Title: Life in my Hands
Artist: spacefragments (formally nk_aoede)
Characters: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin
Rating: PG13
Artist's Website: spacefragments' livejournal (art is public)
Aritst's Summary: The Veil will not give up its victim so easily.
Why you chose this piece: This painting raids my emotions every time I view it. From Sirius' tightly clawing fingers to the windy swoop of Remus' robes, this moment can steal breath. The header tells us it's an AU scene, and by the set of Remus' jaw and the penetrating white light breaking through to the foreground we allow ourselves to root for an outcome different from that in Book 5. Yet the viewer is thrust into a paradox amongst all those complex and dramatically perilous visual details fused together, unable to ignore The Veil wound greedily around Sirius' arm ... just how can it lose?

Created for 2008's rs_games, spacefragements' expert technique and vivid emotional representation forces you to confront everything you understand about Remus and Sirius. It means so much.

Life in my Hands (click link in header)

Title: Two Conversations
Gaining Access: Public
Author: YKuang/likeatuesday
Length/Word Count: 1,665
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2688433/1/Two_Conversations
Pairing: Harry/Ginny, Harry/Hermione friendship
Rating: G
Author's Website: None
Why everyone should read this: A quick read that is utterly adorable and wonderfully in character. It'll give you the warm fuzzies and leave you with a smile on your face. But, really, it's more than just a fluff piece, with a just a touch of bittersweet angst below the surface.

( Excerpt )

Title: Salva Veritate
Access: Public
Author: lassiterfics
Crossover Fandoms: Chronicles of Narnia
Length/Word Count: 900
Character/Pairing: Tom Riddle/Susan Pevensie
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Magic is a blessing and being different can be a tool of power.
Author's Website: Lassiter's Fic Master List
Why everyone should read this: This is a very short piece, but it packs such a gut-wrenching punch. The idea of putting Tom and Susan together is absolutely chilling, and the fic as a whole has a shadow cast over it. The prose is absolutely haunting, and the characterization of Susan's thoughts as well as her conversations with Tom are absolutely marvelous. However, my favorite aspect about this story is how it chooses to explain "the problem of Susan." It humanizes her so much, and it does so in a perfectly believable way. I could wax on and on about it, but I don't want to ruin it for you all. At any rate, pleasepleasePLEASE read this absolute gorgeous bit of darkness even if you don't like crossovers. I promise that you can scarcely even tell that two universes have collided, the blending is so seemless, and you will not regret giving it a try.


( Excerpt )

Title: Important Secrets
Author: alwaysasnapefan
Length/Word Count: ~2500
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: here
Pairing: Severus Snape/Horace Slughorn
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Severus demands to know why he's not allowed into the Slug Club.
Author's Website: Enchantment Under the AFF.net Dance

Why everyone should read this:

This fic gives an intriguing mix of backstory and porn(!), showing the seldom-visited relationship between Severus and Horace in Marauders' Era Hogwarts. Severus' voice is marvelously age-appropriate here; this is a snapshot of the Half-Blood Prince before he learned to suppress his histronics with a well-placed sneer. Slughorn is also beautifully in-character, his morals and opportunism doing battle before our eyes.

Yes, this is a student/teacher fic in which Severus may or may not be of age - the author leaves that up to you - but the power-balance here is far from obvious, I feel, elevating this story above the more predictable examples of that trope. Indeed, the author's touch is deceptively light - plenty of banter, not too much angst - but I was left afterwards pondering exactly who, if anyone, had been exploited here. A shortish fic that punches above it's weight.


( Excerpt )

Title: Where It Takes Us
Gaining Access: Unlocked
Author: bk03
Length/Word Count: 9,535
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: None
Pairing: Harry/Padma
Rating: PG-13
Author's Website: Profile at FF.net
Author's Summary: Padma is at a crossroads in her life. She can either stay on the known path, or take the turn and see where it takes her.

Why everyone should read this: The author does a great job fleshing Padma out, and building on the small clues that we get about her from canon. Writing about such minor characters really lives or dies in the details and quirks that an author puts in to fill in the gaps that canon left out. I really liked the Padma Patil that bk03 created, from her skirts to the purple bangle she wears to remember her sister by. Both Harry and Padma were just so real with their friendship, and the awkwardness that comes with becoming something more that by the end of the fic I really believed in them, which is all you can really ask for.


( Excerpt  )

Title: Reconciling Lily's Eyes
Access: Public
Author: persepolis130
Length/Word Count: ~52,175
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: Walking the Plank (scroll down)
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter, fleeting Harry/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Author's Website: None that I know of
Why everyone should read this:
With my previous fic rec, we entered the muddy middle ground of Snape interpretation. He's still Dark, sarcastic, suspicious, and above all Not Nice to Harry, but at the same time he's fascinating, amusing, skilled, and a source of reluctant erotic attraction. It's hard to rank the stories in the middle spectrum with exactitude, because Snape's most irresistible when he's being a fuckwad and a tragic hero, a stubborn bastard and a damaged soul, so judging degrees of obnoxiousness gets a little subjective.

I will say upfront, Persepolis' fic has perhaps the most physically unattractive Snape I've ever encountered, and that includes canon. She's merciless about his appearance and his lack of evident sex appeal. He's the perfect antidote to all the Slytherin Sex God fics in fandom. What's more, he's a total basket case on every possible level. Harry, for his part, is a whack job obsessed with treating Snape as his own personal redemption project. They absolutely and repeatedly do not understand each other. Harry's a screwed-up and screamingly self-centered teenager who needs an instruction manual to find his way around an emotional clue, Snape is… well, about the most unsocialized, self-pitying and self-punishing excuse for a survivor ever set loose in a shipper fic. Also decidedly pervy. Together, they're a train wreck of humongous proportions.

Yet this is, by God, one of the funniest, most sarcastic, most distinctive Snarry fics I've read in all my fandom years. As well as one of the most surprisingly tender. Persepolis has a gift for dry, deadpan, absurdist humor, for creating scenes of lunacy and emotional chaos. Through it all, Snape and Harry push each other from comedy to melodrama and back, with occasional jaw-dropping forays into extremely unglamorous but disturbingly hot sex. I mean to say, the encounters between them, with their mess and unpleasantness and emotional pathology, shouldn't be sexy, yet by some miracle they are. They shouldn't work, yet they do. This is the definition of Snarry in a nutshell.

The whole saga's told from Harry's POV, and it may take a scene or two to catch on to the off-kilter voice of the fic. Once you do, it becomes scathingly funny and exasperating and touching all at the same time. The episodes in an American wizarding school swing between the hilarious and the neurotic. Eventually the reader comes around to believing that these two mental cases have earned the right to drive each other crazy, and it would be wrong to inflict them on anybody else. But even Harry's stubbornness has to break in the face of repeated slapdowns, and the relationship, such as it is, smashes on the rock of Snape's self-hatred. Yet even with a wedding to Ginny in the offing, Persepolis pulls off a virtuoso piece of comic writing, squeezing tension and farce together while setting up a reunion scene that made my heart ache.

It's difficult to describe this fic accurately because it charges right through all the fanon clichés and stomps them flat. Set aside plenty of time for it, because it's addictive and once you're hooked it will be hard to stop reading. And once you've recovered enough from the experience, there's a sequel to look forward to, with Snape being his evil, pervy self and traumatizing the Weasleys for life.

( Snape and Harry in an American classroom )

~~~

Reconciling Lily's Eyes

Title: HBP Missing Moments
Gaining Access: Public
Author: melindaleo
Length/Word Count: ~12,000
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: None
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG
Author's Website: http://www.melindaleo.com/
Why everyone should read this: This is actually a series of three one-shots which are, obviously, missing moments from Half-Blood Prince. One is a Harry POV set after Dumbledore's death, one is a Ginny POV set after Harry is injured in the Quidditch match, and one is an utterly adorable scene that takes place immediately after the first kiss. The POVs are both incredibly well-done - the author clearly has a firm grasp on both of these characters. If you like missing moment fics, don't miss out on these.

If you have signed up to rec for this month and fail to post a minimum of 4 story recs (8 maximum, 3 art recs/1 vid rec are optional) during the month of July, your chances of recommending works here in the future are hurt as your name will be moved to the bottom of the queue.

The following reccers are behind:

jbangelo (Harry/Ginny), shimotsuki (Remus/Tonks), somandalicious (Draco/Hermione), bluestocking79 (Threesomes) - each with 1 story rec.

elanorofcastile (Harry/Draco), balcony_scene (Harry/Hermione), echolynn4 (Remus/Hermione), aldehyde (Draco/Ginny) - each have yet to rec a story.


We've got around half a month left, lots of time to catch up!

Title: Sage | OPEN
Author: lady_rhian
Length/Word Count: 97,412 complete
Alternate Links to Fic: TPP
Pairing: HG/RW, HG/SS
Rating: Mature
Why everyone should read this: The story is told as a series of flashbacks. Rose questions her mother and Hermione tries to explain the past. Besides the compelling mother-daughter relationship I was intrigued by how Lady Rhian made SS/HG go all wrong. Instead of bring the couple into sugar covered happiness after the war, we are shown how the couple imploded. I thought it was very realistic, not all Hermione’s fault and not all Severus’ either. They were just too diverse at that time in their life to make the relationship work. Now in the present Rose has discovered Mr. Snape is still around. Oh my! Read it you’ll love it I promise.

Title: Professor Slughorn and His Best Student
Artist: Didodikali , aka trickofthedark
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: None that I can find
Pairing: Severus Snape/Horace Slughorn
Rating: G
Summary: A glimpse into Severus' training as a Potions expert.
Artists's Website: Didodikali's Lemonade Party

Why everyone should read/view this: Didodikali's style is utterly charming (perhaps a little Tintin-esque); she puts across a great deal of expression and character in relatively few lines. This piece in particular is lots of fun - I love Severus' little scowl and Horace's expansive pose! The accompanying drabble works very well too, showing the characters' differing approaches to being Potions Masters...

Title: Truth of the Heart
Gaining Access: Accessible to all
Author: Shadowycat
Length/Word Count: ~35,000
Alternate Links to Fic: None
Pairing: Severus/Remus
Rating: R with violence
Author's Website: More stories are available here
Summary: The war is finally over and, to his surprise, Remus Lupin has survived, though questions about just what happened to him during the final battle haunt his dreams and his waking hours in equal measure. When he realizes that Severus Snape is also still alive, Remus knows he can’t rest until he finds him. Something deep within him whispers that Severus holds the answers he needs, and only when he’s face to face with him again will he be able to understand the true reason for his survival and find what’s been missing from his life for far too long.

Why everyone should read this: For me, this story reads like old school RL/SS, using many of the tropes that I love as a reader, and I can see it becoming a "comfort fic" for me because of that. It offers a plausible - and romantic - explanation for both Snape and Lupin's survival of the final battle, it has Snape running off to start over somewhere warm and far away from England, it has Remus putting together the pieces and seeking him out, and it even has some suspense and action/adventure to leaven the romance.

For me, it has the tone and feel of a RL/SS story from the "good ol' days" before HBP and DH when things were easier for our little ship and there weren't so many obstacles to overcome. It's romantic without being soppy or cloying, it's dramatic without being gratuitously angsty, and it left me with a sense of "feel-good" satisfaction after I finished reading it.

I recommend this story to anyone who's in the mood for a solidly written, engaging romance with just enough drama to make it suspenseful.

( Excerpts )

Title: A House Mad from Grief
Gaining Access: Accessible to all
Author: Rosy
Length/Word Count: ~51,500
Alternate Links to Fic: None
Pairing: Severus/Remus, Harry/Neville
Rating: hard R with a post-DH altered reality, mentions of rape, torture, and murder.
Author's Website: More stories are available here
Summary: The House remembers him, has seen him before. Long, long ago. But he has returned, and the Master will be pleased. The House need only get rid of Severus Snape first. And then the Master will forget his foolish plan.

Why everyone should read this: As a fan of ghost/haunted house stories myself, I dove into this story eagerly, especially when Rosy mentioned Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Stephen King's derivative of it, Rose Red, as inspirations, and the resulting story didn't disappoint.

It's written in first person, which is rare to see, but the voices are clear and distinct, and Snape's is particularly fun to read; Rosy captures his snarky voice well, and I snerked aloud during his chapters numerous times. I was particularly engaged by Severus' description of their means of communicating without words, since I favor characterizing Snape as someone who wouldn't be able to voice sentiments such as "I'm sorry" and "I love you" easily, if at all.

Remus and Severus are an established couple here, and while there is a lovely sex scene, the story is plot-driven rather than romance-driven, combining mystery, the supernatural, and action/adventure in such an engaging way that I couldn't stop reading even when I wanted to take a break for dinner. There's a mystery at the heart of the haunting, so I can't say much about the plot because I don't want to spoil it, but the story as a whole is a page-turner (figuratively speaking).

I enjoyed it immensely as an homage to one of the greatest haunted house stories of all time with a RL/SS twist, and I enjoyed the little throw-away references to things like Ghost Hunters (I totally agree with Severus that Remus probably has a crush on Jason). The story moved at a good pace, and the descriptive passages gave a strong sense of place and visual imagery, making the story seem cinematic.

I recommend this to anyone who likes ghost stories, haunted house stories, and/or mysteries.

( Excerpts )

Title: Extraordinary Lengths
Gaining Access: Unlocked
Author: madeyemax
Length/Word Count: 46,970
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: Here
Pairing: Percy/Barty Crouch Jr.
Rating: NC-17
Author's Website: Fic Journal at Dreamwidth
Author's Summary: From the HP Lexicon: "Barty Sr. quickly realized the extent of Barty’s (Jr.) allegiance to Voldemort, and went to extraordinary lengths to keep his son imprisoned at their home."

Why everyone should read this: Because it's Percy/Barty Crouch Jr., how could you say "no" to Percy/Barty Crouch Jr.? The interactions in this fic between these two characters are very believable with Percy's Gryffindorish arrogance and Barty's devil-may-care craziness; not to mention the sex is pretty hot, and slightly twisted as Percy makes choices that bring him deeper and deeper into Barty's world.


( R-rated Excerpt )


Mods, I need a Percy/Barty Crouch Jr. tag Thanks!

Here's the second of my Snape/Slughorn recs for July - a very high quality piece of writing:

Title: Yond Snape
Author: Falco Droop, aka Anders Svartalfurinn, who used to have LJs and IJs by the names svartalfur and falco_droop
Length/Word Count: ~8700
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: None that I can find
Pairing: Severus Snape/Horace Slughorn
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Slughorn pursues Snape. An account of the burgeoning relationship between two Slytherins on the background of the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Author's Website: Alas, I can't find a live link to this author anywhere. If anyone can help, I'd be most grateful.

Why everyone should read this:

The author makes a thoroughly believeable, unsentimental case for a relationship between these two consummate Slytherins. Severus is perfectly prickly - a man under real stress and starting to fray at the edges. Slughorn is an tantalizingly uneasy mixture of kind-heartedness and creepyness - the characterization here is wonderfully thorough, but his moral ambiguity is never lost.

To this end, the dialogue is crisp and gives a superb sense of the precarious fascination/unwilling dependency between the two men. The descriptive prose is pretty dark, but always taut; never self-indulgent.

As befits the tone of this fic, the intimate scenes here are completely without facade or glamourization - a real feat, which shows the skill of the author, I feel. Furthermore, they are central to the development of the characters; there is a very slow burn of tenderness in otherwise dire straits; deftly and masterfully done.


( Excerpt )

Title: Unexpected Christmas Gifts
Author: koalathebear
Length/Word Count: 5,123
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: At fanfiction.net
Pairing: Hermione/Oliver past Hermione/Cedric.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "I told you ... we were friends. We kept in touch even after I left. I was touring with Puddlemere... Cedric had asked me to find your Christmas present for you when I was in China for the qualifying rounds ...I never got the chance to tell him I found it .."
Author's Website: Authors Livejournal
Why everyone should read this: Can I just say because it is really good? I love the emotions is this story, there is angst and humor and both of them are well written. It is a follow-up to The Boy Who Died so you might want to read that first. This story is set during Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.


( Excerpt )

note to mods: This pair needs a tag. :)

Title: Kestrel
Access: Public
Author: lomonaaeren
Length/Word Count: ~25,000
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: hds_beltane
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter, past Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG-13
Author's Website: None that I know of
Why everyone should read this:
lomonaaeren is best known as an H/D shipper, and this is the only Snarry fic she's written so far. Alas, because it's both beautiful and unique. It's a post-DH fic, AU only in that Snape survives the Shrieking Shack. Harry seeks him out when his eldest son suffers a crippling encounter with a venomous snake; Snape's profession is no longer potions-centric, but has undergone a complex transformation into the magical crafting of artificial limbs. It sounds far-fetched, but it's perfect. It allows Snape to combine the callings of art and science; it's arcane, slightly repellant, and enormously useful; and it gives free rein to Snape the inventor, the Half-Blood Prince who was always dreaming up new spells.

This is Snape at nearly sixty, shut away, suspicious, still grudging, still fierce and brilliant and cruel. He's emotionally paranoid, which makes him incapable of reading gestures and expressions without searching for the underlying mockery, the scorn he's sure is there. The price he demands for helping young James is that Harry submit to wearing his experimental wings. Once attached, the wings are permanent. Harry agrees for his son's sake, and the fic builds from there to an intense, low-key, mostly one-sided courtship as Harry becomes fascinated by Snape and Snape begins the process of slowly changing his mind about Harry while watching him master the wings.

Flight is a metaphor for freedom and transcendence, of course, and it's dazzlingly erotic in its own right. I love the scene in which Snape, unaware of the effect he's having, runs his hands over Harry to check how the wings are faring. And the scene of Harry showing Snape the joy of flying is gorgeous. But there are so many individual pleasures scattered throughout this fic: the many descriptions of the wings, lomonaaeren's marvelous version of magic which is itself reason enough to read this fic, the glimpses into Snape's laboratory/studio, Harry's maturity and stubbornness, the layers of Snape's characterization as an emotionally stunted and defensive arsehole, a master craftsman, a compelling outsider distrustful of his own loneliness. The writing is never less than graceful, and frequently rises to heights of beauty and subtlety, never gratuitous in its image-making, always tightly focused on the emotional tension between Snape and Harry and the breathtaking strangeness of the wings. This is prose of a very high order, and utterly spellbinding storytelling.

( This bit includes one of my favorite lines )

~~~

Kestrel

Title: This Bloke.
Gaining Access: Public post
Author: ladybirdington
Length/Word Count: not given; ~ 1000 I think
Alternate Links to Fic/Art: none.
Pairing: Katie/Lee
Rating: PG-13
Author's Website: birdiefics
Why everyone should read this:
Katie/Lee is probably my OTP if I have one. I love it because it's extremely plausible without having to shift and rearrange canon. It's a rarepair that works with JK's writing, instead of against it. Unfortunately, it's pretty darn rare, so the only fics I've seen thus far that I have not written are ones that I've asked for/badgered people to write. This is no exception.

This fic is great, because you really get a feel for their history, for how long Lee has sat and nursed Katie through her broken love life before he finally decided to stake his claim. There's a comfort and a realness to their interaction which I appreciate.

Title: The Drought Story
Author: librae
Word Count: 3182
Characters: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin
Rating: PG
Warnings: N/A
Author's Website: lj homepage
Summary: Remus's owl died at the end of June, inaugurating what Sirius dubbed the Summer of Heatstroke.
Why everyone should read this: This story's opener traps its reader. Immediately a strong sense of a hot summer surrounding is brilliantly detailed and continues as the thematic thread upon which the entire story hangs. The sense of place -- sweltering, blood boiling red sense of place -- is an arid contrast to Sirius' coolly detached correspondence with Remus while at James' for holiday. At its turning point, Remus inserts himself directly into the story, bringing a feast of subtle, beautiful, almost painful shared moments as their friendship unfolds through intense and uniquely paced scenes representing all the posturing of youth combined with sexual awakening.

I've loved this story for years. Its pitch perfect character voices and rich narrative gently dovetailing into canon is never to be outworn. Written in 2005, librae's The Drought Story is symbolic of everything luminous about this pair as boys.

( Excerpt from The Drought Story )

Title: Don't Go
Artist: undunoops on InsaneJournal
Rating: R? For naked bum and the touching thereof. NWS.
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Artist's Website: Apparently it's been taken down.
Why you chose this piece:
Well, I've always loved line drawings, graphite, black-and-white, and Undun's pencilwork has an immediacy to it, a grittiness and intimacy, that suck me in. Her portraits stay true to the characters - I love her homely, intense Snape, her youthful Harry. There's a quality to her work that's hard to pinpoint, a quality that makes the viewer more of a voyeur, as if catching the characters in the act. The figures aren't, so to speak, posing for the world. They're totally absorbed in the moment, in each other, not pretty or stylized or embodying their role in a story, even when the drawing (like this one) is meant to illustrate a specific fic. These are private moments, rumpled, sweaty, rough, crossing the emotional line, the men involved oblivious to the onlooker and definitely not playing to an audience.

I love this piece in particular because it captures something important in the pairing dynamic. It's suggestive rather than explicit; both men have their trousers down, but they're mostly clothed. It's the quality of resistance, of resistance being overcome, of thwarted escape, of Harry making the effort but unable to leave, of Snape as a hungry, seductive bastard whose hair covers his face and whose braces dangle from his waistband. The sexual tension here is gorgeous, from the way Harry not-quite-claws at the door, eyes closed, mouth open, arse exposed, conflicted and clearly breathless, to the way Snape's hands fondle him fore and aft - God, Snape's hands here slay me. But the centerpiece, as far as I'm concerned, is Snape's mouth. His face is almost entirely hidden, but we see his mouth pressed to Harry's neck, presumably muttering the words of the title. The intimacy of that mouth, and the implicit surrender in Harry's expression, are really freakin' erotic.

So, um, yeah, it pushes my buttons. And the style perfectly suits it, swift and textured, conveying both stillness and motion.

But words can only go so far in describing art. I admit my limitations and urge you to judge for yourself.

Don't Go