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Dark Gods In The Blood	By : Hayseed Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 3951 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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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. Harry Potter and his cronies are the
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 (hayseed_42@hotmail.com)

An Epilogue

The
offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and

the tranquil waterway leading to the
uttermost ends of the

earth
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. Nothing inappropriate, mind. But nice dreams all the same. Last night, for instance, I dreamed that you
and Harry and I were sitting beside the lake at Hogwarts, chatting. �I�m glad you�re happy,� Harry said in my
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. I have been looking forward to her Quidditch
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.

clasclass=MsoNormal>

Also feel free to pass on my congratulations to Nicholas --
Head Boy, wow! His mum must be thrilled. Personally, I knew he was bound for Head Boy
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? �Hallo, I�m Ron Weasley,� I told him. �I believe you know my old school friend,
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. Only then did he confirm that he was,
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? Nicholas never did tell me how the last
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. I suppose Snape has improved somewhat and
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 Fran�oise is still quietly scandalized at you
two, still living in sin after all these years. How oddly against her French background, really, but Fran�oise
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 Fran�oise and mostly fail. Now, don�t frown at that, Butterfly. It�s not what you think. Well ... that�s not true.

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. Sometimes I try to convince myself that the
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. The Path is awfully compelling -- perhaps
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. Are you still now, Butterfly? If I recall, at the time, I told you it was
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. But today, maybe. Watching the sun rise over the mountain peaks, thinking about you
as I write this, thinking about all you�ve told me through the years.

A man once wanted to rid himself of his shadow. He ran and ran and ran under the hot sun,
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. Be still.

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. I like meditation. I like the simplicity of pulling the weeds
from the ground. Somehow, I feel
larger, living this small life, as if I�m part of some sort of pattern. It makes me think of what Albus used to say
once in a while.yes"> 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 based on my reviews. While I didn�t, you know, add in extra chapters or anything, I
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 to be a whodunit-type story, meaning I never intended
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. I think that every single character I even
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 Fran�oise 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. Ron, though, has a way of whispering in my
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, and I went back and forth on the romance issue
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. An exploration of the quote that one of my
old high-school teachers used to attribute to Karl Jung: �There is no coming to consciousness except
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 and this story were deliberate. I wanted a broader tale, though, in that I
was looking for more of a study of grief and loss through the human heart of darkness rather than Harris� more
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 rather nicely:
�I like to think that each of the main characters finds stillness (to borrow Ron�s phrase), in their own fashions --
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, about plot points and dialogue bits and every
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. Anyway, if this story is dedicated to
anyone, it�s dedicated to her. She
knows who she is ...

hayseed

Started: 10 August 2003
Finished: 07 March 2004
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Dark Gods In The Blood