queer_scribbling | Fandom Snowflake Challenge

Day #10: In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.

I have fic. Specifically, I have two oneshots where Sirius Black/Severus Snape is tagged, but you could also use an ampersand or squint and miss it. I have a multi-chapter that's more definitely Sirius/Severus that's more about rebuilding after a war you didn't expect to survive with a bit of Jewish!Severus included. Finally, I have Part Two of a series that's more about time travel and changing one's mistakes than super focused on Sirius/Severus as a ship. (There are a few notes about Part One, which might be too squicky or triggering for everyone, and I don't think it's absolutely necessary to read Part One before giving Part Two a try.)

❄️ "Blanket Me" by TowardTheStars.

Dated: 2020. Oneshot; 3,060 words. A Sirius Black/Severus Snape fic for an event. Heads up that it's tagged for implied or referenced alcohol abuse or alcoholism.

In my opinion, I'd call this more of a 'Sirius & Severus' fic than a slash ship fic, but it depends on how you split the ampersand and slash ships, really. Mostly, it's a Sirius POV of being touch starved and leaning into each under a blanket on a chilly morning. I liked the feeling of being in a private liminal space where touching someone is okay, and I also liked that Sirius and Severus are both too tired to fight instead of changing their animosity.

Excerpt:

The sun is rising, but it’s still cold. They’ll have to go inside soon; Snape to report and Sirius to pretend like he matters. Albus will visit shortly, and then Remus will stop by this afternoon. Sirius will fill the time by drinking, and Snape will disappear back to Hogwarts. They’ll see each other at the next Order meeting, and they won’t talk. If they do, it’ll be something ugly and vicious; hate doesn’t die in the dawn.

He hopes, though, that another morning, Snape will join him, cigarette flickering between his fingers and lips. He’ll like to hold him again, or he’ll like Snape to hold him, pale fingers running through Sirius’s hair as Sirius clings to his bony body. They won’t talk much, but they won’t need to.

❄️ "Once in a Red Moon" by o2doko.

Dated: 2011. Oneshot; 11,743 words. There's a very brief Sirius/Severus moment in a kiss, but there are also references to Past Sirius/Remus and Unrequited Lily/Severus. While I found this fic while searching the Sirius/Severus tag, the moment is so brief that I'd almost hesitate to rec this to someone clearly wanting a Sirius/Severus fic.

The focus is on Sirius eventually sobering up and trying to deal with post-Azkaban life without alcohol, so it's definitely an alcohol or alcoholism trigger. However, if one happens to be in a head space where they might want to sit with a character that feels useless and virtually abandoned and drinking to cope with the loneliness of existence, this fic might provide some camaraderie before showing that it's possible to stop drinking.

Excerpt:

A week and a half went by, and nothing; no news. No contact.

The world outside sank into the moody, grey gloom of approaching winter. The trees shed their leaves like flecks of dried blood against the bone-pale ridges of the sidewalk, until even those scrapes of decaying color shriveled up and blew away. And Sirius stood before the solitary window in the room that had once been his, day after day, watching the world fade and waiting. His breath smoked against the chilled glass, and while the sunlight whithered he would draw meandering, meaningless shapes in the fog until even that last scrap of warmth bled out into the darkness.

When the ponderous clock in the front hallway tolled the two-week mark, Sirius used the twisted metal skeleton of a discarded folding chair to pry open one of the windows in the attic. With a fifth of whiskey in his hand, he crawled out onto the decaying roof and sat alone for hours, watching the first snowfall of the year with cobwebs streaking his hair.

❄️ "Tear Down the House I Grew Up In" by bluewoodensea.

Dated: 2020. Five chapters; 24,541 words. A Sirius/Severus fic with a background of the 'quietly wanting what you shouldn't and/or can't have since you were a teen' variety.

AU where Sirius and Severus both live through the Second War with Voldemort and start something together. It's alternating POV, and there's something about the flavour of 'I didn't think I'd live' and 'rebuilding is actually a bit tedious' post-war recovery that feels, in a way, comfortable. In the last chapter, Severus asks Sirius to accompany him to Spinner's End to pick up a few things, and I really like this take on Jewish Severus.

Excerpt one:

The dead windows of his onetime home made him remember the two candles his mother used to light on Friday evenings. There was no shul within walking distance and his parents could rarely afford the journey farther afield, and neither wizarding law nor Tobias would have allowed Eileen to use magic to transport the three of them; perhaps they would not have been particularly observant in any case; but his mother would light candles.

Somehow the ritual always seemed to bring his mother and father closer; then they seemed in alliance with each other. They had known nothing of each other’s worlds when they married, but this they had in common. They never argued on Friday evenings.

Excerpt two:

In the kitchen there were candles in the cupboard under the sink. He took two and set them in their holders on the windowsill. It was long after sundown, but he lit each in turn and, covering his face with one hand, murmured the blessing he remembered.

[...]

He watched the candles burn lower, the only part of the house that brought him any sense of calm. Perhaps, he thought — he hoped — when he was in London he would find a shul, attend its services, if they would allow him to. He had not been raised with much knowledge of the traditions, and, beyond that, some people had not forgiven and would probably never forgive him Dumbledore’s death. He was not sure, despite everything, he would ever forgive himself.

❄️ "Fiddler's Green" by Gadhelyn.

This is a work in progress (started in 2021); currently, there's nine chapters and 42,688 words. Technically, this is Part Two of a series - Farther From Hell - where Sirius/Severus is established during Sirius' post-Azkaban time in Part One.

When Sirius goes through The Veil, he travels back in time to his teen body and has to try to not mess up the future too much by changing the events of the past. It's interspersed with Severus' POV in the future. Note that there are some references to past and/or teen relationships; currently, Sirius/Remus and Avery Jr/Severus. Personally, I don't think you absolutely need to read Part One in order to understand this; see note below the excerpt.

Excerpt:

Because, Sirius Black realised just now, that’s where he was. Back at Hogwarts. With his friends. Sitting around under an alder tree, books carelessly scattered near them on the grass, surrounded by crowd of other chattering students: some were playing, one group tossed around a broom they were practicing flying with, girls trying on new colour-changing lip-glosses and holding mirrors up for one another by the lake… Few orange leaves on the trees, so it might have been September, early start of a new schoolyear.

So, this was his afterlife, then.

School.

To be honest—it was kind of a bummer.

Note: Part One is called "Dead Reckoning"; it's ten chapters and has 42,797 words. It has the Archive Warning of Rape slash Non-con and definitely starts out with what one could call hate sex in the first two and and a half chapters. (While it's perhaps not entirely unrealistic to have "I'm not retarded" in 1990s dialogue, that may be something some readers want to prepare for in Chapter 4.) The arc of animosity to not hating each other isn't easy, but it feels cathartic. Personally, the descriptions of 'this feeling' as inconvenient or peaceful at certain moments (from Severus) and struggling to say the word 'love' feels oddly satisfying, in a quoiromantic way. However, the first half of the fic might require a particular mental space in some readers.

Original Pillowfort post can be found here.