#laventadorn

[laventadorn]

one of the drawbacks of having a story set in a british boarding school is that it's very hard to finagle an anime style beach episode

i keep trying to remove snape and harriet temporarily from the hogwarts setting but i always wind up coming back to "sucked into a magic vase with a beach painted on it" cuz i don't have any better ideas

[darthvaporwave]

I am Korean. I wanted to support you as a fan when I saw your Harry Potter novel. It was the best luck of my life to read the novel. Good luck, writer

thank you very much!! <3 <3 <3 i hope you continue to have the best of luck!

[laventadorn]

thanks for these kind words! this is a lovely end to 2024 <3

@hprecfest Day 31: most recent fic you've loved

The Never-Ending Road

by laventadorn (@laventadorn). Harriet/Severus. Rated: M. Words: 557,818.

AU. When Lily died, Snape removed his heart and replaced it with a steel trap. But rescuing her daughter from the Dursleys in the summer of ’92 is the first step on a long road to discovering this is less true than he’d thought. A girl!Harry story, starting in Chamber of Secrets and continuing through Goblet of Fire. Future Snape/Harriet. (OotP - DH will continue in a separate story.)

I've not yet finished this fic, I'm afraid. I'm still new to the world of Snarriet--as of this year, in fact! 20+ years of loving Snarry, but Snarriet? Brand new love of mine. I knew once I started I'd have to get to this fic, as I've heard so much good about it over the years. For good reason! It's taking me so long, not only because I rarely have the spoons for longer fics, but because I find myself going slow to savor this one. It's gorgeous. It gives me much to think about, and feel. I can already tell I'm going to enjoy the whole journey. And for now, I just want to bask in it. I love it so much already and I'm thrilled to see where it will take me.

[lilyerida]

TNER/NJE by @laventadorn is my roman empire

i just love them😭

[hogwartsraccoon]

Actually anyone who has watched my tumblr closely may have noticed, but after reading the writer laventadorn's TNER, I created this account.

If there's anyone who hasn't read it yet, you're lucky. Hurry up and read it.

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: Severus wakes up in the afterlife expecting something rather different than being almost-seventeen again. Seriously, what kind of game is this? But wait - Lily's come back, too - from 1981? Perhaps it's a second chance... but to do what? SS/LE

Author: @laventadorn

[laventadorn]

aw, thank you! for these kind words c:

this was the first hp fic i wrote, and the first fanfic i’d written for many years at the time, so it has a special place in my heart. (and! it was actually the first story i had ever finished.) i’m glad you enjoyed it!

I really enjoyed this fic by laventadorn - I feel almost foolish calling this a long read compared to the other works they're known for but lets ignore that! This fic is a little bit of a romance and a little bit of a mystery and all of it is very, very good! I loved the really strange flow of time here, it's clear that things are not quite real and it gives the story such a sense of place. Truly fantastic. I hope you'll give it a read!

Come Once Again and Love Me

By @laventadorn https://archiveofourown.org/works/13844247/chapters/31840572

Severus wakes up in the afterlife expecting something rather different than being almost-seventeen again. But wait - Lily's come back, too - from 1981? Perhaps it's a second chance… but for what?

Words: 179,370

[souryam]

I've recently gotten severus/snily brainrot but I've only found 1 or two good fics about them so far. Do you have any recommendations?

I should start saving the fics I read bc everytime ppl ask I pause 😭 I only remember these now, def my favorites tho!

Seventeen Moons by we_built_the_shadows_here

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15042299

this is my favorite of this author but the other fics are pretty good too (but sad and more dark!snily if i remember well so. be warned). It's a fluff one shot of an AU where Severus becomes a werewolf after the prank and Dumbledore assigns Lily to take care of him. Pretty interesting to me bc the first full moon is post SWM, so it even touches on that. Also, lily characterization is amazing

Come Once Again and Love Me by laventadorn

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13844247

It's the cliche "snape dies and comes back to his 15 yo self" but this time isn't weird bc Lily ALSO came back after she died so she isnt a rlly teenager <3 .My only critique about it is that I think it ends too quickly 😭 It's lovely tho

[shostakobitchh]

finally admitted to myself that ok maybe i doooo ship snily 🙄 the thing is that i cannot find fics… i mean i *can* but there’s too many and i don’t know where to start……. so this is me asking for recommendations from the only jily shipper i know of (i’m not in the fandom a lot lol). i think it would be cool to read about them getting together as adults or something where snape is a little bi (turns out i also ship snape and sirius…. whatever ok!!!) but truly anything you have i’m accepting hehe i trust you! thank you bye!!! ps; i miss a&i aka the fic that i love so much and that i shamelessly recommend to literally everyone i know xxxxx

hi!

I'm gonna be real with you; there is very little Snily and even fewer stories I've found that do them both justice. I find that many make Lily a damsel in distress with like, her only driving motive to be a mother, and James is ALWAYS a POS. And Snape becomes an alpha male who is too controlling and it just skeeves me out. Lily loses all autonomy the second they do the deed and it's just not my thing. Even with the few Snape/OC fics I've read; if Snape is not like feral and nasty and with someone who can match that energy, I have no interest in it.

I have two major stories that come to mind with A+++ Snily. I have discovered recently that I am somewhat of a Snape Snob when it comes to fics where I only enjoy it if he is an unhinged, bitter little asshole who is a little nuts and Lily is like, the only one who can stomach him and keep him somewhat calm, but she can absolutely match his level of crazy if/when she needs to.

Come Once Again and Love Me - laventadorn

I read this nearly a decade ago and I haven't picked it up again because it just breaks my heart and puts it back together. It's a "Snape gets a do-over" but he does NOT want the do-over - he doesn't want anything to do with Lily at all at first - but the author does such a beautiful job of showing Snape as a bitter 30-something-year-old back as a teen just as his life took a dark turn. And Lily is AMAZING - her grief over losing her life old life (when she thinks of Harry it's gutting) but finding Snape again is just - UGH. She doesn't put up with his shit. She matches him and doesn't back down. She's awesome. A true queen.

A Dream Carved in Stone - diadelphous

I forgot about this one for a long time and recently reread it - I think I accidentally took inspiration from it with a certain potion LOL so I am giving full credit here - BUT - THIS is the best Snily I have ever read. It's during the first war where Lily and James never got together and Dumbledore approaches Lily and asks her to get Snape to confess he's a Death Eater. Their love story is - SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

They are both a little broken and a little crazy, but when people ask me how it would've gone down if Snape had known about Lily being pregnant, THIS story is how it would've gone down. When he's Soft with Lily it's so natural, it's so tender and raw and I die a little. Also, his reaction when Lily says she's pregnant is 10/10. It makes me laugh and cry every time.

I'm sorry I don't have more but I genuinely don't know of any others (at least that I like). I love this pairing so much LOL it makes me so sad there's nothing out there.

[hp-fanfic-archive]

Come Once Again and Love Me by laventadorn Pairing: Severus/Lily Rating: M Word Count: 179k Severus wakes up in the afterlife expecting something rather different than being almost-seventeen again. But wait - Lily's come back, too - from 1981? Perhaps it's a second chance… but for what?

[taylorsterryart]

"I need to know if you're still feeling unwell"

or

just #tner things

or

#harrietpotter my beloved

or

@laventadorn 's latest update is murdering me and I"m going back and re-reading the whole thing

[laventadorn]

I have a question. Where did you draw from to get as kind, seeing, thoughtful and loving and such a good-hearted character as Harriet in your stories? It blows my mind. She was good for people. How do you write a character like that?

aw, this is a really nice message! <3 ty so much for sending it :3c

Background: Canon Harry is supposed to possess an "extraordinary ability to love," right? To me, it felt like canon harry was... not deficient in that area, precisely? But the series hinged upon his ability to love, and in some ways, this "ability to love" seemed to be "ability to not choose evil." I don't think those things are the same, although you could argue that they grow on the same vine. To quote Sir Terry Pratchett, "Evil starts when you treat people like things." Harry knows that people aren't things, and he never treats anyone like a thing.

Harry is certainly capable of kindness and compassion -- but his abilities aren't particularly extraordinary if you take them at face value. However, if you set them in the context of the way the Dursleys treated him, the way the wizarding world treated him -- the violence that was done against him all his life, the way that he was routinely treated like a thing without feelings -- then Harry's ability to be incredibly decent is downright amazing.

HP isn't a novel about Cycles of Abuse in a tradition of realism, although cycles of abuse are represented in various characters; rather, it's about innate goodness and innate evil. These are dressed up as "choices" (Harry chooses Gryffindor, he chooses goodness, as opposed to other characters who choose Slytherin, who choose evil) but the truth is that Voldemort was born from an act of evil and Harry was protected by an act of true love. Voldemort treats people like things. Harry treats people like people.

But, aside from this basic upright decency and literal ability to love others, I felt that Harry's Extraordinary Ability -- in a story about innate goodness and innate evil -- could be augmented.

How I Approached it: An important consideration in writing a character is not only to define their important traits, it's also to demonstrate those traits through their actions. Pretty basic observation, right?

But sometimes we get told "the character is smart" while they don't do anything especially smart, or "the character is so special" while they just don't seem to be particularly special in any way at all. It's like the author gives us a grocery list of traits, but when we get to the store, the shelves haven't been stocked, and we're just left holding the list and an empty basket.

So we can't just tell the audience the character possesses these traits and expect them to buy it if the character doesn't reveal those qualities in the things they do. It was therefore important to me to create a character that could demonstrate some empathy/compassion/kindness/extraordinary ability to love, rather than just, like, saying "Harriet has a good heart" and leaving it there.

Defining Traits: In order to write a character who's kind, we have to have an understanding what kindness looks like in the first place. We can't write -- or recognize -- a character who's kind unless we have some definition for that, some shape it takes in our mind. Only then can we start showing it through actions.

So, what does a kind action look like? To some extent, this depends on how the specific author defines kindness, or at least chooses to express it. Is it compassion? Selfless acts? Consideration for other people, in word and deed? An awareness that other people have interior lives? A willingness to love them, warts and all? An understanding that it feels good to be treated like you matter and feels awful to be treated like you don't? There are so many things it could be; we just have to define it for ourselves.

Kindness in real life involves some measure of self awareness and an ability to tune in to other people, but it also involves an understanding that kindness matters. We also have to acknowledge the ways that other people's unkindness affects us, and to seek ways to avoid perpetuating that (to the best of our ability -- everyone is angry, hurt, mean, or uncaring sometimes).

Harriet in particular: She does understand a lot of this, even if she might not be able to articulate it to herself. She recognizes that people around her have feelings, and that she has the power to affect those feelings through her actions. She knows that you don't treat people like things. She has the temperament of, "I don't like being treated that way, so I'm going to treat people better."

By contrast, Snape doesn't comprehend, well, any of this. As a result, he's mean, belittling, and frequently cruel. He first of all refuses to acknowledge that he can be hurt, while at the same time he wants to hurt other people in an effort to protect himself from pain and fear that he won't even admit live inside him. He sees emotions as a weakness (Canon Snape says this to Harry in OotP), and as a result he ignores his own while trying to provoke others' constantly.

But kindness to others starts with the self. Harriet has the ability to say, "Hey, that hurts and I don't like it, so I won't do it. I'll do this instead." Snape starts off the story unable to do this, and even at this point his ability is still extremely stunted. But Harriet's consideration towards him affects his consideration towards her; and because kindness ripples outward, it also starts to seep into the way Snape responds to others.

On a Practical Level: Designing your character approach can involve looking at things and seeing what didn't work for you. I'll give you an example:

In HBP, when Ron makes fun off Hermione in class and she runs off, Harry accurately and clearly determines that Hermione needs his support; he follows her. He finds her with Luna, who's attempting to comfort her. Harry doesn't know what to say to Hermione and, iirc, feels kind of awkward, so he just hands her stuff over, and she's embarrassed, so she runs off.

What Harry did was kind, and it shows more awareness of someone's needs and ability to act to meet them than a lot of characters would show. Where he fell short in this scene was in being able to actually comfort Hermione. However, we wouldn't say he was at fault for this -- she wouldn't wait to be comforted, either by him or by Luna, and he's also a teenage boy. If he'd been able to flawlessly support her, it would've felt weird. There's a whole lot of baggage surrounding the way men are often taught/allowed to express emotions, which frequently boils down to, "they aren't." He has the impulse to comfort her but not the skills.

When I was writing Harriet, I wanted to retain that impulse while augmenting her skills. Some of this can happen purely because she's a girl. It's not that she's innately better at comfort because she's a girl; it's that she gets more opportunity to practice. For one thing, Hermione in such a situation would be less likely to run off from Harriet than from Harry.

What I'm trying to say is that Canon Harry had a sweet moment there. He just had some perfectly natural limitations. I can take those away from Harriet and give her more opportunities to develop this skill.

[darthvaporwave]

saw in tags that you teach at a college, that sounds so cool though!! ok maybe grading not so much... depending on the students (i hope they are well-behaved)

it's horrible and i hate it!!!!! lmao and yet i worked hard to get it?? what a dope

(grading is the worst thing ever invented and if teachers and students were true visionaries we'd rise up against the Forces at Work and abolish it forever. how would people then get accredited, you might ask? no idea. don't care. i just wouldn't have to grade anymore!)

[ollywander]

one of my all time fav snape fics is The Courage to Live by ShadowAceSeverus on AO3.

It's a beautifully written post battle of Hogwarts snape lives au where he actually gets therapy & recovers. It's fully completed & is an absolutely amazing fic that I've read twice now, (which is a lot bc it's about 700k if I remember correctly).

It's also a genfic

Some other ao3 fics ive enjoyed (in no particular order):

a life of smoke and silvered glass by dirgewithoutmusic

More Than One Way to Skin a Cat by AverageFish (severitus)

Someone To Walk With Me by Heathersparrows (hagrid/snape)

Cryptic by Delphi (flitwick/snape)

Unfinished Business by Likelightinglass

Glimpses of Adoration by memory wolf (albus/snape, would not recommend if you don't like the pairing)

Summer Afternoons by sweetkidlousycook (snily)

Standing At the Sky's Edge by Morbidmunch (Hermione/snape, this one's fun, some corporate espionage & stuff)

The Dead Master by FalconLux (Harry/snape, this one's very weird & fucked up, an interesting read though)

The Gryffindor Sort by small_spyglass

The Gift of Kindness by hippocrates460 (snarry)

ff.net fics:

Alio Modo by Jilly James

Come Once Again and Love Me by Laventadorn (time travel, a lovely version of Eileen)

Miles to Go Before I Sleep by Rannaro

Honestly, anything by Rannaro is absolutely amazing but Miles is by far my favorite.

Finis on AO3 gets an honourable mention for being batshit insane, very fun to read if you're sleep deprived & want to turn your brain off, even if it's not strictly Severus focused (Sirius/Severus, it's by an orphan account)

Oh, nice! Thank you so much for sharing!! This is a full compendium. I’ve read Come Once Again and Love Me, but none of the rest. I’m very excited to read these. Have a wonderful day.

[lilyerida]

Harriet from The Never-ending Road by @laventadorn is my cruuuush 🥺