Thistlecat’s Wolfstar Rec List
We’ve got heartbreaking canon-compliant angst. We’ve got brilliantly creative canon divergent works. We have pure smut. Plus some humor and happy endings. We’ve got it all here.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten to bookmark some favorites of mine (especially some of the shorter ones!), and I hope to grow this list. I’ve divided it into Canon, Canon Divergent (eg still in the wizarding world), and AU and then by length.
Wolfstar is OTP since 2003, and it’s an honor to still be able to create and take part in this fandom nearly 20 years later <3 I survived on rec lists in the pre-Ao3 days, and I’m so glad to be able to create them now.
October 30, 1981 by Penknife (943 words, M)
Get your heart broken in less than 1,000 words.
Calibration by TheDivineComedian (4k, T)
Remus’s mind is usually a tidy place. The worst has already happened, what’s left to be scared of? His fears are labelled, annotated, and most of all, archived. For one evening, though, he’ll have to let them come out and play. (Remus prepares the Boggart for his lesson with the third years. Featuring Severus Snape as an unwanted critic, and Sirius Black as the elephant in the room.)
Not technically wolfstar but a brilliant Remus case study in a small canon moment.
poppies in october by @tahtahfornow (19k, M)
A little half-moon indentation on a patch of green south of Llandeilo, another amongst the densely marked webs of North London. Remus Lupin, Sirius Black. He wouldn’t need magic to follow their footsteps: back and forth, circling, circling around each other. Opposite points of a gravitational orbit.
And now here he is again, pulled in like the tide, back to where he started, back to where he left.
I finally listened to @leftsidedown (who is entering the ranks of god-tier fandom reccers) and read it and oh! It’s got that old school fandom literary angst vibe which I love. There’s something indulgent and rich in the writing (the stylistic choices, the literary references), which feels so appropriate for indulging in angst in this ship in this fandom at this time (after all these years?). But paired with Remus’s especially tendency towards understatement, it never feels like too much. Maybe the singularly most underrated wolfstar ship manifesto fic.
Le Tourbillon by krystal_moon (E, 30k)
Who doesn’t want to be loved by everyone?
Warnings: voyeurism, fingering, drug use, boys being assholes, femdom, poetry, angst, unrealistic portrayals of achieving orgasm, extensive foreshadowing, exhibitionism, excessive length, wall sex, (constant) alcohol use, incest, occasional breach of the fourth wall, over-indulgent discussion of a car, fluff, the French.
It’s a pre-Ao3 fic which is hosted on some random site with no author listed, and it was my favorite at 14 years old and remains a favorite. Nothing else quite captures that feeling of the summer after senior year of high school… right when you’re all about to go to war. Fun and smutty with a dark sense of foreboding.
Death, and Other Origin Stories by @houseofhebrideanblacks, @thestralsofspinnersend (WIP) (250k+, E)
To make a Grim, you bury a live dog in a churchyard before any person is laid to rest there.
I have to rec this fic at least twice a year. It’s the growing up together fic of my dreams – humor and darkness and politics and deep, complex, human characters. Don’t you dare let the WIP status scare you off and delay your enjoyment of this divine fic.
One to Speak, Another to Hear by @seventymilestobabylon (61k, T)
The Wizarding Wars are over, but the work of recovery has only begun. Remus Lupin is trying to find his place in an ever-changing world, and when he is invited to serve on a truth and reconciliation commission, he has to confront the truth that lives there—in the past and within himself.
Top 5 all time favorite fics. I cried so intensely in a happy way. How do we continue on after shared trauma? We can read this fic and then do our best.
Buy the Stars by wilteddaisy (taotu) (23k, E)
Sirius Black, respectable pureblood patriarch and heir to the Black family fortune, has a wife and three children at Hogwarts. Defence Against the Dark Arts professor Remus Lupin wrestles with the aging wolf inside of him. When Black offers him a hand, Remus reluctantly takes it.
Slytherin Sirius Black! Dubious Morality! Toxic adult wolfstar! Fucking your daughter’s professor!
Let Slip the Dogs of War by itallstartedwithdefenestration (54k, E)
Remus can’t seem to escape certain parts of his life. The worst is being a werewolf. The second worst is Sirius Black.
More Slytherin Sirius! The most toxic of toxic wolfstar! There’s love there in the darkness.
under the blood moon by @iamsiriuslyriddikulus (WIP) (29k+, E)
A Wizarding War has been raging for several years with no end in sight. When Lily learns how to infuse Dark Magic into her music, Remus and Lily work together to take justice into their own hands.
Murder family bluegrass AU! The concept is just brilliant. I recently recced this fic, and I will repeat my earlier point that Sirius is simply too hot in this fic.
brilliant difficulty by basketofnovas @slashmarks (580k, M)
A canon divergence AU starting the summer before fourth year where Peter Pettigrew is arrested and sent to Azkaban and Sirius cleared at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban.
Not very shippy so if you’re looking for a wolfstar romance, this is not the fic, but the world building is so brilliant it set my brain on fire. No one does wizarding politics like slashmarks.
A Brother Is Born For Adversity by tb_ll57 (WIP) (190k+, E)
A series following Remus Lupin over four phases and relationships: spying on Fenrir Greyback and the werewolves in the first war against Voldemort’s forces; a chance reunion with Severus Snape in Paris five years after the war, where all is not as it seems; learning how to like each other again with Sirius after teaching Harry’s third year at Hogwarts; and back again to werewolves, this time with Bill Weasley hostage to Voldemort’s agenda. Features the origins of the Order of the Phoenix, hitting rock bottom repeatedly and still trudging into work the next day, ambigious mentoring from Albus Dumbledore, and learning to live with the monster inside.
Again, not a very wolfstar shippy fic, but the Remus character study! I’ve never seen the first war portrayed quite like this – dark and immersive and realistic and Remus has to learn how to keep living.
The Fragile House of Black by @fantismal, Jormandugr (550k, E)
Following the lives of Sirius and (to a lesser extent) Regulus Black as they navigate their family, Hogwarts, and the first wizarding war.
Everything follows the story as you know it… until Kreacher decides the young Master Regulus is not going to die tomorrow.
Plotty plot! You’re going to want to murder Peter by the end. One of the best villain Peters I’ve ever read. And the older Black characters get to be full people!
AU (outside of the wizarding world)
Recto Verso by zambla (8k, M)
Love in the time of the 1984-5 coal miners’ strike. Remus is a geologist working for an independent assessment of a disputed coal mine in his hometown in south Yorkshire during the strike. He meets a communist agitator.
Remus’s mournful and vaguely intellectualizing perspective is so perfect, and each paragraph is richly layered.
White Sheets, in the Closet (or: the earth from a great distance is perfect and whole) by tahtahfornow (12k, M)
The preacher’s boy is pale and strange. Silver scar running horizontal across the crooked bridge of his nose like a tributary catching winter sunlight. Dusty freckles collecting in the corners of his cheeks. And thick fair hair that on Sundays shines with pomade, slicked behind two apricot-slice ears: sweet flesh and flesh, always at attention.
(South Georgia, 1961-1962. Hurried kisses in hostile climates.)
Atmospheric. You can just feel the Georgia humidity and energy as you read it.
57th Street On Fire by @shipsnsails (31k, M)
It’s the 90’s and springtime in New York. Remus is dealing cocaine, Sirius is looking to get high.
He felt a twinge of paranoia. He thought, This is a junkie. One way or another. You don’t take walks with people you sell cocaine to. And he might be rich. Do not say yes.
He’d never seen grey eyes quite like that before.
I’m half in love with Sirius at all times, and I fell in love with him right along Remus. The prose is gorgeously clean and modern and feels so perfect for 90’s NYC.
The Prince’s Pet by BasPer (WIP) (37k+, E)
After waking up the morning after the full moon in the dungeons of the royal palace, Remus Lupin expects to be executed for the crime of being an unregistered werewolf. Instead, he finds himself being taken as a pet for the unstable Prince Sirius Black, who’s taken an interest to owning a dark creature. While trying to play the role he’s been put in to survive until he can escape, he finds himself feeling less like a prisoner set on freedom and more like a loyal pet who wants to serve his master. Will he fight to break these chains, or give into the life his master is offering?
The tags say: “Porn With The Tiniest Morsel Of Plot,” and it’s not a lie. It’s smut. It’s good smut.
Did You Miss Me? by @fantismal, @krethes (640k, E)
Though the new boy at Hogwarts University, James Potter, appears to be an adorable himbo with deep pockets, Remus Lupin and his friends instead find a horrifically dark past on Google. Did he really attack that boy and leave him for dead? Why won’t he talk about his mysterious childhood best friend, “Pups”? Would it kill him to stop messing with his hair?
At least Remus got his phone back after losing it, but now he can’t stop texting the mysterious number of the man who had sent it back. Padfoot is funny and charming, and Remus is NOT going to fall in love with him.
Delightful, intense, engrossing fun-as-hell texting AU. A genuinely excellent college texting AU!!!
izzy806
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
vaporwave
titsay
