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a_t_rainAt last, the long-delayed third installment of the Daftest Crossover Ever. Parts One and Two are here. Basically, what you need to know is that a young Severus Snape has drunk a Plothole-Plugging Potion, landed in the sixteenth century, and is now happily wandering around Europe saving characters in various Shakespeare plays from themselves. In the last installment, he met Helena, a young French witch who is now definitely NOT in love with Bertram, and Diana, a Florentine who invited him along to Verona for her cousin Juliet's wedding.
Summary: Snape meets Romeo and Juliet. (Almost) everybody lives.
Act One: TheWedding Funeral Crashers
“Better?” Helena asked Horatio.
With a considerable effort, Horatio nodded. It was clear to everyone that he had not enjoyed his first flying carpet ride, which had been a somewhat unexpected one, and he was still very pale. But now that his feet were on solid ground, he seemed less likely to faint or vomit.
“So,” announced Severus to no one in particular. “Here we are in Verona. On our way to visit some perfect strangers. Who thought this was a good idea, again?”
“They are not strangers,” said Diana positively. “I have visited my uncle Capulet in Verona before, and you will all be very welcome there for my sake. This is his house; will you come in?”
“But – but this is a palazzo,” said Horatio. “Are you not – I mean no offense, Diana, but I thought you were an innkeeper’s daughter?”
“So I am. My father’s father disowned him when he married my mother, but he was a wealthy man by birth.”
Diana knocked at the door. A servant opened it and led them into an antechamber, where they were greeted by a large, hearty man in his fifties and his much younger wife. “My aunt and uncle, Lord and Lady Capulet,” said Diana. “Uncle Capulet, this is Helena de Narbonne, daughter of the late Gerard de Narbonne, the physician. And Horatio and Severus, who are visitors from the court of King Hamlet of Denmark.”
“You are my niece’s friends? You are welcome to my house, one and all! You have come in good time for the funeral.”
“Funeral?” said Severus. “I thought it was a wedding.”
“The wedding is tomorrow; today is a day for mourning. On Monday last, my nephew Tybalt was stabbed in the street, by a base, cowardly son of that Montague.” Capulet spat on the ground. He appeared to think that this event required no further explanation.
Diana, evidently, did not require explanation either, for she received the news in silence and nodded gravely. Horatio, Helena, and Severus looked at one another with varying degrees of perplexity.
“Gregory! Samson! Find chambers for our guests.”
“What, husband, are you mad?” demanded Lady Capulet. “We have guests in every room of the house already; where are these strangers to sleep?”
“Oh, ay,” said Lord Capulet vaguely. This aspect of the domestic arrangements did not seem to have occurred to him. “They might stay at my uncle’s house,” he suggested at last. “They would be good company for Rosaline and Livia; I am sure the girls do not love to pass all their time with old people like us, eh?”
“Speak for yourself,” said Lady Capulet shortly. “I am not so old yet, I thank God.”
Diana interrupted what appeared to be an incipient quarrel. “Where is my cousin Juliet? I long to see her.”
Lady Capulet sighed theatrically and rolled her eyes. “Mewed up in her room weeping, I have no doubt.”
“Is everything well, aunt?” asked Diana.
“The fool does nothing but bewail her cousin’s death and defy her parents,” explained Lord Capulet. “Wife, tell the nurse to make her come down to dinner, and see that she makes herself fit for human company.”
“If she is so grieved, would it not be better to put off the wedding?” Diana suggested.
“Certainly not,” said Lord Capulet. “She said this very morning that she would have Paris, and by God she will have him before she changes her mind again.”
Helena and Horatio exchanged another perplexed glance at this speech. Severus, who was less polite, demanded, “What is this, a soap opera?”
Lady Capulet seized on the one word of this speech that she found intelligible. “What? Oh, yes, of course. Peter! Bring Master Severus some soap – the rose-scented kind from France, if you please – and a basin of water.”
While they were having a wash which they hadn’t particularly wanted, Severus attempted to explain to Horatio what a soap opera was. Horatio was puzzled as to why it wasn’t called a soap opus, if it was singular, but when he finally understood the concept, he agreed with Severus that there was something very peculiar and melodramatic about the Capulet household.
This impression was strengthened when they sat down to the noon meal. Juliet had finally put in an appearance, but she ate little and talked less. Severus thought that she looked far too young to be anyone’s wife. He guessed that if she were a witch, she would have been in her fourth year at Hogwarts, at most.
* * *
After the meal, the entire Capulet household proceeded to St. Peter’s church, where Tybalt’s funeral was being held. Severus thought that going to the funeral of a man he’d never met sounded like an unspeakably boring way to spend the afternoon, but there didn’t seem to be any way out of it.
At the church, they were introduced to the County Paris, Juliet’s betrothed. Severus still couldn’t work out why the man was calling himself a county, as there seemed to be nothing particularly geographical about him. He was a rather smarmy-looking young man who appeared to have slicked his hair back with olive oil.
The funeral, however, proved to be more entertaining than Severus had anticipated. There were sixteen pallbearers, and Tybalt’s coffin was draped with a massive canopy of red and white roses – most of which got crushed when Juliet’s nurse, in the grip of grief and aqua-vitae, overbalanced and fell onto the bier and had to be helped up by Samson and Gregory.
As far as Severus was concerned, the entire household seemed to be completely mad. Thank God they weren’t going to be staying with Lord and Lady Capulet.
Not that Lord Capulet’s uncle’s house was much better. As soon as the visitors arrived, they were introduced to Livia, an excited child of twelve, who had already stripped off her mourning dress and insisted on showing off her bridesmaid’s gown to all of the visitors. Luckily, Helena and Diana seemed equal to the task of admiring it. Severus thought that the less said about the confection of taffeta and pearls, the better, and Horatio seemed to be of much the same opinion.
At last they escaped, and were shown upstairs to their bedchambers, which were on either side of a long gallery lined with windows. Rosaline, a pretty, dark-haired girl about seventeen years old, was sitting in one of the window seats with a volume of Sappho’s poetry. She looked up as the guests approached.
“I am sorry,” Horatio ventured, “to hear of your kinsman’s death.”
“You are sorrier, then, than I am,” said Rosaline frankly. “Tybalt was a quarrelsome fool. He went looking for trouble, and I cannot say I regret that he found it. Besides, he had just killed one of Romeo Montague’s dearest friends; I can hardly blame Romeo for taking vengeance.”
“Oh. Your uncle never mentioned –”
“No, of course he would not. He likes to pretend the Montagues are at fault in all things. Mercutio will be buried at five o’clock this afternoon, by the way. I must not go, and neither must Diana, but those of you who are not of our blood ought to go to St. Zeno’s church with Paris, for you would do well to be seen there. It does not do to slight the Montagues, especially when you have been seen at Tybalt’s funeral already.”
“Wait, what?” said Severus. “We have to attend ANOTHER funeral today? Are you serious?”
Rosaline hid a smile. “I am afraid so. The safest course for strangers in the city is to appear to be civil to both families, but not specially intimate with either.”
“What relation was Mercutio to the Montagues?” asked Helena.
“Why, none at all; he was only a friend. If anything, he was closer kin to the Capulets, for Paris is his cousin, and Paris is as good as married to Juliet.”
Horatio frowned. “Then why are the Montagues –”
“‘Tis plain to see that you are a stranger here. If the Capulets have a funeral, the Montagues must seize upon the nearest corpse and have a bigger funeral. That is the way of things in Verona.”
* * *
The travelers contemplated the six velvet-draped coaches that were drawing up to the church. They were laden with portraits of the dead man, plaster saints, and wreaths of flowers. Four servants lifted the last and most elaborate wreath from its bed of lilies, and a flock of white doves soared toward the sky.
“It’s a bit tacky, isn’t it?” Severus ventured.
“Hush. You had better be thankful they are confining their rivalry to funerals today. They have spilled blood over less weighty matters.” Paris fell silent and watched two of the Montagues’ servants as they attempted to bring an enormous papier-mâché representation of the god Mercury inside the church. The churchwarden objected that the image violated the First Commandment. There was a brief altercation, which ended with the churchwarden being pitched headfirst into the shrubbery and Mercury being adorned with the churchwarden’s hat.
“You are right,” said Paris suddenly, his lips twitching. “‘Tis past the bounds of all decorum, and Mercutio must be laughing himself hoarse in heaven. He was a merry man.”
“Is that Romeo?” Horatio indicated a young men who seemed, almost alone among the mourners, to be genuinely grief-stricken.
“No, that’s Benvolio, old Montague’s nephew. Romeo was banished for the murder – gone to Mantua, or so they say. A good riddance. The feud has always been great trouble to my kinsman, the prince.”
Severus noted that this was at least the third time in an hour that Paris had said my kinsman, the prince.
* * *
The visitors arrived home late from the funeral, as the Montagues had put on a lavish spread of roasted meat and sparkling wine. By the time the last bottle had been drunk, an enormous marble obelisk had been raised, and a number of girls had flung themselves melodramatically onto the grave and had been shooed away and packed off into their respective carriages by the Montagues’ servants, it was nearly midnight.
Severus stumbled muzzily into bed, only to be woken at an ungodly hour of the morning by the cries of the female servants.
Horatio muttered an oath and buried his face in his pillow; Severus tried to do the same, but the shrieking grew louder.
Severus pulled on his cloak and stumbled out into the hall. The girls had also left their chambers, in varying states of sleepiness, and Rosaline’s parents and a manservant were standing there with stricken expressions. “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me they’re holding the wedding at four o’clock in the morning!”
“There is to be no wedding!” said Livia, who was plainly torn between genuine distress and the pleasure of being the first to tell a shocking piece of news. “My cousin Juliet is dead! Her nurse found her this morning, and sent Peter to tell Father the news.”
“Dead?” Diana uttered a cry; Rosaline was white-faced, but silent. The young people looked at one another with mingled horror and perplexity, none more horrified and perplexed than Severus. In his experience, perfectly healthy young people did not drop dead overnight. Except when they did. And it was a sign of something particularly dark and complicated afoot when it happened to Muggles.
“What did she die of?” he demanded.
The Capulets looked awkwardly at one another. “Er – grief, ‘tis thought – at her cousin’s death, of course,” said Rosaline’s father at last. “Her heart, I fear, was sorely overcharged – and, er, it must have burst in the night.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! Who made you a cardiologist?”
Helena trod heavily on Severus’s foot. “Hush!” she whispered. “Can you not see that they all think she took her own life?”
“No, I don’t! Why on earth would she do that?” whispered Severus.
“I know not. I knew her no better than you did. But ‘tis plain to see that they all think it, and cannot say so, for then she could not be buried on Christian ground. They will give us little thanks for asking questions.”
“When a girl suddenly drops dead, I think questions ought to be asked!”
Helena took him by the arm and drew him aside into the nearest antechamber. “And I think it is plain to see that questions are dangerous in Verona! Besides, it may be nothing more than the sweating sickness. I have heard that it can take a person’s life in hours, although I have never seen a case myself. You must have seen it in England; is it true that people can seem well when they go to bed and never wake the next morning?”
“I don’t know.” Severus fell back on the excuse that had generally served him well every time he had to admit his ignorance of English life in the 1540s. “I have never concerned myself with the diseases of Muggles.”
“Well, perhaps you should! How did you come to be a court wizard to a Muggle king, if you are so indifferent?”
“King Hamlet’s different,” said Severus shortly. It had not really occurred to him to think of Hamlet as a Muggle, at least not since he had got to know him, or Horatio either.
“Perhaps these people are different, too. You might at least give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“I’ve seen enough of them already. I vote we get out of here – before they make us go to another bloody funeral – or else we stay and get to the bottom of this, which means asking questions. Your choice.”
Helena frowned, and thought for a long moment. “So be it,” she said at last. “We will stay, and do what we can.”
It was not until after she had agreed that Severus began to wonder why he cared in the slightest what had caused Juliet’s death, or why he was, still more inexplicably, thinking of himself and Helena as a unit.
“Let’s start with these Montagues,” he said. “There’s a wizarding family of that name in England.”
“Is there?” said Helena. “I have never heard of them before.”
Of course, Severus realized, there might not have been a wizarding family of that name in 1540; many of those who claimed pureblood status had more recent Muggle ancestors than they cared to admit. And he had seen nothing at Mercutio’s funeral that suggested the presence of wizards; quite the reverse, since it was hard to imagine a family so addicted to ostentation passing up the opportunity to enhance the spectacle with magic. Still. Something uncanny was going on in Verona, and the feud seemed a promising place to start.
Summary: Snape meets Romeo and Juliet. (Almost) everybody lives.
Act One: The
“Better?” Helena asked Horatio.
With a considerable effort, Horatio nodded. It was clear to everyone that he had not enjoyed his first flying carpet ride, which had been a somewhat unexpected one, and he was still very pale. But now that his feet were on solid ground, he seemed less likely to faint or vomit.
“So,” announced Severus to no one in particular. “Here we are in Verona. On our way to visit some perfect strangers. Who thought this was a good idea, again?”
“They are not strangers,” said Diana positively. “I have visited my uncle Capulet in Verona before, and you will all be very welcome there for my sake. This is his house; will you come in?”
“But – but this is a palazzo,” said Horatio. “Are you not – I mean no offense, Diana, but I thought you were an innkeeper’s daughter?”
“So I am. My father’s father disowned him when he married my mother, but he was a wealthy man by birth.”
Diana knocked at the door. A servant opened it and led them into an antechamber, where they were greeted by a large, hearty man in his fifties and his much younger wife. “My aunt and uncle, Lord and Lady Capulet,” said Diana. “Uncle Capulet, this is Helena de Narbonne, daughter of the late Gerard de Narbonne, the physician. And Horatio and Severus, who are visitors from the court of King Hamlet of Denmark.”
“You are my niece’s friends? You are welcome to my house, one and all! You have come in good time for the funeral.”
“Funeral?” said Severus. “I thought it was a wedding.”
“The wedding is tomorrow; today is a day for mourning. On Monday last, my nephew Tybalt was stabbed in the street, by a base, cowardly son of that Montague.” Capulet spat on the ground. He appeared to think that this event required no further explanation.
Diana, evidently, did not require explanation either, for she received the news in silence and nodded gravely. Horatio, Helena, and Severus looked at one another with varying degrees of perplexity.
“Gregory! Samson! Find chambers for our guests.”
“What, husband, are you mad?” demanded Lady Capulet. “We have guests in every room of the house already; where are these strangers to sleep?”
“Oh, ay,” said Lord Capulet vaguely. This aspect of the domestic arrangements did not seem to have occurred to him. “They might stay at my uncle’s house,” he suggested at last. “They would be good company for Rosaline and Livia; I am sure the girls do not love to pass all their time with old people like us, eh?”
“Speak for yourself,” said Lady Capulet shortly. “I am not so old yet, I thank God.”
Diana interrupted what appeared to be an incipient quarrel. “Where is my cousin Juliet? I long to see her.”
Lady Capulet sighed theatrically and rolled her eyes. “Mewed up in her room weeping, I have no doubt.”
“Is everything well, aunt?” asked Diana.
“The fool does nothing but bewail her cousin’s death and defy her parents,” explained Lord Capulet. “Wife, tell the nurse to make her come down to dinner, and see that she makes herself fit for human company.”
“If she is so grieved, would it not be better to put off the wedding?” Diana suggested.
“Certainly not,” said Lord Capulet. “She said this very morning that she would have Paris, and by God she will have him before she changes her mind again.”
Helena and Horatio exchanged another perplexed glance at this speech. Severus, who was less polite, demanded, “What is this, a soap opera?”
Lady Capulet seized on the one word of this speech that she found intelligible. “What? Oh, yes, of course. Peter! Bring Master Severus some soap – the rose-scented kind from France, if you please – and a basin of water.”
While they were having a wash which they hadn’t particularly wanted, Severus attempted to explain to Horatio what a soap opera was. Horatio was puzzled as to why it wasn’t called a soap opus, if it was singular, but when he finally understood the concept, he agreed with Severus that there was something very peculiar and melodramatic about the Capulet household.
This impression was strengthened when they sat down to the noon meal. Juliet had finally put in an appearance, but she ate little and talked less. Severus thought that she looked far too young to be anyone’s wife. He guessed that if she were a witch, she would have been in her fourth year at Hogwarts, at most.
* * *
After the meal, the entire Capulet household proceeded to St. Peter’s church, where Tybalt’s funeral was being held. Severus thought that going to the funeral of a man he’d never met sounded like an unspeakably boring way to spend the afternoon, but there didn’t seem to be any way out of it.
At the church, they were introduced to the County Paris, Juliet’s betrothed. Severus still couldn’t work out why the man was calling himself a county, as there seemed to be nothing particularly geographical about him. He was a rather smarmy-looking young man who appeared to have slicked his hair back with olive oil.
The funeral, however, proved to be more entertaining than Severus had anticipated. There were sixteen pallbearers, and Tybalt’s coffin was draped with a massive canopy of red and white roses – most of which got crushed when Juliet’s nurse, in the grip of grief and aqua-vitae, overbalanced and fell onto the bier and had to be helped up by Samson and Gregory.
As far as Severus was concerned, the entire household seemed to be completely mad. Thank God they weren’t going to be staying with Lord and Lady Capulet.
Not that Lord Capulet’s uncle’s house was much better. As soon as the visitors arrived, they were introduced to Livia, an excited child of twelve, who had already stripped off her mourning dress and insisted on showing off her bridesmaid’s gown to all of the visitors. Luckily, Helena and Diana seemed equal to the task of admiring it. Severus thought that the less said about the confection of taffeta and pearls, the better, and Horatio seemed to be of much the same opinion.
At last they escaped, and were shown upstairs to their bedchambers, which were on either side of a long gallery lined with windows. Rosaline, a pretty, dark-haired girl about seventeen years old, was sitting in one of the window seats with a volume of Sappho’s poetry. She looked up as the guests approached.
“I am sorry,” Horatio ventured, “to hear of your kinsman’s death.”
“You are sorrier, then, than I am,” said Rosaline frankly. “Tybalt was a quarrelsome fool. He went looking for trouble, and I cannot say I regret that he found it. Besides, he had just killed one of Romeo Montague’s dearest friends; I can hardly blame Romeo for taking vengeance.”
“Oh. Your uncle never mentioned –”
“No, of course he would not. He likes to pretend the Montagues are at fault in all things. Mercutio will be buried at five o’clock this afternoon, by the way. I must not go, and neither must Diana, but those of you who are not of our blood ought to go to St. Zeno’s church with Paris, for you would do well to be seen there. It does not do to slight the Montagues, especially when you have been seen at Tybalt’s funeral already.”
“Wait, what?” said Severus. “We have to attend ANOTHER funeral today? Are you serious?”
Rosaline hid a smile. “I am afraid so. The safest course for strangers in the city is to appear to be civil to both families, but not specially intimate with either.”
“What relation was Mercutio to the Montagues?” asked Helena.
“Why, none at all; he was only a friend. If anything, he was closer kin to the Capulets, for Paris is his cousin, and Paris is as good as married to Juliet.”
Horatio frowned. “Then why are the Montagues –”
“‘Tis plain to see that you are a stranger here. If the Capulets have a funeral, the Montagues must seize upon the nearest corpse and have a bigger funeral. That is the way of things in Verona.”
* * *
The travelers contemplated the six velvet-draped coaches that were drawing up to the church. They were laden with portraits of the dead man, plaster saints, and wreaths of flowers. Four servants lifted the last and most elaborate wreath from its bed of lilies, and a flock of white doves soared toward the sky.
“It’s a bit tacky, isn’t it?” Severus ventured.
“Hush. You had better be thankful they are confining their rivalry to funerals today. They have spilled blood over less weighty matters.” Paris fell silent and watched two of the Montagues’ servants as they attempted to bring an enormous papier-mâché representation of the god Mercury inside the church. The churchwarden objected that the image violated the First Commandment. There was a brief altercation, which ended with the churchwarden being pitched headfirst into the shrubbery and Mercury being adorned with the churchwarden’s hat.
“You are right,” said Paris suddenly, his lips twitching. “‘Tis past the bounds of all decorum, and Mercutio must be laughing himself hoarse in heaven. He was a merry man.”
“Is that Romeo?” Horatio indicated a young men who seemed, almost alone among the mourners, to be genuinely grief-stricken.
“No, that’s Benvolio, old Montague’s nephew. Romeo was banished for the murder – gone to Mantua, or so they say. A good riddance. The feud has always been great trouble to my kinsman, the prince.”
Severus noted that this was at least the third time in an hour that Paris had said my kinsman, the prince.
* * *
The visitors arrived home late from the funeral, as the Montagues had put on a lavish spread of roasted meat and sparkling wine. By the time the last bottle had been drunk, an enormous marble obelisk had been raised, and a number of girls had flung themselves melodramatically onto the grave and had been shooed away and packed off into their respective carriages by the Montagues’ servants, it was nearly midnight.
Severus stumbled muzzily into bed, only to be woken at an ungodly hour of the morning by the cries of the female servants.
Horatio muttered an oath and buried his face in his pillow; Severus tried to do the same, but the shrieking grew louder.
Severus pulled on his cloak and stumbled out into the hall. The girls had also left their chambers, in varying states of sleepiness, and Rosaline’s parents and a manservant were standing there with stricken expressions. “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me they’re holding the wedding at four o’clock in the morning!”
“There is to be no wedding!” said Livia, who was plainly torn between genuine distress and the pleasure of being the first to tell a shocking piece of news. “My cousin Juliet is dead! Her nurse found her this morning, and sent Peter to tell Father the news.”
“Dead?” Diana uttered a cry; Rosaline was white-faced, but silent. The young people looked at one another with mingled horror and perplexity, none more horrified and perplexed than Severus. In his experience, perfectly healthy young people did not drop dead overnight. Except when they did. And it was a sign of something particularly dark and complicated afoot when it happened to Muggles.
“What did she die of?” he demanded.
The Capulets looked awkwardly at one another. “Er – grief, ‘tis thought – at her cousin’s death, of course,” said Rosaline’s father at last. “Her heart, I fear, was sorely overcharged – and, er, it must have burst in the night.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! Who made you a cardiologist?”
Helena trod heavily on Severus’s foot. “Hush!” she whispered. “Can you not see that they all think she took her own life?”
“No, I don’t! Why on earth would she do that?” whispered Severus.
“I know not. I knew her no better than you did. But ‘tis plain to see that they all think it, and cannot say so, for then she could not be buried on Christian ground. They will give us little thanks for asking questions.”
“When a girl suddenly drops dead, I think questions ought to be asked!”
Helena took him by the arm and drew him aside into the nearest antechamber. “And I think it is plain to see that questions are dangerous in Verona! Besides, it may be nothing more than the sweating sickness. I have heard that it can take a person’s life in hours, although I have never seen a case myself. You must have seen it in England; is it true that people can seem well when they go to bed and never wake the next morning?”
“I don’t know.” Severus fell back on the excuse that had generally served him well every time he had to admit his ignorance of English life in the 1540s. “I have never concerned myself with the diseases of Muggles.”
“Well, perhaps you should! How did you come to be a court wizard to a Muggle king, if you are so indifferent?”
“King Hamlet’s different,” said Severus shortly. It had not really occurred to him to think of Hamlet as a Muggle, at least not since he had got to know him, or Horatio either.
“Perhaps these people are different, too. You might at least give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“I’ve seen enough of them already. I vote we get out of here – before they make us go to another bloody funeral – or else we stay and get to the bottom of this, which means asking questions. Your choice.”
Helena frowned, and thought for a long moment. “So be it,” she said at last. “We will stay, and do what we can.”
It was not until after she had agreed that Severus began to wonder why he cared in the slightest what had caused Juliet’s death, or why he was, still more inexplicably, thinking of himself and Helena as a unit.
“Let’s start with these Montagues,” he said. “There’s a wizarding family of that name in England.”
“Is there?” said Helena. “I have never heard of them before.”
Of course, Severus realized, there might not have been a wizarding family of that name in 1540; many of those who claimed pureblood status had more recent Muggle ancestors than they cared to admit. And he had seen nothing at Mercutio’s funeral that suggested the presence of wizards; quite the reverse, since it was hard to imagine a family so addicted to ostentation passing up the opportunity to enhance the spectacle with magic. Still. Something uncanny was going on in Verona, and the feud seemed a promising place to start.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 03:40 am (UTC)Um.
That was just my response to seeing you had started it. Now I will actually read the chapter.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 07:43 am (UTC)I particularly treasured the idea of flashy funerals as a form of competition...
no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 04:55 pm (UTC)I felt you should be informed.
----
Aw, poor Horatio.
“So,” announced Severus to no one in particular. “Here we are in Verona. On our way to visit some perfect strangers. Who thought this was a good idea, again?”
*cracks up*
You know, whatever their faults in terms of feuding and melodrama, it does seem to say something for Lord and Lady Capulet in this story that they're on good terms with the disowned portion of the family.
While they were having a wash which they hadn’t particularly wanted, Severus attempted to explain to Horatio what a soap opera was. Horatio was puzzled as to why it wasn’t called a soap opus, if it was singular, but when he finally understood the concept, he agreed with Severus that there was something very peculiar and melodramatic about the Capulet household.
I believe I cracked up three separate times in this paragraph.
who appeared to have slicked his hair back with olive oil.
Severus, should you really be critiquing other people's hair?
The safest course for strangers in the city is to appear to be civil to both families, but not specially intimate with either.
A particularly challenging course, no doubt, for guests of one of the families.
“I don’t know.” Severus fell back on the excuse that had generally served him well every time he had to admit his ignorance of English life in the 1540s. “I have never concerned myself with the diseases of Muggles.”
“Well, perhaps you should! How did you come to be a court wizard to a Muggle king, if you are so indifferent?”
It amuses me that this means nobody in Hamlet's court usually questions this, perhaps because they simply assume that Severus avoiding Muggles in England has nothing in particular to do with the circumstances in which he got involved with them.
Helena frowned, and thought for a long moment. “So be it,” she said at last. “We will stay, and do what we can.”
It was not until after she had agreed that Severus began to wonder why he cared in the slightest what had caused Juliet’s death, or why he was, still more inexplicably, thinking of himself and Helena as a unit.
Aww. ;)
Severus has more of a sense of responsibility here than he's really willing to cop to verbally, I think.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-18 08:31 pm (UTC)BAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This entire fic is excellent. :D
no subject
Date: 2013-09-19 05:44 pm (UTC)