Thief Of Souls: Author's Notes

[bungakertas]

CHAPTER ONE
In these notes I may periodically refer to VWI or VWII. These are Voldemort War I (the one where James and Lily Potter died at the end) and Voldemort War II (where Voldemort died at the end).

Also, while I made a supreme effort to “write British” in the story itself, up to and including spelling, I have no intention whatsoever of doing so in these notes. Here there be cell phones, flashlights, colors, and realizations. :) *waves little USA flag*

All of the characters who are usually muggles are still muggles. And getting the Sherlock and HP characters together is sort a slow burn. (Not a painfully slow burn, but they don’t start hanging out right off the bat.)

I have no idea why Sherlock is testing the dispersion of arsenic through a human eyeball. He’s Sherlock. He does weird experiments. For all I know, he was just bored.

This address, along with any others I mention, is not made up (or so Google maps tells me). All the information about it, less its geography and what it looks like on the outside, is made up. I have no idea who lives there (if anyone) or what they are like, nor have I made any attempts at discovering this knowledge. I wanted to ground the geography factually, but beyond that, I basically threw imaginary darts at the general areas I wanted to use and picked the first usable address I hit on. So, if anyone who lives in these addresses actually reads this fic—the chances of which are vanishingly rare, but it could happen—seriously, I have no idea who you are or what you’re like. But I hope you are having a very nice day.

Yes, ACD!Holmes was a caffeine addict (amongst other things). In fact, during Hound of the Baskervilles, Watson comes to the apartment to discover Holmes has been mentally elsewhere and Holmes says, “My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco.” So only one pot of coffee is actually remarkably restrained for Sherlock. ;)

It is possible to forensically determine a person's age within a fairly small margin. But I think magical people would give wonky results to most of these tests. Wizards apparently tend to live longer than muggles, but how they age isn’t really well established. Dumbledore, frex, who died of unnatural causes around 150, did not demonstrate any major signs of being near a natural end to his life (wasn't frequently sick, charged up and down however many zillion stairs are in Hogwarts without trouble, capably managed a war effort…). McGonagall was seventy-plus when we first encountered her, and she certainly doesn't come off as someone nearing the average life-expectancy age. In fact, she comes across more mid-50s to early-60s. That being the case, I imagine that some of the usual tests would give inaccurate/conflicting results when applied to a magic person.

CHAPTER TWO
The names of the businesses where our dead Death Eaters worked have either been made up entirely (Wow! Marketing, indeed) or taken from the show (the Shad Sanderson bank where the horrible Sebastian Wilkes is employed).

The description of Rosier’s “tattoo” comes from a drawing I made of the Dark Mark a while ago, since I never did like any of the official offerings. If I feel it becomes relevant, I may upload it, but no promises. In any case, I’m sure you all know what a Dark Mark looks like, so…

CHAPTER THREE
I know the beginning of chapter three is a bit on the odd side, but I really wanted to give the impression of a second start of the story. Since all of Sherlock’s and John’s memories of the case have been obliviated at that point, their awareness of the fact that the story has already started has also been destroyed. And since Sherlock is the narrator character, going back to the beginning seemed like a good way to communicate this.

Also, I got to write a JKR-style opening chapter twice, which was pretty fun.

Every time you see me referring to Sherlock’s “hard drive,” while I am taking it from the show, I am also assuming that this is Sherlock’s form of “memory palace,” a mnemonic used to organize thoughts and memories (you can find instructions for building one here: http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Memory-Palace). Creating one does not require a photographic memory, nor any other unusual mental skill, though it does take practice. Another feature of the memory palace is that by mentally replacing one memory with another, a person can discard memories that they no longer find important, in effect “deleting” them (although, as a psychology major, I feel compelled to point out that those memories are still stored in the person’s mind and can still be accessed, though they will loose the association with the palace that made them easy to recall previously). This has the triple effect of being significantly more plausible than the ACD conversation that the “hard drive” argument is based on, fitting in with the BBC canon, and allowing me to talk about Sherlock’s mind without constantly using words that make him sound like a machine pretending to be human. Also, as of “Hounds Of Baskerville,” it is essentially canon. Hooray! (Also, “palace” is not an unusual word for it. That’s what it’s called.)

CHAPTER FOUR
“Real Magicalism” is obviously a reference to magical realism, a literary device I very much enjoy and which the Harry Potter series exhibits exactly none of. I first encountered that particular play on the term, I believe, from a review of “Never Leave A Trace” by Sam Storyteller.