#asenora fic recs
Note
Favorite Ron Weasley fics?
thank you very much for the ask @thesilverstarling! my king's birthday seemed like the perfect time to drop this...
six ron-centric fic recs
[for the best sixth son in literature]
envy by @floreatcastellumposts
harry potter & ron weasley
teen | 8.6k words
why i recommend it:
ron's capacity for jealousy is something which generates a lot of fandom discourse - especially the role it plays in his relationship with hermione. this fic is a look at one of the canon moments which foreground this trait - ron's falling out with harry when his best pal's name comes out of the goblet of fire - and it does a wonderful job of exploring ron's less pleasant characteristics without bashing him.
like a brother would by @wolfpants
harry potter/ron weasley
explicit | 5.2k words
why i recommend it:
i have a real weakness for ronarry - largely because i love how ron would give anything in the world to get to take care of his bestie. this fic takes that urge to its natural conclusion...
the english opening by lordrowantree
fleur delacour/ron weasley
teen | 55k words
why i recommend it:
because it respects ron’s canonical rizz and asks the very important question: what would happen if fleur said yes when he asked her to the yule ball?
and, in doing so, it also respects all the rest of ron’s canonical traits - his intelligence, his kindness, his big-picture thinking, his sense of daring - and uses them to offer an exploration of fleur’s character which is considerably kinder and more nuanced than the one she receives in canon.
plus, it’ll teach you something about chess, which is a bonus.
ghouls in the attic by speechwriter
tom riddle/ron weasley
general | 8.9k
why i recommend it:
because - as the author correctly notes - i have seen your heart and it is mine is an outrageously romantic thing for the horcrux to say to ron [especially because it happens just before voldemort canonically suggests that hermione is mid].
collateral damage by @danpuff-ao3
draco malfoy/ron weasley
explicit | 16k words
why i recommend it:
i also have a weakness for dron - above all because the two of them are narrative mirrors, defined by their relationships to their families and their relationships to harry, brought into conflict by their polar differences [draco's wealth versus ron's lack of it, etc.], and possessed of similar personality traits [a desire to be recognised as important and be the centre of attention; a capacity for jealousy]. this fics plays with those similarities - and also with ron and draco's more positive shared traits - in a really striking way. i ship these two losers. i hope they're happy.
some i love who are dead by brightened
hermione granger/ron weasley
teen | 2.2k words
why i recommend it:
because it's a lovely, bittersweet look at ron's character from the perspective of hermione's old age - thinking about the man he became and the husband and father he was.
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what are some really outstandingly written and creative hp fics. (please no wholeslae canon rewrites tho. AUs are fine).
Here are a few fics that I find to be especially outstanding and creative and well written.
Amulette d'amour by The_Carnivorous_Muffin, Vinelle (words: 58,092 | not rated | Tom Riddle/Alphard Black)
Tom is commissioned to repair a magical amulet.
Why I rec it: Listen. This fic is absolutely phenomenal. It has a fascinating and well developed exploration of wizarding society, brilliant and highly complex and multifaceted characterization, and very original and unique plotting. It's extraordinarily well written and is both thought provoking and dramatic as well as laugh out loud funny in places. It's not a fic premise or pairing I would ever have imagined but it's legitimately an outstanding piece of writing that will live rent free in your head.
At Your Service by Faith Wood (faithwood) ( words: 95,752 | rating: E drarry )
Hogwarts students are in danger; Harry is determined to save them all. There’s only one thing he knows for certain: Draco Malfoy is somehow involved.
Why I rec it: This is the closest to book 8 that I've seen. Stylistically it really recalls the feel and structure of the canon books and it has a lot of really cool plot developments and world building. It follows on nicely from the rest of the series and expands on whats there. It feels like a book 8 where drarry happens.
the pleasure, the privilege by asterismal (asterisms) (words: 19,901 | rating: M | Harry/Voldemort | CW: Horror, Extremely dark themes)
It begins with Vernon Dursley’s body, dead across the table. In which Voldemort is dosed with amortentia, and nothing is better for it.
Why I rec it: It takes a crack plot premise and runs with it and really makes it work in a serious way. This fic is DARK and very unique and creative in its plot resolution. It kept me on the edge of my seat and is incredibly innovative and dramatic.
Running on Air by eleventy7 ( words: 74,876 | rating: T | drarry)
Draco Malfoy has been missing for three years. Harry is assigned the cold case and finds himself slowly falling in love with the memories he collects.
Why I rec it: Brilliantly well done characterization and amazing world building and plot. The relationship and characters all develop so naturally and the writing is incredibly beautiful. It never feels rushed and yet you can't put it down.
Denude by Faith Wood (faithwood) (words: 4,172 | rating: E | drarry | CW: Underage)
This is a HBP AU. It's set a few days after the Sectumsempra scene and takes the story in another direction, asking the question: "What if the Sectumsempra scene had a greater impact on Harry and Draco?" Harry and Draco are sixteen. In medias res beginning. Non-linear storytelling.
Why I rec it: Stylistically it feels like it could be taken out of book 6. The characterization and dialogue is so spot on and its very emotionally evocative.
Sparkling Cyanide by Asenora (words: 1,415 | rating: G | Gen | complete)
Tom Riddle had nothing to do with the death of Hepzibah Smith. Hokey had just had enough of being a slave.
Why I rec it: Amazingly creative world building and premise and characterization. It feels brand new and yet wholly plausible and right.
#asks#Harry Potter#fic rec#Draco Malfoy#drarry#hpdm#tomarrymort#harrymort#tom riddle/alphard black#gen fic#Tom Riddle#Voldemort#alphard black#drarry fic rec#tomarrymort fic rec
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HP Rec Fest, Day 13 ❄️
@hprecfest daily prompts running through Dec 31. Goal is to find lesser-known or underrated works, even by well-known authors, to feature here.
*
Day 13: A Fic >100k Words
One Year In Every Ten by @saintsenara (E, 165k, WIP)
Summary: A decade after the final battle, a serial killer emerges, with a message that proclaims the Dark Lord has risen again. Harry is assigned to the case.
Why I rec it for this prompt: Casefic is a very underrated genre for the Tomarrymort ship, and Asenora absolutely delivers in this case, with a richly layered and complex murder mystery, as well as the beautiful unfolding of a tenuous working relationship between Harry and Voldemort and all the steamy tension that builds up in between them.
if we were lovers by @reggieblk (E, 143k, WIP)
Summary: When Harry arrives at the most prestigious theatrical school in the country, he doesn't have many expectations. The most unexpected thing he encounters is Tom Riddle, and subsequently, falling in love with the only other person who deals with feelings as well as him.
But maybe, just maybe, he and Tom will find out that not all love stories have to end in tragedy.
Why I rec it for this prompt: The character work is so rich and detailed in this coming-of-age story in a modern AU setting. There's so much thought that went into all the character interactions here, and I love the way that @reggieblk cleverly weaves in elements from plays and uses the theatre backdrop to develop in such a lovely and fraught and realistic way how Harry and Tom end up falling for each other.
*
Running list of recs:
Day 1: Favorite under 5k | Such a Noble Villain
Day 2: Comfort Fic | In Somno Veritas | Ouroboros
Day 3: Podfic | a taste so good (i'd die for it)
Day 4: Fic with Art | A Soulmate Like You
Day 5: A Non-AO3 Fic | The Anti-Midas
Day 6: Unreliable Narrator Fic | Anabiosis
Day 7: A Canon-Compliant Fic | In Your Soul is Sealed a Pleasure
Day 8: A Canon-Divergence Fic | Thirst
Day 9: A Rare Pair Fic | dust in your pocket | A Breed Apart
Day 10: A Fest Fic | In Your Image
Day 11: A Dark Fic | As Portioned from a Whole
Day 12: A WIP Rec | Lover's Spit | Revolution of Configured Stars
Day 13: A Fic >100k Words | One Year In Every Ten | if we were lovers
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@hprecfest Day 10, 11 and 12
Posting three days worth of recs cos real life got in the way of posting it on their said days :P enjoy!
Day 10 - A fest fic
Nymphadora by @bluethepineapple
Written for the @womenofthehouseofblack , this fic is dark fairytale about families - families you are part of, families you have left behind and the complicated love that runs through both. The implied parallel in conversation between Andromeda and Tonks to Andromeda and Bellatrix is particularly haunting.
Summary:
Nymphadora (Greek) n. "The gifts of the Nymphs"
Andromeda could only watch as her daughter set off to war.
The Rougarou by @evesaintyves
Wolfstar.
I am big champion of reading everything written by Eve, but this fic is my favourite from her! This fic is steeped in grief and death post First War, and even as Remus tries his best to hide away from it all, New Orleans haunts him. It's a beautiful piece and I keep rereading it time and again.
Summary:
After the end of the first war, Remus goes to New Orleans to forget.
Day 11 - A dark fic
Three Knocks Upon the Door by @lunapwrites
Lily/Tonks.
This fic! Such effective imagery and contextaulisation for the quotes we know from canon. The Lily in this story has a hypnotic quality to her, and you can't help be drawn in - like Tonks.
Summary:
Knocking on wood three times is said to bring good fortune; but three knocks on your window or door without a clear cause is an omen of death.
In this case, it's a little of both.
(In which Tonks gets suspended from field duty, and takes matters into her own hands.)
First and Last and Always by Vermoulian
Sirius Black/Severus Snape.
The Snirius discord server is in love with this fic - and I can see why. It is beautifully written and makes you sit viscerally in Snape's headspace, to the point that sometimes you are discomfited.
Summary:
Black had been nearly skeletal when he came out of Azkaban, but he’d put on muscle again.
He prowled, and he loomed, and whatever earthy animal quality he’d had as a younger man had transmuted into something feral and predatory, during his twelve years of imprisonment.
Severus had his wand. He swallowed hard. His wand. Magic. His only defense, because Black outweighed him by at least three stone. But magic was more than enough. Severus had never needed physical prowess. His magical strength, and the keenness of his mind, gave him the advantage.
Except when it didn’t.
Day 12 - A WIP you are following
Beasts by @whinlatter
Ginny Weasley coming of age fic? Ginny Weasley fic that addresses all the canon gaps of Hinny relationship in a layered way? Sign me up! I have always liked Ginny, but beyond wondering about how Chamber of Secrets affected her - I never cared for her. Whinlatter makes you care about her interior life, makes you see that post war Hinny isn't going to be as easy as breathing. Basically, it's love.
Summary:
Ginny Weasley comes of age among them: the beasts, the wild things of their world.
(or: how the youngest Weasley won the Hanging Out With Hagrid Award).
Canon compliant, multi-chapter, non-linear narrative, Golden Gen, PS through post-DH (1981-1999). Harry/Ginny.
The War of Roses by @saintsenara
Sirius Black/Severus Snape.
A canon divergent Snirius fic from asenora? I slammed the subscribe button even before reading it - but having read the first chapter, I greatly enjoy the emphasis on what Azkaban has done to Sirius and I cannot wait to see where she takes this.
Summary:
Sirius Black does not die. But this does not mean that it is easy for him to live.
Or: a butterfly flaps its wings and Sirius does not go to the Department of Mysteries. What follows from that twist of fate is a story about the long, destructive shadow of a schoolboy rivalry; a story about surviving, and how surviving is sometimes more difficult than dying; a story about the fragility of beauty, the gentleness of hope, and the value of choice.
It is also a love story.
Scylla and Charybdis by @saintsenara
Severus Snape/Lord Voldemort.
I love the way Asenora writes Snape - his insecurity, his attraction to power, danger and darkness. I love how the narrative has cuts from his older self reflections, and I am really curious to see where she will take this. It also has Snirius crumbs so large that we could make a sandwich.
Summary:
Severus Snape just wants somewhere to belong.
This will turn out to be a curse.
#nymphadora tonks#andromeda tonks#sirius black#remus lupin#wolfstar#lily evans#snirius#severus snape#ginny weasley#hinny#lord voldemort
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Day 2: A comfort fic
The Velveteen Rabbit
Asenora on AO3 | @saintsenara on tumblr • 3k, G • Mrs Cole & Tom Riddle
A boy has scarlet fever and wants his mother. He gets Mrs Cole instead.
Rec: So maybe this isn’t the most conventional choice for comfort—baby Tom Riddle, in an orphanage, featuring main character Mrs Cole—but it was the first thing to come to mind, and I was delighted to find it tagged as that! I thought the author really captured, through so many little details of worldbuilding and writing, what it might feel like to walk in her shoes. A lovely glimpse into Tom’s childhood.
Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47007811
--
@hprecfest | hprecs on dreamwidth | my #hprecfest picks
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HP Rec Fest - Day 17
Prompt: A fic that made you cry @hprecfest
Catmint
Characters: Minerva McGonagall, Pomona Sprout
Creator: Asenora
Rating: K/G
Word Count: 1,592
Summary: The day after the War ends, grief is green.
Why You Should Check It Out:
This is an achingly lovely and painful portrait of the quiet, otherwordly devastation of war, with just the right whisper of optimism. The perfect post-battle moment that reveals so much about these two characters in a small, poignant scene.
The Many Uses of Lavender
Pairing: Minerva/Severus
Creator: evilbean
Rating: M/R
Warning: aftermath of torture
Word Count: 3,977
Summary: This story starts during the night after the tragic ending of the Triwizard Tournament in Book 4.
According to the “A Daily Herb for Everyday Ailments” book that Minerva used to consult for her regular stress headaches, lavender could be used to treat an array of disagreements. Its main uses, however, were listed as follows: soothing pain, reducing stress, and relieving insomnia.
She had to admit, in hindsight, that it made a lot of sense.
Why You Should Check It Out:
The rhythm of this fic gives it a palpable sense of impending doom, switching between the comfort the characters provide one another and the shocking realities of war. An achingly beautiful fic.
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Fic Rec
Title: The Snow Child by Asenora ( The Snow Child - Asenora - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own] )
Why you like it: Folklore horror vibes, and the story of Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Snr. The ending is horrifying.
HP Leading Lady: Merope Gaunt, Cecilia (identified in the novels as Tom Riddle Snr's girlfriend)
Theme: Villainous Vixens
thanks for another great rec, @ashesandhackles!
FIC REC!
Title and author: The Snow Child by Asenora @saintsenara
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a girl who wished for a child with hair as black as a raven's wing, and skin as white as snow, and eyes as red as blood.
Leading ladies: Merope Gaunt
What's to love: A gorgeously written fairy-tale like fic, with horror, intrigue, and the charm of an actual fairy tale. It's mixed in with the creepiness of the Gaunts, the excess of the Riddles, and the lengths Merope goes to. This fic would be perfect for the themes of week 8, Villainous Vixens!
send fic recs if you have one, self-recs and self-promo always welcome!
Post
#merope gaunt#merope riddle#tom riddle#lord voldemort#tom riddle sr#tom marvolo riddle#the gaunt family#the riddles#ladies of hp#ladies of hp fest
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5 Short Fic Recs for Friday!
happy friday! got some recs for you!! i didn't read a lot but I checked out some fics from other rec lists and read some canon blind subscriptions! that worked out great.
Time Has a Funny Kind of Violence by 2Nienna2. Cho character study. 1000 words. Rated M. Really loved the writing and the Cho POV here. She is drawn to Harry — not primarily because of Harry himself, but because they are, in some way, the same. Knowing that he was there, in the last moments, when she was not, pulls at her with an insistent painful interest. That they both came into contact — for a bit — with Cedric, and thus have a sort of shared fate.
2. Also Spake Zarathustra by eldritcher. 1400 words. Rated G. Ken character study. If you are like me and literally everybody I know you probably heard about the Barbie movie! This rec is not a HP rec... It's a Barbie rec! Ken decides he wants to be Barbie because Barbie is cool and Ken is just Ken! It's actually really sweet and wholesome because Barbie ofc is supportive. Lots of gender and social satire. Also lots of classical music. Highly recommend because it's one of those 20 genres in a trenchcoat type of fic! Don't let the fandom stop you from reading it. It's 110% worth in going canon blind. <3
3. The Snow Child by Asenora. 3000 words. Rated T. Tom Riddle Sr./Merope Gaunt. I got this from @ashesandhackles rec post . Omg loved it. It's a fairytale horror take on Merope/Tom Riddle Sr. Really love how the author got the vibe of the fairytale to match the fic perfectly. Also love how the writing says a lot w/o saying a lot. ‘You may think you have him now,’ she says to herself. ‘But one day he will give me a child with skin as white as this snow.’
4. Contredanse by Jay Tryfanstone. 4000 words. Rated T. Caroline Bingley/Elizabeth Benett. Omg love the ending. Love the Elizabeth POV. Love everything! I am actually on a Tryfanstone reading binge this year. One of my all time fav authors and love them so much so ofc reading everything. Thus Elizabeth's view of Miss Bingley evolved. It was clear, she believed, that being of a subservient nature, Miss Bingley had followed the unconscious lead of others.
5. Hunting the Unicorn by therealsnape. 10300 words. Rated M. Minerva McGonagall/Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank. I got this from @kellychambliss rec post. Love the characterizations and the banter. Omg the banter! It's on the longer side compared to the other fics on this list but don't miss out on it! Highly recommend if you want some snarky Friday vibes! Thanks to Old Jeremy, Pye was a king. He was a god. He was officially the best thing since Merlin and tea in a bag.
#fic recs#friday fic recs#five fic recs for friday#five short fic recs#hp#pride and prejudice#femslash#hp femslash#barbie movie 2023#character studies#recs
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💯/📚
Thanks for the ask, anon!
💯 A fic that makes you think #writergoals
Vetus Amicus by @floreatcastellumposts. It's a tremendous work - there are so many pieces that stick with me, months after reading it. It's one of the finest pieces of writing I've had the pleasure of reading.
📚 A fic you wish you could display on your bookshelf
Bookbinding by Asenora/@saintsenara. I have reread this piece THREE TIMES since it was published for the @ladiesofhpfest. It hasn't even been up for a month. It's majestic. Do yourself a favor and read it.
Fic Recs Ask Meme
#fic rec#fic recs#harry potter fanfiction#harry potter#tom riddle#tom marvolo riddle#moaning myrtle#myrtle warren
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asenora i will listen to anything you have to say about these characters ever. please tell us what the tea is with dron
as i rummage through the backlog of messages in my inbox the thing that i have discovered is that you girlies [gender neutral] are absolutely clamouring for citizenship of dron nation.
[thank you to @spectral-kitty, @thesilverstarling, and two mystery anons!]
to which i say, the borders are open, baby. you just have to read the following manifesto:
why fandom needs to stop sleeping on dron
something i am continually banging on about, as regular readers know, is the harry potter series' fondness for assigning [male] characters to narrative mirror pairings.
exploring these pairings is interesting in and of itself without a romantic dimension being involved - i could talk for hours about the mirrored approach to guilt and grief in snape and sirius' characterisation - but it's also true that several of the most interesting ships which can be drawn [however non-canonically] from the text are between the two halves of each mirror pairing.
tomarrymort is the obvious one, snack [or starprince or snirius or whatever we're calling it] is starting to get the attention it deserves, but people are still sleeping on draco malfoy/ron weasley [and also, may i say, on lucius malfoy/arthur weasley and narcissa malfoy/molly weasley], largely - i fear - due to the sheer popularity of drarry and dramione.
i'll be honest that i really don't like dramione, and i'm generally ambivalent towards drarry, but i do love dron. and the narrative mirror aspect is entirely the reason why.
ron and draco begin the series as mirror archetypes within the genre conventions of a children's boarding school romp. ron is the loyal, humble sidekick of the everyman protagonist, draco is the everyman protagonist's posh, stuck-up rival. both are insiders to the world of the story - whereas harry, the reader surrogate, is not - who introduce harry to the positive and negative aspects of the wizarding world respectively.
as a result, ron and draco are mirrors in terms of personality, and are much more similar to each other than either is to harry or hermione. this doesn't, of course, preclude ronarry [a ship i adore] or romione [which i've defended here] or drarry or dramione [if ya nasty], but it introduces a specific - and very interesting - tension into the pairing which is absent from these other ships.
both ron and draco have shared positive traits - they're both loyal [and their loyalty is very practical and pragmatic - ron is not hagrid, whose faith in e.g. dumbledore is totally unwavering; draco is not bellatrix, whose faith in voldemort is the same], they're both highly observant, they're both quick-witted, they're both capable of doing the right thing - if not always immediately [which is, in fact, more admirable than being preternaturally willing to suffer and sacrifice], and so on.
they also have shared negative traits. they're both attention-seeking [ron fucking loves nearly being knifed by sirius and you just know draco was seething], self-aggrandising, insecure, sulky, and predisposed to jealousy.
and this is a gift for authors, because it means that dron butt heads in a relationship in ways which allow for real character growth... or otherwise.
one issue that i have with drarry is that it often feels like the change either one goes through within a fic is kind of out of character. for example, you have a harry who feels insecure and haunted by his ill-treatment of draco [this is a man whose response to committing attempted murder is to be raging that it reduces the time he has free to hit on ginny], or a harry who is chasing after a cool and sophisticated draco who eventually learns to open up [whereas if there's two things draco isn't, it's someone who keeps his thoughts to himself and someone who isn't a distinctly unsophisticated flop].
dron, however, react to conflict in the same way - which means that the two of them finding themselves in conflict with each other absolutely slaps. they also have similar levels of emotional intelligence, and are likely - if they're inclined to - to be able to communicate with each other and work through issues surprisingly effectively. they can be a mess, or they can be a happy-ever-after, and i like that in a ship.
but, while ron and draco are mirror archetypes, they are specifically children's literature mirror archetypes. ron's role as harry's guide to the world diminishes in the later books, as the series' horizons move beyond hogwarts to think about wizarding society and voldemort's impact upon it more widely [he is replaced by characters such as dumbledore]; while harry becomes considerably less bothered by the pettiness of draco's rivalry with him [concerned as it is with things like being good at quidditch and getting away with misbehaviour at school] as the enemies he's focused on shift to being the resurrected voldemort and his death eaters.
which is to say that dron makes considerably more sense within a hogwarts setting than drarry.
as i've said elsewhere, an issue i have with drarry is that it's frequently written in a way which suggests that harry and draco have a mutual obsession with each other - while the actual evidence of canon is that, while draco is [as his archetype demands] preoccupied with what harry's doing, harry rarely gives the impression of caring what his rival is up to unless directly compelled to by draco's own attention-seeking.
ron, in contrast, spends a lot of time noticing things about draco unprompted - he can, for instance, recall overhearing him boasting offhand about what broom he owns in philosopher's stone - and retaining this information in order to deploy it at the opportune time to get a rise out of him. he delights constantly in his misfortune [him being hyped for days because draco's annoyed harry gets a firebolt is beautiful]. he's ready to throw hands with him at any given opportunity, often giving those of us who thrive on cheap innuendo plenty of material in the process [draco finds himself, for example 'on all fours, banging the ground with his fist' after having ron's wand pointed in his face... same, girl.] and he tends to consider draco much more integral to the various shenanigans which take place in the castle than harry does [ron is the main proponent of the 'draco malfoy is the heir of slytherin' theory in chamber of secrets - and he is shook when draco reveals that he's wrong].
and draco does the same. he comes into the trio's compartment on the train in goblet of fire and immediately starts telling ron how unfashionable his dress robes are. he obsesses over ron's position as gryffindor keeper for months - and, of course, makes up a song about it, which isn't exactly helping him pull off 'i don't think about you at all', is it? - and ron is profoundly affected by the taunts in way that harry, who doesn't really care what draco thinks of him, isn't. and he constantly goes out of his way to provoke ron into trying to punch him [him shoulder-barging ron in half-blood prince just after harry's essentially outed him as a death eater in madam malkins... exquisite pettiness].
all of which is to say, their interactions feel very teenage and petty and silly all the way through to the end of half-blood prince in a way that draco's interactions with harry and hermione don't, and - therefore - i sincerely think that dron can be made to work much more plausibly as a pairing in fics set while the characters are at school.
my final point in favour of dron is that they mirror each other in their approach to their other relationships, and the tension this causes is really interesting to explore.
both ron and draco have mirrored attitudes towards their place within their own families - something neither harry nor hermione can have with draco for obvious reasons. ron is one of many siblings and feels overlooked in the crowd; draco is an only child and feels overburdened by the visibility, especially once his father is sent to azkaban. they both conform to behaviours expected of them by family [they are both in the same hogwarts house as generations of their family, they share their families' political views etc.]. they are of the same social class and their families both have a reasonably similar level of political influence [despite what we're told about his insignificance, arthur weasley is known to everyone in the ministry and he's able to throw his weight around to influence policy even before the promotion he receives in half-blood prince], but their material circumstances are divergent. they both heavily resemble their fathers - to the extent that they are immediately recognisable as each man's son - and spend their schooldays defending family honour by playing out lucius and arthur's own petty feud [lucius and arthur - and, indeed, narcissa and molly - are also narrative mirrors, and we deserve many more enemies-to-lovers fics featuring them]. and the course their lives take during the war is dictated as much by their role within their families as it is by their relationship with harry - the scrambling post-dumbledore order operating out of the burrow is a mirror image of the ascendant voldemort operating out of malfoy manor.
they are also obviously defined by their mirrored relationship with harry - most interestingly by a major similarity in their attitude towards him: that both struggle with how jealous they are of harry.
this leads to lots of excellent tension which just isn't possible in drarry or dramione. how do both sets of parents react to the news their sons are in love? how do ron and draco's relationships with harry change as they find each other? how does draco cope with the hustle and bustle of life at the burrow? how does ron deal with having to have dinner at the manor [particularly interesting because the world in which draco lives is one that's familiar to him - he's not going to be shocked by any of the weird stuff in that house, he knows how it all works, so he can ruin christmas by deciding to have his dad arrest lucius for fun instead]?
it's messy, and fun, and it sustains me.
and some recs for the lads?
collateral damage by @danpuff-ao3, which starts out with both of the lads working out their... issues with harry and ends with declarations of going to lunch with each other's mothers.
dance the night away (aka it's true love, you bastards) by evandar, which has as its premise ron and draco ending up, largely by accident, going to the yule ball together.
this great stage of fools by @nanneramma, which correctly demonstrates how ron is charming enough that him being supremely annoying is actually loveable.
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getting back into the swing of @hprecfest, because there's no better time to gas up the main wip i'm following and its lovely author.
day twelve: a work in progress
beasts by @whinlatter
harry potter/ginny weasley
teen
why i recommend it:
because it's doing several things which are very rare in fandom.
it's a look at complex and nebulous concepts - ones which don't fit neatly into narrative arcs, and yet are shaped perfectly here - such as justice, resistance, and grief, which manages to explore these things with both a real emotional heft and a lightness-of-touch. beasts can be devastating, absolutely, but where it really shines is in the fact that it's very, very funny - and funny in that extremely petty, teenage way which has you cringing - in how it approaches how ginny and her friends would start rebuilding their lives once voldemort was dead. [because of course teenagers dealing with the aftermath of horror would make stupid jokes and have ridiculous parties!]
it's also a ship fic - and not only that, but a canon ship fic - which examines its endgame couple critically and deeply. one of the reasons i don't otherwise read a lot - or, really, any - hinny is because i find the standard race towards all was well quite trite. beasts actually thinks about the tension which their massively divergent experiences of the war and its aftermath would cause in harry and ginny's relationship - and it does so by showing two fundamentally imperfect and human people doing their best to deal with that fact. ginny's characterisation is excellent - she's a flop and a star all at once.
it is also - and i think this is worth saying, because she's too humble to actually do so herself - written by somebody who goes under the radar when people are shouting out fandom icons. whinlatter is a sweetheart, whose intelligence is lightly worn, whose fandom presence is marked by being exceptionally kind and a refreshing absence of ego, who deserves every ounce of praise she receives, and who will one day be forced to admit that she, like her beloved ginny, is only pretending not to be fascinated by the other dark-haired orphan of her acquaintance.
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here's an unhinged ship for you courtesy of my mother, who is not remotely interested in shipping or fandom, but who was inordinately delighted by the idea of a crackship when i explained it to her and popped off with Aragog/The Enchanted Ford Anglia - a concept that has haunted me ever since.
anon, i don't want to alarm you... but i think your mother might be more interested in fandom than she claims.
and, indeed, that she might have had a wee rummage on the @hprarepairfest discord server, where she will have found a fic by @rainstormradish, which meets all her criteria...
honestly - go with this piece, i guarantee you won't be disappointed. it's a perfect encapsulation of one of the principles of fandom i believe in most strongly: that you can write yourself into - and out of - the most ludicrous premises in a way which is genuinely beautiful if you simply have enough nerve.
#asks answered#asenora's opinions on ships#unhinged and deranged ships#asenora fic recs#i will back this fic with my life
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rare pair tag game
thanks for the tag, @said-snape-softly :)
i'm pretty sure everyone has done this by now, but if you'd like to, please consider this a blanket tag.
apart from all the tomarry and the odd dabble in remadora, i am a rare-pair enthusiast, so i am delighted to spread some propaganda here... the criterion i've used for a rare-pair is less than 2500 works on ao3.
pairs, little metas, fic recommendations, and some suggestions for authors to follow under the cut.
sirius black/severus snape
why i ship it:
this one can just about claim to be a rare-pair.
sirius and severus are narrative mirrors, whose complicated relationship to themselves and to each other is crucial for driving several of the most important arcs in the series.
in particular, sirius - constantly haunted by guilt and grief over his role in the death of the man he loved [you can decide if his love for james is platonic or not, but i definitely think the text thinks it isn't...], trapped in his childhood home, unable to have his real loyalties acknowledged before his death by the fact he's on the run - leads harry through his journey in hero-worshipping, then being disappointed in, then forgiving james. and then promptly dies.
this is one of harry's most significant areas of personal growth - it begins to chip away at his rather black-and-white morality, which is finally destroyed by his ability to confront the complexity of dumbledore in deathly hallows - but it is also key narratively: harry coming to understand james starts to hint to the reader that it is lily - otherwise absent from her son's conception of himself - who is the key to the mystery...
which brings us to severus - constantly haunted by guilt and grief over his role in the death of the woman he loved, trapped in his childhood home, unable to have his real loyalties acknowledged before his death by the fact he's a spy - who gives harry, and us, the final piece of the puzzle. and then promptly dies.
put them together, though? well, you get the delicious tension of two fundamentally broken people - who cannot comprehend the possibility of their own redemption - bound to each other. can they forgive each other and themselves? is it a disaster? the story can go either way.
and even in fluff there is so much potential for d r a m a between sirius' recklessness and severus' cunning, sirius' emotional control and severus' temper, the fact that sirius is canonically hot and severus is canonically not, how they react to harry and draco [i don't usually accept the fanon that severus is his godfather, except when it means snack can be fighting about it], and so on.
and i'm a sucker for two bitter old men getting a happy ending. sue me.
want to give it a read?
if you trust nothing else i say in my life [and why should you] you can trust this - second life by nwhiker and cassandra7 is one of the greatest pieces of writing i have ever seen, not only in this pairing but in this fandom full stop. it's a profound and solemn meditation on loving and grieving, choice and chance, and the great pain caused by the divide between the magical and the muggle worlds.
then, for gorgeous angst with a happy ending - two boys kissing by @writcraft and the merit in trying by brightened
albus dumbledore/tom riddle | voldemort
why i ship it:
the facetious answer is because they wouldn't be so obsessed with each other if there wasn't some sexual tension underneath it.
the facetious and nsfw answer is because it appeals to the part of me whose favourite book aged 11 was lolita
the serious answer is that they should be horrifying together: they're both liars; both incredibly self-righteous; both living behind masks which conceal their true emotions and motivations; dumbledore took one look at tom as an eleven-year-old, said "he reminds me of gellert", and then did nothing about it; tom thinks dumbledore's a hypocrite and is right, although not for the reasons he thinks; there is a colossal age gap; there is virtually no scenario in any timeline where they could be openly in a relationship unless one of them is concealing his identity; and - really, this seems quite minor in the grand scheme of things - they are constantly trying to destroy each other.
but.
intellectually, they are the only two characters in the series who could be the other's equal - i'm sure that violent arguments about the twelve uses of dragon's blood trigger the majority of their sexual encounters, and a man who's passionate about your research is hot.
if either of them ever fancy being honest - so, no - there is a shared cavernous [although, in tom's case, unacknowledged] grief in their lives which has shaped their not-as-divergent-as-the-text-thinks-they-are views on death, love, duty and so on. their active refusal to understand each other [i.e. dumbledore entirely misreading voldemort's motivations in the job interview scene] and commitment to constantly underestimating each other [i.e. voldemort bouncing around like an idiot in the chamber of secrets instead of using his brain and remembering what a phoenix is] could, in time, lead to something almost resembling acceptance. i mean, just imagine the hurt/comfort sex which happens when voldemort finds out about grindledore.
the way dumbledore describes the young riddle - "self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless" - is also an exact description of him. that each sees himself in the other canonically drives their hatred of each other, but it could also appeal to two very vain men in a much racier way. after all, who doesn't want to bang their narrative mirror?
and being an orphan probably doesn't seem so bad when you realise your boyfriend's family is aberforth.
want to give it a read?
i can't recommend concordance by @laeveteinn enough, particularly for one of the best-written dumbledores i've ever seen. i find dumbledore is often written either as far more whimsical than i'd like, or far more fiery and radical [when one of his most interesting personality traits in canon is his tendency towards inaction], but this dumbledore is the perfect balance of contradictions, while tom is his canonical feral self, longing to perceived, rather than the emotionless sociopath of so many other stories.
i also recommend as an entire ocean in a drop by eldritcher, which really leans into just how similar these two are underneath all the artifice.
albus dumbledore/severus snape
why i ship it:
well, we've had dumbledore with one lost boy, let's have him with another [i haven't been brave enough to venture into dumbledore/harry yet, but i'll take recommendations...]
as with riddledore, we have the potential for horror here: a vast power imbalance; enormous age gap; the fact dumbledore sends snape out to potentially die every time he goes off to voldemort; and - this is the crucial one - the fact that dumbledore's recognition of himself in snape is pure self-loathing ["you disgust me"] manifested in punishment [allowing snape to be humiliated in front of fudge, not stopping the presumed-to-be-real moody searching his office, making him give harry occlumency lessons, not letting him teach defence against the dark arts].
but then this stops, when snape does the tremendously brave thing of agreeing to kill dumbledore, and their dynamic equalises, as dumbledore recognises that snape is courageous, steadfast, and redeemed. i'm always struck in half-blood prince by the fact that dumbledore has it with harry's sniping about snape and straight-up tells him to shut up, as well as by the fact that he very nearly gives the game away and confesses why snape switched sides [the thing he promised not to do] when harry finds out it was snape who gave voldemort the prophecy.
and within this equalised dynamic - so this hot geriatric sex is happening in the afterlife, i guess - we have two men who are intellectual close-to-equals, who understand grief and guilt, whose aesthetic senses are charmingly mismatched, who are rarely honest but might be for each other, and who have lots of profound similarities which might lead somewhere...
want to give it a read?
cheerfully disregarding everything i've just said about how snumbledore could work, i highly recommend in infinite remorse of soul by @perverse-idyll, which is a chilling look at how dumbledore uses the power imbalance between the two to assuage his own guilt through snape's humiliation.
for something much more wholesome, i'm a big fan of byzantium by eldritcher
petunia dursley/severus snape
why i ship it:
because vernon is a dick.
i'm fond of petunia, who i think is one of the most interesting characters in the series because of how full of contradictions she is, and who i think is also a victim in fandom spaces of how the adult cast was aged up for the films [in canon, she's only in her early twenties when lily dies, and the implication is that vernon is a good deal older than her)] which makes her inadequacies, such as her inability to truly care for either child in the household, seem much more nuanced than they do if she's pictured as a middle-aged woman with considerable life experience.
like snape, she teeters on a knife edge between various chasms: she is a working-class girl from the midlands made good in middle-class surrey, he is a working-class half-blood boy who spends most of his life in pureblood circles; she ends up with her whole life wrapped up in a square little house when she's barely out of her teens, he ends up with his whole life wrapped up in spying at the same age; she hates the wizarding world and yet covets it, he hates the muggle world and yet cannot escape it; she loves lily and she hates her and she loathes her for dying, he... well, you know the rest.
want to give it a read?
i was first convinced by this pairing by the lovely regretfully yours by @maria-de-salinas, which takes both snape and petunia's awkwardness and bitterness and moulds it into something really tender.
i also highly recommend barking at the moon by rinsbane, the summary of which speaks for itself.
merope gaunt/tom riddle sr.
why i ship it:
our first canon pairing, and probably the most problematic of the canon relationships, since the series never acknowledges that tom sr. is a rape victim.
but i have found myself recently in my merope era and, in particular, in an attempt to give her more nuance than she gets in canon. as i've said to anyone who'll listen in the three broomsticks discord server, i loathe the implication in canon that merope dies because she just cba to live [since it directly justifies voldemort's belief that her death was shameful] and prefer to see her as someone who was desperate to escape a truly horrifying life [the fact she's going to be forced into an incestuous relationship with morfin is right there in canon...] and so did something she didn't have the capacity to understand the implications of [this is not a woman who's ever heard of consent] because she thought it would give her the first chance to be happy in her life, watched it all crash and burn around her, and would have very much liked to have lived to raise her son.
i doubt there was anything real or tender in her relationship with tom sr., of course, and his escape - while merely a brief stay of execution from his son's perspective - is tremendously brave. it's impossible to write tom/merope fluff [although i respect you if you're inclined to try] but fanfiction gives a space to explore the intricacies of their relationship which canon doesn't allow, and i'm obsessed.
want to give it a read?
i'm recommending myself here, and assuring you that you will enjoy: enchanter's nightshade, which explores how merope's attempts to keep her husband enslaved fail; the snow child, which treats the relationship as folk-horror; and the shack at the end of the lane, in which there is redemption, in the end.
the best exploration of tom sr. dealing with the fallout of the relationship is @phantomato's exquisite ganymede, which feels so truly embodied that you can't pull yourself away from the page.
bellatrix lestrange/tom riddle | voldemort
why i ship it:
our second canon pairing, i am obsessed with these two and the tragedy and - to some extent - tenderness bound up in their relationship [which can be proven to be there because noted softy @whinlatter loves them].
i've written before about my conviction - in contrast to a lot of bellatrix fans - that her relationship with rodolphus is utterly miserable, and that voldemort is the only man in her life who can understand her desire to make a life for herself which is not constrained by the gendered expectations of her social class.
obviously, lord voldemort is not a shining paragon of a boyfriend [and he is an awful choice as a baby daddy, bella, get it together], but i think the enormous power imbalance is perhaps slightly less enormous than is sometimes assumed - certainly, she tells him to his face in half-blood prince that he's wrong to trust snape [she's a clever woman], voldemort never physically punishes her for anything [rip to lucius malfoy, who seems to get picked for this in her stead], and voldemort tolerates a surprising amount of nonsense from her which shatters his mystique.
all of which is to say... the scream when she dies isn't just because he's losing the war.
want to give it a read?
tee hee, i'm recommending myself again, and encouraging you to take a look at: atramentum, bellamort's last afternoon together before voldemort goes to the potters; nor all that glisters gold, bellatrix's life - including her relationship with voldemort - through sirius' eyes; and death (eaters) in paradise, because murderous psychopaths deserve crack fics too.
draco malfoy/tom riddle | voldemort
why i ship it:
because the ship name is taco.
these two are a pairing which i enjoy with my tongue firmly in my cheek [and tom's tongue firmly in draco's], as i do with most other things in which draco is a main character [do i want to read drarry angst? no! do i want to chuckle? absolutely!], although this should not be taken as saying that many of taco's fabulous authors don't manage to make the pairing entirely plausible.
in fact, consensual taco [non-con is, of course, its own beast] often has some of the best characterisation of both tom [fretful, mercurial, stubborn, and nowhere near as charming as he thinks he is] and draco [prissy, a very good judge of character, someone who likes being taken care of, and much braver than he appears if he absolutely has to be] i've seen in the fandom, largely because - unlike other voldemort-centric ships [especially tomarry, but also voldemort + any of the adult death eaters] - there's no sense of inevitability there. these two aren't connected by a shared bit of soul, or a prophecy, or having gone to school together, or having been hooked in by voldemort in the first war when he was unassailable.
they have to choose each other. or, more accurately, draco has to choose tom, and tom has to get chosen.
and the results have me entertained.
want to give it a read?
then you will want to have a look at the travelling cabinet by @the-paper-monkey [and its sequel, bluebeard], truly the gold standard of taco content with an absolutely brilliant draco, whose sheer capacity to cling on and make himself an irremovable part of tom's life may just end up changing the course of history.
narcissa malfoy/severus snape
why i ship it:
because i am in deep with the conspiracy theory that it's canon. i am absolutely certain that narcissa is the person that voldemort is referring to at the end of deathly hallows - "he desired her, that was all, but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him". it seems highly unlikely to me that the canonical voldemort would give a shit about snape fancying any random pureblood [although the snapemort version is, naturally, hugely jealous], but snape having had some sort of liaison with narcissa, and the ability knowing this gives voldemort to humiliate snape, narcissa, the memory of lily, bellatrix, lucius, and draco is definitely information he would go out of his way to remember...
plus, how do you know where he lives, babe? v suspicious.
want to give it a read?
if you want some fluff, you will very much enjoy the incredibly sweet the reformed man by gingertart50, which features narcissa nursing snape back to health post-nagini and is a favourite re-read for me when i'm drunk and it's christmas.
if you want some very-much-not-fluff, other women and of purer blood by yours truly will scratch the itch...
minerva mcgonagall/severus snape
why i ship it:
because i'm an equal-opportunity age-gap fan, and there is far too little older woman/younger man in the fandom.
and look, i'll admit it, i'm a fan of the fanon that snape and mcgonagall are friends prior to dumbledore's death - i'm not sure it's canonically plausible, but this sign can't stop me because i can't read - and i like the idea of that blossoming into something more, especially in fics where snape survives the second war. after all, he is a man who definitely needs to be treated quite strictly [and i don't just mean in the staff room], there is a shared loneliness and grief to them both, they're intellectual equals despite the age gap, and bickering about quidditch is absolutely fine as a method of foreplay.
plus, you can't tell me dumbledore's portrait doesn't ship it.
want to give it a read?
for a fic which shows minerva at her acerbic - and yet still sensual - best, always but not necessarily forever by gingertart50 is an old, fluffy, and very funny, favourite.
for something much more bittersweet, that good night by kelly_chambliss has my heart.
severus snape/tom riddle | voldemort
why i ship it:
because voldemort is canonically down bad for it - there is no need to believe snape's ridiculous cover story for not attending his resurrection, to try and spare lily as a treat for his man, and to give him a nice, painful death which allows the narrative to move on and harry to defeat him if the dark lord isn't firmly in his simp era.
more seriously, they obviously have an enormous amount in common, particularly in terms of their backgrounds [harry draws a connection between all three of them, but actually the fact that harry is rich in the wizarding world, not a slytherin, and with a muggle mother, therefore giving him a pureblood name, means he can't relate to the post-childhood experience of both halves of snapemort].
as a result, i think snape is the death eater who comes the closest to understanding voldemort's motivations - above all, the fact that he's not seeking an oligarchy, which the malfoys etc. obviously believe - while voldemort is someone snape feels understands his intellectual interests and his creativity.
want to give it a read?
boy, are you in luck, because i myself have a snapemort wip - scylla and charybdis. it is not wholesome.
tom riddle/myrtle warren
why i ship it:
because it started as crack and now i love them.
in particular, i just have so much respect for being incredibly annoying as a method of seduction, and i think myrtle's commitment to just following tom around chattering at him - and, therefore, without her realising it, preventing him from committing all sorts of crimes - is iconic.
want to give it a read?
then my unhinged rom-com - bookbinding - shall provide.
tom riddle | voldemort/ginny weasley
why i ship it:
because i enjoy seeing my dear friends who ship hinny shake and cry.
but also because ginny and tom have an enormous number of similarities, right down to the fact that they both have yew wands [if you're sick of people saying harry has an oedipus complex, you'll be delighted to be confronted with the mountain of evidence ginny reminds him of the villain who keeps trying to kill him instead].
they are both very good liars, quick thinking, remarkably resistant to shame, possessed of nerves of steel, predisposed to violence, brown-eyed, so hot they have harry gagged, and the profound enemy of someone whose surname is smith.
despite what he claims, tom was absolutely not just sat politely in that diary gritting his teeth while ginny complained about having second hand robes and idiot brothers. as he says, he opted "to start feeding [her] a few of my secrets", and i think it's justifiable from canon that they were at the very least half-truths [for example, i would not be shocked to discover he tells her he's a half-blood orphan brought up against his will in the muggle world - there's no other reason, i think, for him to successfully make her tell him these things about harry without it], which means that ginny has lots of lovely emotional leverage over him.
plus, as with tomarry, you have the element of "this is kind of inevitable" in the relationship, and the mysteries of fate are always sexy.
want to give it a read?
this is a tommary/hinny/tominny triad, but it has had me in a chokehold since the first time i read it - shameful company by merrivale, which, truly iconically, manages to be epilogue compliant.
#asenora fic recs#rare pair tag game#starprince#snirius#snack hp#riddledore#snumbledore#petunia dursley x severus snape#merope gaunt x tom riddle sr#bellamort#tom riddle x draco malfoy#snarcissa#minerva mcgonagall x severus snape#snapemort#tom riddle x myrtle warren#tom riddle x ginny weasley#lots to read
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for today's @hprecfest... it couldn't be anything else, could it?
day thirteen: a fic with over 100,000 words
almagest by eldritcher
harry potter/lord voldemort
mature | 134k words
why i recommend it:
let me be clear, if eldritcher has nobody willing to go into battle for them, then i am dead. they are one of the most talented writers i have ever encountered - and, surely, are the only person who could make me cry at james bond slash fic or think snape/giant squid is an entirely plausible ship - and they manage to combine a masterful prose style, woven through with references to classics, poetry, and history, with an emotional dexterity which is breathtaking. i would recommend all their work, but this is - i think - their main masterpiece.
its premise - in one sentence - is that harry, voldemort, and dumbledore hijack a space-shuttle and go to the moon to save the world. outside of that, it is a meditation on sacrifice, love in all its forms, the entwining of grief and love, and the pain of rebuilding after loss.
it is also a love story, as voldemort is shattered by the weight of it all, and harry puts him back together, which treats love very differently from the canon series - and all the better for it. here, we see the choice, duty, and sorrow in love, but also its capacity to break open, heal, restore, and pleasure. that eldritcher shows this beauty in decidedly non-vanilla smut - and, an increasing rarity in slash, in gay sex which actually feels gay - is all the more indication of their talent.
i have spoken elsewhere about how eldritcher’s voldemort is a major influence on my own - particularly their writing of him as someone lonely, bound by a code of honour, and a creature of sensation - and the voldemort of almagest is one of their most impressive versions, but harry and dumbledore also stand out in this story as very real, very human characters thrust into a celestial landscape and profoundly changed by what they encounter there.
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still on my backdated @hprecfest grind with...
day five: favourite fics which aren't from ao3
the cactus and the toad by mirrormarie
neville longbottom & severus snape
teen | 73k words
why i recommend it:
i am, as regular readers of my ramblings will be aware, on the record that snape's treatment of neville is something we need to examine primarily as a narrative device - he's so cruel to him because he's a mean teacher in a children's story, that's the starting point - and this fic does just that, examining how neville comes to terms with his childhood experiences of snape as he looks at them from the other side of the war.
it also does something i always enjoy seeing - it examines how post-war closure looks to characters who aren't harry, and how their reckoning with snape (who is alive - very much against his will - in this story) will be very different than harry's own.
and it's a striking piece of writing in that it is one of the only fics i've seen which approaches a 'cure' for frank and alice longbottom that does not magically fix everything, but which has results which are only partial and which are only the beginning of a road to recovery. i think that's important.
snape stared at it, then at neville, and neville saw, with considerable glee, that snape's natural impulse to say something nasty was warring with his obvious worry that neville would take the cactus away if provoked.
come slowly, eden by paimpont
molly weasley/lord voldemort
mature | 3k words
why i recommend it:
yes, you've read the pairing right.
because it does what all rare pair fics seek to do, and takes two characters whom it should be impossible to imagine any sort of love story between and manages it, through a brilliantly skilful character study of molly and her hopes and her contradictions.
he sat perfectly still, immovable. molly turned slowly around and busied herself at the stove, stirring the soup with an unsteady hand. if only he would kill me right now and leave, she thought. before the others come back. she could feel his glance lingering on her as she worked. she moved more slowly than usual, stirring the fragrant soup that needed no more stirring and adding pinches of unnecessary spices.
he made a slight noise, a quiet rustling of his cloak. molly turned halfway around and caught a glimpse of the white expressionless face. and suddenly she knew: he was hungry. molly always knew when someone was hungry.
the english opening by lordrowantree
fleur delacour/ron weasley
teen | 55k words
why i recommend it:
because it respects ron's canonical rizz and asks the very important question: what would happen if fleur said yes when he asked her to the yule ball?
and, in doing so, it also respects all the rest of ron's canonical traits - his intelligence, his kindness, his big-picture thinking, his sense of daring - and uses them to offer an exploration of fleur's character which is considerably kinder and more nuanced than the one she receives in canon.
plus, it'll teach you something about chess, which is a bonus.
as ron pulled out the pieces, fleur looked out at the setting sun. it was just above the tops of the mountains and it painted the sky an incredible, vibrant red. it lit up ron's face and hair so that it looked like he was wreathed in flames like the gods of old. maybe, she admitted to herself, britain wasn't all bad.
#hp rec fest#asenora fic recs#neville longbottom#severus snape#molly weasley#lord voldemort#fleur delacour#ron weasley
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Snape/James
Snape/James/Lily
thank you very much for the ask, anon!
james potter/severus snape
i have read it - and i've received some very interesting recs for it, which do make me see why people would be into it as a concept - but snames isn’t really a pairing i vibe with.
this is largely because - in my view - the two of them don’t have any particularly interesting points of narrative convergence or divergence in canon which can serve as a hook to grab the reader's attention as a non-canon pairing. snack - snape and sirius - is a hot ship because they’re narrative mirrors within the text: they have identical experiences of and attitudes towards grief, duty, atonement and so on, caused by the fact that they are both indirectly responsible for killing the person they love the most; they both have complicated relationships with their families; they are both outsiders among their peer groups; their differences are polar opposites - sirius is rich, snape is poor, sirius is an outsider within gryffindor, snape is an outsider within slytherin, sirius is attractive, snape is ugly; and so on.
but snames doesn’t have that spark. their differences don’t exist on a scale, like snape’s do with sirius, they just exist as separate categories of experience. james is uncomplicatedly beloved by his happy family, snape is not. james is an inherent insider, whose whole pureblood family have been in gryffindor, snape is an inherent outsider within slytherin on account of his poverty and blood-status. james is rich, but his wealth doesn’t come with strings attached, whereas sirius’ is obviously only something he’s permitted to access if he conforms to his parents’ restrictive social views and snape has none at all. james is a physical everyman - neither as ugly as snape nor as good-looking as sirius - and, therefore, someone who has no idea how it feels to stand out because of your looks [or name, or choices].
that said, james’ obvious sexual jealousy of snape could definitely be because he wants to bang him. i think we can all see him trying to get to lily by befriending her bestie, only to end up in love. good for him.
james potter/lily potter/severus snape
my thoughts on this can be distilled into a fic rec - the gorgeous the loves of the plants by eldritcher.
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