kerravonsen | The SSHG Exchange is Revealed

The story that I wrote was Memoria Veritas, written for

dozmuffinxc.
I am grateful to the mods in their modly choosing, because one of my mild requests for writing was "It would be nice to be able to sink my teeth into something atmospheric/poetic and somewhat angsty."
While I'd been hoping for some other recipients in particular, and didn't consider this recipient at all, their first prompt was just the kind of thing I'd asked for...

Prompt #1: Post-War: Something strange is going on at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy! Students are disappearing, and the longer they are gone, the more people -- staff and students alike -- are beginning to forget they ever went to the School. As professor of DADA, Severus Snape is recruited by Headmistress McGonagall to get to the bottom of things. However, he won't be alone in his endeavor: newly tenured Professor Hermione Granger is asked to help him, and although the two have had little contact after the War, they are forced to get to know each other better as they work to solve the case before more students go missing or, worst of all, they themselves begin to forget that there is a case at all!

A mystery, yes, but also the opportunity to do something atmospheric. Because it's rather creepy to be forgetting that people ever existed.

I can't remember when it occurred to me that the most interesting way of doing the story was to enter it in media res, AFTER they had managed to "forget that there is a case at all". Setting it up so that the worst had already happened. But a situation like that has its own peculiar challenge: how does one investigate something one has forgotten? How can one find clues if the evidence is vanishing? The mystery had to have a particular shape:

1. Something that would cause people to forget that students had vanished.
2. A means by which, even with disappearing evidence, enough data would remain for Our Heroes to figure out the cause of the problem.
3. Something that was reversible (because I wanted a happy ending).

As ever, my Chief-Brainstormer and Alpha reader was my wonderful friend JB. He's very good to bounce ideas off, and patiently listens to me reading scenes to him over the phone, and giving his 5c on them.

It gives me a pang to remember that this is the last story I brainstormed with

mistraltoes on. (Oh how I miss her)

Thanks again to kittylefish, comma-wrangler extraordinary, for beta-reading. This time I managed to purge my excessive "that"-usage before I sent the story to her. (grin)

For those who are curious about my thought-processes, here's the mind-map I made of the story while I was figuring out the plot: http://too.katspace.org/muse/SSHG_2011.html
Note that at that point, I was thinking "creature" rather than "spell-gone-wrong", but a lot of the story factors were there already.

For further curiosity, here are the rest of my notes on the story:

Students are vanishing because of a spell-gone-wrong which was supposed to be a look-into-the-past spell, but which has opened an intermittent rift which is sucking people into another dimension and/or a time-between-times, whereapon they start fading from history. The less there is to remember about the person, the quicker they are forgotten.

Fact-checking

Who died at the Battle of Hogwarts who would have a child at Hogwarts 5-11 years later? I would prefer someone in the shorter end of the spectrum, because I can't see Hermione sticking out the Ministry for 11 years, nor for her taking 11 years to write a book.

* Remus + Tonks (11 years later)

Outline

Before the story opens

1. A student wants to see the Battle of Hogwarts, so that they can see their parents before they died.
* Teddy Lupin?
* Someone else?
* Child of a grandparent who's obsessed by someone who died in the war?
2. They ask for the help of Professor Binns, who might know some look-at-past-events spells.
3. The spell is cast, something goes wrong, Professor Binns vanishes.
* It goes wrong because Professor Binns is a ghost. And/or because Hogwarts has many ghosts.
* Does the student vanish too? No, because we want them to think that Binns vanishing is unconnected.
4. Mineva McGonagall asks Hermione to fill in as History of Magic Professor.
* Minerva thinks that Binns simply passed over.
* Hermione is asked because she recently published a (bestselling) book about the war.
* Hermione is free to come because her supervisor at the Ministry suspended her because of the book, and Hermione resigned because it was the last straw, because she was miserable because she's been exploited and overlooked and ignored and had other people taking the credit for her work.
5. A student vanishes.
* Is it the student who instigated the events?
6. Minerva tasks Snape and Granger to investigate.
7. Another student vanishes.
8. First student is forgotten.
9. Snape thinks someone is tampering with the investigation. Makes tamper-proof journals.
10. Third student vanishes.
11. Second student is forgotten.
12. Third student is forgotten.
13. Investigation is forgotten.

Story Proper

1. Hermione has disturbing day.
* chill atmosphere
* Hermione teaching: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
* Three empty seats - weren't there two empty seats yesterday?
2. At end of day, Snape angrily brandishes journal at Hermione, berating her for practical joke.
* extract from journal
* Hermione finds own journal: if a joke, joke on both of us
3. Journals are found to be genuine.
4. Investigation re-opened.
* more important than ever to write in journals, since they know they are forgetting things
* more journal extracts as SS and HG converse through journals
* Hermione sticks a note to the outside of her journal "Read Me"
5. Room near the History classroom with runes on the floor.
* Snape stops Hermione from erasing the runes; there's a chance they can rescue the missing.
* Research.
* Counter-spell and entrapment runes to retrieve the missing when original spell broken.
6. Success!
7. Journal-writing habit continues.

It's interesting to note the things that are different between the notes and the story, such as where the runes are and which one of them stops the other from erasing the runes. And Gran Foyle wasn't in my notes at all!