Snapedom

Original poster: geri_chan

Deathly Hallows diminished Snape as a character for me. Perhaps because I loved the character so much, I read more into him than Rowling intended, and maybe I was expecting too much. However, the Snape that I saw in Books 1-6 was an incredibly complex and ambiguous character. I was fairly sure that he was "good"--at least in the sense that he was working on the "good" side, although he definitely wasn't a nice person, but I wasn't entirely sure what had motivated him to change sides. Maybe someone he cared about had been killed by the Death Eaters, or maybe he just got in over his head as a teenager and found out that while he was fine with promoting pureblood superiority propaganda, he didn't have a taste for murdering innocent people. Or more likely, I thought, it was due to a combination of reasons, not just one, because surely a man like Severus Snape would not have such a simple motivation.

Original poster: geri_chan

Title: Always
(can also be found at the Moonshadow archive)
Author: geri_chan
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Snape/Lupin
Word count: Approximately 56,400
Warnings: Slash; story is actually mostly PG-13, but there is one explicit sex scene.

Summary: A retelling of Prisoner of Azkaban, with flashbacks to Snape and Lupin's student days at Hogwarts.

Original poster: a_bees_buzz

Self pimping a fluffy little SS/HG drabble series, post-war, vaguely DH compliant (if you squint and assume things like Severus lived). It's a humorous take on Severus' wooing/dating skills.

You can find it here on TPP and here on Ashwinder.

Original poster: peignoir

EDIT: Thanks for the replies! I should have re-read the scene before posting, because there were parts that I didn't remember that were quite significant. So, erudite community members have basically cleared things up for me by now, though you can continue the discussion in the comments if you like.

In "The Prince's Tale," we see Dumbledore ask Snape, "How many people have you watched die?"

He replies, "Lately, only those whom I could not save."

I would like to believe that this is the kind of person Snape becomes. However, a certain scene from book 2 is bothering me because it seems incongruent with a transformed Snape, one truly fighting for what was once Lily's cause, and more in line with a Snape who loved Lily selfishly, seeing no reason to save lives if they did not have a connection with her.

When Professor McGonagall tells the staff room that a student has been taken into the Chamber of Secrets, he and McGonagall immediately pass the job of finding her to Lockhart, without offering themselves. I believe Dumbledore is not at the school at that point. To Snape, who has always been skeptical of Lockhart and is also after his job, it becomes an opportunity to test the other man. But I think that, almost as with Voldemort's task for Draco, it is improbable that he expected Lockhart to succeed. He's too discerning for it to make any sense for Lockhart to fool him, and he saw ample evidence in "The Dueling Club" that Lockhart was dangerously incompetent—Lockhart attempted to get rid of a small snake and only managed to make it fly into the air. His motivation, then, was petty rivalry. Perhaps Snape did not change as much as we thought by this point, and a lot of major character development took place quite late, during the Second Voldemort War.

Original poster: peignoir

It seems that Snape gives Harry quite a lot, but in an indirect way, analogous to sending the doe out to lead Harry to the sword.

For instance, Harry adopts "Expelliarmus" as his signature spell and his use of it is assoiated with his mercy and unwillingness to kill. I find it significant that he learned it from Snape.

[edited to make clearer my selection of this particular example out of the things Harry learns from Snape, and thoughts about its meaning.]

Original poster: melusin_79

Hi, self-pimping my first post DH compliant fic, in which I excise the memory of teh Epilogue of Doom (it was either that or bleach my brain).

I'd rate it about PG-13. Characters are Hermione/Ron/Severus.
Summary: Already experiencing a miserable second pregnancy, Hermione receives some alarming news...

Link to OWL: Cuckoo in the Nest: The Baby Dialogues

Link to IJ: Cuckoo in the Nest: The Baby Dialogues

Original poster: bluestocking79

Sorry I don't have much of anything to rec this Friday, but I can offer you a story that I just recently posted, inspired by the ongoing Resurrection Fest at lupin_snape. I chose the prompt 'Reincarnation', and wrote a short sort-of Snupin fic, to give two of the Wizarding World's saddest cases a second chance at happiness.

Fair warning: because it's a reincarnation fic, there's a bit of gender-bending, but don't let that deter you, please. It's all quite innocent. For that matter, the entire fic is quite innocent, so even if you don't like slash (or Snupin), I think (hope) you could read this without being offended.

You can read "Take Two" here on Live Journal, or here on Insane Journal.

There will be a sequel to follow, when I can get around to writing it!

(Many apologies to those on lupin_snape, who will probably already have seen this!)

Original poster: jezebel_faust

I never do manage to make it to this community on Fridays, but this time I have--just in time to recommend a couple of post-DH fics, both one-shots. 

The first is one of my favorites; it came out shortly after the book, which probably means that everyone has read it, but in case you missed it:

"Asphodel and Wormwood" by rabbit and jinx
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3704487/1/Asphodel_and_Wormwood


The second I just read on Occlumency: 

"Snape's Portrait" by js1976
http://occlumency.sycophanthex.com/viewstory.php?sid=5403