shostakobitchh

[shostakobitchh]

Chapter 9: nocturne in amber

The hush of the dungeon is broken only by the steady drip of wormwood into crystal vials and the low hum of flames beneath pewter cauldrons. Ariel sits at her usual bench, sleeves rolled to the elbow, brow furrowed as she stirs precisely widdershins. 

The potion in her cauldron glimmers a pale, cloudy gold — nearly perfect — and it will be. 

She narrows her focus, counting drops, feeling the swirl of thickened air, letting each careful task stretch out and fill her so there’s room for nothing else. The murmurs of other students fade to distant static. Only the gentle clink of stirring rod against cauldron, the faint, herbal sting of wormwood steam—these are real. These she can manage.

A shadow falls over her workspace.

Ariel doesn’t look up, but she feels it — the electric ache of being watched. Nott’s gaze is a steady pressure at the edge of her vision, intent enough for her knuckles to flush white around the handle of the ladle. It would be easy to snap at him — Why are you staring? — but she finds herself soothed by the certainty of it, the way he anchors her in place without a word.

He stands just close enough that his hip grazes the bench when he leans in, pretending to fuss with a rack of pipettes.

She fixes her gaze on the potion’s surface, refusing to look up though she can feel Nott’s attention like static across her skin. The memory of Belby’s grip hovers on her skin, raw and invisible. No matter how she scrubs or what bruise balm her father leaves by her bedside, it lingers — a hand at her throat in every shadowed corridor, a voice rasping filth just beneath the noise of the class.

She hates it. Hates that she lets it inside. Hates most of all that for one terrified heartbeat — pinioned against stone, pinned under fear — she’d gone still and almost let him win. She’d wanted to vanish, to close tightly as a fist and never have to be seen again.

And now Nott stands beside her — steady and silent — and she’s supposed to remember how to fucking open up — 

She risks a glance sideways. Nott is watching her without pretense now — his lips parted as if caught halfway to speech, hands braced on either side of the bench. His eyes soften when they meet hers, grey stormlight bruised by worry and want. 

Ariel wants him to reach for her — 

Until Snape’s voice cracks across the classroom like a whip.

“Mr Nott — am I to assume that your grade now consists of hovering about Miss Evans’ cauldron like an ill-trained house elf? Or have you simply forgotten that brewing requires even a mite of attention?”

Ariel jerks her gaze back to her potion, blood thrumming in her ears. The golden surface quivers — she nearly over-stirs, catching herself just in time.

Nott doesn’t flinch. He straightens slowly, the line of his spine stubborn and proud. “Just observing technique, sir. Evans is ahead of schedule.”

Snape lets the silence stretch — long enough for every student in the room to look up from their cauldrons, breath held as if waiting for a duel’s opening volley. “I see — were you planning to absorb skill by osmosis or is this another Slytherin innovation I’m meant to praise? Perhaps if I assign you remedial stirring, you’ll at last master the subtle art of not contaminating your neighbor’s work through sheer proximity.”

A ripple of uneasy laughter stirs at the back of the dungeon. Nott does not blink —  his jaw sets in that familiar, stubborn line.

“Ten points from Slytherin for dereliction,” Snape goes on, his voice flat. “and another five for the delusion that hovering near Miss Evans’ bench might somehow elevate your own performance.

Ariel reaches under the table, fingers closing around Nott’s hand, squeezing once — hard and sure. His thumb strokes the back of her knuckles. She feels the heat of Snape’s gaze drilling holes through both of them, but she doesn’t let go — not at first, anyway. 

The hour crawls by in a haze of stares and whispered calculations. When Snape calls time, Ariel sets down her ladle with unnecessary precision, refusing to meet his eye as she decants her potion into a labeled vial. Students form a line at the front of the classroom, vials clutched in nervous hands. Ariel waits until the last possible second before rising from her bench. 

Ariel forces herself not to flinch beneath Snape’s gaze. Instead, she places the vial squarely in front of him — hard enough that glass clicks against wood. 

“Here,” she says crisply. “Hope it lives up to your standards.”

Snape sets the vial down with deliberation. “If you wish for perfection rather than adequacy, I recommend less distraction in the future. I expect more from my apprentice.”

“If you want less distraction,” she mutters tightly. “stop using me as bait every time you need to prove a fucking point.”

She waits until she’s before she slips her hand beneath her collar and presses the locket’s rune. “Meet me. Astronomy Tower tonight. Please.”

There is no answer at first, just the faint tingle of magic humming against her throat.  

The reply comes at last: short, clipped, unmistakably Nott.

Understood.

[shostakobitchh]

Chapter 8: when light is taken

“Do you have any conception,” Snape says, voice trembling at the edges with a fierce pride that frightens more than it comforts. “of what you are capable of?”

Ariel’s lips part, but no answer comes. The question hangs there — a challenge and a benediction. He tightens his hold on her hands, grounding her to the battered armchair and the stone-anchored world. 

“You fought him off.” His eyes burn into hers now, demanding she not look away. “You did not beg or plead. Most grown wizards — most Aurors — would have frozen. You not only fought back, but you broke his grip and turned his own violence against him. I’ve seen men kill for less than what you achieved on instinct alone.”

Ariel tastes old copper in her mouth and wants to spit, to cry, to rage at the unfairness of this — of forests and stairwells and men who think her body is a battlefield for vengeance or desire. She swallows it instead, jaw clenched. She wants to say it doesn’t feel like a victory. The words choke in her mouth. They taste like salt and old nightmares.

Snape’s hands wrap tighter around hers, the pressure just shy of pain, rooting her here, refusing to let her drift away into memory or shame. His voice is low but relentless, the words hammered out as if he has forged them in secret, over years, and only now dares to wield them.

“You do not see yourself,” he says. “Not truly. For all your bluster and temper and that reckless mouth you inherited from your mother, you persist in believing your strength is borrowed — some scrap salvaged from others’ heroics, or a mask you wear to keep terror at bay, but I know what you are made of. I have seen it since the moment you first defied me in this castle, small and furious and already carrying more scar than most adults I’ve known.”

She wants to vanish into the cracked seams between stones, or run until the lake swallows her up, but she can’t — not with his hands anchoring her and his voice carving through every trembling defense.

“My brilliant girl,” he murmurs, tucking her hair back, wiping at the tears that have begun to fall. “Oh, my girl.” 

Snape waits, then — patient, unblinking — refusing to release her hands until she meets his gaze fully once more. There is no pity there, only an iron glint threaded through with something softer — concern so fierce it resembles devotion.

“I shouldn’t have left,” Ariel whispers at last, the confession breaking loose in a rush of shame. “If I’d listened — if I hadn’t run from Tonks — she must feel awful —” 

“Nymphadora is a professional,” Snape interrupts, the words cutting off her spiral. “And she will blame herself, because she is fond of you, and because she is foolish enough to think Auror training equips one to anticipate every window, every turning stair.” He squeezes her hands tighter, the pressure just shy of painful. “You will not take responsibility for his actions. You are not at fault for another’s depravity.”

Ariel bites back another apology, throat thick with unshed tears. Her palms, sandwiched between his, are sweaty and cold all at once. She can feel it trembling beneath his skin — the fear, the rage, the helplessness he masks beneath the veneer of control. It ripples through their joined hands like some barely leashed current. 

Her hands stop their trembling for the first time since the corridor. A strange warmth floods her chest — not the old hollow radiance that left her brittle and burning, but something steadier, more substantial.

Snape releases her right hand only to reach for the vial again. He does not thrust it into her palm this time, nor press it upon her with a command thinly disguised as care. Instead, he uncorks it and extends it delicately toward her — an offering rather than an order.

Ariel accepts it wordlessly, downing the bitter potion in one swallow. Almost immediately, the throbbing pain in her throat and wrists begins to subside.

"The tea as well," Snape adds, nodding toward her forgotten cup. "I've added a mild Calming Draught."

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“I know. You won’t.” 

She nods and takes a sip to appease him for now. 

"He said he'd been watching me," Ariel says finally, her voice scratchy from the strain. "That Death Eaters have enemies. That this was — payback."

Snape inhales sharply, his expression briefly hidden by the curtain of black hair. For a long moment, he doesn't turn, his shoulders rigid beneath his black robes. When he does face her, his expression is carefully neutral, but his eyes burn with something ancient and terrible.

"Marcus Belby's father was killed during the first War," he says quietly. "Damocles Belby."

"The inventor of Wolfsbane," Ariel murmurs, recognition flickering through her exhausted mind.

Snape inclines his head slightly. "He refused to brew for the Dark Lord. His death was made an example of. I was present."

The implication hangs in the air between them. Ariel pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

"So this was revenge. For something that happened before I was even born."

"The war casts long shadows.” 

Ariel stares into her tea, watching the ripples form as her hands tremble slightly once more.

"I will ask you one last time.” Snape tilts her chin up to look at him with one finger. “Did he touch you?"

She knows what he’s really asking. 

Ariel lets the question linger on her tongue, feeling the shape and heat of it, the plea and the terror and the fury that thread beneath. She thinks of Belby’s grip on her throat — too rough, too desperate to have done any more than bruise, of his hands clawing at her limbs but never slicking past her skin, of the place where violence had threatened but not conquered. 

“No,” she says. “He tried — I didn’t let him.” 

Snape rises in one fluid motion, crossing to the fireplace. His back to her, shoulders rigid as iron. "I should have killed him when I had the chance."

"And then what?" Ariel sets down her cup with a sharp clink. "You'd be in Azkaban, and I'd be alone. Is that what you want?"

"What I want is to ensure that Marcus Belby never draws another breath. What I want is to make him suffer as he intended to make you suffer." He turns to face her, his eyes fathomless. "But what I need is to keep you safe. Those two desires are — at odds."

"I'm not a child anymore. I fought in a war. I've faced worse than Marcus Belby."

"Have you? There are horrors in this world beyond the battlefield, Ariel."

She meets his eyes unflinchingly. "I know that. Better than most."

“Which is why you should have let me deal with him my way.” 

“No — I don’t want that.” 

A sharp, tense silence follows her words — so sharp that Ariel can feel it ringing in her very bones. She expects an explosion, but what comes is wearier. 

“Why?” 

"Because I'm afraid of what you'll become to protect me," she admits. "I've seen what happens when you're frightened for me. I remember what you did to Crouch — to Quirrell — to Lucius — would you like more names? I can do a roll call.”

Snape's jaw tightens. "And every single one deserved worse."

"That's not the point," Ariel says, running a hand through her tangled hair. "The point is that I can't bear to watch you destroy yourself for me. Not again. You deserve — rest.” 

Something shifts in Snape's expression — a softening around the eyes, a minute relaxation of the tense line of his mouth.

"You foolish girl," he murmurs, and there is something almost tender in the admonishment. "Do you truly believe I have any choice in the matter?"

He reaches out, hesitates, then gently brushes a strand of hair from her face. 

"I will always choose your safety over my soul," he says simply.

[shostakobitchh]

lily <3

i love her sm

[shostakobitchh]

COMMISSION

Hi everyone, I’m working toward a goal on Ko-Fi so I can finally move into a safer, more stable home for me and my son. Things have been really difficult lately with health struggles, financial pressure, and rent piling up, but I’m still holding on and doing my best. If you’d like to help, I’m currently open for commissions starting at $30. Every bit of support gets us closer to a fresh start. Thank you for being here. If you’ve supported or shared my work, I see it, I’m grateful, and it truly means the world.

I made a goal on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/catinhoart

[shostakobitchh]

Remus and Harry from chapter 14 of PoA

[shostakobitchh]

Happy Hollidays from everyone’s favourite trio! And from me as well xD

More of my art in my tumblr and in my deviantart

[shostakobitchh]

breakfast time

[shostakobitchh]

right before the full moon

[shostakobitchh]

Gosse Bouma

[shostakobitchh]

"I can't fuckin' do this without you. I don't know where the fuck I'm going, what the fuck I'm gonna do." THE LAST OF US

[shostakobitchh]

little life update:

hi! I know I have been pretty inactive lately - I’ve really only been posting the severance of light updates weekly.

some of you know I’m an orchestra teacher, and the month of May is the busiest of the whole year for me. I have 5 performances for myself, and then I attend all the events of my amazing colleagues so I have been going nonstop. I still have 1 concert left, but I’ve had an amazing school year with my kids who are the literal best.

on top of all that I am also moving in a month and getting a puppy within 4 days of moving (I know, great timing, huh?). so Real Life had been pretty demanding. it’s all great stuff and super exciting, though!

a severance of light is still fully written and will continue to update every Saturday. as for splintering and aim & ignite, I haven’t really touched them, if I’m being honest. I haven’t really felt a pull to them since their last updates so they’ll be on a bit of a hiatus for now.

anyway, not dead, just tired. love u all ✨

[shostakobitchh]

this tiktok trend immediately made me think of them

not necessarily a ship art but the canon situationship is definitely there

im sure i could’ve done some more work on it BUT i really dont want to and OH WELL

[shostakobitchh]

Chapter 5: hollow radiance

A slate-grey sky presses low over the October grounds, autumn stripped to bare branches and the last stubborn flags of gold clinging to the trees near the lake. 

Ariel stands at the edge of the Forest, hands jammed deep in her pockets, breath fogging the air as she watches crows gathering on a fencepost. She hopes for solitude on this day — craves it — but footsteps grind through frost behind her, measured and unmistakable.

She does not turn. The silence that grows between them is different from their usual standoffs, diffuse and brittle, not crackling with anger but softened by exhaustion neither can name.

Snape comes to stand beside her, leaving an arm’s width of space — enough to ward off touch, not enough to deny relation. 

For a moment neither speaks. The crows shift restlessly, their wings scraping against the wind.

“It’s cold,” he says finally, his voice spare as old parchment.

“I don’t mind.”

He glances sidelong at her. His face is drawn in profile, mouth set in a line so thin it nearly vanishes. He looks ill — hollows under his eyes dark as bruises, tension living in his shoulders. The only sound is the crows — calling and calling, as if they, too, are waiting for something that will never come.

“You remembered,” Snape says, not quite a question. 

Ariel draws a circle in the dirt with the toe of her shoe, gaze fixed on the place where forest shadow meets grey horizon.

“Of course I remembered. I always do.” Ariel’s voice is soft, and the cold air gnaws at it, thinning each word to a thread. She tucks her chin deeper into her scarf, the old Gryffindor wool scratchy at her jaw — a relic, a tether — and counts crows in silence, wishing the ache in her chest would lessen. 

It never does, not on this day.

They have always marked Halloween together, ever since Third Year when she’d first realized the date’s weight — Mum’s name whispered between flickering candles in a forgotten classroom, Snape’s voice so brittle it could break glass. Ariel had asked to spend the night doing something that wasn’t celebrating, and so Snape had walked them along the tree line and talked about everything and nothing — and they’d done it every year since. 

She doesn’t know why she came tonight, although she’s more surprised that Snape came at all. It’s been over three weeks since the latest note, which means it’s been even longer since their last civil conversation. Ariel wants to speak — to say something real about what she remembers — but the words knot themselves behind her teeth. Tonight she’s full of ghosts, and they press against her skin from within. 

“Your mother hated this cold,” Snape says, and there’s a pulse of something sharp in his tone — memory, perhaps, or grief made bitter by repetition. “She used to curse every window in her parent’s flat shut, trying to burn half the damn thing down with old Muggle radiators. It never helped.”

Ariel swallows. The crows settle further up the tree line, black punctuation marks against the pewter sky. 

“I can’t remember her voice anymore,” she murmurs. “Not really. You’d think dying would bring it back.”

Snape’s jaw flexes — he turns slightly, shoulders angling toward her as if bracing for a blow. 

“Memory is not so charitable.” He hesitates, just long enough for Ariel to feel the ache in his restraint, and then says, more quietly: “The mind hoards pain before it preserves comfort.”

Ariel’s chest tightens beneath her scarf. She wants to say something cruel — something sharp enough to draw blood and prove she’s real, not just some echo left in the wake of loss, but the words refuse her. They curl up and die in her mouth. Instead she looks at the ground, at her boots pressed into brittle grass.

“I wonder if she’d even know me now,” Ariel says, almost to herself. “If she’d want to.”

Snape’s breath is a thin slash of fog in the morning air. 

“She would,” he says, quieter still. There is an edge to his voice — resentment at the universe, perhaps, or at the question itself. “She would have seen what you are.”

“You mean what I’ve become?” Ariel asks, the smallest tremor threading her voice.

He shakes his head, a barely perceptible movement. “What you always were.”

For one aching instant, the hush between them vibrates with things never spoken. The world feels suspended on that note — a fragile peace that could shatter with a single careless word. Ariel digs her heel into the frost. Somewhere behind her ribcage something is breaking open — something old and stubborn and sore from being ignored.

Snape’s breath clouds the air between them, and when he speaks again, his voice trembles on the threshold of something dangerous. “When you said — that you wished you hadn’t returned. Did you mean that?”

The question is so stark, so naked, that Ariel can only stare at the cold ground. Her throat works around words she cannot give him — cannot give herself. The ache in her chest sharpens and she feels more exposed than if he’d torn her skin away to look at her bones.

She does not answer him.

Snape shifts imperceptibly closer, one hand lifting as though he means to touch her shoulder or tuck a strand of hair behind her ear — a motion so instinctive that he seems startled by it himself. His fingers hover in the cold, reaching for something that no longer trusts itself near warmth.

Ariel steps away before he can close the distance. She keeps her head down, shoulders hunched against wind and memory alike, fighting the raw ache in her chest. Without another word, she turns from him and walks briskly toward the castle, boots crunching frost with each step.

Behind her, Snape’s hand falls to his side — empty.

The sky remains leaden above the Forest. 

Neither of them looks back.

[shostakobitchh]

I just came here to say… and apologies in advance if this is too gooey and sweet, but you are truly my favorite fanfiction writer, and I’ve been reading fanfic a very long time. Aim & Ignite has changed my brain chemistry. The splintering and Severance of Light are the brightest spots in my week. I re-read your work over and over and over. I find it difficult to read other fics bc I unconsciously compare them to yours. Your creativity and ability to bring these characters to life is such a gift and I thank you thank you for sharing it with us! Please know how appreciated you are!! Best to you 💫

this is me to you right now.

the levels of gooey and sweetness do not exist. this made my day ❤️

[shostakobitchh]

Hello. I love your writing <3

I wanted to ask whether you think (A&I) Snape still has any "love" left for Lily? Sometimes I feel as though Snape doesn't/can't love Lily anymore - any love he had has been twisted and scarred by guilt, pain, regret and that's all he's capable of feeling when it comes to her... or it's been shoved down so far he can't feel it at all. I find it hard to separate the pain from the love but I suppose one wouldn't exist without the other...

this is a FASCINATING ask and one of the things I love most about writing fic and hearing from y'all, because I feel very much that Snape is still deeply in love with Lily in A&I, and I think it's SO interesting that you're questioning it!

I was watching something the other day where a psychiatrist said that oftentimes, when people hear others say they're "numb," that we think it means we don't feel anything, but in fact, you're feeling everything all at once, and that onslaught is overwhelming because you don't know how to separate it all. that is what Snape's love is with Lily - he is numb to it, because he feels his affection and devotion so deeply, but at the same time, it's like you said - it is a twisted and scarred thing marred by guilt, poisoned by the fact that he got her killed, that he got her pregnant, that she kept it from him, that he couldn't save her, that he's allowed the privilege of watching their daughter grow up when he feels he doesn't deserve to.

So that being said - the purest form of love you're talking about is buried beneath it all. The focus of the fic is Snape being able to have love that isn't tainted - and that's Ariel. I know this quote is thrown around a lot but - "what is grief if not love persevering?" Snape is going on for Lily - he knows he's never going to be able to heal it or make it better - but he can try. It's the trying part he's having trouble grappling with - the extent to which he steps up as a father - but it's all driven by his love for Lily. He is hers, always.

I'm sorry the last line was so cliche I just love them okay

[shostakobitchh]

Hi 🥺 I love your stuff sm!! I just wanted to ask, what will be the title for your Snily fic, and when can we expect the first chapter? There is not enough new Snily stuff out there and I’m going to McFreaking lose it

it'll be called "dichotomy"

I'm going to attempt to write it over the summer in full - I have it outlined and everything - but I'll be moving AND getting a puppy the first week of July so I'm gonna do my best. ❤️

[shostakobitchh]

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/38139928087610423/

what I thought Snape was about to pull up with when Ariel did not respond to his notes in severance of light lol

It takes every fibre of my being not to have Snape sling Ariel over his shoulder and just haul her off every time he's freaking out and she's not getting the memo