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Tweak says, "feces encrusted hellhole"

snarryhols (snarryhols) wrote in snarry_holidays,
@ 2008-12-01 10:07:00

Entry tags:

fic, giftee: perverse_idyll, rated: nc-17

Fic: Coming Back
Title: Coming Back
Author: anya_elizabeth
Giftee: perverse_idyll
Word Count: ~12,200
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: The obvious plus past Harry/Ginny.
Warnings: Epilogue compliance
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Harry's been looking for Snape for a long time. Snape doesn't believe him.
Author's Notes: This has been scary and exciting and educational and I'm so happy to be done. Love and thanks to my dearest Elizabeth, who spoke of My Fair Lady when I was stressing and gave this fic her much-demanded attention, and to Emily, who was a last-minute angel and is owed a ton of H/D wallsex. I really hope you like it!

Coming Back

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	torino10154 2008-12-01 02:53 pm UTC (link)
	I really like the way Harry sort of worms his way into Severus's life, but Severus really seems unaffected by it for the most part. They are both so incredibly stubborn-it's wonderful. g I do love when it all finally comes to a head and they both lose their restraint. Nice hopeful ending. Well done. (Reply to this)

	thesewarmstars 2008-12-01 03:28 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, how great! I especially loved the description when Snape first opened his door. I liked the flow of the story, and the characterization was spot-on. Great job! (Reply to this)

	snarry_fan7 2008-12-01 03:28 pm UTC (link)
	Very grand work! I love the thought of being on an island by myself with no one to trouble me and I love the feelings conveyed by this story.~Sophia (Reply to this)

	nenufarx 2008-12-01 03:53 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, that's amazing! Great story, beautifully told and drawn. (Reply to this)

Part 1, because I do go on

perverse_idyll
2008-12-01 05:37 pm UTC (link)

I read this story with the mist hanging still and silent outside my living room window and deer picking their way across the grass. I've been playing medieval music for the last few hours, because it fits the midday hush. As does this extraordinarily beautiful story. The atmosphere here is wonderful: cold and bracing, lonely and wild, exactly the conditions in which I'd expect to find a Snape who's gone to ground. The quietness of the story itself is uncanny, because it's exactly what I'm in the mood for. I adore your descriptions of Snape, his harsh, stooped angles that straighten up in Harry's presence, that inner sense of a vanquished self, remote from life. His preternatural calm. I love how you depict this as a refusal to feel, which is such a mixed blessing. It allows him to live at peace - perhaps to live at all - but it's the peace of a cold grate after the fire's gone out.

I've said elsewhere that I tend to focus on Snape more than Harry in fics, but not this time around. Because your Harry makes so much sense to me. His reasons, his urgency, his lack of anything meaningful in his life, his good intentions - it's so recognizably him, and yet it's tempered with regret, with the experience of having done the right thing only to find he doesn't really know himself at all. He's both brash and humble, but the way he reacts to the landscape and to Snape - not to mention the fact that he's being carrying this yearning around for 20 years, unfulfilled - really strikes a chord with me. I can see why Snape doesn't throw him out.

The way their conversations circle and feint, dying off when Snape withdraws, are hypnotic. The whole psychological mood is weirdly and beautifully balanced. I spent most of the fic unsure whether I wanted Snape to agree to go back. Because in certain ways the isolation suits him, even if the loneliness has emptied him out. And the things Harry tries to tempt him with aren't really the things Snape needs.

Other things I loved: Harry's flights on the outdated broom. The line: every time he thought of them it was like a moment of true life. Snape's comments about Harry being the centre of the universe. Because of course Harry was. I sat up straight when I read that, especially when he repeated it. Snape saying, "I thought I would never forget, but it fades." (Oh, my heart!) The phrase: the icy square of savage beauty beyond the window pane. This is a line that somehow utterly belongs in a Snape's fic, and the fact that it's Harry who perceives it just makes it that much more perfect. Harry laughing like a maniac when he crashes on Snape's lawn. Quidditch as sexual innuendo! (And Harry not knowing until now!)

"I don't know why you're not insane," said Harry.

"I don't know why you think I'm not," said Snape. I adore this parry and thrust, the intelligence, the evasiveness.

And I'm so glad you have Snape say this: "You think you can bring me out of my shell with hate? Don't you think, Potter, that hate is probably something I have had my life's share of?" Because it gives Snape his due and allows him to grow up. While Harry, even knowing he's on the right track, knowing he's forced Snape to feel, doesn't stop and listen to what he's just said. Snape's just opened his fist and shown Harry what's been clutched tight in his heart, and Harry misses it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Part 2

perverse_idyll
2008-12-01 05:45 pm UTC (link)

I love the moment Snape kisses him, which is full of ice cracking and sparks lighting up again, but especially I adore the image you use of the picture tilting, the angle changing, so that Harry's not really in the kiss because he's caught instead in the moment of seeing everything new. Or of realizing the deeper meaning of what he's been staring at all along.

And then the staggering rush toward the truth, the breaking-open of buried secrets: "It has never seemed like a good idea. . . You don't know me half as well as you think you do," followed by:

"It's about a long-standing and highly inappropriate fixation," said Snape. Harry, who'd thought of Snape nearly every day of his life, found that he understood.

Oh my, this. Yes, this. It gave me goosebumps of pleasure. Also a totally idiotic leap of response: It's as if this fic were written just for me! And of course, it was. Which is amazing. Because you've given me that moment I search for in Snarry fics and rarely see: that moment when the emotional pressure snaps, only for once it doesn't break them. It's more of a breakthrough, a mutual recognition. And in this pairing, that's incredibly hard to pull off. But you've done it here, in the midst of the sea and wind, and it feels like the answer to so much left unspoken.

"I'm not nice."

"I'm not even sane."

"You also talk too much."

Oh, how this makes me grin. So them. And the way you end it: "No," said Snape, and Harry could see the real answer in his eyes. It's the way it should be, that stubborn No, Snape unable to believe or simply unable to admit it, but also unable to hide the truth.

So, short version: I love this fic to pieces. The mood, the descriptive sharpness, the wintry sensation of them sheltering together, the subtle, amusing dance of their conversations, in which they echo and confess to each other. The sexual intensity and the unhealthy need, which obviously isn't going to stand in their way. Thank you so, so much, dearest author. You've given me a fic to cherish and re-read, and an unforgettable version of both Harry and Snape. I feel absolutely buoyant with the beauty of my gift.

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foliageink
2008-12-01 09:22 pm UTC (link)

Wow. I am stunned by how well you blend in realism and a dream-like, timeless quality into your writing.

This story gripped me tightly from start to finish. It's a relatively simple plot, but the emotional stages and exchanges I went through along with Snape and Harry was unbelievably intense.

I cannot pinpoint my favorite sections of this fic because when a story is this well-written, it is just one immensely powerful and satisfying journey. I simply adored everything.

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	eucritta 2008-12-02 12:49 am UTC (link)
	Wonderful! For the glimpses of the half-blood prince, for the cabin in the wilds, for Harry's halting introspection. (Reply to this)

	froggie 2008-12-02 01:28 am UTC (link)
	This is so beautiful. I'm really glad I read it. (Reply to this)

	charie-caphine.livejournal.com 2008-12-02 04:03 am UTC (link)
	Intense. Snape with a hopeless fixation on Harry, and Harry needed his passion is any way, - that's romantic. I so agree with Harry about the missed boat of opportunity, thinking, in accord with all the Snarry fans out there, that they would have been explosive together. (Reply to this)

	lazlong 2008-12-02 02:41 pm UTC (link)
	crossposting.. THIS is Snape/Harry. Strong, willful, probably insane - and able to bend the world to their will. Awesome. This is so powerful, that it seems very difficult to write anything at all after it - but any chances of drabble, at least? Of meeting Al?:) (Reply to this)

	estioe 2008-12-03 10:29 am UTC (link)
	This is lovely, Anon. :D A wonderful romantic Snarry, with hints of angst. Just perfect. :) (Reply to this)

	cluegirl 2008-12-04 03:02 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, Emo!Snape... apathetic and world-weary. Could anything be sweeter? (Reply to this)

	mhorrighan 2008-12-05 06:31 pm UTC (link)
	I absolutely adore this story. Beautifully written. (Reply to this)

	hepson 2008-12-06 01:12 pm UTC (link)
	Love Snape's characterisation. So brilliant &hearts (Reply to this)

	szefi 2008-12-07 09:58 am UTC (link)
	Nice snarky Snape:-) And stubborn Harry does wear him down in the end. (Reply to this)

	ivylady 2008-12-08 10:20 pm UTC (link)
	Perfect Snape. I love your characterization of him, and I loved how Harry kept pushing until he got what he wanted. (Reply to this)

amanitamuscaria
2008-12-14 02:59 am UTC (link)

Hot,hot, hot.
I love what you did with Snape, how he sort of hopes Harry will read him, then pulls away when Harry doesn't get it.
I love this line : "I saw their names in the Prophet. Don't you think it is a little strange to name your children entirely after the dead?"
I loved a lot of the voice you had for Snape and Potter.
i really liked Harry's first flight on Snape's Nimbus 2000, and the "Took you long enough" line.
Very good, indeed.

(Reply to this)

enname
2008-12-14 03:28 am UTC (link)

Seemed like a good idea at the time?" he said weakly, attempting to smile.

"It has never seemed like a good idea," said Snape.

It is amazing what one simple change in tense can do to an entire story. Whilst I was enjoying greatly the part that had come before, the almost locked in a room sensation that the two of the had going, it is this line that just makes the entire thing vibrate like a plucked harp, resonating up the spine and through the fingers. Reading in Harry's point of view, we have been privy to his somewhat shrill protestations (this is not a criticism, despite myself, I really liked him in this story) and attempts to reform .. and then this one sentence cuts right through to the quick of them both. Through all the bluster and silence, this admission just lies there and lets them be themselves, pretensions stripped away. The rest is really just icing on the cake.

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	elvirablue 2008-12-14 12:54 pm UTC (link)
	I liked the way Severus and Harry’s talks ebbed and flowed and how the topics changed from serious to light and back. The sea and the weather gave the story a strong, atmospheric background. (Reply to this)

	sarahsezlove 2012-01-28 05:33 pm UTC (link)
	I totally loved their oppositional stubbornness!! Bloody brilliant :) (Reply to this)