fox | reading some of my old fic

I don't know why, but I've been looking at some of my old stuff on AO3 lately (maybe wishing I could get back to writing more? I have intentions, but seldom real ideas and never enough free time), and from time to time I find things I now wish I had done sliiightly differently. I mean there are a lot of things I'd do very differently if I were doing them now; juvenilia is what it is. I'm speaking now of much smaller matters. For instance:

Best Man
The main drama of Best Man has to do with Harry and Snape getting locked out of their hotel room because Harry left Snape the key and Snape didn't know that.

Room Nine was full of dark wood and heavy fabric, and had, Snape was mildly surprised to note, a private bath, which he understood to be rare among Muggle public houses of this vintage. Harry's suitcase was open on the rack, with a shirt draped over one edge of it and sundry other articles on the bed, over the arm of a chair, jumbled in an open drawer. Snape found Harry's cloak and hung it, with his own, on the coat rack near the door. He returned to the suitcase to try and make some order out of the heap of clothing and found, laid on top of the pile, another note from Harry: "S -- dinner in restaurant downstairs -- come down when you get in -- 5:45 now, going down to be sociable -- H."

Snape hung and folded the various shirts and trousers flung about the room before stepping out into the narrow corridor, where he realized he had no key with which to lock the door behind him. He tried to lock it from the inside and then close it, but as he'd anticipated, this failed; the deadbolt device that kept Muggles from opening a closed door also kept them from closing an open one, which had always struck him as rather stupidly earnest.

He briefly considered leaving the room unlocked, but at the very idea he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He'd have to lock it using magic, and he'd have to do it inconspicuously; there was no telling when the next Muggle might come up the stairs or through one of the neighboring doors.

A locking charm wouldn't do. It was just the thing in a wizarding building, where everyone knew the same spells and it was important to set a door to admit only oneself or one's authorized guests. Here, though, the Muggles used their metal keys much as wizards used passwords -- which meant that some Muggle member of the hotel staff might come along expecting to be able to get into the room, which meant that Snape had to leave the door magic-free and figure out a way to get that thrice-damned deadbolt shut.

Finally, after two solid minutes of turning the lever back and forth, peering at the bolt and the doorjamb and into the keyhole, closing his eyes and feeling for the vibrations with his fingertips as he locked and unlocked the open door, he had a solution.

Snape uses magic and locks the door but it turns out the spell he used depends on being able to make contact with the deadbolt, which you can't do when the door is already shut. So they get back from Hermione's rehearsal dinner and each thinks the other has the key:

[Harry] stopped at the door to Room Nine.

Snape looked at him. "What are you waiting for?"

Harry looked back at him expectantly. "You, to open the door."

"I haven't got a key."

"Of course you have. I left it for you."

Snape folded his arms. "If you had left me a key, I wouldn't have needed to spend five minutes coming up with a way to lock a Muggle deadbolt with a spell."

"I left it in the pocket of my cloak."

"Then it's hardly a surprise that I didn't see it."

Harry rattled the doorknob, though why, Snape could only guess. Possibly for the same reason some people persisted in shaking a vial over a cauldron immediately after looking and seeing that it was empty. "But -- well, can't you unlock the door the same way you locked it? Undo whatever you did?"

(The vial-shaking thing was meant to be the magic equivalent of pressing an elevator button extra times to make the elevator come faster.) So Harry and Snape are stuck in the corridor and Bill comes along and ~awkward~ because Snape and Bill have this History Together and Bill magicks the door open by vanishing the deadbolt just long enough to open the door, which I hope I established a deadbolt is a strange enough thing to a wizard that there's no point worrying "just vanish the deadbolt" would lead to break-ins all over the damn place all the time. Anyway. (And then it turns out Harry hadn't known about Snape and Bill's History Together and surprise! there had also been History between Harry and Bill, blah blah, it's not important.)

Why, oh, why, did I not have Harry's original note read

"S -- dinner in restaurant downstairs -- come down when you get in -- 5:45 now, going down to be sociable -- key's in my pocket --H."

???

???

Snape would have assumed Harry had the key with him in his pocket, so he'd still have had to work out how to lock the door without it; it would never occur to him to leave the door unlocked just long enough to go get the key from Harry and come back and lock the door, and they wouldn't talk about it, partly because even after the four or five years they've been together Snape is still pretty noncommunicative and Harry isn't a lot better - doesn't realize, for example, that his note wasn't specific enough ("left you the key in the pocket of my cloak"). That would have been a much more realistic argument to have had in the hallway, though:

Snape looked at him. "What are you waiting for?"

Harry looked back at him expectantly. "You, to open the door."

"I haven't got a key."

"Of course you have. I left it for you."

Snape folded his arms. "If you had left me a key, I wouldn't have needed to spend five minutes coming up with a way to lock a Muggle deadbolt with a spell."

"I left you a note."

"Yes, it said you had the key in your pocket."

"It said the key was in my pocket. My cloak pocket, right next to the--"

"How was I meant to infer it was in the pocket of a garment that was there in the room?"

"Why on earth would I have brought it with me?"

"Why on earth wouldn't you have left it on a table?!"

Harry rattled the doorknob, though why, Snape could only guess.

etc.

I will plead inexperience with the style of argument between partners who have been together for years and still manage to surprise each other by not understanding the entirely obvious. (I've been with the Gentleman Caller almost 10 years now and am now much more familiar with this style of argument. :->)

Fortune's Fool
In scene 1 of Fortune's Fool, I wrote this:

SERVANT
I pray you pardon me, good sir. Is't not Signior Mercutio who lives here?

MERCUTIO
It is, but none will answer if you knock. What's your business with Signior Mercutio?

SERVANT
Will you see him before tonight?

MERCUTIO
Marry, will I, if I look in a glass. What message do you bring?

When of course, of course!, I should have written this:

SERVANT
I pray you pardon me, good sir. Is't not Signior Mercutio who lives here?

MERCUTIO
It is, but none will answer if you knock. What's your business with Signior Mercutio?

SERVANT
Will you see him before tonight?

VALENTINE
Marry, will he, if he looks in a glass.

MERCUTIO
What message do you bring?

Proverbs 31:29
When Marilla and John quarrel in October and he stops coming to see her, and then at Christmas Rachel Lynde tells Marilla that John has been going to see Sarah Jane McGinty for however many weeks, why in the world did I not name her Sarah Jane Gilbert? Why? WHY?!

I'm sure there are others even more recent than that, but. You get the idea.