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crack_van2011-02-03 11:16 pm
perverse-idyll.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-02-03 11:16 pm
Entry tags:
A Rowan in Winter by Duniazade (G)
Hi, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
perverse_idyll back a second time to steer the Harry Potter van into Snape country, and I've finally sorted out which recs can stay and which had to go. Once again, I'll be presiding over an all-Snape month, and I've arranged the stories in chronological order, following my favorite character from childhood through Hogwarts to the end of his life.
Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Gen, no pairing
Length: 5840
Author on LJ:duniazade
Author Website: duniazade's page at the Online Wizard Library (OWL)
Why this must be read:
This is one of my favorite fics in all of fandom. In its brief span it combines the winter-bleak, winter-beautiful quality of a Grimm's fairytale with a textured, touching description of a day in Severus' childhood; the day his Hogwarts letter arrives. The quiet, worn poetry of daily life under siege, of cold and poverty and a terrible strangeness barricaded inside a Muggle household, is painted in delicate, economical, intensely sympathetic colors. This is a parable of destiny, of unfathomable forces far more ancient and indifferent to puny human lives—a half-blood child's life—than anything we see in canon; of inheritance and magic as both a source of wonder and an inescapable, inhuman compulsion of the soul.
The portraits here—of Eileen and Tobias, desperate for different reasons and using their different strengths to hold things together—or in Eileen's case, down—for as long as they can; of Lily, normal and good and untouched by the darkness in Severus' heritage; of Severus, stoic with responsibility but still just a child, a child with a sick mother, an unemployed father, and a much-needed friend, already at eleven years old a pawn to history and unrelenting myth—are all little masterpieces of storytelling, original and alive and individually heartbreaking.
duniazade takes care not to dispel the story's central mystery; she ends at the perfect moment, in January darkness at the painful close of Severus' birthday, with a blaze of insight that's breathtaking and shivery, both for its beauty and its extraordinary glimpse into this doomed child's fierce, solitary, and enigmatic nature.
~*~
He lay still under his covers, listening intently.
He knew his mother was lighting the range in the kitchen, putting the pail of water and the kettle on it. He usually couldn't hear her, as she went about the chores very quietly, but the snow had muffled all the sounds from the vicinity. In the cottony silence, he could hear the muted shuffle from the kitchen—she would open the door of the stove to shove the coal in, crumple the torn pages of the newspaper before striking the match to light them, and there would be the light hiss of the flame before she threw the paper in with the coals and shut the door, the clang of metal barely audible. Then, she would hoist the tin pail onto the stove to heat the water for washing, and the bottom would scrape faintly—the pail was heavy, and she never managed to lift it clean off and clear the top of the stove—and then he would hear the tiny clink of the kettle going on the smaller plate.
But the sound he had been waiting for all week long was the flapping of wings against the window.
"They mostly come in the week before your birthday," was what he had managed to get out of his mother. "But I don't think it will come by owl for you," she had added, and the bitter crease at the corner of her mouth had kept him from asking more.
Today was his birthday, the eleventh one. After a while, listening to the muffled creaks and rattles of the house, he knew with certitude that he wouldn't hear the flutter of the owl today, which meant that either his mother was right about the letter coming by other means, or that he wouldn't get a letter, after all.
The warmth of sleep was already dissipating, and the bitter cold was seeping through the covers. He threw them off and rolled out of bed, feet landing exactly in the old, felt slippers by the bed, grabbed the dressing gown laid on the nearby chair and slipped it on over his pyjamas. It had been Dad's, and he was grateful for the oversize, for the thick flannel wrapped almost twice around him. Mum had cut the hem so he wouldn't step on it, but it still covered him to the ankles and brushed the top of his feet.
He went down the stairs to the kitchen, trying to avoid the stairs that creaked, and pushed the door silently.
The kettle was already singing, and his mother was bent over the stove, watching the porridge pan.
He went to the back door, rubbed up a clear circle with the heel of his hand and rested his forehead against the glass pane.
A Rowan in Winter
perverse_idyll back a second time to steer the Harry Potter van into Snape country, and I've finally sorted out which recs can stay and which had to go. Once again, I'll be presiding over an all-Snape month, and I've arranged the stories in chronological order, following my favorite character from childhood through Hogwarts to the end of his life.Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Gen, no pairing
Length: 5840
Author on LJ:
duniazadeAuthor Website: duniazade's page at the Online Wizard Library (OWL)
Why this must be read:
This is one of my favorite fics in all of fandom. In its brief span it combines the winter-bleak, winter-beautiful quality of a Grimm's fairytale with a textured, touching description of a day in Severus' childhood; the day his Hogwarts letter arrives. The quiet, worn poetry of daily life under siege, of cold and poverty and a terrible strangeness barricaded inside a Muggle household, is painted in delicate, economical, intensely sympathetic colors. This is a parable of destiny, of unfathomable forces far more ancient and indifferent to puny human lives—a half-blood child's life—than anything we see in canon; of inheritance and magic as both a source of wonder and an inescapable, inhuman compulsion of the soul.
The portraits here—of Eileen and Tobias, desperate for different reasons and using their different strengths to hold things together—or in Eileen's case, down—for as long as they can; of Lily, normal and good and untouched by the darkness in Severus' heritage; of Severus, stoic with responsibility but still just a child, a child with a sick mother, an unemployed father, and a much-needed friend, already at eleven years old a pawn to history and unrelenting myth—are all little masterpieces of storytelling, original and alive and individually heartbreaking.
duniazade takes care not to dispel the story's central mystery; she ends at the perfect moment, in January darkness at the painful close of Severus' birthday, with a blaze of insight that's breathtaking and shivery, both for its beauty and its extraordinary glimpse into this doomed child's fierce, solitary, and enigmatic nature.He lay still under his covers, listening intently.
He knew his mother was lighting the range in the kitchen, putting the pail of water and the kettle on it. He usually couldn't hear her, as she went about the chores very quietly, but the snow had muffled all the sounds from the vicinity. In the cottony silence, he could hear the muted shuffle from the kitchen—she would open the door of the stove to shove the coal in, crumple the torn pages of the newspaper before striking the match to light them, and there would be the light hiss of the flame before she threw the paper in with the coals and shut the door, the clang of metal barely audible. Then, she would hoist the tin pail onto the stove to heat the water for washing, and the bottom would scrape faintly—the pail was heavy, and she never managed to lift it clean off and clear the top of the stove—and then he would hear the tiny clink of the kettle going on the smaller plate.
But the sound he had been waiting for all week long was the flapping of wings against the window.
"They mostly come in the week before your birthday," was what he had managed to get out of his mother. "But I don't think it will come by owl for you," she had added, and the bitter crease at the corner of her mouth had kept him from asking more.
Today was his birthday, the eleventh one. After a while, listening to the muffled creaks and rattles of the house, he knew with certitude that he wouldn't hear the flutter of the owl today, which meant that either his mother was right about the letter coming by other means, or that he wouldn't get a letter, after all.
The warmth of sleep was already dissipating, and the bitter cold was seeping through the covers. He threw them off and rolled out of bed, feet landing exactly in the old, felt slippers by the bed, grabbed the dressing gown laid on the nearby chair and slipped it on over his pyjamas. It had been Dad's, and he was grateful for the oversize, for the thick flannel wrapped almost twice around him. Mum had cut the hem so he wouldn't step on it, but it still covered him to the ankles and brushed the top of his feet.
He went down the stairs to the kitchen, trying to avoid the stairs that creaked, and pushed the door silently.
The kettle was already singing, and his mother was bent over the stove, watching the porridge pan.
He went to the back door, rubbed up a clear circle with the heel of his hand and rested his forehead against the glass pane.
A Rowan in Winter