Wonders Unceasing
******
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, not my toys, and some of the ideas are definitely recycled as well.
Author's Note: Chapter four, and the initial idea was a one-post PWP. That's either a very good case of a small bunny proving to be a prolific parent, or a very bad case of not sticking to the initial premise.
Thank you for reading if you're new, and BIG thanks for coming back if you're a regular reader. This chapter's a bit shorter than the last one. It reached a natural break, so I stopped. As always, critique is welcomed. I've changed from referring to 'Granger' to using 'Hermione' instead, as this is mostly Harry's POV. I'd appreciate it if people could let me know whether it works, please. Thanks. :)
******
Chapter Four: More Straw For The Camel
Hogwarts' hospital wing was still busy despite the lateness of the hour. From behind privacy curtains came whimpers of pain and the distressed reflections of nightmares. Assistants and half-trained mediwizards did what they could, alternately berated and encouraged by the weary, hassled but unrelenting Madam Pomfrey. Some beds now sat empty and stripped by the House Elves, their former occupants packed off to House dormitories or transported to St. Mungos for specialist treatment. Two of the wounded had been escorted away by Aurors- one shamed, one defiant, both bound securely and watched by the silent, accusing eyes of the castle's defenders.
Harry Potter had disobeyed Madam Pomfrey's orders and slipped out of his bed. He had only removed himself to a quieter corner, however, and she let him be. He had found a window alcove, let into one corner of the castle's thick tower walls. There was a faded crimson window cushion on the deep, narrow ledge. Harry curled himself into it, wrapped in his hospital dressing-gown and his thoughts.
The window was tall and arched, diamond panes of leaded glass distorting the view beyond so it seemed as if it looked out into a waterscape scene. Darkness mercifully shrouded the world beyond the glass, dulling the harshness of death and destruction. The silent blackness was lit by the tiny wand-glows of those searching for survivors and making a tally of the dead. The colours of their charms formed a faint pastel cobweb across the ground. Smoke still coiled across that faintly glimmering net and veiled the star specked sky, oozing thickly from a flickering red light within the heart of the Forbidden Forest. The broken pole of a single Quiddich hoop thrust up into the centre of a full, red moon.
Harry barely registered Madam Pomfrey's voice above the distant hospital bustle.
"Well, thank you for the potions, my dear, but I distinctly remember giving you orders to tie the man down if he tried to get up. He's in no state to be brewing anything at the moment… I thought so! I don't know what he was thinking… that was a rhetorical remark, my dear. He actually let you finish them on your own? Wonders will never cease. Harry? He's right over there, my dear."
A shifting of the air, a subtle change in atmosphere and the slight scrape of a shoe on the stone floor heralded Hermione's appearance in the entrance of the windowed alcove. Her indistinct reflection ghosted itself onto the face of each diamond window pane, swimming against the green-tinged glass.
Harry did not look away from the view outside. He seemed to find it an effort to speak, his voice dull and detached. "It's all over."
"No," Hermione replied, a little frostily, "it's not."
Harry wrenched his eyes from the battlefield and turned his head to scowl at his friend, anger and hopelessness warring across his face. "It's over! Everything! It's all over! Seven years of life… that was when my life really started, you know." His hand dragged shakily through his already disordered black hair. "When I started Hogwarts. Hogwarts, the three of us- you, me, Ron- Gryffindor Tower was home, Mrs McGonegall was… safe, home, someone to look after us. Life was surviving Voldemort's attacks… and now it's all over. All gone. My whole life."
Hermione seemed unable to answer. "It'll seem better in the morning," she said eventually, the words sounding inadequate. "Everything always seems better in the morning. Have you any idea how melodramatic you sound," she went on less sympathetically. "And why the sudden change of mood? Two hours ago you were cuddled up all cosily with Ginny, having a whale of a time by the sound of things."
Harry scrubbed an arm across his face and stared back out of the window. "You're still angry with me, aren't you," he mumbled indistinctly.
Hermione sighed. There was a rustling of robes as she sat down on the floor beneath the window seat. "No, Harry. I'm too tired to be angry, but I still can't understand why you'd… ugh! How could you even think about it? After Ron… Harry, how could you? And don't give me the silent treatment. I'm not shouting, I'm listening. Just make sure it's good."
"I… wanted to feel alive, I suppose." Harry bent his neck until he could rest his forehead against the chill glass of the window. "I wanted to find something that was still… untainted, and uncomplicated, and young, and happy. I don't think the first part worked, but at least Ginny will sleep well tonight. Knowing someone loves her. It makes one of us."
There was another long stretch of silence before Hermione spoke again. "Do you love her?"
"Yes," Harry answered simply. "Why would I say I did if I didn't?" he added, with a touch of defensive belligerence, when he looked down and caught the sceptical expression on her inverted face.
"It's not that I don't believe you, Harry," Hermione apologised. "It's just that love seems like such a strange idea. The romantic kind, anyway. I used to believe in it. I used to think I felt it. Then I grew up, and realised it was just a couple of schoolgirl crushes, and started to wonder if the whole idea wasn't just an idealistic dream. Why do you love Ginny? The word's so small but the concept's so big."
Harry leaned his head against the window again. "It's not big. It is small, like the word. Lots of small things. She's pretty. She likes me. She wants to hold hands while we go for a walk by the lake. She's just so normal. She wants a nice little house, and children, and a big untidy garden where the kids can make mud pies and fly their broomsticks and chase the gnomes. She wants evenings together in front of the fire, and big, comfortable dinners with sausages and mash and gravy and sponge pudding with custard. She wants a home..."
"You love Ginny because she's a younger version of Molly Weasley?" Hermione suggested with a slight grin in her voice. "It's okay, I'm teasing. I can understand that you'd want a home, Harry. A proper, happy home, just like Ron..." Her voice faltered slightly, but she went on. "Is that really love, though?"
Harry shrugged. "You asked why, 'Mione. That's why. And I do love her. But she doesn't love me. She thinks she does, but it's still mostly one of those schoolgirl crushes. I'll look after her, 'Mione. You know Ron would want us to look after her, both of us. Maybe later she'll love me, when we've got ourselves that house, and ten kids, and gnomes in the garden and bats in the rafters. If she doesn't…" he shrugged, and went on in carefully light tones. "She'll find someone else. I'll let her go."
"Oh Harry…" Hermione sounded as if she didn't know whether to howl with frustration or cry with sympathy.
"I'm used to it," Harry said. The bravado was hollow and resigned. "Everyone always leaves, in the end."
"Don't be so defeatist!" Hermione's hair tickled Harry's leg as she shook her head. "You beat Voldemort! If you can do that, you can do anything!"
"Ron beat Voldemort," Harry disagreed. "It was his plan that got everyone close enough to attack. Neville beat Voldemort too. He was the one who healed Snape, and without Snape the rest of us probably wouldn't have been enough. So it wasn't me. I could have been anyone. It was Ron and Neville. They were the important ones."
Hermione lightly slapped Harry on the leg. "Right. Ron and Neville. And what do you think Ron would say if he could see you now?"
"He'd be jealous, because everybody's already talking about it as if it was just me who killed Voldemort," Harry snapped at her. "Nobody remembers that Ron was there, or Neville, or you, even, or Snape. I'm The Boy Who Lived, so I'm the one who was destined to face Voldemort. All my life, that's what I've been. And now Voldemort's finally gone… what am I? The Man Who Killed?"
"You're Harry," Hermione told him firmly.
"That's who I am, but how many people know that?" Harry hugged his legs closer to his body, resting his chin on his knees. It made him look absurdly young. "How many people know me? I'm a what, not a who. Maybe I should go back to the Muggle world. I could be a who again there."
"No, you'd still be a what," Hermione said resignedly. "Everyone's a what. That's the way people work. They put labels on things because that's the easiest way to deal with them, and nobody really gets a say in what labels other people give them. It's life." She shrugged. "It's not fair. It ought to be, but it isn't, and it doesn't get any better. I'm sorry." She clambered stiffly to her feet and stood over Harry. "But I'm still here, and I know you're a who. And I couldn't care less whether you're The Boy Who Lived, you're going to stop skulking here in the corner getting cold, and come with me, and get into bed, and drink the Dreamless Sleep potion I'm going to give you, and get some rest. And if you try to argue with me then I have a wand and I'm prepared to use it."
Harry managed a weak grin as Hermione dragged him to his feet with a hand clamped on his wrist and hauled him back towards his bed. "What would I do without you to boss me around, Hermione?"
"Spend all your time playing Quiddich and fail all your exams," Hermione responded tartly. "Bed." She pointed. "In." She held out a potion bottle. "Drink."
"Are you allowed to hand out potions like that?" Harry asked, pulling up the bedcovers and taking the vial.
"I made it," Hermione replied as Harry uncorked the potion and gulped it, pulling a face at the taste. "I've got to test it on someone, haven't I?" Hermione added, smiling slyly.
Harry lowered the empty bottle and looked at it suspiciously. "As long as there's no cat hair in it," he mumbled, eyelids already drooping. "Merlin, 'Mione, that stuff's strong..." He slumped back against the pillow, struggling to keep his eyes open a moment longer.
Madam Pomfrey peered over Hermione's shoulder. "Serverus asleep and Harry smiling again, the potions restocked, and the help you gave me earlier..." The mediwitch sounded exhausted. "Hermione, my dear, you're quite indispensable." She patted the younger woman on the shoulder and smiled tiredly at Harry. Harry managed to grin back.
Hermione closed her eyes, willing away her own weariness. "It's quite all right, Madam Pomfrey. I'm sure everyone is doing what they can. Do you need any more help?"
Pomfrey hesitated so long that Harry's eyelids drooped closed. In the silence, a Second Year whimpered.
"I'll take that as a yes, then," Hermione decided. "Lead on, MacDuff¹."
"Sorry, dear?" asked the slightly bemused Pomfrey.
Hermione sighed, her voice growing distant, as if she'd turned away. "Muggle quote. Never mind. Just show me what to do." Harry's limbs felt thick and stuffy. Two sets of footsteps tapped their way into the distance. Hermnione's voice was the last thing he heard before unconsciousness claimed him. "Sleep probably wouldn't do much knitting for me anyway..."
******
1. Shakespeare, 'The Scottish Play', as is the knitting reference in the last line. I don't know how much Hermione would have kept up with Muggle literature with the entire Wizarding library at Hogwarts to occupy her. The portrayal of Witches and Wizards in Muggle literature is probably required for Muggle Studies, wouldn't you think?
Thank you everyone who corrected me on the Dreamless Sleep potion. I wrested the relevant book from my son and tracked it down to the source. :)
You're all so darned nice! Thank you! blueyed-angel, more blushes from me. I quit Latin to do Ancient Greek instead, and I never did get the hang of all those tenses, so I'm sure by the time I'm done you'll find a whole bunch of errors :( . Orange, glad you're enjoying the dialogue, here's more! linnetjo, thank you, I'm trying to keep things believable (although it's probably making the story a little slow paced). EireVerde- do I sense an Irish connection? I know what you mean about starting stories while they're still in progress. I promise this won't turn into one of the kind that never get finished (assuming I don't get abducted by garden gnomes, swallowed by giant squid, or killed by a random rogue bludger...).
Elsie, on Snape's voice, thank you. Snape strongly reminds me of one of my old teachers, who had the ability to effortlessly reduce First Years to tearful quivering wrecks with a single sentence. He didn't even score a one in the 'tall, dark, handsome' contest either. Some of it must have rubbed off on me anyway, though. Cynicism comes very easily these days. I only wish I was quick-witted enough to think of the nastily entertaining come-back lines in time to say them, instead of producing the perfect lines about three hours too late :p . cassy, thanks. I like writing dialogue (hopefully I'm restraining myself so there isn't too much of it). I'm glad the issues don't seem too cliched. I'm sure other people have already covered similar ideas, so I'm trying to keep the approach fresh. Cho, thank you, I'm trying to keep it up :) . mym2000, here's more! Inieda, I was quite pleased with that line myself ;) .
Susanna, welcome back :D . I was a little worried that the guilt conversation might be a bit confusing, but it sounds as if I put it across okay. I'll say hi to AngelSnape at this point too. The thinking behind Snape's initial impulse in the final confrontation with Voldemort actually came from watching my son's reactions when someone bullied him. The desire to make others hurt in return for pain they have inflicted is a very human one, and one that is often at odds with rational behaviour. People claim they want justice, that they want to make sure nobody else will be hurt, and that they want to make an example of the wrongdoer, but what most people really want is the satisfaction of watching the other person feeling just as much pain and suffering as he or she caused. Ack, I'm such a cynic when it comes to human nature.
stonecoldfox, I'd be blushing again if I wasn't still channeling Snape after the previous comment. Actually this isn't the original story at all, but once I started writing the characters took over and refused to cooperate with my initial idea. Now they're camping out in my brain and directing my fingers on the keyboard :p . surreall, I have gone on with the story, hope you enjoyed :) .
******
Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, not my toys, and some of the ideas are definitely recycled as well.
Author's Note: Chapter four, and the initial idea was a one-post PWP. That's either a very good case of a small bunny proving to be a prolific parent, or a very bad case of not sticking to the initial premise.
Thank you for reading if you're new, and BIG thanks for coming back if you're a regular reader. This chapter's a bit shorter than the last one. It reached a natural break, so I stopped. As always, critique is welcomed. I've changed from referring to 'Granger' to using 'Hermione' instead, as this is mostly Harry's POV. I'd appreciate it if people could let me know whether it works, please. Thanks. :)
******
Chapter Four: More Straw For The Camel
Hogwarts' hospital wing was still busy despite the lateness of the hour. From behind privacy curtains came whimpers of pain and the distressed reflections of nightmares. Assistants and half-trained mediwizards did what they could, alternately berated and encouraged by the weary, hassled but unrelenting Madam Pomfrey. Some beds now sat empty and stripped by the House Elves, their former occupants packed off to House dormitories or transported to St. Mungos for specialist treatment. Two of the wounded had been escorted away by Aurors- one shamed, one defiant, both bound securely and watched by the silent, accusing eyes of the castle's defenders.
Harry Potter had disobeyed Madam Pomfrey's orders and slipped out of his bed. He had only removed himself to a quieter corner, however, and she let him be. He had found a window alcove, let into one corner of the castle's thick tower walls. There was a faded crimson window cushion on the deep, narrow ledge. Harry curled himself into it, wrapped in his hospital dressing-gown and his thoughts.
The window was tall and arched, diamond panes of leaded glass distorting the view beyond so it seemed as if it looked out into a waterscape scene. Darkness mercifully shrouded the world beyond the glass, dulling the harshness of death and destruction. The silent blackness was lit by the tiny wand-glows of those searching for survivors and making a tally of the dead. The colours of their charms formed a faint pastel cobweb across the ground. Smoke still coiled across that faintly glimmering net and veiled the star specked sky, oozing thickly from a flickering red light within the heart of the Forbidden Forest. The broken pole of a single Quiddich hoop thrust up into the centre of a full, red moon.
Harry barely registered Madam Pomfrey's voice above the distant hospital bustle.
"Well, thank you for the potions, my dear, but I distinctly remember giving you orders to tie the man down if he tried to get up. He's in no state to be brewing anything at the moment… I thought so! I don't know what he was thinking… that was a rhetorical remark, my dear. He actually let you finish them on your own? Wonders will never cease. Harry? He's right over there, my dear."
A shifting of the air, a subtle change in atmosphere and the slight scrape of a shoe on the stone floor heralded Hermione's appearance in the entrance of the windowed alcove. Her indistinct reflection ghosted itself onto the face of each diamond window pane, swimming against the green-tinged glass.
Harry did not look away from the view outside. He seemed to find it an effort to speak, his voice dull and detached. "It's all over."
"No," Hermione replied, a little frostily, "it's not."
Harry wrenched his eyes from the battlefield and turned his head to scowl at his friend, anger and hopelessness warring across his face. "It's over! Everything! It's all over! Seven years of life… that was when my life really started, you know." His hand dragged shakily through his already disordered black hair. "When I started Hogwarts. Hogwarts, the three of us- you, me, Ron- Gryffindor Tower was home, Mrs McGonegall was… safe, home, someone to look after us. Life was surviving Voldemort's attacks… and now it's all over. All gone. My whole life."
Hermione seemed unable to answer. "It'll seem better in the morning," she said eventually, the words sounding inadequate. "Everything always seems better in the morning. Have you any idea how melodramatic you sound," she went on less sympathetically. "And why the sudden change of mood? Two hours ago you were cuddled up all cosily with Ginny, having a whale of a time by the sound of things."
Harry scrubbed an arm across his face and stared back out of the window. "You're still angry with me, aren't you," he mumbled indistinctly.
Hermione sighed. There was a rustling of robes as she sat down on the floor beneath the window seat. "No, Harry. I'm too tired to be angry, but I still can't understand why you'd… ugh! How could you even think about it? After Ron… Harry, how could you? And don't give me the silent treatment. I'm not shouting, I'm listening. Just make sure it's good."
"I… wanted to feel alive, I suppose." Harry bent his neck until he could rest his forehead against the chill glass of the window. "I wanted to find something that was still… untainted, and uncomplicated, and young, and happy. I don't think the first part worked, but at least Ginny will sleep well tonight. Knowing someone loves her. It makes one of us."
There was another long stretch of silence before Hermione spoke again. "Do you love her?"
"Yes," Harry answered simply. "Why would I say I did if I didn't?" he added, with a touch of defensive belligerence, when he looked down and caught the sceptical expression on her inverted face.
"It's not that I don't believe you, Harry," Hermione apologised. "It's just that love seems like such a strange idea. The romantic kind, anyway. I used to believe in it. I used to think I felt it. Then I grew up, and realised it was just a couple of schoolgirl crushes, and started to wonder if the whole idea wasn't just an idealistic dream. Why do you love Ginny? The word's so small but the concept's so big."
Harry leaned his head against the window again. "It's not big. It is small, like the word. Lots of small things. She's pretty. She likes me. She wants to hold hands while we go for a walk by the lake. She's just so normal. She wants a nice little house, and children, and a big untidy garden where the kids can make mud pies and fly their broomsticks and chase the gnomes. She wants evenings together in front of the fire, and big, comfortable dinners with sausages and mash and gravy and sponge pudding with custard. She wants a home..."
"You love Ginny because she's a younger version of Molly Weasley?" Hermione suggested with a slight grin in her voice. "It's okay, I'm teasing. I can understand that you'd want a home, Harry. A proper, happy home, just like Ron..." Her voice faltered slightly, but she went on. "Is that really love, though?"
Harry shrugged. "You asked why, 'Mione. That's why. And I do love her. But she doesn't love me. She thinks she does, but it's still mostly one of those schoolgirl crushes. I'll look after her, 'Mione. You know Ron would want us to look after her, both of us. Maybe later she'll love me, when we've got ourselves that house, and ten kids, and gnomes in the garden and bats in the rafters. If she doesn't…" he shrugged, and went on in carefully light tones. "She'll find someone else. I'll let her go."
"Oh Harry…" Hermione sounded as if she didn't know whether to howl with frustration or cry with sympathy.
"I'm used to it," Harry said. The bravado was hollow and resigned. "Everyone always leaves, in the end."
"Don't be so defeatist!" Hermione's hair tickled Harry's leg as she shook her head. "You beat Voldemort! If you can do that, you can do anything!"
"Ron beat Voldemort," Harry disagreed. "It was his plan that got everyone close enough to attack. Neville beat Voldemort too. He was the one who healed Snape, and without Snape the rest of us probably wouldn't have been enough. So it wasn't me. I could have been anyone. It was Ron and Neville. They were the important ones."
Hermione lightly slapped Harry on the leg. "Right. Ron and Neville. And what do you think Ron would say if he could see you now?"
"He'd be jealous, because everybody's already talking about it as if it was just me who killed Voldemort," Harry snapped at her. "Nobody remembers that Ron was there, or Neville, or you, even, or Snape. I'm The Boy Who Lived, so I'm the one who was destined to face Voldemort. All my life, that's what I've been. And now Voldemort's finally gone… what am I? The Man Who Killed?"
"You're Harry," Hermione told him firmly.
"That's who I am, but how many people know that?" Harry hugged his legs closer to his body, resting his chin on his knees. It made him look absurdly young. "How many people know me? I'm a what, not a who. Maybe I should go back to the Muggle world. I could be a who again there."
"No, you'd still be a what," Hermione said resignedly. "Everyone's a what. That's the way people work. They put labels on things because that's the easiest way to deal with them, and nobody really gets a say in what labels other people give them. It's life." She shrugged. "It's not fair. It ought to be, but it isn't, and it doesn't get any better. I'm sorry." She clambered stiffly to her feet and stood over Harry. "But I'm still here, and I know you're a who. And I couldn't care less whether you're The Boy Who Lived, you're going to stop skulking here in the corner getting cold, and come with me, and get into bed, and drink the Dreamless Sleep potion I'm going to give you, and get some rest. And if you try to argue with me then I have a wand and I'm prepared to use it."
Harry managed a weak grin as Hermione dragged him to his feet with a hand clamped on his wrist and hauled him back towards his bed. "What would I do without you to boss me around, Hermione?"
"Spend all your time playing Quiddich and fail all your exams," Hermione responded tartly. "Bed." She pointed. "In." She held out a potion bottle. "Drink."
"Are you allowed to hand out potions like that?" Harry asked, pulling up the bedcovers and taking the vial.
"I made it," Hermione replied as Harry uncorked the potion and gulped it, pulling a face at the taste. "I've got to test it on someone, haven't I?" Hermione added, smiling slyly.
Harry lowered the empty bottle and looked at it suspiciously. "As long as there's no cat hair in it," he mumbled, eyelids already drooping. "Merlin, 'Mione, that stuff's strong..." He slumped back against the pillow, struggling to keep his eyes open a moment longer.
Madam Pomfrey peered over Hermione's shoulder. "Serverus asleep and Harry smiling again, the potions restocked, and the help you gave me earlier..." The mediwitch sounded exhausted. "Hermione, my dear, you're quite indispensable." She patted the younger woman on the shoulder and smiled tiredly at Harry. Harry managed to grin back.
Hermione closed her eyes, willing away her own weariness. "It's quite all right, Madam Pomfrey. I'm sure everyone is doing what they can. Do you need any more help?"
Pomfrey hesitated so long that Harry's eyelids drooped closed. In the silence, a Second Year whimpered.
"I'll take that as a yes, then," Hermione decided. "Lead on, MacDuff¹."
"Sorry, dear?" asked the slightly bemused Pomfrey.
Hermione sighed, her voice growing distant, as if she'd turned away. "Muggle quote. Never mind. Just show me what to do." Harry's limbs felt thick and stuffy. Two sets of footsteps tapped their way into the distance. Hermnione's voice was the last thing he heard before unconsciousness claimed him. "Sleep probably wouldn't do much knitting for me anyway..."
******
1. Shakespeare, 'The Scottish Play', as is the knitting reference in the last line. I don't know how much Hermione would have kept up with Muggle literature with the entire Wizarding library at Hogwarts to occupy her. The portrayal of Witches and Wizards in Muggle literature is probably required for Muggle Studies, wouldn't you think?
Thank you everyone who corrected me on the Dreamless Sleep potion. I wrested the relevant book from my son and tracked it down to the source. :)
You're all so darned nice! Thank you! blueyed-angel, more blushes from me. I quit Latin to do Ancient Greek instead, and I never did get the hang of all those tenses, so I'm sure by the time I'm done you'll find a whole bunch of errors :( . Orange, glad you're enjoying the dialogue, here's more! linnetjo, thank you, I'm trying to keep things believable (although it's probably making the story a little slow paced). EireVerde- do I sense an Irish connection? I know what you mean about starting stories while they're still in progress. I promise this won't turn into one of the kind that never get finished (assuming I don't get abducted by garden gnomes, swallowed by giant squid, or killed by a random rogue bludger...).
Elsie, on Snape's voice, thank you. Snape strongly reminds me of one of my old teachers, who had the ability to effortlessly reduce First Years to tearful quivering wrecks with a single sentence. He didn't even score a one in the 'tall, dark, handsome' contest either. Some of it must have rubbed off on me anyway, though. Cynicism comes very easily these days. I only wish I was quick-witted enough to think of the nastily entertaining come-back lines in time to say them, instead of producing the perfect lines about three hours too late :p . cassy, thanks. I like writing dialogue (hopefully I'm restraining myself so there isn't too much of it). I'm glad the issues don't seem too cliched. I'm sure other people have already covered similar ideas, so I'm trying to keep the approach fresh. Cho, thank you, I'm trying to keep it up :) . mym2000, here's more! Inieda, I was quite pleased with that line myself ;) .
Susanna, welcome back :D . I was a little worried that the guilt conversation might be a bit confusing, but it sounds as if I put it across okay. I'll say hi to AngelSnape at this point too. The thinking behind Snape's initial impulse in the final confrontation with Voldemort actually came from watching my son's reactions when someone bullied him. The desire to make others hurt in return for pain they have inflicted is a very human one, and one that is often at odds with rational behaviour. People claim they want justice, that they want to make sure nobody else will be hurt, and that they want to make an example of the wrongdoer, but what most people really want is the satisfaction of watching the other person feeling just as much pain and suffering as he or she caused. Ack, I'm such a cynic when it comes to human nature.
stonecoldfox, I'd be blushing again if I wasn't still channeling Snape after the previous comment. Actually this isn't the original story at all, but once I started writing the characters took over and refused to cooperate with my initial idea. Now they're camping out in my brain and directing my fingers on the keyboard :p . surreall, I have gone on with the story, hope you enjoyed :) .