![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Title: Blood Magic by Gatewaygirl
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: essentially gen (with het, slash, and femmeslash
background romances)
Categories: AU, angst, action/adventure, hurt/comfort
Length: Really Freaking Epic (340,000 words)
Warnings: n/a
Author on IJ: http//gatewaygirl.insanejournal.com
Website: http://www.the-archive.net/viewuser.php?uid=224
Review:
Harry finds out that Snape is really his father, but they both must hide this fact so that Snape can continue to spy for as long as possible. Around the same time the Dursleys are killed, which means the Minstry's trying to adopt Harry. Plus there's the whole Voldemort rising thing. Set during Harry's sixth year, AU after book five.
Very minor quibble first: the romances in this fic (aside from Severus/Remus) are very true to high school romances. In other words, not very interesting. Fortunately they only make up about 1% of the fic as a whole (hence the 'gen' classification).
Which leads me to the gushing: I've read a lot of Snape is Harry's father and Snape adopts Harry fic over the last few months and this is one of the very best. Snape is perfectly in character and yet still manages to grow into a good (if conventional) father figure, the plot
is detailed and interesting (and features lots of very interesting magics, including some of Fred and George's which are thankfully fun, rather than cruel), and the non-romantic relationships are fascinating. My favorites are probably the burgeoning Harry/Draco friendship, the troubled Ron/Hermione/Harry friendship (lying about Snape's relationship to Harry was bad enough and then Harry *told the truth*), and of course, Harry's relationship to Severus (my absolute favorite and the focus of the story as a whole).
Full of realism, relationship angst, adventure, love, and family, this is a truly great offering for anyone who would like to see a thoughtful, fascinating interpretation of the Harry is Snape's son genre.
Blood Magic (at FFA -- Fanfiction Downloader works for this site)
Blood Magic (single file source -- thanks![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
in_interval!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: essentially gen (with het, slash, and femmeslash
background romances)
Categories: AU, angst, action/adventure, hurt/comfort
Length: Really Freaking Epic (340,000 words)
Warnings: n/a
Author on IJ: http//gatewaygirl.insanejournal.com
Website: http://www.the-archive.net/viewuser.php?uid=224
Review:
Harry finds out that Snape is really his father, but they both must hide this fact so that Snape can continue to spy for as long as possible. Around the same time the Dursleys are killed, which means the Minstry's trying to adopt Harry. Plus there's the whole Voldemort rising thing. Set during Harry's sixth year, AU after book five.
Very minor quibble first: the romances in this fic (aside from Severus/Remus) are very true to high school romances. In other words, not very interesting. Fortunately they only make up about 1% of the fic as a whole (hence the 'gen' classification).
Which leads me to the gushing: I've read a lot of Snape is Harry's father and Snape adopts Harry fic over the last few months and this is one of the very best. Snape is perfectly in character and yet still manages to grow into a good (if conventional) father figure, the plot
is detailed and interesting (and features lots of very interesting magics, including some of Fred and George's which are thankfully fun, rather than cruel), and the non-romantic relationships are fascinating. My favorites are probably the burgeoning Harry/Draco friendship, the troubled Ron/Hermione/Harry friendship (lying about Snape's relationship to Harry was bad enough and then Harry *told the truth*), and of course, Harry's relationship to Severus (my absolute favorite and the focus of the story as a whole).
Full of realism, relationship angst, adventure, love, and family, this is a truly great offering for anyone who would like to see a thoughtful, fascinating interpretation of the Harry is Snape's son genre.
Blood Magic (at FFA -- Fanfiction Downloader works for this site)
Blood Magic (single file source -- thanks
in_interval!)
Designed by chasethestars
chasethestars
Comments
(Gah. Why can't I catch these things at home?)
http://www.the-archive.net/viewstory.php?sid=5561
(updated 9/1/2007)
the-archive.net's servers are *really* slow today - it's probably good to have another link up anyway.
Which is actually how I feel about a lot of Snarry fic these days -- before I started ER (and thus before I was doing *massive* amounts of fic downloading), I'd read a fic beginning to end unless the writing was so bad as to be incomprehensible. These days I'm chucking fics based on the warnings. (And yet my to-read folder (currently at 800 MB) continues to grow!)
For me, nothing can top In Blood Only (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2027554/1/In_Blood_Only) in the 'Snape becomes Harry's father' market (er, save maybe A Year Like None Other, of course.) It's one of the only such stories that preserves the uncompromising nastiness Snape projected for most of the series.
Of course, stories that preserve the personalities of dick!characters earn brownie points with me no matter how well they're written, so I could be wrong about this too.
His relation to Harry has come as a nasty shock on a couple of different levels, he hates Lily and the Marauders more than ever, and the revelation that Harry isn't James' son doesn't immediately stop him from continuing to project that hatred onto Harry. On the other hand, he's also having to come to terms with the fact that despite all of that, this kid is his, and that means something (though not, perhaps, entirely what you'd expect.) Harry's a teenager, in all that implies -- he's struggling to figure life out, he's still trying to deal with Sirius' death, and he's carrying a lot of repressed anger. This situation with Snape is the last thing he needs.
Despite all this, it works. The characterization feels right, and Harry and Snape do eventually come to understand each other better and even find common ground. Sirius' death has taught Harry to think things through a bit more, and Snape may be a spiteful bastard but he doesn't approve of child abuse. Finding parallels between the way he treats Harry and his own relationship with his father makes him very uncomfortable (despite his best efforts).
It may seem a bit harsh at first (also, it's not quite as well written in the beginning), but once you get into it the relationship between them becomes very interesting. And like I said, the characterization's a gem. It takes a long time for them to develop anything approaching positive emotions for each other, though, and Snape is fairly abusive for the first while. He isn't beating up on him or starving him or any such thing, but he's about as bad as you might imagine. If you can, I'd recommend reading it at least until Lucius gets into the picture. That's past the worst of Snape's behaviour and it's the point where things start to get more interesting -- Harry finds some value in being Snape's son, Snape is starting to re-evaluate his impression of Harry, and Lucius ... well, you already know my feelings on the characterization.
(Yes, I've been re-reading this and am starting to remember everything I love about it, and it's too hot to think straight besides, so excuse me if I gush.)