Fantastic! I love thed the chatpter's title from the get go and this was a lovely justification. Trul y horrible interrogation. You have a knack for writing some truly monsterous OC's. I read an interesting review of Rowling's world once. The writer talked about how, in fiction, the evil characters are usually the more interesting ones, but in real life its the good people who are interesting. There's nothing particularly interesting about bad people. Rowling's books are more true to life in that her Harrys and Rons, etc. are more interesting than her Crabbes and Malfoys, etc. And I'd agree. I half expected Lucius Malfoy to twirl an evil mustache in Book 5. Snape, his motivations still unclear, is perhaps most interesting of all because we just don't konw. Is he an asshole who's learned to do the right things? Is he a good person who's just taken to many licks? Could he still be a loyal Death Eater? Is he every bit as horrible and petty as he seems, even if he's doing the right thing now? No wonder fanfic springs up a dense forest around that character. He's hardly knowable beyond the little bits we're given, so there's so much to speculate about.

I really love how, in your story, your evil characters are well written and terrifying, but not interesting. There's just effin' awful. And they can't touch your Hermione or Snape, whose characters are very interesting indeed.

Author's Response: Thanks for the review! I really want to write gray characters--that's where the proverbial money is. Everyone enjoys reading about gray characters, whether they hate them or love them, because they are unpredictable. That's where characters like Severus, and Percy Weasley (see upcoming chapter thirteen) fit into my story. It's a horrible world filled with horrible people. Severus is not a nice, happy person who's willing to single-handedly save the world, but he's still helping Hermione. Hermione, on the other hand, is no longer the stereotypical Gryffindor we've come to know--she's bitter, grieving, and mad as hell. She's willing to manipulate anyone and anything to achieve her goals. I refuse to write about "good" guys--because they are not true to life. No one is that altruistic, or foolhardy.