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more HP recs (no DH spoilers in this set)
By popular demand, here's a list of some HP stories I've been reading (or rereading) in the past couple weeks. Almost all of these stories are well-known and widely recced for folks who have been active in HP fandom, but since apparently lots of folks on my f-list, like me, merely dabble in the fandom and may not be aware of them, I've made a list of the stories that have been devouring me whole for the past couple weeks.
I'm pretty easy when it comes to HP fic: I'll read almost any pairing as long as I like at least one of the characters. My favorite characters tend to be Snape, Neville, Hermione and now Luna, but I'm also quite fond of Harry and Ron. Really, I love the world of HP so much it's one of the fandoms I'll happily read genfic in. None of the stories I am recommending in this set have DH spoilers (and these stories were all written pre-DH, though of course many of them are set after the war as the author imagined it), but I'm cut-tagging for length, because this turned into a rather long list. At the bottom of the recs, I also list a few of my favorite HP reccers for folks looking for even more HP fic to read.
Luna stories:
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dolorous_ett's The End is Nigh is a very interesting gen piece set in the year before Ginny and Luna go to Hogwarts. It's about what it means to be friends with someone different when you're basically a normal person. It also features, I kid you not, apocalyptic chickens. Sweet and sad and strange--the perfect Luna fic, really.
fourth_rose, The World of the Living. Luna shakes her head. "I think I need a t-shirt that reads 'I'm not shagging Harry Potter'. Probably technically should be listed under the Harry/Draco section below, but what I love most about this story is Luna, who apparently loves to take in strays, as she ends up with both Harry and Draco living under her roof in the aftermath of the war.
Neville stories:
Becoming Neville (gen), a long plotty piece set after the end of book 5. Neville's grandmother breaks her hip, so while she's at St. Mungo's, Neville comes to stay at the house at Gimmauld place with Harry and Remus. This is about Neville growing up and his developing relationships with Harry, Remus and Snape; it's also about Harry dealing with Sirius' death.
_hannelore A Thousand Wishes . (Gen) If you fold a thousand paper cranes, do you really get a wish? What would Neville wish for? This story breaks my heart into pieces.
Also see "Nightblooming Heartsease" below for another good Neville-centric story.
Harry stories:
dementordelta, Parseltongue-tied . This is actually slash, but to give the pairing would be to give away the ending. The summer after Voldemort's defeat, Harry is working as the Hogwarts groundkeeper, where he makes the acquaintance of a very unusual snake.
Harry/Draco stories
astolat, The Scholomance series . The first story is "A Rare Descent;" the rest of the stories in the series are listed at the top of the page. The original story in this series was written about 7 years ago, so the series as a whole is very AU, but fascinating. Voldemort marked Draco in a dark ritual, and the only way he can escape is through "the door which despair opens." Can he ever return? And at what price? This may have been the first Harry/Draco I ever read, and I was so happy to see astolat finish this series recently.
Probably my favorite Harry/Draco story isresonant8's Transfigurations , which I'm pretty sure I've recommended before at some point. I have to admit, though, I love this story less for the slowly-building relationship between Harry and Draco and more for the amazing depth and richness of magical backstory Resonant created for this tale; I completely love the curses affecting Hogwarts that the new staff is trying to untangle, and what we learn about the differences between American and British magic, both spells and magical communities, and the slowly shifting relationships in the story.
This story also inspired my favorite Neville story of all time,julad's Night-blooming Heartsease (Snape/Neville). This is a prequel to Transfigurations, though I honestly don't know which one you should read first. If you read Transfigurations first, you'll know the ending of NBH, which may spoil it for you; on the other hand, knowing the ending in advance made the heartbreak a little easier for me to bear. But at any rate, this story about Neville working with Snape during the war is not to be missed; it's an amazing tale of Neville failing and failing and being terrified all the time, and not giving up, ever, and how Snape grows to admire that quality in him. This is probably the story that made me fall in love with Neville. It also features my favorite original house elf ever. "Blinky is knowing Potions is a subtle and refined art and not subject to ill-considered alterations and reckless improvisations, but Blinky is enchanting the sandwiches so they don't make crumbs!" [Warning: character death]
Another Harry/Draco story I love rereading is Mad Martha's The Lodger . After defeating Voldemort, Harry is depressed. Hermione suggests he take in a lodger, though neither expects Draco Malfoy to turn up on Harry's doorstep. I really love the versions of Harry and Draco in this story, and the way their shared sense of alienation and isolation draw them together.
Harry and Snape stories (gen):
My absolute favorite piece of HP comfortfic is Tira Nog's A Nick in Time . Dumbledore grants a wish: Snape and Harry get to experience a happy childhood. This can be read as Snape/Harry preslash (and the sequel is definitely slashy), but it's really about getting to see Harry and Snape as boys, and Ron and Hermione as parents. I have an insane love for this story--it hits all my happyfic squishy places.
Another gen story featuring Harry and Snape is Marina Frants' wonderful Harry Potter and the Polka Dot Plague . Set in the aftermath of GoF, Harry is trying to deal with his guilt over Cedric's death when he comes down with a wizarding childhood illness, and accidentally infects Snape as well. Funny and really insightful; I especially love the glimpses we get in this story of Snape as head of Slytherin house.
Harry/Snape stories (slash)
resonant8's The Familiar . This is another one of my comfort fics in this fandom. Harry accidentally gets turned into a frog, but it does wonders for his relationship with Snape. I love the slow build of their relationship in this story, as well as the humor.
Kai, Contemporary Magical Innovations by H. Granger . I love the framing device of this story--Hermione recording the history of a new type of magical weapon invented by Snape and Harry for her new edition of Hogwarts, A History--especially when juxtaposed against the action scenes. The contrasting styles make for a really fun read. It's also unbelievably hilarious.
rexluscus, Contrapasso. Warning: non-con, torture. This is a deeply disturbing story. Snape, convicted of causing Dumbledore's death, has been sent to a prison where all the prisoners are transfigured into doll-size. Harry, filled with anger, obtains a job at the prison with the aim of getting revenge on Snape. While I love sweet and schmoopy Snarry, stories like this seem more realistic for the characters, to me.
Threesomes or multiples:
Harry/Ron/Hermione
I actually would love to find more H/R/H, because I love triosmut, but the only stories I know well enough to rec areresonant8's Bed and Board , and its sequels Fair and Paternity . "Bed and Board" is set the year after Voldemort's defeat, only the trio are left in a very changed Hogwarts environment: one where the student body is coping with the trauma through a wave of domesticity, and the Ministry wants to shield the "children" from any future unpleasantness. The trio rebel in their own way. "Fair" and "Paternity" are shorter stories in the same universe, the former a PWP, the latter an examination of how this relationship might (or might not) fit into the wizarding world.
Snape/Hermione/Lupin
sam_storyteller, Three Galleons . I really like the idea of Hermione and Snape together, but I haven't read a lot of stories that actually convinced me of the pairing. Ironically, this story, which is actually a threesome, is the best Snape/Hermione I've ever read. I particularly love how prickly Snape is in this, but I also love how Snape and Hermione, after building an accord together, bring Lupin into their home and their relationship.
Snape/Harry/Draco
Rushlight, Through a Shattered Mirror .Warning: non-con. Voldemort has won the war, and given Harry as a slave to his trusted lieutenant, Severus Snape. Draco Malfoy is also Snape's slave. But is everything as it seems? I have a real weakness for this particular trope (which seems to be a very popular one in HP fandom), but this was the very first story of this type I ever read, and it's still one of my favorites. It's not at all a brutal slavery story--in fact, despite the noncon elements and Harry's rather realistic opposition to being enslaved, it still manages to have a sort of gentle, dreamy tone. It's also tremendously HOT.
Snape/Harry, Snape/Ron, Snape/Hermione, Harry/Ron/Hermione, etc.
Mouse, Corvus Fallere .Warning: non-con. The general outline of the plot is similar to "Through a Shattered Mirror": Voldemort has been victorious, and the remaining members of the opposition have been captured and enslaved. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have become the special slaves of Snape, who is the head of House Corvus at the newly remade Hogwarts. This very lengthy story spends a lot of time on their sexual training and on the customs of the new regime, though once again Snape is an ambivalent figure who might still be working for the opposition. In addition to the HOTNESS factor, which I rate at something like 169 on a scale of 1 to 10, I really like the fascinating cultural details in this story, like the breeding of the bird-servants who run Snape's house.
Stories that may devour your whole life:
These stories are really really long (my guess is that each is at least 800 pages long, if printed out--possibly longer, detailed, and amazingly well-characterized. In all cases, these were stories I started and could not physically stop reading, even when it meant (on a couple of occasions) I ended up going to work not having slept at all.
Mad Martha's Two Households Series . (This link takes you to the master list of her stories; this particular series is halfway down the page). (Harry/Ron)
I have to admit, though I am pretty open to most pairings in this fandom, I never would have thought a Harry/Ron story could eat my brain this way, but this series is really an amazing look at what might have happened had Harry been sorted into Slytherin. This story is most definitely AU, beyond the central premise; for one thing, Sirius is still alive, he and Remus are lovers and they are Harry's guardians. But what I find most compelling about this story is the amazingly well-developed world Mad Martha has created in this series, which includes wizarding hierarchy far beyond mere purebloods and mudbloods--First Families and a class structure as complex as the muggle one, with rules of comportment and complex social codes, including several varieties of wizarding religions. It also creates some really interesting backstory for James and Lily, and the develops a really complicated relationship between Sirius and Harry. And the central relationship between Harry and Ron is in itself wonderful: slow to build, tremendously complicated first by house politics and then by Harry's need to conceal the relationship to protect them both. I really love this universe.
Jordan Grant, Cambiare Podentes: Invocare and Cambiare Podentes: Madurare . (Harry/Snape; d/s).
I have no idea how long this story is, but each part took me at least 12 hours to read, and I'm not a slow reader, so be warned if you don't have a spare 2 days to spend.
This is slavefic, which may make some people want to abort immediately and others click immediately, but it's not the standard "Snape the deatheater (or fake deatheater) enslaving Harry" kind of story. The premise of the story is that Harry receives a prophecy that the only thing that will save the world from a ten thousand year reign of Voldemort is if he undergoes an ancient ritual which will give him more power than any wizard that ever lived, at the price of binding himself forever as a slave to Snape.
Although the first half or so of the original story reads to me as d/s, eventually I would say it actually morphs into something more like a typical arranged-marriage romance with a few d/s trappings. I confess, I was actually hoping for more d/s from this story, because I like that sort of thing, but really as a gradually building romance it is absolutely perfect, notching the sexual and romantic tension up and up and up until the reader, at least, is ready to explode.
Probably this rec set alone has made clear that one of my favorite things in fic is slowly developing relationships fraught with lots of tension and sprinkled with interesting bits of character development and worldbuilding; this story has all that and more. Also? It's one of the hottest things I've ever read. Frankly, in stories this long I usually find myself skimming sex scenes at a certain point, to get to the plot, because after the first ten sex scenes or so what else is there to see? But the sex in this story never bored me; it was always so tied to character and relationship development that I loved ever scene.
Other places to find HP recs:
I really likebethbethbeth's recs, which can be found here; her recs tend to focus on Snape-centered pairings (Snape/Harry, Snape/Lupin, Snape/Hermione, etc). musesfool always has fabulous recommendations as well, in all sorts of pairings as well as gen fic, though she's especially interested in the older generation, especially Remus/Sirius; her delicious recs page is here. Another recs site everyone should know about it (if they don't already) is Polyamorous Recs, which features gen, het and slash recs in over 20 fandoms, and has a great HP section. And finally, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
switchknife has pages and pages of recs for multiple pairings (Snape/Harry, Harry/Draco, Harry/Ron, Snape/Draco, Sirius/Remus, Hermione/Ginny, etc.) here.
I'm pretty easy when it comes to HP fic: I'll read almost any pairing as long as I like at least one of the characters. My favorite characters tend to be Snape, Neville, Hermione and now Luna, but I'm also quite fond of Harry and Ron. Really, I love the world of HP so much it's one of the fandoms I'll happily read genfic in. None of the stories I am recommending in this set have DH spoilers (and these stories were all written pre-DH, though of course many of them are set after the war as the author imagined it), but I'm cut-tagging for length, because this turned into a rather long list. At the bottom of the recs, I also list a few of my favorite HP reccers for folks looking for even more HP fic to read.
Luna stories:
dolorous_ett's The End is Nigh is a very interesting gen piece set in the year before Ginny and Luna go to Hogwarts. It's about what it means to be friends with someone different when you're basically a normal person. It also features, I kid you not, apocalyptic chickens. Sweet and sad and strange--the perfect Luna fic, really.fourth_rose, The World of the Living. Luna shakes her head. "I think I need a t-shirt that reads 'I'm not shagging Harry Potter'. Probably technically should be listed under the Harry/Draco section below, but what I love most about this story is Luna, who apparently loves to take in strays, as she ends up with both Harry and Draco living under her roof in the aftermath of the war. Neville stories:
Becoming Neville (gen), a long plotty piece set after the end of book 5. Neville's grandmother breaks her hip, so while she's at St. Mungo's, Neville comes to stay at the house at Gimmauld place with Harry and Remus. This is about Neville growing up and his developing relationships with Harry, Remus and Snape; it's also about Harry dealing with Sirius' death.
_hannelore A Thousand Wishes . (Gen) If you fold a thousand paper cranes, do you really get a wish? What would Neville wish for? This story breaks my heart into pieces.Also see "Nightblooming Heartsease" below for another good Neville-centric story.
Harry stories:
dementordelta, Parseltongue-tied . This is actually slash, but to give the pairing would be to give away the ending. The summer after Voldemort's defeat, Harry is working as the Hogwarts groundkeeper, where he makes the acquaintance of a very unusual snake.Harry/Draco stories
astolat, The Scholomance series . The first story is "A Rare Descent;" the rest of the stories in the series are listed at the top of the page. The original story in this series was written about 7 years ago, so the series as a whole is very AU, but fascinating. Voldemort marked Draco in a dark ritual, and the only way he can escape is through "the door which despair opens." Can he ever return? And at what price? This may have been the first Harry/Draco I ever read, and I was so happy to see astolat finish this series recently.Probably my favorite Harry/Draco story is
resonant8's Transfigurations , which I'm pretty sure I've recommended before at some point. I have to admit, though, I love this story less for the slowly-building relationship between Harry and Draco and more for the amazing depth and richness of magical backstory Resonant created for this tale; I completely love the curses affecting Hogwarts that the new staff is trying to untangle, and what we learn about the differences between American and British magic, both spells and magical communities, and the slowly shifting relationships in the story.This story also inspired my favorite Neville story of all time,
julad's Night-blooming Heartsease (Snape/Neville). This is a prequel to Transfigurations, though I honestly don't know which one you should read first. If you read Transfigurations first, you'll know the ending of NBH, which may spoil it for you; on the other hand, knowing the ending in advance made the heartbreak a little easier for me to bear. But at any rate, this story about Neville working with Snape during the war is not to be missed; it's an amazing tale of Neville failing and failing and being terrified all the time, and not giving up, ever, and how Snape grows to admire that quality in him. This is probably the story that made me fall in love with Neville. It also features my favorite original house elf ever. "Blinky is knowing Potions is a subtle and refined art and not subject to ill-considered alterations and reckless improvisations, but Blinky is enchanting the sandwiches so they don't make crumbs!" [Warning: character death]Another Harry/Draco story I love rereading is Mad Martha's The Lodger . After defeating Voldemort, Harry is depressed. Hermione suggests he take in a lodger, though neither expects Draco Malfoy to turn up on Harry's doorstep. I really love the versions of Harry and Draco in this story, and the way their shared sense of alienation and isolation draw them together.
Harry and Snape stories (gen):
My absolute favorite piece of HP comfortfic is Tira Nog's A Nick in Time . Dumbledore grants a wish: Snape and Harry get to experience a happy childhood. This can be read as Snape/Harry preslash (and the sequel is definitely slashy), but it's really about getting to see Harry and Snape as boys, and Ron and Hermione as parents. I have an insane love for this story--it hits all my happyfic squishy places.
Another gen story featuring Harry and Snape is Marina Frants' wonderful Harry Potter and the Polka Dot Plague . Set in the aftermath of GoF, Harry is trying to deal with his guilt over Cedric's death when he comes down with a wizarding childhood illness, and accidentally infects Snape as well. Funny and really insightful; I especially love the glimpses we get in this story of Snape as head of Slytherin house.
Harry/Snape stories (slash)
resonant8's The Familiar . This is another one of my comfort fics in this fandom. Harry accidentally gets turned into a frog, but it does wonders for his relationship with Snape. I love the slow build of their relationship in this story, as well as the humor.Kai, Contemporary Magical Innovations by H. Granger . I love the framing device of this story--Hermione recording the history of a new type of magical weapon invented by Snape and Harry for her new edition of Hogwarts, A History--especially when juxtaposed against the action scenes. The contrasting styles make for a really fun read. It's also unbelievably hilarious.
rexluscus, Contrapasso. Warning: non-con, torture. This is a deeply disturbing story. Snape, convicted of causing Dumbledore's death, has been sent to a prison where all the prisoners are transfigured into doll-size. Harry, filled with anger, obtains a job at the prison with the aim of getting revenge on Snape. While I love sweet and schmoopy Snarry, stories like this seem more realistic for the characters, to me.Threesomes or multiples:
Harry/Ron/Hermione
I actually would love to find more H/R/H, because I love triosmut, but the only stories I know well enough to rec are
resonant8's Bed and Board , and its sequels Fair and Paternity . "Bed and Board" is set the year after Voldemort's defeat, only the trio are left in a very changed Hogwarts environment: one where the student body is coping with the trauma through a wave of domesticity, and the Ministry wants to shield the "children" from any future unpleasantness. The trio rebel in their own way. "Fair" and "Paternity" are shorter stories in the same universe, the former a PWP, the latter an examination of how this relationship might (or might not) fit into the wizarding world.Snape/Hermione/Lupin
sam_storyteller, Three Galleons . I really like the idea of Hermione and Snape together, but I haven't read a lot of stories that actually convinced me of the pairing. Ironically, this story, which is actually a threesome, is the best Snape/Hermione I've ever read. I particularly love how prickly Snape is in this, but I also love how Snape and Hermione, after building an accord together, bring Lupin into their home and their relationship.Snape/Harry/Draco
Rushlight, Through a Shattered Mirror .Warning: non-con. Voldemort has won the war, and given Harry as a slave to his trusted lieutenant, Severus Snape. Draco Malfoy is also Snape's slave. But is everything as it seems? I have a real weakness for this particular trope (which seems to be a very popular one in HP fandom), but this was the very first story of this type I ever read, and it's still one of my favorites. It's not at all a brutal slavery story--in fact, despite the noncon elements and Harry's rather realistic opposition to being enslaved, it still manages to have a sort of gentle, dreamy tone. It's also tremendously HOT.
Snape/Harry, Snape/Ron, Snape/Hermione, Harry/Ron/Hermione, etc.
Mouse, Corvus Fallere .Warning: non-con. The general outline of the plot is similar to "Through a Shattered Mirror": Voldemort has been victorious, and the remaining members of the opposition have been captured and enslaved. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have become the special slaves of Snape, who is the head of House Corvus at the newly remade Hogwarts. This very lengthy story spends a lot of time on their sexual training and on the customs of the new regime, though once again Snape is an ambivalent figure who might still be working for the opposition. In addition to the HOTNESS factor, which I rate at something like 169 on a scale of 1 to 10, I really like the fascinating cultural details in this story, like the breeding of the bird-servants who run Snape's house.
Stories that may devour your whole life:
These stories are really really long (my guess is that each is at least 800 pages long, if printed out--possibly longer, detailed, and amazingly well-characterized. In all cases, these were stories I started and could not physically stop reading, even when it meant (on a couple of occasions) I ended up going to work not having slept at all.
Mad Martha's Two Households Series . (This link takes you to the master list of her stories; this particular series is halfway down the page). (Harry/Ron)
I have to admit, though I am pretty open to most pairings in this fandom, I never would have thought a Harry/Ron story could eat my brain this way, but this series is really an amazing look at what might have happened had Harry been sorted into Slytherin. This story is most definitely AU, beyond the central premise; for one thing, Sirius is still alive, he and Remus are lovers and they are Harry's guardians. But what I find most compelling about this story is the amazingly well-developed world Mad Martha has created in this series, which includes wizarding hierarchy far beyond mere purebloods and mudbloods--First Families and a class structure as complex as the muggle one, with rules of comportment and complex social codes, including several varieties of wizarding religions. It also creates some really interesting backstory for James and Lily, and the develops a really complicated relationship between Sirius and Harry. And the central relationship between Harry and Ron is in itself wonderful: slow to build, tremendously complicated first by house politics and then by Harry's need to conceal the relationship to protect them both. I really love this universe.
Jordan Grant, Cambiare Podentes: Invocare and Cambiare Podentes: Madurare . (Harry/Snape; d/s).
I have no idea how long this story is, but each part took me at least 12 hours to read, and I'm not a slow reader, so be warned if you don't have a spare 2 days to spend.
This is slavefic, which may make some people want to abort immediately and others click immediately, but it's not the standard "Snape the deatheater (or fake deatheater) enslaving Harry" kind of story. The premise of the story is that Harry receives a prophecy that the only thing that will save the world from a ten thousand year reign of Voldemort is if he undergoes an ancient ritual which will give him more power than any wizard that ever lived, at the price of binding himself forever as a slave to Snape.
Although the first half or so of the original story reads to me as d/s, eventually I would say it actually morphs into something more like a typical arranged-marriage romance with a few d/s trappings. I confess, I was actually hoping for more d/s from this story, because I like that sort of thing, but really as a gradually building romance it is absolutely perfect, notching the sexual and romantic tension up and up and up until the reader, at least, is ready to explode.
Probably this rec set alone has made clear that one of my favorite things in fic is slowly developing relationships fraught with lots of tension and sprinkled with interesting bits of character development and worldbuilding; this story has all that and more. Also? It's one of the hottest things I've ever read. Frankly, in stories this long I usually find myself skimming sex scenes at a certain point, to get to the plot, because after the first ten sex scenes or so what else is there to see? But the sex in this story never bored me; it was always so tied to character and relationship development that I loved ever scene.
Other places to find HP recs:
I really like
bethbethbeth's recs, which can be found here; her recs tend to focus on Snape-centered pairings (Snape/Harry, Snape/Lupin, Snape/Hermione, etc). musesfool always has fabulous recommendations as well, in all sorts of pairings as well as gen fic, though she's especially interested in the older generation, especially Remus/Sirius; her delicious recs page is here. Another recs site everyone should know about it (if they don't already) is Polyamorous Recs, which features gen, het and slash recs in over 20 fandoms, and has a great HP section. And finally, switchknife has pages and pages of recs for multiple pairings (Snape/Harry, Harry/Draco, Harry/Ron, Snape/Draco, Sirius/Remus, Hermione/Ginny, etc.) here.
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