squibstress

[squibstress]

Self-Recs 2024

A little self-rec list for what I wrote this year.

WIPs

smile with sweet surprise

Harry/Severus. Lily/Severus. Rated: E. Chapters: 4/5. Words: 17,760. Stepdad Snape. Pseudo incest. Infidelity.

Harry is barely sixteen. Had barely blown out his candle when Severus kissed him.

Wasted for Love

Harry/Severus. Hermione/Harry/Ron. Rated: E. Chapters: 9/25. Words: 25,435. Polyamory. Closed triad. Fidelity issues. Domestic bliss. Developing relationship. Angst & feels.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione are living happily ever after 5 years after the war. That is until the Prince returns, and with him all of the turmoil and temptation from the past.

Sugar, Honey

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Chapters: 8/?. Words: 21,926. Sugar Daddy Harry. Sugar Baby Snape. Bottom Snape.

Severus Snape has been down on his luck since the war ended. Enter: Harry Potter. With no other causes to occupy his time, he makes Severus an offer he can't refuse; but Severus can't help but wonder: what is it the boy really wants?

Hopes of the Heart

Harriet/Severus. Rated: E. Chapters: 3/?. Words: 22,074. Female Harry Potter. Pregnancy. Angst. Student/teacher. Harriet Potter is busy her sixth year of Hogwarts. She has lessons and Quidditch and tasks and a war to fight. She's also pregnant.

Completed

Good Daddy

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 2,639. Daddy kink. Praise kink.

Severus is nice. Sometimes.

Heartstop Lollipop

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 400. Student/teacher. Valentine's Day.

Harry eats a lolly in class.

The Forbidden Fruit

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 7,060. Check AO3 for warnings.

Severus is obsessed with the Dark Lord's young heir.

The Whispers in Your Eyes

Harriet/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 15,703. Infidelity. Past underage. Past student/teacher. Angst. Dysfunctional relationships. Ambiguous/open ending. Female Harry.

Severus Snape wants revenge for his broken heart. Harriet Potter wants revenge for his revenge. Naturally, matters escalate.

The First Date

Harry/Severine. Rated: E. Words: 11,178. Female Severus. Blind date. First time.

Harry hasn't seen Severine Snape since the trials 7 years ago. Now, she's his date.

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

Hyacinth/Sulpicia. Rated: E. Words: 11,875. Female Harry. Female Snape. Hanahaki Disease. Language of flowers. Case fic.

There's an outbreak of Hanahaki, and Curse Breaker Hyacinth Potter is brought onto the case, to work closely with the Aurors and Unspeakable Sulpicia Snape. Snape doesn't have a romantic bone in her body, and Hyacinth is happily in love with Ginny Weasley. They have nothing to worry about...right?

Spellbound

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 1,315. Somnophilia. Infidelity.

Has anyone ever loved and hated anyone so deeply?

The Enemy's Bed

Harry/Severus. Rated: E. Words: 3,985. Student/teacher. Secret relationship.

Harry has Snape wrapped around his finger.

Guilty Pleasure

Harry/Severus. Rated: M. Chapters: 2/2. Words: 2,414. Hand & foot fetish.

Harry and Severus have a date night on Harry's sofa, and they keep their secrets to themselves.

Snowfall

Harry/Severus. Rated: M. Words: 2,433. Fluff & angst. Christmas.

Christmas at Spinner's End.

[squibstress]

Love this!

Please do more mmad drawings!

👀

So I’ve had this idea for a while👀

👀Heh

[squibstress]

Ron Headcanons in Honor of His Birthday

7-year-old Ron had a rivalry with a gnome. It was his gnome and he threw a fit every time someone else got it. The rivalry only ended when one day, the gnome came charging in riding a huge spider. Little Ron ran away and never looked back.

Ron has a love-hate relationship with his deluminator. It brought him back to Harry and Hermione, yes. It was exactly what he needed in that godforsaken camping trip from hell. But he can’t shake the hollowness he feels looking at it. Dumbledore was so certain of his weakness - that he, and he alone, would break and leave when it mattered the most. And he proved his former headmaster right. It takes years to shake the feeling of failure.

Adult Ron has a love-hate relationship with hosting. He learned at his mother’s knee and absolutely loves the prep that comes with it. He loves preparing food, arranging music, and cleaning up the house to be exactly just right for his guests. Hosting when your wife is Minister for Magic always came with politics however. He loves the home he has built, but having to host rich and powerful politicians trigger all the teenage insecurities he thought he had long since overcome.

Ron is an indulgent man. The moment he began earning enough to afford them, he began buying everyone he loves lovely thoughtful gifts. This is especially true for Harry who he absolutely relishes buying gifts for. At first, it starts as repayment for all the gifts that Harry bought him that he couldn’t match, but eventually, it morphs to him just wanting to bring out the sparkle in Harry’s eyes.

Ron got Rose to fall in love with Chudley Canons. Rose’s room is as painfully orange as her father’s, and he buys the two of them matching quidditch robes that quickly became baby Rose’s favorite pajamas. Her first quidditch match was on her father’s shoulders, cheering loudly at the Canon’s thousandth loss.

[squibstress]

All of the podfics of peu_a_peu's fics that sweaters_in_the_summer recorded (Rookie Moves Series | The Superfluous Man) by @sweatersinthesummer

Primary tropes/tags: Dumb cop and dumb cop - they're dumb cops (RM) | Mpreg (TSM) | Enemies to lovers hilarity (both)

Why I chose it: These podfics have been my travel companions on the last few long drives I've had to take! The Draco voice in all of these is so good, she's got his snary sarcasm down pat.

We'd already been blessed with peu's writing, and these wonderful pods are an extra bonus!

Summary:

Aurors Potter and Malfoy crack the case. (RM) --- A child for Harry Potter is a miracle of magic. And it's the second act of Draco Malfoy's sorry little life. (TSM)

@hprecfest

[squibstress]

@hprecfest Day 16: a podfic

I don't really listen to podfics, but when Cailyn asked me if she could make a podfic out of one of my stories, I went to check out her work. This is a lovely story, and so tenderly narrated!

Clair de Lune by RonsGirlFriday - a Podfic by @cailynwrites original story by @constitutionalweasleymonarchy

How wonderful to be seen.

[squibstress]

@hprecfest Day 7: the best of your OTP

The Season by @missgryffin [Jily, E, Regency AU: enemies➡️friends➡️lovers, mutual pining, slowburn. Duke James, Debutante Lily 💎. Multi chap, 2021].

Summary: James Potter, Duke of Peverell, has returned to London just in time for the season, where Miss Lily Evans is about to make her debut. Only, he’s not looking for a wife, and she’s not particularly interested in a husband.

Bridgerton-inspired AU. Jily in their element with the pining, the slowburn, the enemies to lovers. It doesn't get any better than this. 💗

[squibstress]

@hprecfest Day 15: a fic over 50k

Room Service by ClaudiaWrites aka @maraudersftw [Jily, M, AU: meet-cute, romance, drama. Multichap. 2021].

Summary: When receptionist Lily Evans is informed that the hotel she works at will be hosting the owner's son for the whole month of October, she figures he's likely to be smug, and unbearable, and really nothing new. As it turns out, she's right about the first two assumptions—and terrifically wrong about the third.

An absolute favorite, I lost count on how many rereads this has gone through. At this point it has become a comfort read, sort of happy place for me. 💗

[squibstress]

HP REC FEST dec 8

@hprecfest - day 8: a fic that was recced to you

Wash Away The Pain by @mrsmungus

A short sweet intimate moment with older wolfstar. The war is over, but Sirius is having flashbacks. Remus cares for him in the best way possible.

I could have choosen this for comfort fic as well because it is one of my go to fics for feeling better when I'm struggling with life.

Go read!

[squibstress]

Day 9: a WIP

I have not anticipated I will break my one-fic-per-day rule on a WIP because I do not usually read WIPs unless they are from my fav authors. THEN @tackytigerfic have decided to give us an early Christmas present so I have two recs for you today! Recs under the cut <3

📚 First Watch of Night by @tackytigerfic

Draco/Harry, 54k out of the promised 275k (!), cat E

Chapters: 4/21

Summary:

Harry Potter defeated Voldemort at the Battle of Hogwarts on May 2nd, 1998. But what if he didn't?

📚 These Words of Mine by @dodgerkedavra

Draco/Harry, cat M

Chapters: 10/?

Summary:

The enchanted journals were supposed to be a bit of entertainment. A way to pass the time on tedious Auror missions. Neither one of them is supposed to disappear for two years and counting. But then, Harry never did anything according to plan.

Okay, that’s it for today, thank you for the prompt @hprecfest, @tackytigerfic and @dodgerkedavra for your amazing works and see you next time!

📚 First Watch of Night by @tackytigerfic

Well the answer to this question is easy – then we receive one of the best what if!stories out there. Guys, we got background Wolfstar! And I didn’t even ship it until like, a week ago. We get Sirius calling Harry his pup!! 😭 We got the whole new universe set up! One thing that worries me is that Wolfstar = no Teddy. But alas, there is the multiverse tag so I don’t lose hope xd

Just one little quote for you because I cannot get over what might have been:

Draco picked up his cup again. His hand was trembling, his face white and wretched. He didn’t meet Harry’s eyes. Harry didn’t want him to—didn’t want to have to look at him, still so familiar, so distinctive. Even now, it was hard to think of a time when they were friends; in Harry’s memory, it felt unreal, like a Muggle film he had once seen. It had started the summer after Sixth Year—long hazy days, a wet June leading into a wet July, and Draco coming round to Grimmauld Place with Andromeda while his mum was in Order custody. He and Harry had not one but two fistfights in the back garden, both of them panting and enraged, Draco’s mouth bleeding a little the first time, and then the second time wrestling each other viciously to the ground and struggling until they just gave up and ended up lying on their backs in the muddy grass, both of them defeated. And then, a tentative truce. Making endless cups of tea for Andromeda, sharing a compartment on the train back to school, the silence awkward until it wasn’t. Tedious days hiding out doing research in the Hogwarts library while Voldemort staged attack after attack after attack on the Ministry. Nights spent studying frantically, and then the two of them together, that whole long night of the Battle. Friendship. For whatever that had been worth.

😭😭😭

📚 These Words of Mine by @dodgerkedavra

Yet another one by @dodgerkedavra! I am on a personal mission to make them fandom famous. Their works are my fandom revelation of the year. Well, those and the existance of podfics in general 😅.

One thing that is super special about the fic (which is also the reason why there’s no wordcount provided) is its format. The story is about enchanted journals and the author made them come to life! Just take a look:

On that note I wouldn’t presume you can get emotional over written notes that are not even words but here we are:

It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger so I get a minor heart attack everytime I see AO3 notification ^^

[squibstress]

HP REC FEST dec 9

@hprecfest - day 9: a WIP

The Kings and The Queens of the New Broken Scene by @klilyr

Muggle AU text fic where the Marauders as well as the Slytherin skittles go to the same university. Chaos ensues. It has wolfstar, jegulus, pandalily, dorlene, barty/evan/peter. It deals with the Black brothers home issues. It deals with Sirius and James friendship in relation to jegulus.

Fun and with a strong supportive friend group, even if they have their issues.

[squibstress]

Twilight Eternal by @hsvh-hp for HD Tarot Fest

Drarry, M, 24k

Wherever Draco is, the sun sits eternally on the precipice of setting. His father feeds his peacocks on the manor grounds. Harry is the only one who can communicate with Draco. A malevolent force haunts the house, nipping at Draco’s heels. Draco intended for himself to come to this place. He only wishes he could remember why.

This is an incredibly good and criminally underrated story. The suspense will keep you on the edge of your seat and the shadows lurking behind corners and inside dark windows will make your hair rise every single time. The resolution of the mystery came as a complete surprise for me, with its deep, intense humanity. And the love between Draco and Harry, suffusing every scene in the understated manner of complete, eternal devotion, kept the fear balanced with hope.

The clipped, dream-like narration of the first chapter is a bit challenging; it almost drove me away. But by the end of it I was hooked by the dark whispers. And I am so happy I kept reading, because it's a masterfully woven tale that I'll never forget and always recommend.

Check out @hprecfest for more recs all throughout December!

[squibstress]

Too Good At Raising Hell by @the-sinking-ship

Primary tropes/tags: Nightclub owner Draco, organized crime, pining,

Why I chose it: I mean, it's Sly. Is there a single fic of hers that is less than amazing? Nope. Every single one is an absolute banger. This is the most recent, written for this year's wireless. Obsessed, as always.

Summary:

When Harry Potter walks into Draco’s nightclub looking like trouble, Draco can’t stop staring. He really ought to train his dick not to react so enthusiastically to red flags, but where would be the fun in that?

@hprecfest

[squibstress]

HP Rec Fest 2024

Day 12: a fic by your favourite author

I Put a Spell on You

MsAlexWP

Sirius Black isn't impressed with Salem at Halloween. It's too crowded, too touristy, and filled with cheesy, fake magic. That is, until he meets a handsome shop owner (and his bespectacled best friend) who offers to show him and Lily the "real Salem."

@hprecfest

It’s so difficult to say I have any one “favourite” author, but there is one who is prominent in my bookmarks and my recs, and I have adored every single fic they have written.

Step into the whimsy of their magical au where Lily and Sirius are best friends, James is a bit of a mad scientist type of wizard messing with magic he shouldn’t that brings them all together

[squibstress]

Day 12: A fic from your favorite author

@hprecfest

I have two! I love them both always and forever <3 Reccing a fic each from them

Green Grow the Rushes, O by eldritcher. Rated M. 11400 words. Snarry - Incredibly beautiful, incredibly profound, full of rage, love, grief, regret, sacrifice, revenge, mourning and love. It embraces the drama and the whimsy of the canon including the darkness under the surface of a children's story and creates a stunning, beautiful myth. It's a fic you can sing. But also, it's a fic that sings to you. Snape is almost a hostage in this fic whether it is a hostage to Harry, McGonagall, his losses, his guilt, his relationship with his father, the eroding church and shoreline and even the constellations in the sky. We are also co-hostages with him. When he's in TOTAL disbelief of his imperfect, sexy happy ending we are right there with him :D The most atmospheric fic of its wordcount range.

Year of the Thestral by @perverse-idyll Rated E. 127200 words. Snape/McGonagall - Tragically beautiful, intense, complex picture of love, rage, betrayal, grief and loss and a whole lot of other emotions. Because folks don't feel exactly one or two emotions at any given time after experiencing intense life events like what happened to the characters during DH and nobody can write that full, unnamed range and depth of emotions with the specificity and intensity PI can. A wildfire of a fic. Like any wildfire you get some pine cones bursting and new life/new emotion in the end but it's bittersweet and you can see how the dawn poured like weak tea through the eastern windows, feel what it's like to be accepted beyond the wildest imaginings of the lank-haired, half-feral child who'd once scrambled aboard the Hogwarts Express, feverishly reaching for a better life and like Snape you are going to spend a blissful hour dreaming of the taste of tea. The most Snape Snape ever Snaped.

On a lot of levels, my fav authors have similar vibes in their writing. I feel they write similar subjects but with different frequencies if that makes sense. The writing has similar tones of IDGAF self-indulgence and zero of adherence to fandom zeitgeists. They have the ability to write multiple characters and pairings in different settings with the same level of passion, originality and conviction. They are both insanely obsessed with language/prose/poetry and intertextuality and can actually make that work for their fics. They also have the rare gift of makebelieve in the classic storytelling sense of "I can make you suspend your disbelief" which leads to gorgeously sublime fics that are full of confidence + earnestness in the world/setting which means you have no choice but to make it your reality until you are on the fic's last word and it's going to haunt you after that for the rest of your life. They commit 100% to the story and to the romance of the story. They go 100% into the good/bad/ugly mud of human stuff without making me as a reader feel squicked out/dirty. Also flesh? Like I always feel they write characters with flesh and everything associated with that in a poignant, humorous, wistful, fully engaged with the flesh + its flaws sense. The overall ending feel is always bittersweet joy that stays with me and changes my understanding of life in some mysterious way. In both cases, I feel I can analyze the fics for days in whatever Doylist or Watsonian framing I want. But even without those things, their fics mean 100% of everything for me. Love love love <3

[squibstress]

day 7 of @hprecfest - the best of your OTP

What We Pretend We Can't See, by gyzym - M, 131k, 2017

Summary: Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought.

Excerpt:

“It’s only,” Ron says, and takes a long swig of his wine, clearly to brace himself. “You — well. You know how you can get, Harry. About Malfoy.”

“What?” Harry says, staring at both of them. “Sorry, what ? No, I don’t know how I can get about Malfoy, what are you even talking about?”

“Oh, Harry,” says Hermione, sounding very pitying.

“Mate,” Ron says, in the same tone. “C’mon. This is a safe space.”

“Also, we were there,” adds Hermione, with a heavy sigh. “Remember in sixth year? When you were so obsessed with him that we weren’t allowed to talk about anything else?”

“He was doing evil,” Harry protests, outraged. “And I was doing my best to thwart evil! That’s not obsessive, that’s — that’s — civic-minded!”

“Civic-minded, was it, to sit up all night watching his name move around the Slytherin common room on the Marauder’s Map?” Ron does not sound convinced. Also, he sounds like maybe he thinks Harry has suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury in the last ten minutes; it’s not a combination Harry enjoys. “I swear, one night we were down in the common room and I said, ‘You coming to bed, Harry?’ and you said — ”

“Oh god, I remember this,” Hermione interrupts, and groans. “You said ‘I won’t rest until Malfoy does!’ Then you threw a paperweight at the wall, and it exploded.”

“I loved that paperweight,” Ron says mournfully. “It died too young.”

&

Modern Love, by @tackytigerfic - E, 61k, 2020

Summary: Harry Potter, of all people, knows that life isn’t always fair. And no one gets to be happy all of the time. But surely there’s something more—something better—than a rubbish Ministry job, and a lonely old house, and that feeling that everyone out there is doing a better job of living than Harry is.

And it really doesn’t seem fair that Draco Malfoy is back in Harry’s life, all of a sudden, and even though he’s wandless, and living with Muggles, and making his mother cry with his lifestyle choices, he’s happy. So what's he doing right, that Harry isn’t?

Because things don’t really change, do they? And if Harry can’t be happy, he’ll settle for a good night’s sleep, some posh antiques, and the opportunity to find out what Malfoy has been up to for all these years.

And that’s what starts it all.

Excerpt:

"This is exactly what I'm talking about, Potter. You think I'm happy without magic. I'm happy despite not having magic, you twat. Sometimes it itches under my skin until I think I'm going to go mad. And you show up like this—" he gestures wildly at Harry's Wizengamot robes "—and you Apparated here, didn't you? I could smell it off you when I opened the door, Potter." He sways closer to Harry, and he looks angry again all of a sudden. "You reek of magic, Potter, and you don't even know it. And it's so hard sometimes, being around that. It's just as well you didn't take me up on the offer of a fuck, I suppose. I’d probably have been able to feel your magic when you were inside me. Pretty hard to go back from that."

Harry, having never been in love properly, wonders if this is what it’s always like—feeling simultaneously pissed off and turned on and, through it all, endlessly fond—but suspects it might be just down to it being him, and Draco, and how they are together.

There are loads of fics I could have picked for this prompt. I considered Heal Thyself by astolat, and of That Old Black Magic, by bixgirl, for example, which are both all-time favourites of mine. I've been trying to rec less popular fics, because to me that's part of the fun and the challenge of recfest, and because I think we're so blessed to be in a fandom with such a wealth of talent going back twenty-odd years. But these fics were the very first two to pop into my mind when I heard the prompt, and I kept on coming back to them both, and it feels only right to rec them - and to rec them together - because I do see them both as the very best of Drarry. Both authors' words feel so truly full of love for the characters, and the world, and the ship, and both authors write Draco and Harry so convincingly and unequivocally as two parts of a whole. WWPWCS, of course, so witty and clever, has the amazing scene above so early on, where Harry's just appalled to learn that anyone might have thought he was at any stage obsessed with Draco Malfoy - and then he proceeds to demonstrate how completely and utterly obsessed he is with Draco Malfoy throughout the entirety of the fic. And then there's ML, such a brilliant, complex, emotional piece, with its Harry who begins to find unexpected joy in the little things as he spends more and more time around this fascinating, self-sufficient Draco. Of course, both fics then have their own excellent OH FUCK moment, the moment the dam bursts and Harry realises what we've known for ages - that he's so completely in love with Draco that there's no way back, and what the hell's he going to do about it now?

Neither fic's a quick read, but both are spectacularly written, with such delicious denouements that they are SO COMPLETELY WORTH IT, and if you're getting to read either of them for the first time - god, I envy you!

If you read them, and if especially you love them, please do let me know! And as always, please do take the time to leave the author a kudos/comment <3

day 1 - first fic you remember reading

day 2 - a fic rated G

day 3 - a fic not on ao3

day 4 - a comfort fic

day 5 - a romantic fic

day 6 - a fic for a ship you don’t normally read