#confeito

To celebrate the six-month anniversary, I revisited and recreated the artwork originally made in celebration of 1,000 hits.

The original artwork was posted on January 12, 2026.

Wanting to recreate the world of Suri’s stories, I’ve spent the past six months not only translating and restoring unpublished works, but also learning how to draw through YouTube tutorials.

Along the way, I’ve learned a great deal about Procreate, different brush techniques, and digital illustration. 

I also purchased the brush set created by the instructor of this course, and the lessons helped me improve my coloring skills tremendously. (The course is in Japanese, but English subtitles are available.)

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Recently, a friend named Shii, who isn’t a member of the project team, told one of her friends that I’ve been learning to draw. After hearing about it, she kindly recommended an art book to me.

I’m excited to keep learning and improving ʘʘ

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You may be wondering, “Was there ever a scene like this in the story?”

Confeito is a mystery story that gradually uncovers what happened between Harry and Snape.

However, Suri often said that the fact that the story carries the Snarry tag is itself the answer. That idea inspired the composition of this illustration.

In any case, once the truth comes to light—the existence of Snape’s child, the fact that the baby is named Harry, and the contents of Louise’s will—the Daily Prophet would almost certainly put a photograph like this on its front page.

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Translation Notes

We are translating ***(three asterisks)’s Snarry fanfiction, originally written in Japanese, into English.

Confeito is the second work in our translation project. At approximately 58,700 words, it is a full-length mystery novel that explores themes of religion, law, and morality.

The story begins on Christmas morning, three and a half years after the Battle of Hogwarts. It is written in the third person from the perspective of Cathy Marlowe, Harry’s secretary and an original character.

Although the original story was carefully researched and incorporates elements of British law, we revisited much of that research during the translation process to ensure accuracy and naturalness in English.

Suri was not the kind of writer who worked from a detailed outline. In fact, from what we’ve heard, Confeito was completed in roughly ten days, including the time spent researching for it.

Because of that, one of our first tasks as translators was to map out the story’s timeline so that we could fully understand how all the events fit together. We also created glossaries to keep the spelling of names, places, and other terms consistent throughout the translation.

Another challenge was maintaining the novel’s point of view. Since the story is told in the third person from Cathy Marlowe’s perspective, we had to be careful not to let the “camera” drift away from Cathy. We also paid close attention to conventions of English-language fiction, including the use of free indirect discourse and narrative distance.

The translation itself took about two months. Our schedule was quite intense because we wanted to post Chapter 1 on December 25th, the same day on which the story begins.

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The Opening Poem

Confeito also opens with a poem in the original Japanese.

It is a beautiful poem, like waves washing onto the shore and then drawing back again. Serving as the story’s epigraph, it captures many of the themes that run throughout the novel.

Suri’s work is often admired for the beauty of its Japanese prose. Whenever we translate one of her stories, we try not only to convey the meaning of the words, but also to recreate the sense of beauty that Japanese readers experience when reading her work.

We hope English-speaking readers can enjoy not only the story itself, but also some of what makes Suri’s writing so special.

This time, too, I faced the challenge of how to bring the poem’s beauty and symbolism into English.

At first, I translated the Japanese text directly. However, the work soon became difficult, as there were places where no English expression could convey exactly what was being expressed in Japanese.

Around that time, one of our team members, Luca, had begun reading The Canterbury Tales for a Harry Potter analysis she was writing. As part of that work, she was also tracing the history of writing systems and the origins of irony.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, often called the father of English literature.

To me, it feels like a forerunner of English irony. Rather than criticizing people directly, it criticizes them indirectly, giving readers the intellectual pleasure of recognizing the author’s intent for themselves.

Japan also has a culture similar to English irony in Kyoto, known as Kyoto speech. Kyoto is also where works of Japanese literature such as The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji were created.

Suri’s works are also often built around techniques such as the unreliable narrator and a style that does not state everything directly, instead allowing readers to discover things for themselves. Because of that, I thought her work might be particularly well suited to Chaucer’s literary style.

The opening of The Canterbury Tales is written in rhyming couplets, with each pair of lines generally sharing the same rhyme. It is also written in iambic pentameter, so the pattern of syllables is generally consistent throughout.

Because it is written in Middle English, I had trouble finding a website that could read it aloud. As a result, it took some time before I was able to experience the beauty of its metrical structure. Even so, I was struck by how beautifully it is constructed.

Japan also has poetic traditions with established rhythmic patterns, such as tanka, as well as literary traditions that make use of rhyme.

For example, in Japan we learn that “Shōnen Jidai (Boyhood)” by Yōsui Inoue, which appears in school music textbooks, uses techniques such as matching vowel sounds to create pleasing phonetic effects.

Yōsui Inoue was also a co-lyricist of “Yellow Moon” by Akeboshi, which was used as an ending theme for Naruto. It seems that Akeboshi, who admired Inoue’s work, asked him to collaborate on the lyrics.

Suri was a fan of Akeboshi, and some of her works were inspired by his music.

All of this led me to the idea of making the poem rhyme, much like “Shōnen Jidai” by Yōsui Inoue or the opening of The Canterbury Tales.

J. K. Rowling has acknowledged that “The Tale of the Three Brothers” in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was influenced by Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, so I thought it might be interesting to include a poem inspired by The Canterbury Tales in a Harry Potter fanfiction.

And this was the result.

There are such days that rise upon you like the tide, You pick your way along the waterside; You think your shoes will somehow still keep dry, Then up the beach a sudden wave runs high.  In moments such as these, most people flee, Yet who has ever outrun all the sea? It hits with all its weight, one heavy blow, Then leaves a softer wash that creeps in slow, And laps the sand, then hesitates and stops A breath away from your still-dripping tops.  Such days come without a whisper of warning. 

Fortunately, I was able to make it rhyme without straying from the meaning of the original Japanese poem. Some choices may be a little forced in order to preserve the rhyme (for example, “waterside”), but I hope they are still acceptable.

I hope you can enjoy the beauty of both the sound and the poem itself ʘʘ

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A Christian Fanatic Mother

Chapter 2 of Confeito introduces Cathy’s mother. A devout Christian, she condemns Cathy for being a witch.

This follows the original Japanese story, but it also presented several challenges during the translation process.

This episode was based on a real incident. The scene in which a child is struck with a pasta spoon came from something Suri witnessed when she was young.

Seeing a baby being hit with a pasta spoon simply because it would not stop crying was, apparently, a great shock to her. She was also struck by the sudden appearance of the pasta spoon from the mother’s handbag.

They were an English-speaking mother and baby.

While translating the story, I told ChatGPT about this episode. It explained that in English-speaking countries, the wooden spoon is often regarded as a symbol of corporal punishment, partly because of expressions such as “I’ll hit you with the wooden spoon,” which parents may use to threaten misbehaving children.

Perhaps the wooden spoon occupies a similar place in English-speaking cultures to the stereotypical image in Japan of a parent waking a child who refuses to get out of bed by banging on a pot with a ladle. You sometimes see that in anime, though I have never actually seen anyone do it in real life.

Suri never learned why it was a pasta spoon. However, after many years, I finally felt that I had found an explanation for the shocking sight of a pasta spoon suddenly appearing from that handbag.

I chose not to change it to a wooden spoon. Just as Suri remembered it specifically as a pasta spoon because the incident was so shocking, I felt that Cathy, who had been abused, would also remember exactly what she had been hit with.

For that reason, I kept it as a pasta spoon in the translation.

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In addition, we also had to rework the scene in which Cathy’s Christian fanatic mother berates her during the translation process.

This was because the original dialogue was based on a Japanese Protestant fanatic, and I had questions about whether a British Protestant would actually speak in the same way.

There are many different Protestant denominations in Japan as well (Suri had the opportunity to visit a number of different churches). Some denominations have an atmosphere closer to the solemnity of Catholicism, but overall, I feel that American Protestant churches have had a stronger influence.

Michael W. Smith’s “Awesome God” was one of Suri’s lullabies when she was a child.

In Japan, many churches sing translated versions of his songs as worship music.

Churches in Japan with active congregations of around 100 to 200 members often feel very similar to these American-style churches. Even among smaller churches with only a few dozen members, many seem to sing worship songs rather than traditional hymns. It is also common for members of the congregation to respond with phrases such as “Amen” during a pastor’s message. I have heard that this is much less common in Britain.

Since the story is set in Britain, I reworked the dialogue after looking into British religious culture and ways of speaking. In the original Japanese version, Cathy’s mother attacks her in deeply personal ways, gradually driving her into a corner, so I tried not to lose that intensity or atmosphere when choosing the wording.

Even so, perhaps because of cultural differences, I feel that Cathy’s mother ended up sounding somewhat gentler than she does in the Japanese original. Readers from American English-speaking backgrounds may find her gentler still. Finding the right balance between the setting and the intensity of the story was not easy.

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The Title: Confeito

Confeito was written after Suri was inspired by the song “Confetti” by Sia.

Suri liked the song and looked into what “confetti” meant. She learned that it refers to the small pieces of paper thrown at celebrations such as weddings, and that the word comes from the Italian confetti, a type of sugared confection.

She also discovered that the word has a connection to Japan. The name of the traditional Japanese sweet konpeitō (金平糖) is derived from “confeito,” which was introduced to Japan by the Christian missionary Luís Fróis as a gift for Oda Nobunaga. The word ultimately comes from the Latin confectu, meaning “prepared.”

金平糖 — konpeitō

At first, we assumed that Suri had simply taken inspiration from the song and chosen a title that would also feel familiar to Japanese readers. However, as we reread the story during the translation process, we began to wonder whether the title might carry other meanings as well.

I redesigned the cover of the Japanese edition during that process because I thought that this shape, which also plays an important role in the story, might be what “Confeito” refers to.

Konpeitō takes a very long time to produce and is also associated with blessings.

Since the title and the premise of the story beginning with a baby being left on a doorstep seem to have been decided from the start, I wonder if my interpretation might be right.

In addition, because the English version was going to be released over three consecutive days and the story contains a mystery element, I felt that the chapter titles should be less revealing. Unlike readers of the original Japanese version, who could read the entire story in one sitting, English-language readers would have time to think about the mystery between updates. For that reason, I chose chapter titles derived from Latin, which shares a related etymology.

Chapter 1: Confligere — to strike against each other; to clash Chapter 2: Confingere — to shape together; to form Chapter 3: Conficere — to carry through to the end; to complete

Suri sometimes uses a technique in which she writes something in English, but the clue only becomes apparent once a Japanese reader translates it. To give English-language readers a similar reading experience, I chose to use Latin for the chapter titles.

At first glance, the titles do not reveal much. My hope was that readers would only begin to understand their significance after finishing the story and looking up the Latin meanings for themselves. In that way, they might arrive at the intention behind the title Confeito through their own interpretation.

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Researching British Culture

Even in the original Japanese version, there is a scene in which baby formula is prepared in advance and later warmed with a bottle warmer. Since it is more common in Japan to prepare formula with hot water each time and then cool it to the proper temperature before feeding, I revisited this detail during the translation process.

From what I found, Britain now seems to follow much the same practice as Japan. However, around the early 2000s, when the story is set, preparing bottles in advance still appears to have been fairly common. It seems to have been a transitional period.

Suri apparently included this detail after reading British parenting blogs.

I also looked into legal terminology and the relevant laws so that everything would remain as consistent as possible. Some terms have changed since then, and new laws have been introduced. It seems that the historical circumstances of the period itself helped make the events of the story possible. Even so, I tried to support the premise that Cathy and Harry had no way out of their situation.

Cathy had been an elite Ministry official before the Battle of Hogwarts. If that was the kind of position she once held, then Emily, who works in the same department, is likely on a similar path. I felt that Emily’s ability to speak fluently about both the developments that might follow and Muggle law helps establish that aspect of her character, so I tried not to lose that impression in the translation.

Unlike Japanese, it is often harder in English to tell who is speaking from the dialogue alone. Even so, I tried to translate the lines in a way that would still allow each character’s personality to come through.

I hope that the strengths of the original characters from the Japanese story have been preserved, and that the image of the characters from the Harry Potter novels has not been lost either.

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The Characters’ Names

It is obvious that Louise Soldi-Frois takes her name from Luís Fróis, who brought confeito to Japan, but I also looked into whether the other characters’ names fit the period in which the story is set.

Geoffrey, Cathy’s nephew, seemed to have a rather old-fashioned name, and I considered changing it. However, Cathy’s family is wealthy on both sides, and there are hints that they are a Christian family that values tradition. Under those circumstances, it did not seem implausible that he might have been named after a grandfather or another older relative, so I decided to leave it as it was.

Besides, I could not help feeling that there was something almost fateful about the fact that he shares a name with Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales.

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our dear

What will become of the Ministry of Magic, the surrogate mother, and the bitter custody battle with the Frois family?

Even in the middle of it all, Cathy will likely do everything she can to ensure that Harry is hurt as little as possible.

In the next article, I will be sharing my thoughts and analysis of the story.

Article by Tano

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Originally posted on January 27, 2026.

I think the illustration I drew for Confeito‘s one-month anniversary turned out better than the one I drew to celebrate 1,000 hits.

Since then, I’ve spent another six months studying and practicing drawing, and I feel I’ve improved quite a bit more. I hope this recreated version captures Suri’s world well.

This time, I’d like to take a look at what Confeito was really about.

This article contains spoilers, so if you haven’t read the story yet, I recommend reading it first.

Read on AO3: Confeito

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How the Story Came About

As I mentioned in my previous article, this story was inspired by Sia’s song Confetti.

The resentment toward a lover’s betrayal, the confrontation that follows, and the determination to move forward independently all became part of the inspiration for the character of Louise Frois.

To talk about Confeito, though, I first need to explain how its author, Suri, came to write Snarry.

After watching the Harry Potter films, she became fixated on one question:

What did Snape really think of Harry?

In Suri’s view, when Dumbledore told Snape that Harry would have to die, Snape’s anger did not come from affection for Harry. Rather, it came from realizing that Dumbledore had not been protecting Harry out of respect for Lily’s final wish, but had kept him alive as part of his plan to defeat Voldemort. To Snape, Lily’s wish had been treated as secondary.

Suri also believed that Snape’s feelings toward Lily resembled both atonement and faith. Because of that, he would never have allowed himself to develop feelings for Harry. If Lily was the object of that devotion, there could be no room for anyone else.

Even so, was it really true that he felt nothing for Harry?

She was also deeply struck by the fact that Harry named one of his sons Albus Severus Potter.

Searching for an answer to these questions, she read countless fanfictions. Eventually, she began writing herself in the hope of finding one.

Confeito is one attempt to answer that question.

Did Snape truly have no affection for Harry? What really existed between them?

Confeito was written as a mystery that explores those questions.

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promotional image

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Something That Cannot Be Denied

Unlike many Snarry stories, Confeito contains none of the sweet romantic interactions that often appear between Harry and Snape.

Its protagonist is an original character, Cathy Marlowe, who serves as Harry’s secretary. Harry’s partner is Ginny, just as she is in the original series and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Because Cathy’s job is to preserve Harry’s image as the hero the public expects him to be, and because she is also Ginny’s close friend, she has grown weary of the Snarry boom and the unreserved praise for Snape that often comes with it. In other words, the protagonist herself stands in direct opposition to Snarry.

And yet, by the end of the story, even Cathy can no longer deny that there was something between Harry and Snape.

Whatever that “something” may have been, one fact remains unchanged:

Snape left behind a child whom he wanted to name Harry.

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The Past Cannot Be Changed, but Its Meaning Can

During the war, Cathy escaped to the Muggle world instead of fighting. As a result, she is looked down upon in the wizarding world as a woman who did not take part in the war. There is probably also some resentment that someone like her has been given the position of Harry Potter’s secretary.

Neither Kingsley nor Harry is particularly kind to Cathy.

As the story unfolds, however, Cathy learns that her reputation as “the secretary Harry Potter can’t stand” was actually a cover story. It existed to protect her from becoming a target for kidnapping or attack as “Harry Potter’s valued secretary.”

Of course, considering when this truth comes to light, it is also possible that Kingsley simply could not afford to lose Cathy, since she was essential to keeping the situation under control. Harry also becomes gentler toward Cathy, though it is difficult to say that there wasn’t at least some self-interest behind the change. After all, he still needed Cathy to go along with what he wanted.

Even so, learning the truth allows Cathy to feel that the three and a half years she spent feeling miserable had finally been worthwhile.

Emily experiences the same thing Cathy does: on that same day, she, too, finds that the meaning of her past has changed.

When she first appears in the lift, Emily comes across as an arrogant, proud young colleague. Like many of the other women around Harry, she seems to be someone who wants to get close to the famous hero. She is openly hostile toward Cathy, and the two part after a quiet exchange of barbed remarks.

By the end of that same day, however, Cathy’s understanding of her own past with Emily has completely changed.

Emily once had a girlfriend named Cathy, a pure-blood witch who lost her life during the Battle of Hogwarts.

It turns out that Emily’s prickly attitude came from something much more complicated. Faced with someone who shared both the name and, to some extent, the appearance of the woman she had loved, she simply did not know how to treat her.

As a result, Cathy’s memories of her relationship with Emily take on an entirely different meaning. What she had taken to be hostility was, in fact, born from Emily’s grief and from not knowing how to act around someone who reminded her so deeply of the person she had lost.

But Emily’s own understanding of the past changes that day as well.

For three and a half years, she had wished she could see her late girlfriend again, even if only in a dream. At last, it seemed that wish might come true. The dream brought her back to the night they had danced together—what Emily considered her happiest memory. Yet before Cathy appeared wearing her dress, Emily ran away from the dream herself.

In doing so, she lost what had been her most precious memory.

Looking back at the lift scene after learning this, Emily’s red nose no longer seems as though it was simply caused by the cold. Perhaps she had been crying over that loss.

Looking more carefully, her attitude is not driven by jealousy toward Cathy for being close to Harry, nor by jealousy toward Ginny. Instead, it seems to come from envy that Ginny is able to be close to Cathy, and from resentment toward Harry for treating Cathy so poorly.

In this way, as we continue reading, we experience the same thing the characters do: earlier events come to be understood in a completely different way.

What happened cannot be changed. But depending on how we interpret it, the past can become either a sweet memory or a painful one.

Because we experience the story through Cathy, an unreliable narrator, we cannot help but see the world through her assumptions and biases. Depending on a person’s perspective and on what they know, the same events and the same people can leave completely different impressions.

That, too, seems to be one of the themes of this story.

The question, then, is what this means for Harry.

Nothing can erase the fact that Snape treated Harry harshly. In the original series, Harry’s view of Snape changed after learning that Snape had risked his life for Lily.

But Snape is already dead.

He can never apologize to Harry for what he did. Nor can Harry ever let Snape know that he received and understood the memories Snape entrusted to him before his death.

Time can no longer move forward for either of them. Their shared past can never be changed.

From Hermione’s observations, from the testimony of those around him, and from what Cathy herself witnesses, Harry speaks of Snape with gratitude and forgiveness. Even so, the people around him cannot help feeling that he is forcing himself.

Near the end of the story, Harry says:

“The truth I learned that day wasn’t enough to heal me.”

After learning that Snape had fathered a child, and that he had wanted to name that child Harry, how did Harry’s understanding of his own past with Snape change?

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A Story of Mirrors

Throughout Confeito, many scenes are arranged as mirror images of one another.

On the day Cathy’s understanding of her past changes, Emily loses what had been her happiest memory. On the day Harry takes in a baby named Harry, Cathy learns that Emily’s late girlfriend was also named Cathy.

When Harry asks Cathy, “Complicated?” to put her feelings into words, Cathy later echoes the same question back to Harry, asking, “Complicated?” as she tries to understand his feelings.

Near the end of the story, we also learn that the mother who abused Cathy was named Emily. Cathy’s instinctive discomfort around Emily was not simply because she had to keep Harry’s secrets as his secretary. Emily’s name itself reminded Cathy of her mother.

In that sense, the relationship between Cathy and Emily can also be seen as a mirror of the relationship between Snape and Harry.

There is an age difference between them. Emily sees the woman she loved in Cathy. They are both women. And both carry wounds from their past.

I cannot help wondering whether Cathy and Emily represent the future that Snape and Harry might have had if Snape had survived.

To me, Cathy seems like a rather difficult person. Perhaps because of the lasting effects of the abuse she suffered as a child, once she begins to trust someone even a little, her sense of distance becomes unusual. She talks rapidly about herself for long stretches, and sometimes interrupts the flow of a conversation simply to repeat a phrase she happens to find amusing. It feels as though her personality never had the chance to develop in a healthy way.

She also shows signs of dissociation, such as the world losing its colour around her, and symptoms that resemble PTSD, including traumatic memories of the war resurfacing whenever Kingsley summons her. Her abusive mother is still alive and continues to be violent toward her whenever they meet.

At the moment, these issues do not become a major problem because Emily seems to have completely fallen in love with Cathy. Sooner or later, however, if they are to stay together, they will have to face Cathy’s emotional wounds.

In an earlier draft of the story, there was a scene set on the day Snape’s son entered Hogwarts. In that version, Hermione congratulates Cathy on her marriage to Emily, so the two of them do eventually end up together.

By the time Snape’s son begins at Hogwarts, however, eleven years have passed since the events of this story. That passage of time suggests they had to overcome many difficulties before reaching that future. Even so, they never gave up on their relationship.

If Cathy and Emily are an “what if” version of Snape and Harry, then perhaps, had Snape lived, this might have been the kind of future they could have shared.

Harry, meanwhile, takes in Snape’s son, who is also named Harry. I think this, too, is another mirror within the story.

At the end, Harry looks directly into baby Harry’s black eyes before collapsing to his knees, repeating, “I can’t.”

At that moment, perhaps Harry finally understood exactly what Snape had felt each time he looked into the eyes of the first Harry—the boy with Lily’s eyes.

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Ginny as a Character

In many Snarry stories, Ginny is either portrayed as an obstacle to Harry and Snape’s relationship or written out of the story altogether. In Confeito, however, Ginny remains Harry’s partner in both his public and private life.

Part of the reason is that Suri was very fond of Bonnie Wright, who played Ginny in the films, and that affection is clearly reflected in her writing. More importantly, Confeito was written as a canon-compliant story. Even though it is a Snarry story, Suri chose not to remove Ginny from Harry’s life.

In the opening lift scene, Cathy lands a sharp counterpunch by saying to Emily,

“Mind you, Harry seems to like girls like that—the ones you can’t stand.”

Even before Ginny ever appears in the story, we already begin to sense what kind of person she is. Through Cathy’s own quick wit, through the narration telling us that even the old pure-blood families had come to admire Ginny’s way of meeting cutting remarks with humour, and through the conversations between Cathy and Kingsley, which reveal the complete trust they place in her as Harry’s partner, her presence is already strongly felt long before she ever steps onto the page.

Yet when she thinks she might lose Harry, she blurts out things like,

“Harry, if you’re willing, I think you should just adopt him.”

and

“And if it’s going to cause an uproar that Harry took the baby into his care, then it can be me instead—it can be said that I did.”

She stops worrying about appearances and simply says whatever comes to mind.

Incidentally, this scene also contains another mirrored exchange from the original series:

“What if I don’t care?” “I care.”

Whenever Harry loses his composure, Ginny becomes the calm one. Whenever Ginny loses hers, Harry becomes the calm one. They support one another in that way.

Ginny could almost be described as Harry’s soulmate. And yet she senses that there is a place within Harry that belongs to Snape—a place she herself can never enter.

To me, that speaks to the depth of the bond between Harry and Snape.

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What Was the Relationship Between Harry and Snape?

Confeito is a mystery that explores what existed between Harry and Snape. In the end, however, the only undeniable fact left behind is that Snape wanted to name his son Harry. Beyond that, all we have are the speculation of those around them and Harry’s own reactions. The story ends without offering a definitive answer.

Even so, I think there is something in this story that leads even Cathy—someone who has grown weary of Snarry—to say:

“That was who he was. He couldn’t bring himself to do it—not to the very end. But he never gave up on loving you.”

How much, though, did Harry actually know about what happened?

Throughout the story, there are several moments where Harry behaves in ways that feel deliberately out of place, as though the reader is meant to notice them.

① Harry Loses His Composure Despite His Training

To protect Harry’s safety, Kingsley trained him by repeatedly giving him false reports that Ginny had been kidnapped or killed, so that Harry would learn not to rush off on his own. Through that training, Harry learned to stop, think, and act in that order, even when someone he loved appeared to be in danger.

And yet, when he is presented with the letter that reads,

“The child’s name is ‘Harry.’—Severus Snape.”

and with the baby himself, Harry forgets even about Ginny and immediately decides to leave the wizarding world and live alone with the child.

Why?

If his training and even his life with Ginny were not enough to stop him, then perhaps something far more powerful had shaken him in that moment.

② Was “noticed” really about Ginny?

In the conversation between Harry and Cathy at the cottage in Chapter 2, Harry speaks about how much he loves the life he has now. He also says that, for that life to exist, nothing in his past could have been different, suggesting that he is trying to accept everything that happened to him.

Then he begins to say,

“Otherwise I wouldn’t have met Ron or Hermione. Everything that happened there made me who I am. I don’t think it was good that my parents were killed—of course not. But without all of that, I sometimes wonder if I’d ever have been noticed by—”

Before finishing the sentence, he stops himself.

Almost as if trying to cover what he had been about to say, he quickly adds,

“By Ginny!”

But who had Harry really been talking about?

To me, it feels as though Harry suddenly realized that he had drifted into talking about Snape—or perhaps had almost revealed feelings he did not intend to put into words—and caught himself at the last moment.

③ The Odd Punishment Emily Witnessed

In Chapter 2, Emily tells Cathy about a punishment she once witnessed Snape giving Harry at Hogwarts.

Harry’s punishment was to wash a cauldron that was already clean.

Emily says it was almost like torture, while Cathy suggests that perhaps Snape simply wanted to make sure Harry would not be working with anything dangerous.

When I read this scene, though, something else stood out to me.

It was a punishment with no clear end.

If Harry had been told to clean a dirty cauldron, he would have been free to return to his dormitory as soon as it was clean.

But if the cauldron was already clean, then the punishment could never end unless Snape himself decided it was over.

Another detail that caught my attention is that Harry seems to know where Snape is. Realizing that Emily has come to deliver a report to Snape, he immediately tells her where Snape can be found.

Snape keeps Harry within his sphere of influence. In a sense, that is its own form of restraint.

And Emily witnessed only one brief moment.

Was that really all there was to it?

Hermione and the others also remark that Harry always seemed odd after serving detention with Snape.

It makes me wonder whether something more existed between them.

④ The Parchment Bearing Harry’s Signature

On the drive to see Louise in Chapter 3, Cathy explains that documents from the wizarding world appear to Muggles as nothing more than ink stains on parchment.

Later, that earlier explanation comes back during Miss Johnson’s conversation with Cathy, when she tells Cathy about a piece of parchment Louise found hidden in Snape’s house.

Because Louise was a Muggle, she had no way of knowing what was written on it.

The only thing we know is that it bore Harry’s signature, and that it had been hidden somewhere in Snape’s house where it would not be easily found.

When Miss Johnson presses Harry about his relationship with Snape, he responds by denying that there was any such relationship rather than explaining why the document was there.

Was it really nothing more than one of Harry’s old essays from Hogwarts that had somehow survived the Ministry’s clean-up?

⑤ Harry’s Curious Remarks

In Chapter 3, just before Harry goes to see Louise, Cathy questions him about his relationship with Snape.

The tension between them is interrupted by a phone call from Emily to Cathy.

After Cathy ends the call, Harry falls silent for a moment before saying,

“When this gets out—do you think they’ll say he and I were… like that?” Harry spoke quietly, as if reminiscing. “That’s what everyone likes, isn’t it? Me and him—people love that sort of story. Then what am I, in that story? The one he left behind? He has a child with another woman now. Or do you think I’ve been seeing him all this time—hiding it from Kingsley, from you? That we used a Muggle woman just to have ‘our own’ child? His son’s name is Harry, after all.”

Why does Harry say something like this at this particular moment?

Immediately afterward, he changes the subject to Cathy and Emily, and never explains what he meant.

How much did Harry know about Snape’s plan?

There is one more remark that strikes me as equally puzzling.

When Miss Johnson presses Harry about his relationship with Snape, Harry says,

“I just wanted to ask why he did that to me.”

Watching this, Cathy thinks:

She wondered what “that” meant. Ordinarily, that would mean naming the baby Harry—but to Cathy, it felt as though he was speaking of something far older, buried deep in the past.

I don’t know how much Harry knew, but I think it is possible that he knew something about Snape’s plan—or was involved in it in some way.

What I find difficult to understand is this:

If, as Miss Johnson explains, Snape set his plan in motion after learning that Harry would have to die, would naming his own child Harry really have been enough?

If his goal was to preserve Harry’s existence, wouldn’t he have wanted to preserve Harry’s genes—and, by extension, Lily’s?

The baby Harry was conceived through IVF using sperm that was said to have been donated by Snape and Louise’s egg, and was carried by a surrogate.

But was it really Snape’s sperm that had been donated?

Of course, baby Harry has Snape’s black eyes and shows signs of magical ability. He also possesses Snape’s genetic traits.

Still, Suri once said that “the answer to this mystery lies entirely in the fact that this story is tagged Snarry.”

She also said, “Whatever you can imagine happened, you may assume that it did.”

My interpretation is only one possibility. But I do think that something happened between the two of them.

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Always

One line that offers a glimpse of Harry’s feelings toward Snape is the word always.

“Always” is, of course, the word that represents Snape’s love for Lily. Yet in this story, it appears in Harry’s words about Snape.

“Snape was good at finding me—always.”

I cannot help wondering whether there is a wish hidden in that line—a wish for the word always, once spoken of Snape’s feelings for Lily, to become something that also belongs to Harry.

The story itself also ends with the word always, which makes me feel that Suri placed it there quite deliberately.

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Louise Frois

Louise, whose character was inspired by the woman in Sia’s Confetti as well as by the historical figure Luís Fróis, who introduced confeito (Portuguese sugar candy) to Japan.

Her background closely parallels Harry’s. She lost her parents at a young age and was raised by relatives who gave her little real affection. Because of that, she longs for a family of her own.

In a sense, just as Cathy and Emily can be read as a metaphor for Snape and Harry, I think the relationship between Snape and Louise also reflects them.

Perhaps it exists to show that Harry could not help being drawn to Snape, and that Snape, in turn, could not help caring about Harry.

Yet regardless of what Snape truly intended—which the story never reveals—what Louise is ultimately left with is the conviction that she was used by him.

Louise comes to believe that Snape approached her for one reason alone: he wanted to preserve Harry’s existence even after Harry was gone, by continuing to speak the name “Harry” with love through his child.

That belief turns into love mixed with hatred.

Already weakened by terminal cancer, Louise concludes that she had simply been an easy woman for Snape to take advantage of.

What she did cannot be called ethically right.

Having grown up with relatives who raised her only because they wanted her inheritance, she herself should have hated the idea of bringing a child into the world as part of an act of revenge more than anyone.

But after Snape disappeared, and with it her hope of building a family, the dream she had long cherished was shattered.

It is true that the frozen embryos still existed. She could still have had a child and built a family.

But with so little time left to live, she could no longer find hope in that possibility.

To Louise, Snape’s betrayal must have felt as though he had destroyed her last chance.

Especially for someone with terminal cancer, emotional support is enormously important. It is easy for those of us who are healthy to say what the right choice would have been. But I do not think Louise was in a position where she could make that choice.

That does not mean what she did should be justified.

Rather, I think this, too, is part of the central theme of Confeito: what we do with things that have already happened and can no longer be undone.

As I mentioned in my previous article, perhaps Louise was given the name “Frois” because she is the one who ultimately brings Confeito into the world—just as Luís Fróis brought confeito to Japan.

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What Will Become of the Custody Battle?

Whatever the relationship between Snape and Harry may have been, Harry is about to become involved in a bitter legal battle over who should become baby Harry’s guardian.

From Louise’s perspective, even if she were no longer alive, forcing Harry to testify publicly about his relationship with Snape would be her final act of revenge.

If her written statement is taken at face value, then the story becomes this: because Snape and Harry could not have a child together, Snape took advantage of Louise—a terminally ill woman who longed for a family—and had a child with her instead.

Of course, it was ultimately Louise who made the final decision to have the child, and she herself would certainly face criticism for that choice.

Even so, many people would likely see it as a gay couple exploiting a terminally ill woman with little time left to live and a deep desire for a family. The fact that Snape had been Harry’s teacher, together with the rumours surrounding a relationship that supposedly began while Harry was still underage, would only add to the public condemnation.

The wizarding world would also demand answers from Harry.

Whatever Harry’s true feelings may be, and whatever the truth may actually be, he would have little choice but to acknowledge some kind of relationship with Snape in court in order to secure custody of the child, since the Ministry is responsible for protecting orphaned magical children. In her will, Louise names Harry Potter as her preferred guardian because she believed him to be the romantic partner of the baby’s genetic father, Severus Snape.

In a rather frightening way, the Snarry that so many readers have wished for would become reality.

Confeito ultimately leads into Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, so Harry does not end up raising Snape’s son himself. Even so, he will surely continue to support him as his guardian.

Seen in that light, Harry later naming his own son Severus also becomes part of the story’s mirrored structure.

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Finding the Wave That Soaked Your Shoes

Confeito opens with the poem about the waves that also serves as the story’s epigraph, and it closes with another poem about the sea.

At the beginning, the poem speaks of trying to walk without letting the waves soak your shoes, only to be caught by a larger wave without warning.

It foreshadows the unexpected turmoil that begins when Cathy receives the news of the hero’s disappearance.

By the end of the story, however, the poem has changed.

Now it speaks of walking along the shore, searching for the wave that soaked your shoes within the sea itself.

And because you continue walking along the water’s edge, your shoes are soaked again.

The story becomes a circle.

When you return to the opening poem after finishing the story, it no longer feels quite the same.

It makes us wonder whether we truly wished to keep our shoes dry in the first place.

Harry can do nothing but continue searching the sea for the meaning behind the fact that Snape named his son Harry—the wave that soaked his shoes.

And perhaps he chooses to go on living with those shoes still wet.

Just as Harry does, perhaps we, too, will keep searching this story for the reason why.

Suri

Perhaps that is why we continue doing what we do as well.

We want to find the wave that soaked Suri’s shoes.

What was Suri searching for?

Why did she write this story?

We know we may never find the answer.

And yet, we keep searching for that wave.

Article by Tano

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