"Voldemort is gone, now the question is: What to do with the Marked Ones that haven’t really committed any crimes? The Wizarding World’s solution: Place them under the care and ‘protection’ of a Guide from the Light. The problem is most of Abuse, Anal, BDSM, Humil, M/M, MPreg, N/C, Oral, Slave, Spank, WIP"
—AFF dot net's fittingly-abbreviated summary
Deserving
by moonofthesea picks up the Harry Potter story in the year 1998. The Second Wizarding War is over, and Harry Potter and friends must decide what to do with the surviving Death Eaters. This being fanfic-world, a marriage law is instituted whereby each "Marked One" must come under the supervision of a "Guide of the Light". Harry sacrifices everything he has to be Guide of the Light to Severus Snape (who in the fic survived Deathly Hallows), and Deserving tells their story.
Deserving contains examples of:
- Anti-Climax: Just as Harry takes his wand out to fight, Ron Weasley walks in with a pair or Aurors, takes his wand away, and tells the Aurors to take the former away.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Millicent and her son have been thrown out of the house by her vindictive husband, with the kid being put up for sale. The part that the story treats as unforgivable is that the kid is named "Sin", which isn't even that bad a name by wizarding world standards.
- As You Know: Characters will tell other characters things they already know, and in some cases the reader also knows, and the actual phrase "As You Know" is used at one point.
- Author Vocabulary Calendar: A shot for any of the following: "stated", "dared" as a dialogue tag, "rectum", "ministration(s)", "butt cheek", "entrance" in a sexual context, "penetrate", "git".
- Atrocious Alias: Sin is treated this way, whatever the reader might think of it.
- Babies Make Everything Better: Harry suggests that his baby was exerting some kind of influence on Snape before he was even born, thus helping him along the road to redemption.
- Bizarre Human Biology: Several factoids about male pregnancy and wizard infants are invented for the sake of the plot.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: It's hard to see who the good guys are in a fic where the "Guides of Light" are enslaving, raping and forcibly impregnating people.
- Body Horror: Implicit in the concept, but there's plenty more.
- "Burly Detective" Syndrome: "The Gryffindor" isn't a useful epithet in a scene where everyone was in Gryffindor.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The dire fates of Gregory Goyle and Pansy Parkinson are mentioned in passing in the first chapter, but become relevant to the plot later on.
- C-List Fodder: If you're a minor Slytherin character, this fic is going to put you through the wringer.
- Continuation Fic: It picks up after Deathly Hallows.
- Crack Fic: If you were in any doubt, this fic has Crabbe shagging a house elf.
- Death by Childbirth: Male pregnancies are said to be quite dangerous and Goyle finds out the hard way.
- Depending on the Writer: The beta's disagreements with moonofthesea herself, both in ideas and writing style, are speculated to be the cause of a lot of the fic's inconsistencies.
- Deus Angst Machina: Snape gets this piled on thick and deep.
- Did Not Do the Bloody Research: No, "wanking" is not a word to use in polite company. Contrariwise, "git" is a very mild term for the uses it gets put to in this fic.
- Door Stopper: 53 chapters, weighing in at slightly over 200,000 words.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Millicent has a dream of Snape birthing more kids.
- Dysfunction Junction: The closest to a well-adjusted character in this fic is Kreacher, which should tell you all you need to know.
- Everybody Lives: Implied to be the outcome of the Second Wizarding War. Snape and Vincent Crabbe have survived the events of Deathly Hallows, and nobody can see Thestrals, though the latter may just be a minor Plot Hole.
- Everything's Better with Sparkles: Wizard babies cast "twinkles" to show they're magically adept.
- Felony Misdemeanor: The business with Millicent's kid's name.
- Gender Bender: What Snape tries to do in response to Harry's
Narmful outburst. - Genius Loci: Hogwarts Castle personally sends out all the admission letters. It also controls its registration with an iron fist. Any attempt to alter the admission records causes them to vanish and be replaced with a new one. Despite hundreds of years of attempts by the Ministry, Hogwarts alone decides who may attend it.
- Godwin's Law: Chapter 6 has Marked Ones explicitly likened to Holocaust victims.
- Heel Realization: "When did we become DARK WIZARDS and WITCHES?"
- The Immodest Orgasm: The infamous "Dumbledorrrrrrrrrrre!" is only one example of many.
- Interspecies Romance: A lot of Marked Ones escape by romancing house elves.
- In the Blood: The canonical trend for Hogwarts houses to run in families (a rule with notable exceptions) is flanderised into Harry and Snape's ass-baby having literally a 50/50 chance of being in Slytherin or Gryffindor.
- Kudzu Plot: Each chapter seems to develop more plot threads than it resolves. Good luck keeping track if you're not taking notes.
- Lamarck Was Right: Whatever it was that stopped the Marked Ones from using magic also did the same with their kids. Maybe.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Harry is impotent, though this isn't revealed until Chapter 36 despite having free access to Harry's POV. Oddly enough, this is one of the few bits that make any biological sense (he states that it came about following the final battle with Voldemort — if anything would cause long-term impotence, it would be a psychological shock like that).
- Malaproper: The author's apparent reliance on autocorrect causes this a lot.
- Milking the Giant Cow: Harry is described as doing this at one point when he was in full Large Ham mode talking about Kingsley's son's birthday party, complete with magical fireworks.
- Mister Seahorse: The entire premise.
- No Indoor Voice: Everyone in this fic spends half their time shouting. They make the Harry of Order of the Phoenix seem calm.
- Offscreen Inertia: Severus takes up knitting, but is never shown actually completing anything even though the story spans several years. This led one reviewer to suggest that he was making the Fourth Doctor's scarf.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. There's a Mark Sly and a Mark Rogers, neither of whom are Marked Ones.
- Pædo Hunt: Appears as a Diabolus ex Machina when Harry and Snape's family life starts to become as normal as it can be. And vanishes just as quickly.
- Pair the Spares: Neville and Dennis, also a Last-Minute Hookup.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: The point of the fic's premise, vengeance upon the defeated Death Eaters... Er, "Marked Ones".
- Said Bookism: Lots of it, often combined with a refusal to use character names and pronouns, produces a Mundane Made Awesome effect when phrases like "proclaimed the Chosen One" appear in a conversation about interior design.
- Second-Hand Storytelling: Over the course of the story, Harry and Snape get married twice, and both times are off-screen despite the shipping being the entire point of the fic.
- Sophisticated as Hell: A result of the children's inconsistently-written dialogue alternating between baby talk and Little Professor Dialogue often in the same scene.
- Token Minority: Dennis is the only character who's depicted as being actually gay rather than subject to Situational Sexuality. The only purpose this seems to serve is to tell the rest of the cast that Dumbledore was gay, because apparently he came out to him.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Men are getting pregnant left, right and centre, and only once in passing is it noted that this isn't exactly normal.
- There is also a scene in which it appears that Snape is naked during dinner with Harry and Mrs Weasley, and nobody comments on this either.
- Wise Beyond Their Years:
- Richard, who is fully fluent in Little Professor Dialogue and offers accurate opinions on relationships and office politics (!) before he's three years old.
- Serena takes this up a notch when she's talking and using controlled wandless magic before her first birthday.
- World of Ham: Every character is given to overdramatic dialogue and behaviour. One memorable scene has Harry casting fireworks with his wand to emphasise a point in a conversation about a birthday party.
