seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Lithuania
seen from United States
seen from Japan
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seen from Kazakhstan
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seen from United Kingdom
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losing it
As if in slow motion, Harry watched as Severus pulled away and sat straighter. His entire body tensed, his back straight and shoulders squared, his black curtain of hair coming to cover his face as he left his teacup on the coffee table. Harry blinked in stupor as he realised it had been months since Severus had last done that in his presence, had hidden from him, had pulled away. He felt a painful pang in his chest as he blinked. “If you think you won’t have time for us, please, do let me know as soon as—” “What? What are you saying?” Harry took stock of Severus, and saw his expression hardened behind his mask, though it was cracking. His eyes were cold, black pools full of emotions that were kept carefully hidden. But Harry knew. Harry could read them. “Hey, Severus, that’s not what I meant at all,” Harry rushed to say, leaving the cup on the coffee table and shifting closer. But Severus kept his body at arm’s length, tense, his eyes avoiding his gaze. “Tomorrow the students will return, the new year will start,” Severus said in a cold, even tone, “I will have responsibilities. And your time will already be strained between your studies, your friends and Quidditch. It’s inevitable that you will… have little time for us.” A heavy, cold dread settled in Harry’s lower stomach at Severus’s words, at the resigned tone of his voice. He shifted closer to Severus, resting against his body, and sought his hand under the blanket they were sharing. His fingers were cold, and gripped his hand tight as soon as they found it. “Severus… look at me. Look,” Harry whispered in a soft, caring voice. He tugged at his hand, and when Severus finally locked eyes with him, a chill ran through Harry’s back, followed by a shudder and a warm tug coming from their connected hands. His eyes were glistening, still hard but beneath that, there was a fear and need that warmed the deepest part of Harry’s soul. He squeezed Severus’s hand firmly, anchoring them both in the moment. “Listen to me,” he began, his voice steady but thick with emotion. “I know this year is going to be busy—for both of us. And I know we’ll have responsibilities pulling us in every direction. But don’t ever think that means I suddenly don’t care about you. You are my friend now, and no friend is left behind.”
Little snippet of this week's BENEATH THE SURFACE chapter!!
HP Rec Fest 2024 - Day 26: A fic under 5k
A year ago we lost a much beloved member of our fandom community. My co-mod for this tumblr and the HOS Discord group, and founder of @hprecfest, the unforgettable Scarlet, aka givereadersahug (tumblr) / emeraldlove (AO3).
Today's theme for HP Rec Fest 2024 is for fics under 5k, and I thought it was a perfect way to celebrate her memory.
Scarlet loved writing short-form works, and there wasn't anything she couldn't write a drabble/microfic about. She left us with hundreds to enjoy, across many ships and many fandoms. It was a very difficult choice picking just a few of them from huge selection. Accidentally, they've all ended up being her G-rated fics, but she also wrote an impressive and delicious number of works from all ratings.
In memory of Scarlet, this is 5 fics under 5k (for Scarlet did always like it when the numbers had some theme), from the irreplicable emeraldlove:
💚Microwaving Potions💚 Summary: Harry suggests brewing potions via microwave. 300 words | Harry Potter/Severus Snape | Rating: General Audiences Link
💚Wrapped Around His Fingers💚 Summary: "We're a package deal, Severus," said Harry, when he showed up to their first date with Teddy in tow. 300 words | Harry Potter/Severus Snape | Rating: General Audiences Link
💚The Christmas Presents💚 Summary: The various Christmas presents Severus gave Teddy over the years. 450 words | Harry Potter/Severus Snape | Rating: General Audiences Link
💚The Prince and the Bezoar💚 Summary: "I need to do what?" asked Severus, lips curling in disgust. "Pass the Sleeping Beauty test," said Harry, who was enjoying the spectacle a bit too much if you ask for Severus's opinion. 500 words | Harry Potter/Severus Snape | Rating: General Audiences Link
💚Invisible String💚 Summary: The first time Harry saw Snape's black eyes — him truly acknowledging Snape's existence beyond him being his mean professor — it was the night after Harry killed Professor Quirrell. He was dreaming, and in his dreams, he was screaming.
Harry dreams of Severus over the years. 3,728 words | Harry Potter/Severus Snape | Rating: General Audiences Link
“NOT SCARY AT ALL”
This stone bird appeared in the second half of winter. Even at Christmas she was not there, and in February she was already looking at Harry with her blind stone eyes. The bird was definitely conjured, because it was one with the tombstone, as if it was born from it. It was a raven with folded wings and a slightly open beak. As if he wanted to say something.
One could only guess who decided to decorate the grave of the professor, and why it was a raven. Not some bat, not a snake, finally. A raven. Perhaps it was the symbol of wisdom and death. Yes, Harry even read about it specifically in Agatha Daredevil's book "Symbolism in Magical Transformations".
"Raven," she wrote, "has long meant mind and has been associated with death. He embodies prophecy and insight. Crows in stories often act as psychopomps connecting the material world with the spirit world."
Don't ask why Harry needed to know about the raven. And even more so, don't ask why he visited the grave of his former professor so many times in a row. He didn't quite know the answer himself.
They say that criminals are drawn to the crime scene. But it was there—in the Screaming Hut, where he left him to die all alone, bleeding. But here… This grave was just a pit with a stone coffin in which Snape's remains were placed — evidence of Harry's crime. But he remembered the basics of first aid, he remembered, and then for some reason he thought that he was powerless before fate itself.
Harry still dreamed of Snape, paralyzed by Nagaina's poison, unconscious. His light warm breath, his eyes glazed with pain (but not from death). How long had he been lying there when they left before he died? A couple of minutes? An hour? Or maybe more?
Harry first visited his grave in June. He came alone and at dawn, sneaked in there like a thief. He was going to make some kind of speech, ask for forgiveness. But even though there was no one to eavesdrop on her, Harry couldn't get a word out of himself. Instead, for some reason, he burst into tears like a child. At the funeral — Lupin and Tonks, Freddy, baby Creevey, Snape himself — did not cry. But then... the speech was successful only in August.
Since then, Harry had been dropping in on the professor at least once a month, on one of the extra-curricular Saturdays. I told him about my life, shared all sorts of nonsense. He did not ask for forgiveness, as if he knew that the professor no longer holds a grudge. And as if he understands.
***
“Do you mind if I sort out your things?” Harry asked in May.
Only yesterday, the Hogwarts cemetery paid tribute to the memory of those who died in the battle. Today, the usual silence reigned here again.
“No one has touched them all this year. However, the elves have recently collected... how should I say... personal — clothes and all that. There are papers left in your office. No one knows who would need them, and I told McGonagall that I could take them. Not all of them, of course. But... something important. She said she would have given it to my mom if she were alive. But she's not alive, and you're out… So you don't mind, I think.”
The grave did not answer, nor did the raven. Their tacit permission was granted.
There was a warm spring calm. The sun was hot, the back and the back of my head were hot. It was like someone's tight embrace.
***
Surprisingly, there were few papers. So — study plans, several business and personal letters (Harry decided not to poke his nose into envelopes with the Malfoy coat of arms, but to forward them to Draco) and books, most of which were with a library seal, and over which Madame Pince then groaned.
"Professor Snape was constantly delaying the delivery of books! But about this one — he lied to my eyes in an impudent way, said that some scoundrels stole it and burned it!".
In the top drawer of the desk, under stacks of blank paper, Harry found an old, battered diary. The entries in it were completely irregular, sometimes Snape forgot about the diary for several months. There were potion recipes, whole phrases in runic notation, addresses (Harry assumed they were potion customers or ingredient suppliers), and drawings and squiggles that Harry remembered from the Potions textbook.
The guilt that seemed to have calmed down over the past year came flooding back to Harry. He randomly leafed through this old notebook and thought about how much he had personally deprived the magical world. If Harry had stayed, he would have helped Snape, if he had called for help, the professor could have been saved. And with him — his developments. Dozens of useful potions and spells. Cured diseases, solved problems and saved lives…
Harry shifted the notebook to his other hand and started leafing through from the end. On the last filled page, at the very bottom, a bird was drawn in ink. Smooth body, large open beak and folded wings. It was the same raven that appeared on Snape's tombstone in winter. Words written in the professor's familiar small handwriting seemed to fly out of the raven's mouth:
"Feed the bird."
In the lower right corner there was a postscript made in pencil:
"If you go to feed, take a broom."
Harry loved riddles, but he didn't like being overcome by excruciating excitement. Like, for example, this time.
***
Harry took with him a broom and treats for the raven. There was a piece of bread and a sausage wrapped in a paper bag in his pocket. In his mind, the raven would definitely have been treated to some of this.
It looked stupid. He was standing in the middle of the cemetery with a broom and trying to stuff his breakfast into the mouth of a stone statue. She refused to eat.
“Feed… Feed the bird. But how?!” he muttered, feeling himself getting angry.
Why did he even think that this was the same bird? What makes him think that the professor left him a hint? And what was he going to find anyway? A hiding place? A cache with something important? For example, by a will? Snape didn't care about earthly things, and he had nothing to bequeath, except for the old house, which, as McGonagall told him, he hated with all his heart.
Angrily, Harry threw the spoiled food on the ground and began sorting through everything he knew about crows in his head. As a child, these birds scared little Harry. Aunt Petunia knew about it and said: "Don't look at them, or they, bloodthirsty creatures, will peck out your green devilish eyes."
“Bloodthirsty… Bloodthirsty creatures," Harry whispered thoughtfully and bit his finger with his teeth.
The blood did not appear immediately, it had to be squeezed out of the wound. Harry put his hand to the bird's beak and smeared it with blood.
The stone moved. At first, the raven moved its head, then cawed soundlessly — just opened its beak several times. Then he spread his wings, stamped on the spot and fluttered up.
Then Harry understood why the broom was needed.
***
"Why the hell were you going through my papers? Arrogant, stupid, curious, shameless... why are you silent? Can you feel your hands? Do you feel it or not?!”
Snape was furious, his eyes were shooting lightning, but Harry was not afraid. To see him—pale and with bloodless lips—on the floor of a Screaming hut, to see him off on his last journey a few days later, to come to his grave for the first time — that was what was scary. But now I'm sitting in a chair, leaning closer to the fireplace, licking drops of firewhisky from my lips and watching the professor rub his stiff fingers… It wasn't scary at all.
Let his hands be completely frozen from the long flight, let them turn red. Let this village house be unfamiliar and creepy, and it looked like no one had lived here for a long time and only recently a person had settled here. Let Snape, aged and with a torn, scarred throat peeking out of the collar of his robe, shout at him (thank Merlin, his voice remained the same). Harry was happy. And he couldn't get a word out of himself.
“Do you feel it? Are you going to answer me?”
Harry nodded, somewhat drunkenly and sluggishly, and only then did Snape leave him alone.
He sat down at a table—a long one and probably intended for a large family that once lived here, and now almost completely covered with dried herbs- and began to unwrap one of these dried bouquets. His fingers nervously fingered the thin stems and selected suitable ones.
“I…” Harry finally managed to say, but then he trailed off.
Snape looked at him sternly, and there was a threat in that look.
“I was hoping it would be Minerva. Or, in extreme case, Miss Granger…
“Weasley”, Harry interrupted automatically. Hermione, who had been Ron's wife for three months now, was constantly correcting her acquaintances who called her by her maiden name. “She's Mrs. Weasley now”.
Snape snorted. As he was doing it before — ironically , disapproving and arrogantly.
“ I had a better opinion of her. Well… What the hell did you want in my desk? What were you looking for there? Memories? My diary, in which I confessed to crimes? They wanted to sell his Skitter, probably, and…
"I wasn't looking for anything," Harry interrupted him again. "McGonagall gave me permission to take your papers, that's all. The office had to be vacated for a new teacher. She allowed it… She allowed me to take what I think is necessary.
“Allowed you? And why on earth would that be?”
“I needed it.”
“Why did you need it? Couldn't leave me alone even after death?
“Couldn't," Harry muttered, reaching for a bottle of firewhisky. It was standing at his feet.
The esophagus burned with heat, it became difficult to breathe at first, and then immediately felt better. Even the excitement has subsided.
“Why would that be? Tormented by guilt?”
"No, no guilt," Harry lied. “ I just fell in love. You know, it happens like this… You know a person for many years, and then he dies, becomes less disgusting and malicious, and you even have a communication. So you can fall in love. Even... with such a… you.”
He took two more big gulps, and a very pleasant heat spread in his chest.
Snape was silent and stared at the herbs on the table. It seemed that now they would break out and a fire would start.
“And how did you...? The antidote? Or did someone help?”
"Someone helped," Snape echoed and, apparently deciding that Harry had had enough to drink, called for a bottle with non—verbal and non-verbal spell.
He waved his hand — and it jerked and flew to the table, hitting the bottom on the edge.
“Malfoy? I've seen his letters… You were friends, right? … Are friends, I mean”
"Can you take the stairs?" Won't you wring your neck? Or do you need to be levitated?
It took Harry a moment to realize what the professor meant.
“ Are you inviting me... to stay? After what I…”
“ You won't be able to fly back in this condition. I won't let you apparate drunk, and I don't have a sobering one. You will spend the night here, and in the morning I will erase your memory.”
“ What are you going to do to me that you will have to erase my memory?” Harry laughed.
“I don't like you, Potter...” Snape looked at him as if he suspected some kind of bad change in him or someone else's evil influence.
“Yes, to be honest, I don't like myself ... but you…” Harry paused, feeling like a drunken fool. “Don’t erase my memory. I'm coming back anyway. In a week or a month…”
“Yes, you are coming back. I have no doubt in your stickiness, Potter.”
A few things didn't happen next morning. Firstly, they did not quarrel, although they could have. Secondly, Harry did not apologize for what he said drunk in the living room yesterday. As if he felt it was wrong to apologize for telling Severus the truth. Thirdly, Snape never erased his memory.
And, to be honest, Harry didn't go anywhere. Neither in the morning, nor in the evening, nor the next day.
I noticed that my fic, Anachronism, was imported to Ao3 in two large chapters rather than the 17 individual ones on lj, so I decided to break it apart to make it easier to read on ao3.
As I was working on it, I realized that the version on ao3 wasn't the most updated version of the fic and there were differences between it and the lj version. It meant I had to go through chapter by chapter.
As I was uploading each chapter, I read through some of the original comments I had received. On one chapter, someone had complained that Snape was too mean. On the very next chapter, someone had complained that Snape was too nice. The duality of Snarry.
Another thing I thought was funny was how many people said that they had never read a fanfiction that long before, or comments surprised at the length. At 97k, it doesn't seem that long to me compared to what I normally read, but I guess it was back then.
The best part of reading fics is getting inside of Snape's head
a snarry wip snippet
Two years and seven months after the battle, Harry Potter packed an oak trunk with his few remaining possessions and took a train north from Victoria Station. He was last seen in the bookshop, blue paperback in hand. Where he was off to, no one could say, lost between transfer and terminus. He was twenty years old, hair still unruly, an absent expression on his still-too-thin and pale face.
(He’s not eating well, Severus had thought. He’s not sleeping. One might say that Severus Snape is an expert in the look of a man who has given up. Then again, one might say a lot of things about Severus Snape.)
For the first five years, the world looked for him. They scoured London, Edinburgh, even Tokyo and New York. They turned out their pockets and peeked in their drawers, finding nothing but dust and pocket change. A man who doesn’t want to be found can make it simple to disappear. Consider a magic trick: now you see me, now you don’t. His eyes had looked empty. Lined. Tired. He was twenty years old and used up already. They looked for him, but what did they need him for now? The machine moved on. Fame found another chew toy. His name slipped from their tongues.
Severus Snape has always wanted to be free of the Boy Who Just Fucking Insisted On Living, and somehow now, ten years after Harry Potter’s disappearance, everyone is free but him.
hello friends! last month was full of wonderful reads that i’m excited to share. there’s a good variety of pairings this round of recs too, with majority drarry and a few others sprinkled in. wishing everyone another month of amazing fics in august! and now here are my favourite fics from july:
Drarry
The Heart of the Manor by @kedavranox | M | 3k
i love drarry and horror and this fic was masterful. it’s able to weave such a vividly eerie atmosphere with an incredible, ominous ending in only 3k words. skillfully concise and quick, it’s like a well placed gut punch in the best way possible.
Not Nineteen Forever by @sorrybutblog | E | 5k
i am a sucker for any fic involving de-aging/age difference between Harry and Draco, especially when it has a generous dose of pining. i absolutely loved younger draco in all his funny, sexy, teasing glory!
Progressive Displacement by GatewayGirl | E | 20k
this one was a reread, but one i’ll never get tired of. universe hopping is always so so fun, and all the different versions of harry and draco were amazing.
The Matchmaker’s Spell by @kbrick | E | 20k
messy drarry has such an exquisite flavour. their dynamic when it’s a little bit fucked up is just *chefs kiss* the energy of this fic is so wonderfully intense and i felt like i was buzzing the entire time i was reading it. and can we talk about that ending? brilliant!
The Day Before the Wedding by @kbrick | E | 39k
when i saw that kbrick dropped a new fic and that it was a timeloop fic, i pretty much dropped everything to read it. harry reliving the day before he gets married to ginny over and over is all at once spectacularly calamitous and cathartic. harry and draco both work for their growth in this one, and the timeloop aspect is done wonderfully, as per expected from kbrick!
The Art of Our Necessities by dcfg21 | E | 52k
this one was another reread and one that i’d consider one of my personal drarry classics, at least in the vampire genre. we have unhinged vampire harry who is bonded to draco to keep him on a leash, with a gloriously hot dynamic featuring a possessive and protective harry. i love how much these two cant help but want each other. a drarry vampire must-read.
The Remnant by @kbrick | E | 71k
i must admit that i went on a bit of a kbrick splurge this month but i couldn’t resist this one when i saw the demonic possession tag,, possessed harry has got to be one of the most creepy hot things i’ve read and i thoroughly enjoyed everything about it (as did draco 😳)
Others
Snarry
Ingredients of Respect by Lizzy0305 | E | 27k
harry gaining a genuine interest in potions is something i love reading, especially when severus helps him realize it. but when harry also gains an interest in severus, the tension is strikingly hot. i loved the dynamic between them!
In Between Days by atrata | E | 68k
the characterization of snape in this fic is so good! he’s the perfect mix of bitterness, snark, and self loathing. paired with a messy, angsty harry, you get a snarry dynamic that feels absolutely electric.
Tomarymort
Break it Down by @acciotomriddle | M | 1k
prisoner voldemort and harry in a smutty power struggle? yes, please.
Dark Heritage by @dropsofnightshade | 342k
it’s always lovely reading harry-gets-adopted-by-adult-who-actually-treats-him-well stories. i especially liked the depiction of the black family in this one! and harry’s relationship with the greengrass family was such a treat as well. also notable is the world building, wizarding politics and dark magic!
Sirius/Voldemort
It runs in the blood by @metalomagnetic | E | 121k
this fic has haunted my mind since i started reading it. voldemort courting sirius to be a death eater, and maybe even more was something i didn’t know i needed until i got it and then suddenly it was all i’ve ever wanted. this fic immersed me into a setting i don’t read too often—during the first war with voldemort. and we really get into the thick of it with sirius and all his different interactions. highly recommend!
