Title: Night-Blooming Heartsease
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Neville/Snape
Categories: Romance, drama, war
Length: Long (~32,000 words)
Warnings: Character death, slash

Author on LJ: julad
Author on AO3: Julad
Author Website: Ambivalent Pleasures

Summary:
Snape swooped around the room like a giant bat, adding ingredients to some cauldrons and stirring others. Then he stopped and tapped his wand against the benchtop impatiently. "Well? What is so important that I must risk a vital brew of Animaserum by having you in the room with it?"

His tongue was so dry, he didn't know how he would ever get the words out. "Heartsease, Professor." There, that wasn't so hard. He took a deep breath. Dementors were worse, surely.

Review:
There's a little throw-away remark in Resonant's story Transfigurations (which unaccountably hasn't been recced here (yet)): Then George raised his glass. "To Neville Longbottom," he said ... "And to Severus Snape, may he rest in whatever he prefers instead of peace." This is the story of that remark.

It is a gloriously impossible romance, and it tugs on your heart-strings the whole way through. We know from the start that Snape won't live to the end of the story, and the Snape we meet still terrifying Neville at the beginning of the story isn't the sort of man that we would mourn much, just as he should be. By the end, he's still the same man; it's our view of him through Neville's eyes and Neville's growing self-confidence that has changed. That's the great achievement of this story, keeping true to the characters but making us care anyway.

It's worth saying that Neville's viewpoint is appropriately odd all by itself. He is a pureblood, and there's a lot that he takes for granted, particularly about magical plant breeding. There's enough logic to it that we get drawn into accepting what Neville accepts, and correspondingly have to think a moment before recognising ordinary Muggle things like credit cards.

If you haven't read this story, you definitely should, even if you have to put your fingers in your metaphorical ears for the short slash parts. It's the romance and the growth that matters; just keep a hanky near to hand.

Night-Blooming Heartsease

Title: The Second of our Reign
Fandom: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Pairing: Ciel Phantomhive/Sebastian Michaelis
Categories: Established relationship, future fic
Length: Medium (5,720 words)
Warnings: Underage? (This story is a bit vague on Ciel's age. He is certainly older than his canonical age of 13, but likely still a teenager.) Knife/blood play.

Author on LJ:  p_zeitgeist
Author Website:  Phoebe_Zeitgeist

Review: I fell in love with Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler a few weeks ago after streaming the first season of the anime, and since then, I've been gorging myself on all of the fanfiction I can find. "The Second of our Reign" is one of the handful that's really stood out to me. This story follows the course of a day in the Phantomhive household in a structure that feels very in keeping with the show. But unlike other days, Ciel has some strange and pointed questions for Sebastian, as well as a mysterious errand to run.

This story captures a lot of what I love about Black Butler. The power dynamics between Sebastian and Ciel are what first hooked me on the canon, and p_zeitgeist captures them beautifully here. The constant references to the eating of souls kept the eventual termination of their contract firmly in my mind as I read, and served as a nice counterweight to Ciel's control over Sebastian as both his demon and his butler. The characterization was a real strength of this piece. This takes place a few years after the anime (though it ignores the ending of the first series), and I really enjoyed seeing how the two of them had settled into their relationship, while still keeping each other on their toes. The one sex scene is smoldering! The story conveys the obvious affection between Sebastian and Ciel without sacrificing either of their characterizations or giving way to sentimentality. The prose is lovely without drawing too much attention to itself, and the dialogue is as witty as I could hope from Black Butler. There was also a very nice exploration of the theology of this universe, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Although on the shorter side, this story has some heft to it. I found myself thinking on it again and again after reading it.

I also highly recommend the remix, Cafe de I'Europe (The à la carte remix) by Lady_Ganesh (1,416 words and gen, rated PG-13), which is a lovely and tragic look at what, exactly, Ciel was doing during his mysterious errand in "The Second of our Reign."

The Second of our Reign
Cafe de I'Europe (The à la carte remix)