed with an injured leg was spectacular, we can see how she started to develop the Stockholm Syndrome when she started to question her own actions, especially when she thought about how “Maybe if she was a bit more concerned of their well-being altogether and not just herself this would not have happened.” In that moment I thought “No girl!!! Don’t go there, don’t start thinking about an ‘us’ with Snape!!!!”, but at the end of that scene when she asked him to come back soon, I just felt how lonely she was, how much of human contact she needed at the time, how much being alone was affecting her, and I felt so much pity for her, because, how can she help to think that she loved that monster if he’s the only “human being” around? And when I reread the Valentine’s Day scene I realized that, at that point in the story, she really, really was seeing everything with the glasses of denial, idealizing her time with Snape at the point that she wanted to count their first year together as one of love too. No wonder she still thinks that she loves him. She would need years of therapy to see what really happened to her, to accept that she wasn´t in a healthy “relationship”, but one where she was a pampered sexual slave. Can that be the reason why she’s now being so docile with Harry? Because now she, subconsciously, was accepting the trading from one slavery to another? (It was the same with Snape: first she was angry and rebellious, but later she accepted her “fate” and started to obey him).
And Harry!!! Poor Harry, he really is mentally ill (but I still hope that some part of his attitude came from the curse). In the flashes we can see how possessive of Hermione he was, and when they were in the lake and he told her that he would never lose her, I thought about everything in this story and I swear that I heard the first ‘crack’ in his mind when she was lost, a second ‘crack’ when she reappeared and a final crack when she tried to help Snape. Poor Harry, he’s sick too, and Hermione needs to escape from him, but I can’t help to think that he’s another Snape’s victim.
Oh crap, another long review, as always, sorry for the babbling and thank you so much for the great work, I can’t wait to read the next chapter.
Hugs,
Ines
Wow, Snape wanted her since before the attack!!! I can’t believe it!!! Now things made more sense!!! That’s another reason why he didn’t want to come back, he has wanted her since she was in six year, maybe before… and he was such a hypocrite, telling Hermione that her relationship with Harry would distract the BWL from his task to destroy Voldie, but what would distract Harry more that Hermione being lost without a trace?
You are giving us clues about what happened, and while some things are more clear now, others only turned to be more mysterious, like what were the real reasons behind Snape actions? Did he saw the chance and took the opportunity to have Hermione for himself? Or it was all planned from the beginning? He wanted her, and he saw her as his prize, that much we know now, but he was thinking about taking her, stole her from Harry since before the attack? He was also a possessive and mean man, he punished her first with words (he practically called her a slut in Grimmauld Place) and he made her suffer while attending her bruises, as a punishment for going with McLaggen to the party. I wonder how his brain worked, he’s a sick man, but what were the reasons behind his actions? It was not love, that much is clear, it was revenge against Harry? Taking something he knew Harry loved, like James Potter took Lily from him?
And now Harry’s actions are another mystery, it is the curse or is he really mentally ill? I can understand that after ten years looking and waiting for Hermione, he’s anxious and possessive (especially if the woman he loves was more worry about freeing her captor than trying to retake her life) but to attack the Weasleys? They have been his family for Christ sake!! That made me wonder if he’s really ok in the head.
I´m happy to see that Hermione is now more worry about herself and not obsessed only with Snape, I understand that she have to be free before try to help Snape, but it’s good to see that she isn’t only crying in the corners about Snape’s fate, and now is trying to see beyond Harry’s façade. This means that she’s going to be more like the logical, intelligent woman she was before being taken? Is she going to take a step back and try to see the big picture? Is she going to start to see things as they are? (That Snape isn’t the hero, that she’s a victim, and Harry’s illness)
As always, great, great work!!! Can’t wait for the next chapter and more answers (although I like to be guessing what’s next, lol)
Sorry for the babbling and my horrible English (you must know by now that is not my maternal language)
Hugs
Ines