I've been doing all the spooky things as we get closer to Halloween. Pumpkins? Check. Seasonal soup? Check. Scary movies? Check. Leggings and sweater? Check Check. Now I can check off spooky fics from my fall fun list too!
In my opinion, there's no one who does a Halloween fic better than @corvuscrowned. Whether you're looking for suspenseful or scary, Crow has you covered. I immensely enjoyed @hp-fearfest last year, and Crow's own writing was a large part of why. I thought for this year, I'd let him share what's making him happy in the world of horror! Thank you so much to Crow for being willing to join us for Happy Hour!
Hello to all of you lovely ghouls, gaunts, and ghosties! I’m so thrilled to be able to hang out at the library during this spookiest of seasons, and I want to thank the Librarian for letting me make my status as The Horror Guy everyone’s problem!! Horror has been my lifeblood since I was young, and it’s been absolutely incredible to find so many explorations of the genre in the drarry fandom. I had such a blast co-running @hp-fearfest with my co-mod and eternal soulmate @m0srael, who has carried on the torch this year with a new group of incredible mods. I absolutely recommend checking out the fest collections, but I wanted to share a few horror fics that were written outside of the fest as well.
Horror movies are my one true love, but I’ve always found short horror films to be immeasurably scarier. So instead of reccing one longer horror fic, I wanted to share a few short fics that use brevity to their advantage and let the reader’s mind fill in the blanks with the stuff of absolute nightmares.
Your Mind, A Jar by @floydig (473 words, not rated)
Instead of being sentenced to Azkaban, Draco is sent on a deep space exploration to pay for his war crimes. Or is he?
I am a huge fan of floydig’s writing, and have been from my early days in fandom – their prose is brutally sparse in the best of ways, and many of their fics have an artfully haunting quality that’s perfectly suited for horror. In fact, their fic Walk Right Through Me was the first drarry horror I ever read, and was what inspired me to try my hand at bringing horror into my fics.
But today I want to talk about something even shorter. At 473 words, you might think Your Mind, A Jar is a short fic - but the story it encapsulates is terrifying because it is utterly limitless. Immersive, unsettling, and characterized by Floyd’s usual dark humor, Your Mind, A Jar is the first space fic I’ve ever read, and might be the last I ever need to – because I’ll be thinking (and shuddering) about it for a long, long, long time.
Lateralus by @shiftylinguini (2,108 words, rated T)
The world after the war was so big, and so untamed. Magic spilled out of every corner, creatures never seen before watching from nooks that never used to exist. There were colours in the air, in the morning dew drops on the leaves―indescribable, and new. Otherworldly, and pulled from a spectrum that shouldn't be visible in their world.
Atmosphere is so important to horror, and it’s one of many things that makes Lateralus work so well. The fic lives in an unsettling, suspenseful space that I simultaneously want to escape immediately and live in forever. I sometimes prefer to understand the bare minimum in horror – just enough to have a feel for what’s going on, like I’m reaching out in the darkness for something I know is there, but can’t quite see. Shifty nails this. I don’t fully understand how we’ve found Draco and Harry where they are – passing by each other in the darkness, communicating only in echoes and refractions – and I don’t need to. That’s where the terror comes from.
One of my favorite things about Lateralus is that, despite being eerie and unsettling, it doesn’t lose the romance. That’s what makes it so much more heartbreaking, so much more compelling, and absolutely worth a read.
Triptych by @theartfuldodger (1,821 words, rated M)
One afternoon, a feather emerges, marring already-scarred skin. But what other problems lie unnoticed beneath the surface?
Body horror isn’t for everyone, but that’s not going to stop me from trying to convince everyone to give it a try! If you have even the faintest of interests, Triptych should absolutely be your entry point. This fic takes the veela trope and brings it to its most visceral core, with needling feathers, scaly skin, and the relentless intrusion of wings. The dynamic between Draco and Harry is deliciously dysfunctional, and the weight of inheritance and choicelessness is as unsettling as the beautifully fucked up descriptions of Draco’s transformation. Theartfulldodger’s choice to write this fic in first person present was perfect – it puts us in such an immediate proximity to Draco’s experiences that we feel everything alongside him, from his terrifyingly changing body to his unsettling relationship with Harry.
I first read this fic a year ago, and I think it’s still one of the drarry fics that pops into my mind the most often – the images and tone are crafted so powerfully that they’re nearly impossible to forget. To me, that’s what makes good horror.
Making A Family Makes A Home by @m0srael (2,433 words, rated T)
Harry and Draco have been dating for years, but Draco still won’t move in to Harry’s place. Is it a case of cold feet, or cold something else?
I have to disclose my bias here. In addition to being one of my earliest and most beloved fandom friends, Mose was my co-mod for Fearfest last year, and has my entire spooky heart in their hands. But I think even if I’d never met Mose, Making A Family Makes A Home would still be one of my favorite horror fics of all time, because it is just. So. Fun.
Not everyone looks for fun in their horror, but I’m someone who really enjoys an indulgently gross, slightly zany interpretation of the genre, which is the note Mose’s fic hits perfectly. I’d say it’s best to go into this one blind, and be prepared for a wild ride. This fic feels like every campy classic 80’s horror movie that I love in the best of ways – it absolutely goes there, and I’m so happy that it does.
Thank you again to the Librarian for letting me steal the mic for this month’s post! It’s been such a joy to reread my favs and share these fics, and I’m so appreciative I got the opportunity to do so. I hope everyone has a dark, delicious, and spooky Halloween, that you all howl at the moon, eat countless pumpkin-spiced goodies, and do something that chills and thrills you. Stay safe, and stay scary! 🖤
Thank you again to @corvuscrowned for joining us in the Library for a pre-Halloween Happy Hour!
❤️ As always, if you find a fic you enjoy, please remember to leave the author a kudos or a comment! ❤️
Lots of Love and Happy Reading!
