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crack_van2011-08-31 09:28 am
perverse-idyll.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-08-31 09:28 am
Entry tags:
Rapture by mia_ugly (NC-17)
This is my final rec of the month, and it's one I'd intended to post during my last go-round. It's Snape/Harry, my OTP, and one of my favorite stories of all time, so fair warning: this rec blithers on for a while. I hope regular c_v readers found something to enjoy here, and if you feel the urge, please let the authors know.
Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Length: ~50,000
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mia_ugly
Author Website: Mia's masterlist of fics on LJ. There is also a sequel Blood (but also roses)
Why this must be read:
This is one of the most beautiful stories—certainly one of the most beautiful Severus/Harry fics—I have ever read. The majority of Snarry fandom has probably seen it by now, but it's worth reccing to appreciators of gorgeous stories everywhere. It's entirely about love, you see. Which is to say it has a plot and ravishing characterization and some of the most spare, intense language found anywhere in HP, a style both real-feeling and unexpectedly poetic (unexpected for those who have never read Mia's fics before). But from the beginning it's drenched in yearning, in the helpless, soul-shattering embodiment of mutual recognition, need, embarrassment, gratitude and grief, the sometimes agonizing experience of giving one's heart, even against one's will. This fic doesn't merely tell the tale, it incarnates the experience and puts readers through the transformation it so passionately describes. It invites us inside Severus' penitential, emotionally outcast, povertystricken existence and accompanies Harry through his frantic pursuit of hopeless causes and beyond—into a life shadowed by the loss of someone he cannot save from what has already come to pass.
I'm trying not to flail here, but every time I think about how to summarize this incredibly moving fic it rekindles the ache, the desire to overflow with words, even though this is one of those stories where it's tempting to say, "There are no words." It's a time-travel narrative of sorts, weaving back and forth between Harry's viewpoint in the present and Severus' in the past, as Harry uses a magical pocketwatch that sends him back in time for short intervals and then yanks him forward again. Mia tells of the two men's awkward, half-comical, all-too-brief encounters. She keeps up a quick, careful pace interspersed with dazzling moments of imagery that burn the scene, the anti-courtship, into the reader's mind, flaying open Snape's soul with each reiteration. She cuts to his damaged core word by word, and she can make your heart fly into your throat with the cumulative misery and bewilderment and longing of this neglected young man: Snape in his twenties, affection-starved and socially isolated and self-loathing, snarling at Harry, at himself, barely able to believe that someone would be so unthinkingly decent as to make him breakfast, for God's sake. This is a far cry from the suave and self-possessed Professor Snape found in fanon; this son of Spinner's End is rough and vulnerable, self-punishing and stretched thin, and the author shows us why someone might be so foolish as to fall in love with him—which is what Harry eventually does, wants to do, wants so badly that he infects himself with lifelong regret and a broken heart.
I hope it won't give you the wrong idea when I say this fic is impossibly romantic; romantic, in that the story breaks its bounds and soars. The emotional intensity is extraordinary, and Mia's way with words will suck you in. Severus Snape and Harry Potter are brought viscerally to life, and you won't want to see the fic end because it means walking away from this world and leaving them behind. But at the moment it does end, Rapture lives up to its name and takes flight.
And that's the point at which I burst into tears.
~~*~~
The first time, it is Severus' birthday.
Christmas may be weeks over, but grotty pieces of tinsel and flickering lights still hang loosely on the shabby pub walls around him. To add to this indignity, the occasional Christmas song keeps playing softly on the largely ignored stereo-system (Someone must have made a bloody tape and forgotten all about it.). Severus is alone, twenty-five years old, and for all intents and purposes, it is sodding Christmas.
He's had a bit to drink.
There is no reason for him to be there. Alone he couldn't help, and didn't much want to, but he easily could have had the obligatory pint (or ten) in Hogsmeade and saved himself a drunken Apparation. There is no reason in the world for him to be this close to Spinner's End, surrounded by the same unemployed, unwashed men and women he grew up with. There's a table full of men in the corner that he is sure used to drink with his father, on many a night that his father would come home and kick the living shite out of his mum. Severus has not yet had the requisite amount of ale to start thinking about murdering them all, but he's well on his way.
Yes, Hogsmeade was an infinitely better choice. If Severus had not been violently hated by a good deal of the wizarding world, then perhaps he would have made that decision. And surely there were better Muggle pubs than this, places silent and dark and inconspicuous, where a man could be alone and miserable without drawing attention to himself, without standing out for not swearing loud enough, not grabbing at the barmaids, or sloshing ale around or frequently leaving to piss all over the front entrance.
Maybe even Muggle pubs with halfway decent music.
("It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank...")
Even mid-January, the song elicits a favourable response from the drunken masses. Someone even has the gall to slap Severus on the back, breathe something hot and indecipherable in his general direction, before lurching away across the floor. Severus curls closer in on his tiny table, rage and disgust curdling what alcohol he's so far managed to keep down. He's punishing himself, and he knows it. He's punishing himself by refusing to forget exactly where he came from, what kind of person he really is. If it hadn't been for the magic, he'd probably be one of these blokes in a few years, working at the mill, spending his pay at the pub, and slapping his wife around if she didn't like it. As it is, he escaped to a different world, where he managed to indebt himself for life to a powerful and deceptive old man, as well as murder the only -
He stops that thought before it finishes. It is his right, surely, on his bloody birthday, the same bloody day every bloody year for twenty-bloody-five -
He's had a bit to drink.
So much to drink that he pays no attention when the doors of the pub swing open, letting in a gust of damp wind. People have been coming and going all night, and Severus isn't much bothered that it's someone he might know. He drains the last of his pint, and shouts across the bar for another one, feeling the room spin pleasantly. Nearly there, then (it's his bloody birthday.).
And that is when, over the swearing and shouting and Christmas melodies ("They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold"), against all odds and reason, Severus hears the sharp intake of breath behind him, a small gasp, like someone is in pain. And he (against all odds, why should he sodding care, it's his bloody birthday) turns on his stool, eyebrows furrowed with a glare, turns to look behind him and sees -
Well, no one. No one of note anyway. There is a young man standing behind him, soaked to the bone with rain and leaving more than a small puddle on the dingy stone floor. He is slim and strangely dressed, with green eyes and an oddly-shaped mouth; it isn't that he is particularly handsome, but there is a strangeness about him that draws your eye and holds it, catches your gaze whether or not you want it to.
Severus realizes that he is staring, and it takes a second to realize the man is staring right back at him. Staring as if horrified and fascinated and shocked, and Severus feels the sudden desperate urge for confrontation. He's lived through a war, and in this bloody area for how long, it isn't like he hasn't picked up a few things here and there, and surely to god he's not the ugliest sod this chap has ever seen. Top five maybe, sure, but nothing to warrant this sort of attention. Some sort of insult flickers on Severus' tongue, he can already taste it, and it's his bloody birthday, and he's had too much to drink, and the green-eyed man strips him bare with his wide gaze, makes him feel like he is slowly being dissected and studied and carefully consumed, and his heart pounds in his chest and the room spins and -
The man spins on his heel, one shaking awkward motion, and heads back out into the rain. It mists against Severus' face as the door slams shut.
Oh.
Rapture
Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Length: ~50,000
Author on LJ:
mia_uglyAuthor Website: Mia's masterlist of fics on LJ. There is also a sequel Blood (but also roses)
Why this must be read:
This is one of the most beautiful stories—certainly one of the most beautiful Severus/Harry fics—I have ever read. The majority of Snarry fandom has probably seen it by now, but it's worth reccing to appreciators of gorgeous stories everywhere. It's entirely about love, you see. Which is to say it has a plot and ravishing characterization and some of the most spare, intense language found anywhere in HP, a style both real-feeling and unexpectedly poetic (unexpected for those who have never read Mia's fics before). But from the beginning it's drenched in yearning, in the helpless, soul-shattering embodiment of mutual recognition, need, embarrassment, gratitude and grief, the sometimes agonizing experience of giving one's heart, even against one's will. This fic doesn't merely tell the tale, it incarnates the experience and puts readers through the transformation it so passionately describes. It invites us inside Severus' penitential, emotionally outcast, povertystricken existence and accompanies Harry through his frantic pursuit of hopeless causes and beyond—into a life shadowed by the loss of someone he cannot save from what has already come to pass.
I'm trying not to flail here, but every time I think about how to summarize this incredibly moving fic it rekindles the ache, the desire to overflow with words, even though this is one of those stories where it's tempting to say, "There are no words." It's a time-travel narrative of sorts, weaving back and forth between Harry's viewpoint in the present and Severus' in the past, as Harry uses a magical pocketwatch that sends him back in time for short intervals and then yanks him forward again. Mia tells of the two men's awkward, half-comical, all-too-brief encounters. She keeps up a quick, careful pace interspersed with dazzling moments of imagery that burn the scene, the anti-courtship, into the reader's mind, flaying open Snape's soul with each reiteration. She cuts to his damaged core word by word, and she can make your heart fly into your throat with the cumulative misery and bewilderment and longing of this neglected young man: Snape in his twenties, affection-starved and socially isolated and self-loathing, snarling at Harry, at himself, barely able to believe that someone would be so unthinkingly decent as to make him breakfast, for God's sake. This is a far cry from the suave and self-possessed Professor Snape found in fanon; this son of Spinner's End is rough and vulnerable, self-punishing and stretched thin, and the author shows us why someone might be so foolish as to fall in love with him—which is what Harry eventually does, wants to do, wants so badly that he infects himself with lifelong regret and a broken heart.
I hope it won't give you the wrong idea when I say this fic is impossibly romantic; romantic, in that the story breaks its bounds and soars. The emotional intensity is extraordinary, and Mia's way with words will suck you in. Severus Snape and Harry Potter are brought viscerally to life, and you won't want to see the fic end because it means walking away from this world and leaving them behind. But at the moment it does end, Rapture lives up to its name and takes flight.
And that's the point at which I burst into tears.
The first time, it is Severus' birthday.
Christmas may be weeks over, but grotty pieces of tinsel and flickering lights still hang loosely on the shabby pub walls around him. To add to this indignity, the occasional Christmas song keeps playing softly on the largely ignored stereo-system (Someone must have made a bloody tape and forgotten all about it.). Severus is alone, twenty-five years old, and for all intents and purposes, it is sodding Christmas.
He's had a bit to drink.
There is no reason for him to be there. Alone he couldn't help, and didn't much want to, but he easily could have had the obligatory pint (or ten) in Hogsmeade and saved himself a drunken Apparation. There is no reason in the world for him to be this close to Spinner's End, surrounded by the same unemployed, unwashed men and women he grew up with. There's a table full of men in the corner that he is sure used to drink with his father, on many a night that his father would come home and kick the living shite out of his mum. Severus has not yet had the requisite amount of ale to start thinking about murdering them all, but he's well on his way.
Yes, Hogsmeade was an infinitely better choice. If Severus had not been violently hated by a good deal of the wizarding world, then perhaps he would have made that decision. And surely there were better Muggle pubs than this, places silent and dark and inconspicuous, where a man could be alone and miserable without drawing attention to himself, without standing out for not swearing loud enough, not grabbing at the barmaids, or sloshing ale around or frequently leaving to piss all over the front entrance.
Maybe even Muggle pubs with halfway decent music.
("It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank...")
Even mid-January, the song elicits a favourable response from the drunken masses. Someone even has the gall to slap Severus on the back, breathe something hot and indecipherable in his general direction, before lurching away across the floor. Severus curls closer in on his tiny table, rage and disgust curdling what alcohol he's so far managed to keep down. He's punishing himself, and he knows it. He's punishing himself by refusing to forget exactly where he came from, what kind of person he really is. If it hadn't been for the magic, he'd probably be one of these blokes in a few years, working at the mill, spending his pay at the pub, and slapping his wife around if she didn't like it. As it is, he escaped to a different world, where he managed to indebt himself for life to a powerful and deceptive old man, as well as murder the only -
He stops that thought before it finishes. It is his right, surely, on his bloody birthday, the same bloody day every bloody year for twenty-bloody-five -
He's had a bit to drink.
So much to drink that he pays no attention when the doors of the pub swing open, letting in a gust of damp wind. People have been coming and going all night, and Severus isn't much bothered that it's someone he might know. He drains the last of his pint, and shouts across the bar for another one, feeling the room spin pleasantly. Nearly there, then (it's his bloody birthday.).
And that is when, over the swearing and shouting and Christmas melodies ("They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold"), against all odds and reason, Severus hears the sharp intake of breath behind him, a small gasp, like someone is in pain. And he (against all odds, why should he sodding care, it's his bloody birthday) turns on his stool, eyebrows furrowed with a glare, turns to look behind him and sees -
Well, no one. No one of note anyway. There is a young man standing behind him, soaked to the bone with rain and leaving more than a small puddle on the dingy stone floor. He is slim and strangely dressed, with green eyes and an oddly-shaped mouth; it isn't that he is particularly handsome, but there is a strangeness about him that draws your eye and holds it, catches your gaze whether or not you want it to.
Severus realizes that he is staring, and it takes a second to realize the man is staring right back at him. Staring as if horrified and fascinated and shocked, and Severus feels the sudden desperate urge for confrontation. He's lived through a war, and in this bloody area for how long, it isn't like he hasn't picked up a few things here and there, and surely to god he's not the ugliest sod this chap has ever seen. Top five maybe, sure, but nothing to warrant this sort of attention. Some sort of insult flickers on Severus' tongue, he can already taste it, and it's his bloody birthday, and he's had too much to drink, and the green-eyed man strips him bare with his wide gaze, makes him feel like he is slowly being dissected and studied and carefully consumed, and his heart pounds in his chest and the room spins and -
The man spins on his heel, one shaking awkward motion, and heads back out into the rain. It mists against Severus' face as the door slams shut.
Oh.
Rapture