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VOLDEMORT: Confringo.

Everything explodes, especially the Time-Twister.

The narrative frame of past Harry describing zir memory closes. We are back in Snape's office.

PAST HARRY: The memory ends there. But I know what happened. The explosion destroyed Voldemort's body. Lily died. I lived. The Aurors hunted down the bits of his soul and destroyed them... leaving me here with the Dursleys... the Malfoys... He may be gone from this life, but Voldemort is my past, present, and future... So you want to know how I can hate James Potter. He did nothing to protect me. He–

Harry becomes visibly upset, crying.

PAST HARRY: I'm not like him, I don't want him to be part of me... ...that spell... "in the houses of his fathers"... is that why Dumbledore–

SNAPE: Professor Dumbledore, Harry–

Crying, Harry runs out of the room and down the corridors of Hogwarts, to Luna, who is standing on a table. Harry collapses in front of the table.

PAST HARRY: Luna, help me, please, I need something to change. Anything.

LUNA: Of course I'll help you! But if you want to change things, you've got to understand the seats of influence.

(hide transcript)

How would this have gone differently if Snape had given Harry a hug instead?

I briefly considered doing that (but still having Harry, after the Professor line, reject Snape's affection and run away). But, no, Harry's world is a world of very little affection. There's an interesting compromise going on here, between the atmosphere of the world and the action of each page: Setting the atmosphere is very important, but when characters being emotionally distant happens so often, it doesn't have any special impact when it does happen.

On another note, Voldemort has some very cool lines in the Harry Potter series. “Voldemort is my past, present and future” is something that ze (as the memory of Tom Riddle) says in the second book. One of the coolest things about “alternate universe” fanfiction in general is when you can take an event from the original story, but show it in a different context and with different reasons behind it.

Approximate readability: 12.11 (749 characters, 159 words, 7 sentences, 4.71 characters per word, 22.71 words per sentence)