Dark Gods In The Blood
Epilogue
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A/N: Long, rambling
author’s notes follow. Thanks for
reading!
Summary: A wandering
student comes home, a broken man pays his penance, and a gruesome murder is
both more and less than it seems. Some
paths to self-discovery have more twists and turns than others.
Rating: R, for
intermittent dark themes, violence, and language
Disclaimer: Nothing
you read here (save the plot and bits of the text itself) belongs to me.
property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros. (and someone else, probably, but not
me). All chapter headings are properly
credited to their sources.
Dark Gods in the Blood
by: Hayseed (
An Epilogue
The
offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and
uttermost ends of the
flowed somber under an overcast sky -- seemed to
lead into
the heart of an immense darkness.
-- Joseph Conrad, Heart of
Darkness
My dearest Hermione,
I find myself dreaming about you sometimes.
and Harry and I were sitting beside the lake at Hogwarts, chatting.
dream and for once, I’m able to believe him.
His ghost is naught but a tickle in the back of my mind, these
days. A good tickle, mostly.
And you may tell my little monkey, Alice, that she’s taken
your five Galleons. I have indeed
shaved off my infernal beard (see enclosed photograph, taken by a pair of
lovely German tourists the last time I was in town). The final delousing was the last straw, you see.
I’m not surprised that Harry’s little Looking-Glass girl has
turned out to be the first Slytherin Potter in -- what was it you said? --
seven generations. She always was a
devious little scamp. It is a
shame that she won’t wind up Gryffindor’s Seeker, though.
debut for many years now. Feel free to
read this portion of my letter to her, by the way. I’m sure she’ll be amused and offended, as she always is when I
hear from her.
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Also feel free to pass on my congratulations to Nicholas --
Head Boy, wow! His mum must be thrilled.
the minute I heard he’d made prefect.
Make sure to warn him about the twins, though. They’ll give him hell all year.
I’m sure he’s gotten quite good at defending himself, though, for a
Ravenclaw.
I’ve moved again, this past month, and finally managed to
run across your monks. Master Xi sends
his regards, by the by. Why on Earth
didn’t you warn me about his rather intriguing way of introducing himself?
Hermione Granger.’
‘I know,’ he said in pretty good English, before belting me
in the face with an open fist and landing me flat on my back with a single
kick. In the thirty minutes he insisted
we spar, I think he ‘killed’ me no less than fifteen times.
indeed, Master Xi. He was, however,
kind enough to wait for me to remember how to breathe once again before
beginning our next lesson -- Weeding for Morons.
You owe me big time, Butterfly.
Oh, yes. I know all
about your monks now. They’ve told me
many interesting stories. I’m
particularly fascinated by the one that somehow wound up with you in the middle
of a snowstorm wearing only a bath towel.
And here I was, thinking you took to Zen like a duck to water.
Watch it or I’ll send a letter to your Severus telling him
all about it.
How is the old bat these days, anyhow?
Battle for the Playstation Master of the Universe made out, and he usually
rather enjoys giving me a blow-by-blow account of how he slaughtered Snape at
Ultra-Mega-Triple-Death-Wars or whatever the newest game is.
Nicholas has finally lost his edge -- don’t tell me you finally gave in and let
him get his own Playstation. I told you
that letting him wire Dumbledore’s old estate for Muggle electricity was a big
mistake. Although I suppose that the
idea of anyone telling Severus Snape what to do is laughable at
best. I’m sure you come closer than
most, though.
And I know Françoise is still quietly scandalized at you
two, still living in sin after all these years. How oddly against her French background, really, but Françoise
has always been a rather strange blend of French sophistication and English
pragmatism. I don’t know anyone else
that gets along with my mother and Petunia Dursley equally well.
I try not to think about Françoise and mostly fail.
It’s exactly what you think, but don’t believe for a second
that I don’t know what a bad idea it always was. I’m well aware.
She writes me sometimes.
The fact that she still uses Hedwig is a good reminder.
reason she’s still unmarried after all these years is because she’s waiting for
me to come and sweep her off her feet.
Bhen hen the illusion shatters and I remember that she’s waiting for
Harry. Always for Harry.
You see, Hermione.
You see that I’ve changed. I
think I now understand why you stayed in Tibet as long as you did.
some day I will know what Master Xi means when he tells me that I must not
travel on the road to enlightenment, that the road must first come to me.
Sort of makes me think about what you said to me all of
those years ago, when I asked you what you’d been doing for all the time you
were gone. Learning to be still.
a difficult thing to imagine -- you being still. And now that I’ve learned Master Xi’s definition of the word,
it’s difficult on most days to think of myself as being still.
as I write this, thinking about all you’ve told me through the years.
A man once wanted to rid himself of his shadow.
trying to escape it. Eventually, his
heart burst from the exertion and he fell down, dead.
Funny, if he’d only gone and sat under a nice, shady tree,
his shadow would have disappeared.**
Stillness ...
Hermione, I hope that at the end of every day, you come home
from the Aurory, ignore Kingsley Shacklebolt’s owls (I know he sends them,
don’t bother denying it), and curl up in your manor with your Severus on
something comfortable and push the shadows back into the corners.
And I know you can.
You’ve always been a better student than I. Although, I admit that this particular course of instruction is
somewhat more appealing than our old schoolwork used to be.
I like waking up at the crack of dawn.
from the ground. Somehow, I feel
larger, living this small life, as if I’m part of some sort of pattern.
once in a while.
Maybe one day I’ll know what he means.
My roundabout, rambling point is that my heart still hurts,
most days. But it’s a good hurt and one
that I may come to understand, in time.
I may, one day, wake up and find that I am truly still.
And now, my lovely Butterfly, Master Xi comes tapping at my
door -- the onions wait for no man.
Love,
Ron
P.S. As per usual,
tell your Severus that if he breaks your heart, I’ll hunt him down and use his
skull to practice the newest tricks Master Xi has taught me.
too, undoubtedly) would gladly assist me.
-- --
-- --
FINIS
-- --
-- --
**Footnote -- This is, indeed, a Taoist epigram (loosely
translated from the English source I read it from, I’m sure).
assured that I’m nowhere near bright enough to come up with something so
prnd ond on my own.
-- --
-- --
Endnotes:
Dark Gods in the Bloodal'>
very nearly didn’t get written on at least a dozen different counts, the
largest reason being that I was afraid that I couldn’t tackle a story of the
scope that I knew it would wind up being.
Having said that, though, it’s been an enjoyable, albeit intense,
ride. And I would like to take a
moment, briefly, to acknowledge a few people and answer a few commonly asked
questions.
First of all, thanks a
heap for reading and thanks an even bigger heap for reviewing.
reviews, I am unfortunately lax in replying to them. But if you did review, be assured that I paid attention to your
comments. I wound up adding at least
five pages (according to my formatting scheme, this comes out to a little more
than 3000 words, roughly) of tweaking to a story that I had considered complete
did add short scenes and exposition bits.
So a big thanks for telling me what you thought about my little tale.
Now, onto the pertinent
questions. Or, at least, the most
common comments.
I should probably say
right off the bat that I never, ever intended Dark Gods
it to be particularly possible for the reader to follow the evidence and
“guess” the killer along with Hermione and Severus (although I like to think
that knowing the conclusion, you can re-read the story and see that I’ve
dropped subtle clues). But when I
started receiving conjectures as to the identity of the killer as I posted
chapters, I just couldn’t bring myself to say that -- I thought it might dispel
all of that lovely tension I was attempting to build and render Severus’
introduction to our buddy Stan anti-climactic.
Besides, some of your
theories were absolutely fascinating.
off-handedly mentioned in the story was a suspect, from eighteen-month old
Alice Potter to not-even-appearing-for-a-full-scene, obvious-red-herring Draco
Malfoy, with Dumbledore, Neville, and Dudley as the most-suggested
suspects. My personal favorite theory,
however, was the suggestion that the video game Soulblade had something to do
with Harry’s death. Fifty points for
originality ...
Another issue that I
received a fair number of comments/questions on was, of course, the romance
question. There were, naturally,
several potential pairings here (Ron/Hermione was suggested from the get-go,
but as a natural Snape/Hermione ‘shipper, I find that pairing difficult to even
read, much less write), and if I’d been
writing a WIP, I suppose I could have been persuaded to have more of an overall
romantic flavor to the story. But I’d
decided in my, what, second outline that Françoise was going to attempt to
seduce Ron and that Severus and Hermione were going to wind up “getting
together” after the story ended, thus
prompting the epilogue, actually. I
wanted to allude to their relationship to give it some closure.
ear and he turned the epilogue into much more of a statement than the simple
sum-up I’d originally intended.
As I said, then, Dark
Gods was about understanding
myself in the writing. In the end, I
decided that the characters I’d drawn here were far too hesitant and had
entirely too many trust issues to come together within the timeframe of the
actual story.
Because, again, as with Ordinary
People (shameless plug for my own work, yes?), I’d
always intended this to be a very character-driven tale.
old high-school teachers used to attribute to Karl Jung:
through pain.” In many ways, I saw the
‘serial killer’ thread as secondary to this idea.
Although quite necessary
to the plot, both as resolution to Harry’s death and as a method of making this
more than three hundred pages of people talking. And I will go ahead and confirm the rumors -- yes, I am a fan
(not avid, just familiar enough to have read the entire Hannibal trilogy) of
the work of Thomas Harris, and for the most part, the parallels people have
drawn between certain elements of Silence of the Lambs
was looking for more of a study of grief and loss through
explicit exploration of the heart itself.
How Ron and Hermione, and ultimately even Severus himself, are transformed
by this tragedy and its eventual resolution.
I went creeping back through my old outlines and notes and I found
something I wrote some months ago as I was struggling with some
characterization issues (probably at t AM AM and jazzed out on caffeine) that
sums up what I was trying to achieve with Dark Gods
“I like to think that each of the main characters finds stillness
an inner peace that was lacking, an acknowledgement of shadow-within-self ...”
And you see why I thought
this story was entirely too ambitious for me ...
One last final thanks and
then I’ll go away, I promise. To the
one person with whom I talked about this story incessantly
aspect of the writing process that writers find fascinating but no one else
wants to hear about. But she listened
to me at least ninety percent of the time, and for that I am eternally grateful.
anyone, it’s dedicated to her. She
knows who she is ...
hayseed
Started: 10 August 2003
Finished: 07 March 2004