Re: A two-parter here
This is, as a friend of mine once put it, the type of feedback that makes you want to roll over and light up a cigarette afterwards. You don't know how much this made my day - my week - my month! Thank you so much.
You just put into words why I'm partial to Slughorn much better than I could explain it. I find him a fascinating character, warts and all, and one of my favourite things about the HP-verse is that not only is it a little behind the times, but it has living characters who came up in vastly different eras with different norms. I rather like a Slughorn who thought Dumbledore was modern and a little silly with his 'hands off the students' policy but was willing to play along. And I also like a Slughorn who's smart enough to separate his public persona from his inner self from time to time, to reassess, to seek out some sort of peace as doggedly as he seeks out pleasure.
In a way, I sort of intended this to be a "Slughorn lives!" story as much as "Snape lives!" one, and I'm gobsmacked and delighted at how well it was received.