FOREWORD
Blake's 7. I doubt many of you would have heard of it these days, but you would have heard of the creator, Terry Nation, and his creations for Doctor Who: the Daleks. Hell, he even created Survivors, a post-apocalyptic drama that seemed eerily prescient of a little of the COVID pandemic, considering it deals with a superflu. But I digress.
Blake's 7 was a rather camp and low-budget science fiction series (even lower budget than Doctor Who at the time, and that was saying something) about a rebel called Roj Blake, fighting back against the tyrannical Terran Federation with a group of rebels and criminals, like an inverse of Star Trek. For all its faults, Blake's 7 had a lot of moral ambiguity, and even some surprisingly dark concepts for the time, with Blake being framed for child molestation in the very first episode.
Perhaps one of the best characters in the series was Kerr Avon, whom I often describe as 'Severus Snape as a computer hacker from the future'. Played wonderfully by the late, great Paul Darrow (who also played, amongst other roles, Zarok in the game Medievil, which recently received a remake for the PS4, and is dedicated to his memory), Avon had a fine line in caustic wit, with the title of his story being his reaction to his fellow rebel Vila being safe in The City at the Edge of the World.
I had attempted a crossover with Blake's 7 before, a crossover with Mass Effect called Short Change Heroes, but I lost interest, and eventually archived it in the Compost Heap. But after reviewing the similarities between Snape and Avon, I thought I'd do this, a story not dissimilar to my Goblin Slayer oneshot, Vigilance, where a Potterverse character is reincarnated in another world.
Anyway, time for the usual disclaimers. First, there will be spoilers, as well as references to dark themes.
Finally, the following is a fan-based work. Blake's 7 and Harry Potter are the properties of their respective owners. Please support the official release. Otherwise, Avon will shoot you in the back...
EVERY SILVER LINING HAS A CLOUD
The nightmares had come again. Avon woke up in a cold sweat, before getting to his feet. Dressing quickly, he walked down the corridors of the Liberator. Not so long ago, when the System had hijacked the ship, it had been turned against them. That Orac had not only dealt with that, but the pursuit ship the System had sent after them and thus subverting the prophecy that the obnoxious computer had given them, gave him some small comfort.
He never liked prophecies anyway.
Kerr Avon was a man of logic and science. True, he was also distinctly self-centred and pragmatic, but in a galaxy like this, mostly dominated by the Terran Federation, those were sane qualities to have. Mysticism and magic were things to be denounced. He was reminded of Arthur C Clarke's famous law, his third, that any sufficiently advanced form of technology was indistinguishable by magic.
And yet, his dreams were filled with it.
They felt less like dreams and nightmares than memories of a life he had never truly lived, and yet, it felt like he was living it. Of a man who slid into darkness, spurned by the love of his life, and who spent too long searching for redemption. A man who sacrificed himself for the cause.
A man called Severus Snape.
When the dreams and nightmares happened, Avon began researching. His hacking skills allowed him to access all manner of digitised records, but those that came from the 20th Century CE were hard to come by anyway. The Federation, in its rise to power, destroyed many documents that it probably considered inconvenient. Avon was reminded of a quote he had read in a contraband copy of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
Had the wizards kept themselves out of the history books? Had the Federation erased them from it entirely? Or was he in another universe, another timeline? None of those options were particularly appealing. And to be perfectly honest, he didn't care.
He had to admit, he identified with Snape somewhat. The man's xenophobic bigotry or cruelty did not, not to mention allying himself with a would-be warlock terrorist, and Avon took a little more pride in his appearance. But he could understand the man.
Firstly, the feeling of being the smartest man in the room, no, the human race, by far. Snape, for all his many faults, was smarter than most. Avon, at times, not almost all of the time, despaired at the stupidity of those around him. He had a sharp, incisive mind, and only the fact that other people had betrayed him had gotten him caught in the first place, betrayed by unknown parties.
Secondly, knowing what it was like to have loved and lost. Though Snape was a fool, unleashing a vicious slur on his friend in a time of petulant anger. Snape's love was a selfish thing. He didn't truly love Lily Evans, Avon felt. It was lustful infatuation mixed in with his friendship, and while lustful infatuation doubtlessly played a role in James Potter's desire to woo Lily, well, their marriage had lasted long enough.
Avon was fairly certain that he loved Anna Grant, before she was tortured and murdered by the Federation and their pet interrogator, Shrinker. One day, he would track down Shrinker and find out exactly what had happened, how he and Anna had been compromised. He owed it to himself, and, grudgingly, to Anna's brother, the mercenary Del Grant. He wondered if he would see him again one day(1)?
Thirdly, despising having leashes put on him. Snape had two: Voldemort and Dumbledore, the former using the Dark Mark like one would a cattle brand, while the latter wielded Lily's memory and his responsibility for her demise over him. Avon had only one, and even then, it was loose. None on the Liberator trusted him, and with good reason. The only one who was close to doing so was Cally.
Ah, Cally. It was hard to describe his feelings for her, and vice versa, for they were complex. The telepath was by turns a naïve idealist and a vicious warrior woman, not unlike Lily in some regards. He admired her, felt some affection for her, but it couldn't erase his exasperation and contempt for her support of Roj Blake's crusade against the Federation. And Blake certainly had him on a leash.
Blake was more pragmatic than Dumbledore in some regards at least. True, his inability to deal with Travis once and for all was irritating, but Blake at least knew that you couldn't win a revolution without bloodshed. But he was still also too much of an idealist at times.
That pillock reminded him of Harry Potter, actually. True, Potter was not quite as pragmatic as Blake. Then again, Potter hadn't quite gone through what Blake had. Potter may have grown up in a home with relatives who despised him (something Dumbledore had related to Snape, who considered it justice, something Avon considered childish), and gone through a number of misadventures, but had he had his memory wiped? Seen his entire group of friends wiped out? Tortured by the Federation, whose machines made the Cruciatus feel like tickles by comparison? Framed for being a child molester? He'd like to see Potter go through all that and not come out drastically changed.
But Potter did have a knack for drawing people together. True, part of that was the mythopoeia that had formed around him thanks to the credulous sheep of Magical Britain. Harry's life was to be a hero, a symbol, and a sacrificial lamb. Avon didn't know whether he survived the coming battle, to have that Horcrux removed by a gamble from Dumbledore. Nor did he particularly care. If Potter won against Voldemort, then all well and good, but it would have been a hard-won victory all the same.
Even now, Avon still had the nightmares of Snape's end, of Nagini's venom burning through his veins. It was that that had woken him up. Pain was never so vivid in a mere nightmare, and yet, even now, he felt the lingering echoes. Same when he flashed back to the Cruciatus being used on him by Voldemort.
Anyway, Blake was indeed a symbol himself. Originally, the Federation wanted to pervert that symbol through brainwashing him into a model citizen. When that was broken, they tried another tack. Still wary of making Blake into a martyr, they tried framing him for child molestation, and then shipping him off to Cygnus Alpha. Avon cringed at the mere thought of it. Not just the frameup, but, according to Blake, he suspected brainwashing technology had been used on the victims, memories implanted, a nasty thing.
But even so, it seemed that the various rebel groups around the galaxy recognised that for the frame-up that it was. Avalon's group, for example, had no issues with working with him, though one betrayed her to the Federation, allowing the Federation to create a robot double of her. Blake was a symbol, a figurehead. People would charge into Hell for him. And Blake, if it meant overthrowing the Federation, would probably, if reluctantly, step over their corpses to do so.
Avon hoped that this wouldn't include his corpse. He stayed with Blake partly for protection, but also, once the revolution was over (assuming it ever would be), he may have the chance to have the Liberator to himself, and with it, freedom, to do as he wished. What would that be? He didn't know, yet, though it probably involved a life of quiet luxury under an assumed name.
If the dreams and nightmares were memories of a past life, then he had a second chance. People would have leapt at such a thing, but Avon knew that life came with problems, and a second chance would not be easy to exploit. He was under no illusions that he could get what he desired with ease.
After all, every silver lining has a cloud.
THE END
ANNOTATIONS:
Nothing much to say. I'll be perfectly honest, while I like some Severitus fics (Arsinoe de Blassenville's The Best Revenge and its sequel being the best examples of its kind), I despise Snape for the most part. I find Avon a more honest character than Snape. At least at times, Avon cares about others, like Cally and, to a degree, Vila, but Snape? He was loyal only to himself and his masturbatory fantasies of Lily.
1. He does, later on in the second series, in Countdown. Tom Chadbon, who played Del Grant, would return to the role for Big Finish's Blake's 7 audios, while Anna would be revealed to be alive in the third series episode Rumours of Death. Unfortunately, without going into too many spoilers, the lovers' reunion doesn't go well.