This isn't exactly unfinished; it just never quite added up to anything.
Cannily, Cannily [fragment]
by Resonant
Cannily, cannily, O me lal bairnikie, Divn't ye cry, me lal pet. Whisht at thy greetin'; Thy daddy is sleepin'. It's no' time to waken him yet. -- Ewan MacColl
Suetonius Snape is not an unreasonable man.
He says so frequently. I'm not an unreasonable man, Cecilia. But when a man works hard all day, he earns the right to a happy home. Dinner to his liking. Children scrubbed and silent. No shrill demands.
If a woman can't be bothered to provide that, what the devil did she get married for?
Suetonius Snape is not a cruel man, but he's not going to tiptoe about like a troll hunter just to spare someone's feelings. If the shoe fits, he's fond of saying, leaving off the ending as too obvious to waste breath on.
Cecilia does what's needed to keep the peace at home. That's what a woman is for.
As for young Severus, he's very adept at being neither seen nor heard.
What the Dark Lord does, he does for the dream of a better world. This his followers know. If he occasionally goes into rages, if he is at times preoccupied with goals which are not only secondary to the goals of the movement but, frankly, phantasmagorical -- well, such is the toll which his great purpose takes on a frame which is, despite his best efforts, only human.
Snape understands. He does his work and suffers his penances in silence.
What Albus Dumbledore does, he does for the dream of a better world. He's not above using all one's better feelings against one: one's loyalty, one's sense of obligation, one's ambition, one's desire to pay kindness for kindness. One's very love.
Privately, Snape feels that the Dark Lord's rages are easier to live with than Albus's exacting love. But he does his work and suffers his penances in silence.
He knows what gratitude demands.
Severus Snape has never intended to have children. Reproduction is the achievement dearest to the heart of those who can achieve nothing else.
It isn't surprising that Potter was among the first of their class to spawn. His great ambition was always to see more of himself everywhere he looked.
Snape, on the contrary, believes the world would be a better place with fewer brats in. He, at least, is doing his part.
This does not mean that he is indifferent to the rearing of children. Quite the contrary. He intends to do what he can to free his students from their most egregious flaws, though they are sadly ungrateful for the opportunity to improve.
The Potter brat, for example, is forever turning those great burning eyes on Snape, spitting in outrage because Snape has injured his delicate feelings.
There is nothing Snape despises like a spoiled child.
-end-
July 17, 2007
http://trickster.org/res/cannily.html