Eros & Thanatos

To Geminiscorp

Thanks to Scatteredlogic and Not So Saintly.

Thanks to all the people that had found time to review: Today I can finally give you a glimpse of Snape.

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Extracts from the life of Hermione Granger. Years 2013 – 2015

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E-mail from Susan Granger to her daughter, Hermione Granger:

Dear Hermione:

I'm so happy that you remembered to invite mumsy to your lecture. I would have loved to go, but you know how hot Oxford is in this season; and I've never been able to deal with such a climate. I hope you can understand.

Big Hugs, Mum.

***

The School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, St Antony's College, Oxford

The Latin American Studies Center cordially invites you to a public lecture :

What: Nectar & Ambrosia: Going through Death, given by Prof. Hermione Granger (University of Bath, Center for Death and Society)

Introduction: Prof. Marina Gaete (The Latin American Studies Center)

When: Wedsnesday, July 20th, 2013; 5:30 – 7:00 PM

Where: School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, 12 Bevington Road, Oxford, OX2 6LH

This public lecture will consider how the survival in ancient Greek of the lndo-European root *nek and *mer, which in Indo-European designated two ways of dying, not in the words referring to death, but in the terms ϖ φ ι χ ρ α π and α γ π ο ο φ α. At the same time, the analysis of the texts where these terms are connected to death helps us to determine exactly their meaning and to realize that in Greek religion, like in other Indo-European religions, a belief exists in a substance allowing going beyond death and reaching immortality. Finally, we connect these terms evoking these two different ways of dying with the ancient formula α ψ ι φ π α ε χ.

Hermione Granger is a Reader in Sociology and the Vice Head of the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. Before moving to Bath she was the Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She has also held posts at the University of Sussex and the London School of Economics where she was a T.H. Marshall Fellow in the Department of Sociology. She has been researching and publishing in the field of death and dying for almost ten years.

Granger is a Founding Editor of Mortality, the first European journal of death studies, which she now co-edits with Mortimer Killjoy. She has been closely involved with the series of conferences on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal, the first of which she co-organised with Fernando Alvarez in 2003.

For more information on the speaker: http://www.bath.ac.uk/cdas/people/cdasmem/index.html

To register or for information: ana.castillo4@bath.ac.uk or maria willkins@area.ox.ac.ok

***

Card from Mr. Granger to his daughter, Hermione Granger:

My little one:

I can't express how proud I am of your success; I've framed The Times interview and put it in my office. Now all my patients will know I have a brilliant daughter. These 33 roses are a symbol of all the years that you have made my life bloom. (Remember, my dear scholar, to put water in the vase and the roses in it!) Looking to be with you for my birthday,

Daddy.

PS: Mum sends you a kiss.

***

Letter from Ted Lupin to his Godmother, Hermione Granger:

Hogwarts, 11th November, 2013

PS: Thanks for saving my ass life too

***

Chat between dean_forest (dean_forest@hotmail.com) and Herm19 (herm19@aol.com)

03:09

dean_forest: Are you there?

Herm19: Have any news?

dean_forest: You were right.

Herm19: How many?'

03:10

dean_forest: No deaths in the last five months!

dean_forest: It's like people just stay alive, a minute away from dying, no changes, neither dead nor alive.

Herm19: Were you able to get the files?

03:12

dean_forest: Love, I can't go around asking for files about non existent dead

03:13

Herm19: So, how are you sure of the facts?

dean_forest: I don't reveal my sources

Herm19: Stop being silly, this is serious

03:14

dean_forest: I AM being serious; there is something rotten here. It scares me.

***

Irma Pince to Hermione Granger:

Dear Miss Granger:

I will be delighted to receive you in Hogwarts Library again. You should not be concerned about your condition; measures will be taken to make your stay as pleasurable as always. I send you this bookmark with the invitation; it's a Portkey that will be activated next Monday at 8:30 sharp.

Regards, Irma Pince.

***

Black, Araminta Melliflua, Birth Date Unknown – 1800.

Papers: Guide. Hogwarts Library, Hogwarts School of Witch Craft and Wizardry Descriptive Summary

Repository: Hogwarts Library, Hogwarts School of Witch Craft and Wizardry

Location: Restricted Section b (shelved with bMS Flamel 6)

Call No.: MS Flamel 7

Creator: Black, Araminta Melliflua. Birth date unknown? –1800

Title: Papers

Date(s): 1741-1773.

Quantity: 1 box (.5 linear ft.)

Abstract: Letters to and from author and literary hostess Araminta Melliflua Black, from the Noble and Most ancient House of Black, a partial draft of her An Essay on Death, Comparative Study among British Muggles and Wizards, and her transcripts of poems by a variety of authors paying tribute to the essay.

Acquisition Information: *1984JM-58 (part)

Donor: Cedrella Black

Custodial history: Most of the letters in Series I had previously been bound into an extra-illustrated edition of The Life of Honoria Nutcombe. Which Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel purchased at a Chilean auction in 1801, and which they disbound in 1823. The contents of Series II were all sold as a group to Benjy Fenwick in 1971, along with four letters in Series I: Starkey to Black, 1769 Sept. 29; Gregory to Black, 1768 Oct. 31 and 1769 Mar. 18; and Black to Lyttelton, 1769 Sept. 22. Several other letters were acquired by the Flammels from miscellaneous sources. Araminta Melliflua Black, an author and literary hostess, was a central figure in Wizarding Bluestocking circles, and a friend of Honoria Nutcombe; their friendship broke when Mrs Black tried to force through a Ministry Bill to make Muggle-hunting legal. Her best-known work was the anonymously published An Essay on Death, Comparative Study among British Muggles and Wizards (1769). Arrangement.

Organized into the following series:

• I. Correspondence

• II. Manuscripts The correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent.

Scope and Content Series I, Correspondence, includes fifteen autographed letters by Black, and ten letters received by her. Prominent correspondents include her friendship and depart with Artemisia Lufkin, philosophic discussions about the nature of Muggles with Gondoline Oliphant & Flavius Belby; Perenelle Flamel, her romantic letters to Edward the Young (covers the subsequent change of perspective that led to her being disowned for disagreeing with the belief in pure-blood supremacy). Several of the letters discuss her An Essay on Death, Comparative Study among British Muggles and Wizards. Series II consists of a partial draft of Black's An Essay on Death, Comparative Study among British Muggles and Wizards, and nine poems written by a variety of authors which honor the essay. Most are transcripts in Black's hand.

Processed by: Snape, Severus

***

Hermione Granger's pensieve reminiscence from the Unspeakable Department unclassified archives:

They had tipped her that "Eros & Thanathos" was a unique independent Muggle bookstore at Perarchori, at Ithaki Island. It has one of the best and most extensive collections of death and erotic studies in known literature. Her grant allowed her to go overseas, but the board of trustees wanted her to visit a prestigious institute, not a private bookstore. She lobbied, defending her cause, presented tons of documentation and finally almost begged them.

Hermione was finally there, at the small paved street, watching the white and blue building with its red door. The aroma of dark coffee tempted her. Maybe she could leave this for later and look for a new place in which to drink a sketos? Ever since she had arrived in Perarchori two months ago, she had been experiencing problems crossing that street. Not that she first noticed it, but the closer she got to the store, the more she felt this great urge to go and explore the rest of the island. So far she had made four excursions towards Homer's land, read the Iliad and the Odyssey twice, and visited Kioni and Vathy more times that it was worth before it struck her as odd behaviour.

After a few more tries she contacted Bill Weasley to ask for an amulet against magical shields; the owl took three days to find Bill and more than a week to come back. Bill's recommendation had been simple, for this particular ward, stating aloud a piece of the Odyssey in which quoting Ithaki could do the trick. He didn't say if a translation would do, neither did he mention if her lack of magic could affect the countercurse. So there she was again, looking at this lovely little bookstore, fighting the urge to go and visit that lovely Monastery near the top of the mountain again to drink coffee with the monks. Inhaling deeply, Hermione cried to no one:

"Bright Ithaca is my home:

it has a mountain, Leaf-quivering Neriton, far visible.

Around are many islands, close to each other, Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos.

Ithaca itself lies low, furthest to sea towards dusk; the rest, apart, face dawn and sun."

A few people passing next to her mumbled in Greek what she guessed was a reprobatorial comment, but she didn't care. The shield was neutralized; she could feel it. She wasn't happy, though.

She knew that the magic was made by the amulet and not cast by her; that brought a deep sense of loss that struck her with force. Ever since she started investigating this strange phenomenon with Death in wizarding culture, her well-built inner wards had melted, making her crave magic; the mystery added by the bookstore dilemma had turned her sabbatical, not into the self-search travel she hoped, but into a intense mourning for what she had lost years ago. She tried to divert her feelings and concentrate on the task at hand. Hermione consciously held her breath, and then let her breath out slowly while crossing the street.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" She snorted; she remembered facing torture at the Malfoys' Manor when she was young; in the middle of that traumatic experience, her mind wouldn't shut up. Making bad jokes and seeing the irony in an unexpected turn of events was a habit that had brought her more than one problem through the years.

Hermione crossed to the little red door that welcomed Muggle buyers from all over Greece and gasped. She was facing the loveliest and cosiest bookstore she´d ever seen. Eros & Thanathos was one of those places in which books, apparently without order, crowded on small exhibition tables or on the shelves that covered the walls. The apparently small store had a first floor with the owner's selection of books, often exeptional and rare enough to satisfy any social science lover. She could well spend a week sharing a cup of coffee with that Gilgamesh she glimpsed over there. Hermione had been told that it was the basement that gave the bookstore its fame. In apparent disarray, the buyer could spend hour after hour walking through the bookshelf labyrinth, finding more and more surprises at each step. This bookstore was designed for the pleasure of discovering books in the chaos of covers, spines and formats. How different from the cold columns of identical volumes at a neat retail bookstore, arranged as if they were a large miniature city of soon to be bestsellers; here titles were supposed to catch the reader's eye, seducing, inviting, capturing them. With all her will she fought the lure; not a magical one, but her own compulsion and fetish for what was offered here.

She approached an old lady for directions: "Do forgive me; it's my first time in here. I don't see any clerk or someone who could help me. I'm researching the phenomenon of Intermittences of Death in ancient cultures"; Well, that was stupid, she thought, this woman will have no idea what I'm looking for.

The woman assessed her while thinking of an answer, her face impassive. "You know better than me that life and death has no intermittence." Chuckling, she changed her deep tone for a more pragmatic one: "Still, you might want to check in the last corridor, in the south wing." Something in her eyes reminded her of Dumbledore. Good Lord, how long since I last thought of him?

Locating it – a grey shadowy corridor, a bit anticlimactic after the gorgeous bookshelves she had stepped by on her way here – Hermione caressed the side of a few books with her fingers, distracted by the smell of humidity and her own disappointment, not really looking at the volumes. Another reader was near; diffused between the shades and shadows, bent over the pages of a book, totally engrossed and oblivious to his surroundings. She had to go back a few steps when it struck her it was someone she knew, as she had seen him so many times in her childhood. Hermione slowly approached him. Just a few steps, clasping her mouth, her eyes wide. She could see him dressed in layers of clothes: Close-cut textured jacket, a black cashmere turtleneck and a shirt with dark-based fussy patterns. It couldn't be him, she thought, not alive, not in Muggle clothes. Lovely logical train of thought, Granger, she congratulated herself, but then, there were his large thin hands and his sharp aura – for lack of a better word – that made her believe her gut instinct, so she called to him:

"Professor Snape!"

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