An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Hot Rec! Wolfstar Wednesday today!
TL;DR - The 2000s are back again!! :D
Length - 2500 words, completed.
Rating - T
Author - @billsfangearring
Pairing - Wolfstar
Genre - First War, Angst no comfort, established relationship, Canon compliant.
Premise - This fic looks at the really chaotic time during the First War when nobody knew who to trust. It really gets the reader into the paranoid/stressed mindset of the first war using two brilliant POVs.
Rec
Characterization - OMG! The characterization! Generally I don’t really see Canon! Sirius the way I interpret him in a lot of fics especially in modern Wolfstar. This fic has Canon Sirius the way I see him. He really cares about people. He is super empathetic. For him the Potters are not just his friends but also found family. Also really really tragic. Same for the Remus characterization.
He should have known that it had never been him and Remus alone together in the middle of London, hunched over cheap chips as their breath mingled with the exhaled smog of the city.
The wolf had always been there too.
Canon Compliance - Ok. Snarry shippers forgive me but I was pretty interested in Wolfstar in the 2000s esp when the fics are canon compliant. Short fics which are canon compliant generally were a really unique Wolfstar thing from this time. This one has serious throwback vibes to some of my favorite fics from that time.
Now, it was a curse—a curse to see those same footprints everywhere in a sick mockery of everything he’d thought was on his side.
Scope - One of the things I really love about this fic is how it shows us the full First War by using two main POVs. It’s like looking at their marriage story but then you take a step back and realize OMG! This is what it was like for everybody during this war. The fic is amazing in how much it says without saying things directly.
One secret, two secrets—they were all keeping secrets these days. Sirius wondered when the secrets themselves had become more important than the spaces between them.
Tone - A lot of times fics can compromise the angst by sort of softening it. This fic doesn’t compromise. We get to feel the insane amount of feels Remus and Sirius are experiencing. The chaos, the worry. Lack of trust. Stress. Like life is moving so fast and nobody has the time to actually plan anything. It’s really heartbreaking.
Somehow it was the feel of his fingertip hitting the bottom of the jar as he sought out its last dregs that did him in. His finger. The biggest bit of Peter they found was his finger.How could Sirius have done it?
Narrative style - This fic keeps the reader guessing. When a POV switch happens we start thinking things can get resolved with communication and maybe there is a happy ending here. But of course the fic uses the technique to make the angst sharper. Because communication won’t solve things when people don’t trust each other. The biggest angst of The First War was people not knowing who to trust. This fic shows that brilliantly.
But why? How did the packs get to him? Sirius knew Voldemort had promised them a place in his brave new world, but what could he have offered that was worth more than everything the four of them had built with Remus, for Remus? What they’d built together, just the two of them? Sirius had thought—
