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kquil · 1 year ago

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DIVORCING ORION BLACK | CHAPTER ONE

01 : ARRIVAL

SERIES SUM. : (A Marauders Era Fix-It-Fic - featuring Reader as Walburga Black but better)

You wake up in pitch blackness and under excruciating pain. It isn't too long before you realise that you've been transported into the world of Harry Potter…and you've taken the place of a familiar villainess - Walburga Black. You need to escape this toxic family. The first order of business is Divorce AND YOU'RE DEFINITELY TAKING THE KIDS!

CHPT. SUM. : you take a familiar villainess' place, but it's all just a dream, right?

TAGS. : son sirius black/mother reader ; son regulus black/mother reader ; marauders fix-it-fic ; transferring into harry potter series (marauders era) au ; reader is a harry potter fan ; but not a JKR fan ; walburga black is no more ; or is she? ; pre-marauders era ; sirius black is an angry child ; regulus black is a precious baby ; big brother sirius being a little jealous ; mentions of child abuse (not explicit) ; orion black can eat dirt ; kreacher is a precious bean ; not canon compliant ; the journey begins!

LENGTH : 6.3k

1st August 1971

Your eyes snap open to opaque darkness as a silent scream escapes you. Pain. Excruciating and tormenting pain rips your head in two and paralyses the rest of your body. You want to call for help, desperate for relief but words fail you. It’s as if someone had lacerated your throat and ran away with your mangled vocal cords. Overwhelmed by the pressure in your head, you quickly surrender and fall into the mouth of the hungry blackness encompassing you.

The next time you wake up, you were almost blissfully unaware of the agony you previously awoke to if you weren’t sorely reminded by the lingering compression in your ears, an, almost, unbearable pounding ache in your skull, and the paralysis of your limbs. Your shaky breaths sound amplified in your ringing ears as you slowly regain control of your desensitised appendages but the stabbing sensation against your skull persists. It doesn’t appear to want to dull out unlike most continuous pains. In a desperate effort to mute the throbbing, you curl up into the foetal position and focus on your breathing, your hands clutching at the temporal and parietal areas of your head. After a while, there’s some relief. Sweet relief.

The darkness remains as obscure and daunting as you had first awoken to, a dead, unfeeling space — like a black hole. But it can’t be that. It can’t be a black hole. You hope it isn’t, at least. There has to be a way out of here.

With great effort and a groan of pain, you get onto your hands and knees, suffering through agonising aches as you feel about the space around you. All the objects you come into contact with are insignificant, too ordinary for your brain to comprehend and speculate over — though the unrelenting throbbing in your skull may be of probable cause to your lack of analysis — it came with one reassuring thought however, their existence was evidence enough that this wasn’t a black hole…

What poor thoughts.

You’ve never been so vapid. The thoughts swirling in your head were so lacking in cognition and inference that you instinctually shook your head in disappointment. A black hole? Impossible! —Unless you were launched into space in between the meeting with your investors and your journey home. Were you drugged? Taken hostage? If you were then why weren’t your limbs tied up? Eventually, your trembling hands find a wall, a small success that you quickly take advantage of, tracing the perimeter of the boxy room, hoping to find a doorway or vent, anything that could lead you to freedom. You probably look pathetic crawling around but there weren’t any traces of light, even a locked box was more illuminated than this.

Your rambling thoughts continue, a distraction from the throbbing in your skull, until you feel it. A break in the wall, the border to a door. You didn’t waste any time and ignored all pains to stand and feel out the space for the doorknob, leaning your weight against the wooden entrance to alleviate your weak limbs. Disoriented and brainless — were you terribly hungover or something? More speculations, more unanswered questions but finally a release to freedom! The door relented and gave way as you finally found its handle, pushing down with your weight and tumbling towards freedom.

The light burned your eyes and made you tear up but the relief of liberty was soothing. The throbbing, stabbing pains in your skull were now replaced by a reeling dizziness and it throws you off balance. But your hand catches the wall to steady you while your other clutches at your head; your disorientation grows and grows. It feels like you were tied to the end of a string and spun around as the length of the string gradually increases, giving the sensation of your mushy brain being stretched out. What in the world have you done to be put through this amount of distress and trauma?

Curling your fingers into your head, you try to distract from the sickening dizziness with grounding pain and search for repose but are given none. Just as your nails begin to claw at your scalp as your other hand gropes at unfamiliar, drab wallpaper, a voice calls out to you. It’s small and confused, full of light and youth — it’s a child’s voice.

“Mother?…”

Turning to the hesitant call, you lock eyes with steel grey pools. It’s a little boy. Maybe eight to nine years of age. He has beautiful short black hair, pale skin and angular features but childishly soft cheeks. His formal-like dress and perfect posture makes him look like a little prince. You don’t answer him right away; too distracted with your curious surveillance so he calls to you again with furrowed brows and the same title on his tongue, ‘mother’.

He was talking to you. Strange…

“Did you just call me ‘mother’?” you ask, he doesn’t answer and you try not to wince, still very light-headed and muddled, “Why?”

“Because you are my mother,” the stare he affixes you with makes it obvious that he thinks you’re a crazy person. No, but he’s the crazy one!

“Are you okay mother?” another, almost identical looking boy walks up and stands beside the first. He, too, has beautiful black hair and pale skin but with much softer features so he must be younger than the first. They wear a similar attire —another little prince. Two little princes, brothers, that view you as their mother.

But that’s impossible…

The younger of the two has an air of politeness surrounding him as he watches you with empathy swimming in his grey pools. In clear objection to the compassion his younger brother was willing to give you, the eldest child subtly squints at your crumpled and distressed figure.

“I don’t have children…” your weak voice states but fails to continue, bewildered but confident in the fact although it breaks your heart. It just slipped out and now the two boys were stiff and tense from head to toe.

Quickly shaking off his rigid limbs, the older brother scowls at you, “as much as we don’t want to be your children, we are!” his tone his biting as he speaks with a snarl, his pristine white teeth bared for defence and attack. With stomping footfalls, the duo run away, fleeing your sight in a blur of blacks, whites and greys. As soon as they’re gone, your dizziness hits you once more, like a boulder to the head, and sends you collapsing into the ground.

Again, your world goes pitch black.

2nd August 1971

There’s no spiralling darkness when you next wake up, nor is there an abundance of lamplight to make your eyes tear up, instead, beautiful golden rays of sunlight fall through the tall glass windows behind you. It was a much easier radiance to adjust to. You’re tucked away in bed, silky, comfortable and perfectly warm. Perhaps yesterday was just a dream, a very vivid dream— no, a nightmare. You let out a groan and squeeze your eyes shut. No matter how long it’s been, your thoughts of failure and self hatred over your own incompetence still haunts you. Curling up under the covers, you go through the breathing exercise your therapist imbued into you.

Acknowledge it, accept it, let it go…

The phrase repeats in your head several times. The longer you rehearse it, the more your limbs unfurl until you’re flat on your back once more.

…rigid.

Now that you think about it, was your bed always this…stiff?

Blinking in confusion, your eyes focus on the ceiling and widen. You don’t have a chandelier in your bedroom. Your eyes quickly jump down and examine the bed you lay in. This wasn’t your bed, no. Where were your Hedwig and Niffler plushies? Your all-white sheets were gone and replaced by all-black covers. It was then that you finally comprehend the cool sensation laying against your forehead, jolting your body forward, you let out a yelp of surprise as the small soaked towel falls from your brow.

Your shocked shriek is almost matched by the bawling that accompanies it, drawing your eyes to a being you’ve only seen in movies. The small house-elf stares at you with shaking, blood-shot eyes and unaltered terror folded into his wrinkly expression. Endless apologies fall from his mouth, sincere and all underpinned by intense anxiety. He’s so real; his small, skeletal-like chest rapidly moving up and down due to his desperate pants. His three-dimensional existence quickly falls and kneels before you to commence grovelling, his shaking hands held together in prayer.

“...Kreacher…” you gape at the house-elf, eyes wide and breath caught in your throat. In disbelief over the elf’s actuality, you reach out for him, awestruck and so dazed that you almost miss how he flinches away from your approaching touch. Apologetic, you retreat your hand and adjust yourself to sit against the headboard before addressing him, “I-I wasn’t going to hit you…”

“Kreacher is needing to be hit, mistress,” the contrite house-elf voices, twiddling his thumbs as he remains knelt down.

Mistress…?

“Please stand, Kreacher,” you neglect to perceive his surprise in your use of the word ‘please’ as you’re still in awe of him yourself. With a subtle shake of your head, you do your best to push away your astonishment in search of answers, “and fetch me a mirror,”

Kreacher promptly clicks his fingers and a handheld mirror appears before you. You try not to awe at the demonstration of magic — it's a simple spell in this world — and proceed to take it in your hesitant hands. Judging from what you have been able to gather, Kreacher calling you mistress and the two young boys addressing you as mother…Walburga Black should be the reflection staring back at you. However, you don’t see a black-haired, cold-eyed, pale-skinned woman, with a constant frowning wrinkle on her brow, you see yourself. You touch your face just to make sure you weren’t mistaken. It is you.

Was this just a vivid dream? It feels so real…

Mirror set aside, you look back at Kreacher and are astonished once more at seeing just how alive he is. His mannerisms were completely authentic and he was solid from all sides. There’s no mistaking that he’s right in front of you, tangible and no longer fictional.

What wonders the mind can achieve when you fangirl and nerd out enough over something… But why aren’t you in the Lightening era timeline? And why are you in Walburga’s shoes? Now you’re the mother of Sirius and Regulus Black… The questions don’t stop, nor do the conjectures. Maybe it’s your mind trying to get over your life’s trauma vicariously through your favourite series and fandom… the notionmade some sense. You, not only, have one son but two. Should you feel elated or anxious?

As your thoughts continue, the apologies falling from Kreacher’s lips slowly get louder and louder until you snap out of your spaced-out state. Guilt quickly gathers in your stomach at the realisation that Kreacher had been vocally repentant this whole time and you haven’t yet acknowledged him in the slightest.

“What are you apologising for, Kreacher?” you finally ask, putting a stop to his penitent speech.

“Kreacher did not realise mistress had the sickness; Kreacher did not serve her well,” his tone was incredibly apologetic and there was no mistaking the panic in his eyes.

“...It’s alright Kreacher,” the reassurance in your voice was something the house-elf was not used to and you almost smile at the explicit amazement in his eyes, “I did not know that I was ill, myself, so thank you for taking care of me when I fainted,” your warm smile confuses the house-elf but you continue. Even though this is a dream, you were going to do things right, “it was you who took care of me, correct?”

His astonishment doesn’t leave his eyes as he nods, slack-jawed and meek, “yes..it was Kreacher, mistress,”

You nod in approval and spot a plate of food in your periphery, set neatly atop the bedside table, “thank you, Kreacher. You are dismissed,” the bashful but, still, misery-stricken house-elf goes to say something, glancing over at the bedside table but you promptly cut him off, “I will eat the food you prepared shortly, thank you, again,”

With a simple nod, Kreacher disappears in a blink and you slowly bring the plate of breakfast onto your lap. Eating in bed, you digest your situation and take in your surroundings. This was all a very realistic dream but a dream nonetheless. And it was a chance for you to, not only do right by the characters you adore but make peace with your past and present. This was a second chance. Even if it was only a dream.

Just as you finish up your plate of breakfast, you also conclude your examination of the supposed ‘master bedroom’ and frown. The disapproval is clear in your furrowed brows, narrowed eyes and pursed lips.

Whoever designed this room needs to be demoted…or fired.

The Blacks were such a wealthy family, surely they had more saved up to be able to hire a decent interior designer. The colours blended into each other and no furniture, wallpaper or trinket could bring you any emotion other than despair. With that disappointing thought and a grimace at the, overall, sombre decor of the room, you turn to place your clean plate back on the nightstand when a rolled up piece of paper catches your eye. Innocuously folded and tucked to the left of where your breakfast plate once laid was a newspaper, the Daily Prophet. Hurriedly exchanging your plate and utensils for the paper, your anticipation rose to witness the infamous articles and its moving pictures. You almost couldn’t stop the schoolgirl giggle from escaping your smiling lips. Never before had you been so excited to read the paper.

Unfolding the pages, you awe at the front cover before quickly skimming the rest of the folio. It’s the real thing and it’s so detailed…even for a dream.

It was written in clear script on the top, right hand side of the front page. 2nd August 1971. There was no doubt in your mind now that you were just about to enter the Marauders era timeline. If you weren’t mistaken, this was the summer leading up to Sirius’ first year at Hogwarts, which meant that, as his mother — the notion was still abnormal to you but also incredibly heartwarming —, you had a duty to help him fetch his school supplies for Hogwarts. You would also have the honour of seeing him receive his own wand before helping him buy his uniform robes and other necessities. You would even help him pack his bags for Hogwarts, congratulate and celebrate his achievements with him, wish him a good day, support him unconditionally… everything a loving and present mother would do. And, of course, you would treat Regulus the same way. It makes your heart sing and butterflies flutter about in your stomach; you get to be a mother.

—one moment…

If the date is correct in the newspaper and you’re right in that Sirius would be attending Hogwarts in a month’s time, then why did he appear one to two years younger than what an eleven-year-old should look like?

Pondering over the question makes you grimace. It’s entirely possible that it could be Walburga and Orion’s doing, Sirius definitely has a defiant manner about him despite only being eleven years of age and it wouldn’t be abnormal to expect the Black couple to be callous towards their own sons, enough to, somehow, stunt their growth. With a click of your tongue and a roll of your eyes, you eagerly move on from the topic and observe the front page more closely only for your breath to stutter and catch in your throat.

A moving picture of the harrowing dark mark being cast over a house plays in a loop before you. Reading the associated article, you feel your stomach turn in on itself. It was such a disgusting display.

“How cruel…” Your disgust morphs into sorrow as you read over the killings made within the specific house. It belonged to innocent muggleborns and their family members, both magic folk dubbed as blood traitors and their muggle family were massacred. It was clearly an attack meant to bring fear and terror to muggle borns and the pureblooded witches and wizards that dare protect them - all in the name of the dark lord and his bigoted agenda.

What a load of bullshit.

Not stopping for long, you read interview quotes from blood purists showing their support over the act. Their only reason was that they feared losing their pureblood traditions entirely to muggleborns. The horrific, terroristic happenings all appear to follow after the election of a muggle born Minister of Magic (Nobby Leach), the induction of Dumbledore as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and then the introduction of Voldemort last year. It’s deplorable that that’s all it takes for blood purists to excuse such radical operations —it’s inhumane.

“��The Ministry continues to spare no effort’,” you read under your breath but frown despite the reassuring words, “I bet those Deatheaters get a real ego boost from that statement…” if you remember correctly, Voldemort was enlisting more Deatheaters as well as magical creatures. However, those who are seen as ‘inferior’ were made to suffer, namely Goblins and House-elves. It doesn’t sit well with you.

The fact that the fantasy world around you — one that you’re an avid fan of — feels so incredibly real, despite it being a dream, suddenly looks very bleak makes your chest tighten. And you quickly find yourself agonising over the lives of many children across the country, both in the muggle and wizarding world, being filled with unhappiness and gloom purely because of the selfish and bigoted adults that are supposed to protect them.

You click your tongue bitterly. Only a terf could write or imply something so tragic in a supposed children’s book…

Just as you set down the newspaper and lean back against the headboard, Kreacher materialises at your bedside and begins to clear away your plate and paper. You shoot him a smile of thanks that he has a mixed reaction to. Before disappearing, he observes your state once more, dull eyes searching for something. When he returns a moment later, he’s carries with him a slim vial filled with a red, almost-pinkish liquid that contained ascending bubbles. Carbonated? It looked like a normal drink — like a brightly dyed, flavoured tea or sports drink.

With eyes of fascination, you carefully take the potion vial from Kreacher. You were about to take your first ever magical potion and you plan on savouring every moment of it, even the moments leading up to drinking it. Slowly turning the vial in your hand, you realise that the consistency of the liquid isn’t as light as water; it was a little thicker.

“It’s a healing potion mistress,” Kreacher explains at your bedside, hunched over with his features scrunched up into a permanent scowl, “for the hot fever, mistress,” you give him a small, grateful smile for the explanation. It’s been a while since someone has been proactive when it came to caring for your wellbeing; it made you feel better knowing that Kreacher was around to take care of your needs, disregarding that it was an obligation he couldn’t escape from. Being a successful woman in commerce didn’t mean you were successful in all aspects of life. You still needed to be cared for. This was a welcomed compassion you were going to take full advantage of.

“Thank you Kreacher,” you swiftly uncork the vial and down the potion like a shot, not expecting it to taste so revolting, “Ugh! That’s horrid!” you cough and feel tears surface. This was supposed to be your dream so why did you come up with something so foul-tasting?! You’ve never tasted anything so disgusting! You can’t even begin to describe the flavour —it’s too foul for words!

Shaken up by your amplified reaction, Kreacher begins to shake but explains that it’s how all healing potions tasted, “there are other potions with the baddest tastes mistress,” you try to shake away the repulsive flavour but have no such luck and turn to Kreacher with a plea.

“Water? Please?” with a snap of his fingers, a cool glass of fresh, crisp water appears and you immediately reach out to drink it. The repulsive taste on your tongue dilutes the more you drink but it doesn’t fully lift off your taste buds. Even after drinking the entire tall glass of water, the awful taste of the healing potion lingered — you couldn’t even feel relieved from the feverish headache that left you.

The healing potion had worked its purpose and you were up and about 12 Grimmauld Place, taking in its dismal but elegant interior, opulent decor and its many rooms. You didn’t know what to expect. It was evident how wealthy the Black Family was in their expensive tastes but that didn’t necessarily translate into aesthetic arrangements. When you watched the movies, it was understandable how dilapidated it was but, despite currently being lived-in, it still looked dull. All rooms appeared the same and began to blend into one another the more you moved around. You still awed at the realistic display of the place, however; it all felt so real, as if your surroundings breathed with life and every ornament, wall and structure had its own individual heartbeat. Just the thought made your heart race. This was once a purely fictional setting and now, your dream brought it to life and you were fully encapsulated - happily so.

One room that held your attention far better than all other rooms of the house combined was the home library. It was majestic, regal and old — a charming space that you were eager to explore. Its many shelves were lined with an assortment of books, many containing magical knowledge such as light magic and dark magic, which was surprising when considering the Black family’s preference for dark magic. What wasn’t surprising was the amount of books detailing traditional wizard and witch rituals, dates, holidays and more. Purebloods and their need for the maintenance of customs and ceremonies, you couldn’t help rolling your eyes. You expected there to be more books on dark magic but most were on the history of the wizarding world and its many traditions, some of which you had never seen or heard mention of in the Harry Potter book series, movies or games.

Your mind was very creative and you were quite proud of yourself for it.

Time passes you as the pages of many books are skimmed by your eyes. You have no idea how much time ticks by as you consume book after book, flicking through pages before being interrupted by a rapid knock at the door succeeded by the entrance to the library being hurriedly pushed open.

“Mother,” Regulus pants with softly flushed cheeks. His head of curls were a hint messier than the last time you met eyes with him, however, he was still dressed more formally than how a normal ten year old boy should be dressed. It was then, however, that you realised your greatest, influential role — a role that’s far more important than being the head of your company. You’re a mother now. A mother to two gorgeous and darling sons, who deserve all the love in the world. It made tears well up in your eyes. Your subconscious had realised your truest, purist desires and brought it to you in a dream through your beloved fictional characters, ”M-mother?” snapping out of your trance, you realise Regulus had been waiting for you to signal that it was okay for him to speak but hadn’t yet.

“Yes?” Your soft voice appears to catch him off-guard but he’s quick to recover and steel his features.

“I apologise for coming to you late, Mother,” he begins, remaining at the door with his shoulders straight and expression level despite the anxiety for his mistake clearly showing in his eyes. He’s still slightly panting but endeavours to explain himself quickly for your expediency.

“It’s alright, darling, take your time,” you offer a kind smile that he doesn’t know how to respond to. And, instead of assuring him, you seem to have only made him more fearful.

“I-I’m terribly sorry, Mother, it was entirely my mistake. It won’t happen again, I swear!” he pleads with tearful eyes and a quivering lip. His small voice raises in volume no matter how much he tries to control it and eventually has to stop talking altogether just so he could gather himself.

“Regulus, you’ve done nothing wrong,” your words have such a profound effect on him that he stills, completely frozen in time from shock and confusion, “what were you going to say originally, darling?” ‘darling’… the endearment slips you so naturally and it doesn’t even bother you — this really was your heart’s truest desire.

Regulus takes a few minutes to himself, trying to find his voice and swallowing to wet his gone-dry mouth in order to speak without his voice cracking, which would have an ill demonstration of the Black family’s standing, “I, once again, apologise for my lateness, mother. I did not realise you would be in the family library rather than your study today,” it’s clear he’s still quite flustered from his earlier frantic search for your wandering form as he was still faintly panting under his breath. You raise a gentle hand and, paired with your soft smile, you silently assure him to take his time once more. He appreciates the unusual consideration and leniency from his typically stringent mother, “as per usual, I am here to update you on the progress of my home studies. I’ve read through all the chapters you wanted me to read and had written notes appropriately, complete with summary paragraphs…”

You don’t speak as you observe the sweet boy before you, his shoulder pulled back and chin held squarely as if he was a soldier, a man of rigorous instruction rather than the innocent young boy he was supposed to be. As you stare with an unknown and unfamiliar look in your eyes, Regulus tenses up, slowly backing into the hallway once more. His mother is a woman of few words but would usually hum along in approval to his list of completed tasks — it was a trivial gesture of favour that he eagerly sought after, wanting nothing more than to seek your acceptance. Complete and utter silence could either be dangerous or harmless. The potential risk made the hairs on his arms raise. The poor boy didn’t know what to make of your bizarre mannerisms lately. His heart raced to new heights and his throat felt even more closed up than usual.

Slowly, you walk up to him and kneel down, love and fondness clear in your gentle eyes. However, it was such a rare emotion for Regulus to see in his mother’s eyes that he tensed up more at the stare, no matter how affectionate and warm.

It has to be a trap, somehow…

Your gentle hand reaches up and cups his cherubic cheek, one of the few remaining demonstrations of his youth. Plumper, you need to fill in his cheeks, make them softer and more rounded; you’ll stop at nothing to get them to that state as soon as possible. With your thumb, you lovingly stroke his cheek and smile with all the love welling up in your chest. Your features are soft with the warmth and affection you wanted to convey beyond words. This is the first time Regulus has ever seen his mother look so kind. He’s never seen it before —it looks nice. His mother looks pretty now. He really hopes this isn’t a trap.

Innate maternal love and instincts overwhelm you. And, after a moment, you take the plunge. You pull him into your arms and embrace his slim, short figure, pressing your face into his hair as you tuck his face into your shoulder. Finally, you have your own son, and you’re going to love him with all your heart. In your mind, you vow to all deities you would care for him like no other, even if in a dream.

“A dream come true,” you say in a voice dripping with tears. Faintly, you hear Regulus ask for what you mean, muffled from how you have his face buried into your shoulder, “having a son like you, it’s a dream come true…”

Regulus can’t believe his ears as a warmth spreads through his chest, rapid and, like a blossoming array of wild flowers, it’s accompanied with the purest happiness he’s ever felt in his short life so far. He doesn’t know what to say, speechless from your words, words that he’s never before heard from his mother. He’s wished so many times for such a scenario to come true that he can’t quite believe that it’s happening to him now.

—BANG!

Sirius stands at the end of the hall, glaring ferociously at the scene happening before him, a bitter emotion consuming his small form at the words he hears and he promptly storms off. But you’re too quick with your lengthier strides and desire to reach him before he goes too far. Without a second thought, you hug the eldest brother to your chest too. You’ve pulled him as close to you as possibly could despite his protests and attempts at pushing you away.

With a stern voice, you speak up against his thrashing form, “Sirius, do not get aggressive with me,”

“I don’t care!”

“You will care because you’ll end up hurting someone and or yourself one day, if you keep this up!”

Sirius is flooded by shock at your response and he freezes up. His mother never cared whether or not he or anyone else got hurt, so long as they succumbed to her ridiculous demands. He can’t recognise his own mother anymore. Taking full advantage of his paralysed state, your hold turns gentle and you begin to comb your fingers through his inky locks.

“Breathe...” you try to calm him down by gently petting the back of his hair down and occasionally running your nails along his scalp, “talk to me…what’s upset you?” looking up, you see Regulus a metre or two away with a curious look on his face, a mix of amazement, curiosity and caution. Sirius doesn’t respond so you gently prompt him, pulling away to meet his conflicted eyes, “darling?”

Sirius is stunned into silence and doesn’t know what to say, he’s in complete denial over what’s happening – this can’t be his mother, “did you hit your head or something?” he accuses in a snappy tone and you step back, a wave of realisation washing over you. Before this, Sirius and Regulus were pushed around by Walburga daily, abused and tortured in an attempt to conform to her ways. It breaks your heart but also fills you with determination. Even though this is just a dream, you will make the proper changes and treat them kindly. They deserve a loving mother, one who supports them and loves them unconditionally. As you part your lips to voice something, you feel an ominous presence enter the hallway.

When you look up and over your shoulder, your eyes meet liquid mercury, swirling with anger and paired with the deepest frown. Orion Black approaches from behind you, his footsteps daunting and seeming to echo through the shaking walls of the hallway as he fixes Sirius with a cold glare. His own son, who’s only 11 years old.

“What is going on here?” Orion demands but completely ignores you when you try to explain. Your husband’s focus stubbornly remains on your son, the accusation and wrath in his eyes aggrandised. He continues to bark at Sirius, who looks at the floor in quiet shame and with bitten lips. You know he’s terrified but still tries to appear strong, knowing that if he cried out and showed weakness through pained anger in front of his parents, they would use it as ammunition to berate and abuse him further, “don’t you dare talk to your mother that way again, Sirius!”

Orion raises his wand to punish him but you hurriedly step in the way and tuck Sirius’ face into your stomach. Chin over your shoulder, you meet eyes with your husband andtry to keep from snarling at him lest your true intentions and change of heart come to light and raise red flags, “this is between me and Sirius, I will deal with his punishment myself,”

Sirius doesn’t know whether he should be fearful or relieved. That emotion is so foreign to him, especially when it comes to his mother and talks of punishment. Thankfully, Orion lets the situation go and nods curtly before walking back to his study with a huff, muttering about wasted time on his ‘useless son’ under his breath.

“My punishment is to eat dinner in my room…” the brothers share a confused look, “usually, it’s to have no dinner and no breakfast…”

“Or worse…” Regulus’ words make them both shiver; a cold chill runs up their spines and inspires dark memories to surface. Un-welcomed, they shake their heads and banish the remembrance.

Diverting the topic altogether, Sirius picks at his food, “what do you think happened to her?”

“Mother?” Regulus asks and receives a confirming nod, “I don’t know…Kreacher told me–” Sirius pulls a face at the friendship his brother has fostered with the elf, “that mother had a terrible fever yesterday and fainted after we saw her in the hallway,”

Sirius thinks for a moment and chews a little longer than usual, ruminating over the new information, “you think that’s what made her like that?”

Regulus shrugs his small shoulders, “that’s the only thing I could think of…” the youngest brother slowly begins to lose himself in thought, thinking back to when his mother embraced him tenderly and whispered such lovely, affirming words beside his ear.

‘A dream come true… having a son like you, it’s a dream come true…’

“You like the change?” Sirius snaps his little brother out of his daydream and Regulus flushes in slight embarrassment, avoiding his older brother’s disapproving eyes. Or was that disappointment? Maybe something else?

“She’s much nicer now…”

“It won’t last forever,” Sirius says roughly, bitterness and disbelief evident in his voice as his brows furrow; he doesn’t want to believe that his mother, one of the two people responsible for hurting him and his little brother day in and day out, could have the capacity to change overnight, “you’ll see…”

Regulus doesn’t want to believe his brother but how could he deny such a pragmatic expectation? His older brother is right. It’s unrealistic for him to believe in such a miracle. Nevertheless, there was a troublesome ray of hope that warmed the depths of his chest and clenched around his beating heart with purpose. It was immature to be so optimistic but he can’t help hoping.

And, he’d never admit it out loud but… Sirius was hopeful too.

3rd August 1971

You’re astonished at how long this dream has stretched on for. You’ve been able to finish the previous day, fallen asleep beside your husband and rose the next day to have breakfast with your darling boys, served by Kreacher. And now, you’re happily immersing yourself in the home library once more.

Amazed, you consume the contents of the book in your hand, you’ve never come across such information in the Harry Potter books, movies or games. It’s so novel! You feel bubbling excitement rise from deep within you, enchanted and equally awestruck from your imagination, even in sleep. You should be a fanfiction writer!

“I can’t believe how detailed and long this dream is continuing on for…” you mutter to yourself, beginning to smile at your luck before you’re harshly interrupted.

“This isn’t a dream you insufferable muggle!” a shrieking shrill scream echoes in your head and makes you wince. In a weak attempt at soothing the ache, you grasp at your temple with a hand. The throbbing discomfort the voice induces is equivalent to the same pain you experienced when you first woke up in that pitch black room, only, not as intense. The memory makes you wince even more and you wonder if the increase of pain was a type of phantom hurt brought on by your own thoughts.

“Wh-wha-?” you do your best to collect yourself but the wailing voice is unrelenting and perpetuates the pounding in your head.

“To hell with that ritual! What. Happened?! This wasn’t supposed to be the result! Explain yourself, you filthy muggle woman! HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY PLACE!”

With staggering realisation, all the pieces click together in your head and you’re stunned into silence as the raging voice of the villainess woman continues to demand answers in your head. Her voice is piercing but is dulled out by your curiosity and rising triumph.

“You’re saying this is real?...”

“Yes! You Filthy Muggle! Whatever you’ve done, reverse it now and allow me to return to my place!”

“...No,” your firm voice counters, a slow smirk gradually tugging at your lips. She goes silent, probably speechless at the audacity a ‘muggle’ has to disobey her demands, “I’m staying,” you threaten, “and I’m going to do right by your sons by giving them the life and mother they deserve—”

“You will do no such thing!” Walburga shouts once more in your head; this time, you don’t mind the throbbing pain it induces, “They are my sons and they—!”

“Not anymore bitch,” you grin deviously, “they’re my sons now,”

NEXT. | 02 : SHOPPING (1/2) →

A/N : this is my attempt at a fix it fic inspired by one of my favourite genres in webtoons etc - reincarnation/isekai/time travel do-overs, wish me luck! i hope i do a good job! ALSO! I'd like to express a special thank you to my dearest friend @thebestofoneshots for being such a darling and taking time out of her day to beta-read this first chapter for me, she's been such a sweetheart and was the one who helped motivate me to finish the first chapter! i don't think i would have been able to post this first chapter without her. i love you so much my darling! please go and support her by reading her work, commenting and reblog her work too! she deserves all the love in the world! and she writes so beautifully too! you won't regret it!

NAVI. | SERIES MASTERLIST

TAGLIST : @melinajenkins @aastonishment @until-i-found-you @corp0real @celestcies @lovelydoveval @inlovewithremusjohnlupin @calums-betch @futurecorps3 @hihihi1112 @simpingforthe80s @yrluvjane @chaosofmanyfandoms @storyofaromance @loving-and-dreaming @somewereinthegalaxi @ashreblogsficshere @cassandra-nerezza-black @stray-bi-kids @ttkttt @notasadgirlipromise @desikudisworld @volturissideslut @arilxup88

SERIES TAGLIST OPEN

#marauders fic #marauders fanfiction #harry potter marauders #marauders era #the marauders era #sirius black #regulus black #the marauders #walburga black #the black brothers #orion black #DOB #Divorcing Orion Black #marauders fix-it-fic #reader insert #fem reader #marauders

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allwaswell16 · 1 month ago

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A fic rec of One Direction fics that involve characters using sign language as requested in this ask. You can find my other fic recs here. If you enjoy the fics, please leave kudos and comments. Happy reading!

- Louis / Harry -

💜 All About Us by LHStylinson

(G, 137k, kid fic) Throughout the night and protests from their daughter, Louis and Harry reminisce about how they met and overtime share their story with the boy that seems to look at their daughter the same way Louis once and still looks at Harry.

💜 All Your Dreams Are On Their Way by @1diamondinthesun

(NR, 73k, Caribbean) Louis Tomlinson is a grieving author with a deadline. Harry Styles is afraid to realize his potential. The Caribbean is the perfect place to dream bigger.

💜 Shout It From The Rooftops by therogueskimo / @bravetemptation

(M, 70k, PTSD) Plagued by memories of the worst day of his life, Louis Tomlinson feels like he’s constantly living in darkness. Harry Styles might just be the person to bring him back to the light.

💜 Dog got your Tongue? by seducedbycurls

(NR, 50k, dog walker Louis) Person a spills coffee on person b when they trip AU

💜 Two Hearts Drawn Together by Chelsea Frew / @chelsea-frew

(E, 46k, famous/not famous) Louis Tomlinson is 1/3 of a world-famous boy band. Harry Styles is a deaf university student. When they meet each other at a book signing, they experience an instant connection.

💜 It Feels Different When You’re With Me by Rearviewdreamer / @all-these-larrythings

(M, 45k, deaf Louis) Harry fell in love with sign language as a kid. He never imagined the first love of his life would lead him straight to his second.

💜 You Came Just Like A Flower In My Darkest Hour by graceling_in_a_suit

(T, 44k, fantasy) Harry had spent a thousand years as the king of a false kingdom, no one but his empty-minded subjects to distract him from his loneliness. Then, he saw a stranger in a mirror to another world.

💜 Quiet People Have the Loudest Minds by @2tiedships2

(M, 38k, omegaverse) the one where Louis is a nonverbal omega who has accepted the fact that he will never find an alpha that will treat him as an equal. On the other hand, he’s never met anyone like Harry.

💜 Stargazer Louis by thecheshirepussycat / @the-cheshire-pussy-cat

(T, 36k, high school) Louis has been deaf ever since a he was a little kid. Some of his only comforts now are the colors and fragrances of flowers. Harry could care less about flowers and prefers the beautiful melodies of his music.

💜 A Life Turned Upside Down by Chelsea Frew / @chelsea-frew

(E, 29k, exes) Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson were madly in love from the moment they met. Their contracts would not, however, allow them to publicly announce their love. Forced to take part in stunts, they persevered. Until one stunt became too much, and Harry left.

💜 Is it a sign? by bluegreenish / @greenblueish

(E, 25k, omegaverse) the one where Harry meets a certain handsome alpha at his sister's wedding and learns that speaking verbally doesn't have to be the only means of communication.

💜 Whipped Cream by @writingstylinson

(T, 24k, pining) Harry is a deaf photographer in charge of taking Lottie's wedding pictures. Louis is determined for Harry to be his plus one.

💜 Don't Act Like It's a Bad Thing to Fall in Love by nightwideopen / @themarshalstale

(G, 23k, high school) Louis was born blind, completely blind, leaving him with nothing but the absolute blackness that his lack of vision produces. Harry, on the other hand, is deaf. No sound can be registered by the two tiny ears his rowdy, chocolate curls obscure so well.

💜 Never Too Late by dimpled_halo / @comebackassholes

(M, 18k, kid fic) Just having come out of the closet and recovering from vocal surgery, famous recording artist Harry Styles needs to get away from LA to work on new music needing to prove to his label that his career isn't over.

💜 Worth a Thousand Words by TheIfInLife / @larryismyotpuniverse

(NR, 7k, high school) Harry went deaf at 5 years old and Louis just wants the chance be heard.

💜 Fingers Crossed by Moriartied

(T, 5k, uni) Harry's been deaf since he was born. Louis is newly graduated after studying sign language, and Harry hires him to translate for all the classes he'll be attending.

💜 The power of Silence by WordsOfHeart

(T, 1k, mpreg) an AU where Harry is mute and pregnant and Louis is the best boyfriend he could possibly be.

💜 My Hands, Your Hands by croisblue / @forwhatiam

(G, 1k, canon divergence) It was something of a joke within Louis’ fandom that he never carried his own luggage. The theories were never too serious, mostly leaning towards him being too much of a princess to do it himself.

- Rare Pairs -

💜 say it out loud by ieatravioli

(M, 25k, Zayn/Liam) Liam has a younger sister who is deaf and he meets Zayn; an alumni from his sister's school. Zayn has just found out that he's qualified to receive a Cochlear implant and decides to go through with the procedure.

💜 Whiteboard by lostinsanity

(T, 5k, Zayn/Niall) Niall’s a musician, Zayn’s an artist. Music and art are their lives, respectively. And the story shouldn't be much more complicated from there. But it is, because Zayn is deaf.

#weekly recs #ficrec #1dficlibrary #1dsquad #Larry fanfic #Larry fanfiction #1dficvillage

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tomionefinds · 24 days ago

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Abandoned but Worth It

What does this mean? We have an Abandoned tag. We've decided to compile a list of fairly popular, now some obscure, fics that are abandoned, but worth reading. Our criteria for this title is thus:

It has not been updated within the last 2 years, has been orphaned, or has been given a fast summary at the end by the author

Presents a unique take on the relationship or a new dynamic to the ship

Advances world-building, or posits its own magical theory, in the HP world

Length (we avoided those with only a few chapters)

Here are some of the fics that met the criteria for abandoned but worth it. We will continue to add to this list as the year goes on. And never say never. Fics left alone for years can suddenly come back and finish.

Authors; If you see your fic on this list and its not abandoned, please DM us.

-TF Team

This Tangle of Thorns by theriskybusinessofwriting

M | 39k Her mother had gotten herself a new lover. His name was Tom. Modern AU. No magic. Slightly inspired by Lolita.

The Orphanage by Xylosaurus

M | 66k

She was only 8 and had already lost her parents and memories all in one tragic night. Forced to live in Wool's Orphanage, Hermione finds friendship with a 9-year-old Tom Riddle but is soon ripped from him by a prophecy. Six years have passed and he still looks for her. AU Tomione

Bodyswitch by Winterblume

T | 50k

Hermione's in hell and all her nightmares have come true. She's turned into a brainless bimbo and is failing all her classes quite spectacularly. Her teachers have, in fact, already given up on her and just sit back and watch her flunk all her NEWTs. Yes, it's nothing but hell for Hermione. On the upside, things can hardly get any worse. Right?

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by LovelyVillain

E | 300k

Hermione hasn’t seen Tom since he disappeared from Wool’s Orphanage eight years ago, taking her heart with him. But now, he’s returned, a string of bodies at his feet and a league of assassins at his back. British Intelligence Officer Harry Potter leads the investigation to catch a highly skilled killer wreaking havoc across Europe, while Hermione struggles between what is right and the man she loves. Killing Eve inspired AU

More beneath the cut!

Orphea by SallyJAvery

M | 48k

"You could not believe I was more than your echo." A spell to sing the dead to life, when the living are lost. Tomione, post-war, dystopian AU.

The Pendulum of the Mind by AvaJune

M | 118k

Tom's fingers slid across her skin as he pulled up her sleeve, feeling irregular bumps and scarring as he watched in fascination as instead of a dark mark, he steadily revealed rune carvings. His eyes flicked back to hers, watching her reaction to his touch. "I will give you this, witch. You are unbearably intriguing," he murmured. Madness flies in the face of logic, and if there is one thing Hermione Granger cannot abide, it's things that defy logic. There is always something against her, this time the very laws of time and space. There is, however, a truth she now knows about herself; she isn't quite the rule girl she once thought she was. *Hermione - Tom Riddle. AU, Post Battle of Hogwarts*

Ad Infinitum by Speechwriter

T | 77k

As he forges inexorably toward the end of time, he may come to wonder if this is a world worth ruling. Science fantasy. [summary in final chapter]

Nothing Like the Sun by Orphan_account

E | 118k

There’s something unnerving about Tom Riddle. Hermione’s never quite been able to articulate just what it is about him that unsettles her so: after all, Riddle’s popular and charming and adored by Hogwarts staff and students alike. Still, she’d swear that there’s something lurking beneath that warmly polite veneer of his, something that lies in wait like a serpent in the dark. But it’s not until her sixth year at Hogwarts, when she rashly confronts him over an unprecedented act of violence, that the full force of Riddle’s chilling regard is abruptly and wholly turned on her.

Blood is Thicker by AbsintheDreams

M | 75k

A/U: Still Hogwarts Universe, but I play with the timeline alot. Hermione is just twelve when she meets Riddle. Just a child when she witnesses a sadistic murder in the halls of her sacred school. Popular, humble, well mannered, Riddle always gets what he wants. Victims, admirers, enemies, followers…they all fall in line. Except the defiant girl with his mark on her skin. She only wants his downfall, and he will only settle for her total submission.

The Anti-Heroine by cheshire_carroll

M | 641k

Hermione Granger knows she's not a good person. Disillusioned with life at only twelve years old; she is cynical, manipulative, ruthless and, above all else, a survivor. For six years she has lived on the streets of London with only her sharp mind and her sharper knives to keep her alive, but a letter from an owl changes everything for Hermione, and the bond she forms on the Hogwarts Express with a timid boy with broken glasses, skinny wrists and a lightning-shaped scar will change the whole of Wizarding Britain. Main Pairing: Harry Potter/Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle

Handling a Dark Lord Wannabe by cleighc

E | 89k

Hermione was not amused. Not. At. All. They had defeated Lord Voldemort after years of struggle. Witnessed the end. She had thought, with relief and without an ounce of charity, that she never had to deal with that pretentious, presumptuous, melodramatic, homicidal son of a bitch ever again. Apparently the castle had other ideas.

Bitter Almonds by orphan_account

E | 63k

What would happen if the Mauraders, the Golden Trio, and the Knights of Walpurgis all went to school together? Also, what if Tom Riddle developed a strange obsession with Hermione Granger?

Et in Arcadia ego by muggleriddle

T | 55k

When Hermione found that little spell hidden in between the complicated illustrations of a book, she imagined she would get a destroyed horcrux with it, not a brand new Tom Riddle.

Journey of the Soul by Queen_Medieva E | 197k

A decade spent as the Undesirable Number One under the Dark Lord's tyrannical regime would challenge anyone's perception of "right" and "wrong". What lengths would YOU go to for a chance at a new life? In the early morning hours of May 2nd 2008, exactly ten years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione Granger ceased to exist.

Addendum: He is also a liar by ergott

Not Rated | 158k

Despite his impoverished circumstances, Tom Riddle always knew he was destined for great things. The ability to travel back and forth through time was a bit of a surprise, though. Also a surprise: the bushy-haired little girl he meets in the future who possesses powers to match his own. Eventual Tomione; starts pre-Hogwarts

#tomione #abandoned #possibly abandoned #abandoned but worth it #incomplete #rated ma/e

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k-nayee · 4 months ago

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Bring Me to Life Harry Potter

wc: 4.3k a/n: was inspired by my classics mythology course, specifically Pygmalion!

Slight Greek Mythology!AU

Traveler M.List

ˏ⸉ˋ‿̩͙‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˏ⸉ˋ‿̩͙‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˏ⸉ˋ‿̩͙‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙.·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .‿̩̥̩‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˊ⸊ˎ‿̩̥̩‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˊ⸊ˎ‿̩̥̩‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˊ⸊ˎ

You were never meant to be in your grandfather’s study.

The room was always locked, but that never stopped you from getting in.

His study held an irresistible mystery—the scent of old books, the glimmer of aged artifacts, shelves of tomes older than the house itself.

The musty air clung to your skin as you ran your fingers along the spines of countless books.

Some of the titles were so faded you could barely make out the letters while others glinted with metallic ink, daring you to open them.

It was late afternoon when you had snuck in, the light filtering through the high windows casted long shadows across floors

You glanced nervously over your shoulder making sure the door was still closed behind you.

The last thing you needed was your grandfather to catch you in here.

Your fingers stilled over a small leather-bound book labeled simply: T.R. Something about it stood out.

Unlike the others it seemed unassuming—no grand title or gilded edges, just those two letters in plain black ink.

Without thinking you slid the book from its place. It was heavier than it looked, the pages stiff and worn as though untouched for years.

Opening the cover the smell of old parchment paper filled your nose as you took in the sight of rows various photographs.

Moving photographs.

The first few pictures were unremarkable: familiar faces from your family’s past—likely great-grandparents or distant relatives.

As you turned the pages a particular set of photos began to repeat: two boys in Hogwarts uniforms standing side by side.

One of them was unmistakably your grandfather; his sharp features softened by youth.

But it was the other boy that drew your attention.

In each photo the second boy lingered in the background or beside your grandfather, his face was always slightly obscured—turned away, blurred, or caught in motion.

There was something about him that intrigued you though you couldn’t explain why.

Maybe it was the way he carried himself all so poised and controlled, or the way your grandfather seemed so at ease around him.

As you flipped through more pages the pair appeared again and again—posing in front of the Hogwarts castle, sitting on the grounds, even at your family’s estate.

You frowned as you squint at the photos wondering who this boy could be and why he was such a frequent companion of your grandfather.

You’d never heard your family mention anyone like him and your curiosity deepened with every turn of the page.

One thing for sure: the mystery boy never smiled. If anything he looked detached.

It wasn’t until you found a picture that made your breath catch in your throat.

This one was different. His face was in full view.

The image showed him sitting alone this time at a desk with a quill in hand, his gaze focused on a book as though unaware the camera was watching.

His features were sharp and defined—high cheekbones with dark slicked-back hair that gave him an air of cold elegance.

Brows furrowed in concentration as he wrote, he suddenly pause before glancing up as though someone had called his name.

He scoffs with a roll of his eyes and return to his work.

And yet there was a small tug at the corner of his lips, a flicker of amusement that softened his otherwise intense expression.

The subtle motion played on a loop that you watched it over and over, entranced.

Something stirred in you—a strange fascination you couldn’t explain.

There was something hauntingly perfect about him, a beauty almost otherworldly.

You had seen many pictures of young wizards but none of them had held your attention like this.

"That’s enough of that." The sharp voice made you flinch.

Album nearly slipping from your hands, you spun around to see your grandfather standing in the doorway with a frown of disapproval.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked, striding across the room with surprising speed for a man of his age.

"I-I'm sorry I didn’t mean to—" Before you could stammer out an excuse, he snatched the album from your hands and slam it shut with a thud that seemed to echo through the room.

"These are not things for you to meddle with!" he said sharply, voice unusually harsh.

He turned away, gripping the album tightly as if the contents were too dangerous to leave in your hands.

A shadow passed over his face when noticing the photograph you had been staring at.

"Who was that?" the question blurt out before you could stop it. "The boy in the photos with you. Who is he?"

For a moment your grandfather didn’t answer. He stood there, his back to you as if weighing whether or not to tell you.

Finally with a deep sigh, he turned to face you, his expression softer now but still guarded.

"Tom Riddle," his voice quiet but laced with an undeniable weight. "We were in school together. He and I...knew each other."

There was something in the way he said the name that made your skin prickle.

Tom Riddle. It echoed in your mind like a forgotten story, a warning wrapped in two simple words.

"Tom Riddle?" you repeated softly, the syllables feeling foreign on your tongue. "Who was he really? And why have I never heard you mention him before?"

Your grandfather’s eyes darkened. Slowly walking to the desk, he place the album down carefully as though it might shatter.

"Because it’s better you don’t know," his voice was thick with something close to regret. "Tom was...complicated. Dangerous."

You frowned leaning in. "What do you mean by that?"

He gave you a long look as if trying to decide whether you were ready to hear what he was about to say.

Then after what felt like an eternity, he leaned back and began.

"We met in our first year at Hogwarts," he started mind heavy with the weight of old memories. "I noticed him right away. Not because he stood out—no no, Tom was very careful not to. But there was something about him that was...off. Most people didn’t see it. He was charming, polite, even likable when he needed to be. The perfect façade."

"Façade?" you echoed. The boy in the photo had looked anything but fake.

Your grandfather nodded. "Tom was empty even then. But people only saw what he wanted them to see. He smiled when it suited him, spoke with a kindness that never reached his eyes. Most people—especially the professors—believed he was destined for greatness. I suppose in a way he was."

He paused, gaze drifting as though he could still see him standing there. "But I knew better. Saw through him before anyone else did."

“How did you know?”

"Because I watched him," your grandfather admitted. “I was no fool, even then. I saw it the moment I met him—he had ambition more than anyone I’d ever known. I knew he could be dangerous and I wasn’t going to let that power slip by unnoticed.”

You swallowed, an uncomfortable feeling settling in your stomach. "So what did you do?"

A small bitter smile tugged at the corners of your grandfather’s lips. "I tested him; wanted to know what he was capable of so I kept an eye on him. I charmed a quill and loaned it to him when he 'coincidentally' lost his. He didn’t suspect a thing—still new to magic at the time and didn’t realize it."

"Charmed how?"

"It was a tracker," he simply said. "I needed to know know who I was dealing with. That quill stayed with him the entire year. And what I found out..."

Silence settled between you. The air felt thicker now, heavy with the weight of what he wasn’t saying. “What did you find out?”

His jaw clenched slightly. “I found out where he came from...he grew up in a Muggle orphanage.”

The revelation sent a ripple of surprise through you. “Muggle?”

Your grandfather grimly nodded. “Tom was a half-blood. He never spoke about it at school and I understood why. He despised them—the Muggles. He thought they were beneath him, knowing he was the product of a love-potion made it no better.”

You blinked. 'He was a love potion baby?'

The term wasn’t unfamiliar to you—your family had a long history of marriages arranged for power resulting in children born from such unions.

Emotionless, loveless, all in the name of strengthening the family’s bloodline.

It wasn’t uncommon for cousins or relatives to be born with the same emptiness. But this...this was something else.

You swallowed feeling a chill run down your spine. “So...what did you do?”

“I confronted him. In our second year I told him what I knew. Told him I’d tracked him, that I knew about the orphanage and his hatred for the non-magic. And instead of threatening, I offered him a place. Didn’t want to see his potential wasted among Muggles”

"Did he accept?" you asked quietly.

His expression softened slightly. "He was grateful...or at least pretended to be. For a time we were close—not friends mind you. Tom didn’t have friends. He had useful people. And I was useful to him, just as he was to me."

The way your grandfather spoke of Tom was an odd mix of respect and wariness.

Even now, after all these years, he was still cautious in how he remembered him.

"What happened?"

Your grandfather’s expression darkened as his lips press into a thin line. "Tom had his ideas about blood purity. I won’t lie, I wasn’t opposed to some of them. Muggles and Muggle-borns...they didn’t belong in our world—at least not in the same capacity as real witches and wizards."

You could feel the shift in the air. His voice was lower now, almost a whisper.

"At first I turned a blind eye. We were still young, still figuring things out. But then..." He trailed off, hands gripping the arms of his chair. "The abuse of Muggle-born students started. It was small things at first; hex here, jinx there. But by the time I realized how far Tom was willing to go it was too late. He had already gathered others around him, boys who would follow him without question. And I couldn’t stand by and watch."

You swallowed, the weight of his words sinking in. "So you cut ties with him."

"I did. I wouldn’t condone harm and murder, so I left. Tom didn’t take it well but he respected me enough to leave my family out of his...ambitions. Even during the war when everyone else was caught in the crossfire, he never came after us."

You blinked confused. "He never came after our family during the war?"

Your mind spun for a moment. "Wait you mean... the First Wizarding War? The war where Harry Potter’s parents were killed?"

A chill ran down your spine as a realization began to settle in.

There was only one person who could have spared your family from the carnage of that time. "The only person I can think of who could’ve done that is—"

Your mouth went dry as the full weight of it hit you.

You look up at your grandfather. He didn’t have to say anything.

You could see the truth etched across his face.

"Grandpa..." Your voice wavered. "You... you knew him. You knew Lord Voldem—."

"Yes." Before you could even finish your grandfather cuts you off sharply, his tone grave.

The confirmation hit you like a blow. Voldemort—the Dark Lord—had once been the boy in the photographs.

And your family...your grandfather had known him. Protected him even.

"So...that’s why our family stayed neutral," you whispered as understanding dawned on you. "That’s why we stayed out of the war. Because of him."

"Exactly," his voice was steady but cold. "Tom never touched us. But don’t think for a moment that it was out of affection or friendship. It was respect, nothing more."

You nodded slowly as your gaze dropped to your hands.

Tom Riddle—Voldemort—had spared your family. Not out of loyalty, but out of a cold calculated respect.

Even though it made your skin crawl thinking about it...there was something that gnawed at the edges of your mind.

The real Tom Riddle was dead—long gone, nothing but a memory now.

And yet the boy in the photograph, the one your grandfather had once known, was still very much alive in your thoughts.

And it was that boy you couldn’t stop thinking about.

════════════════*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═════════════════

Years had passed since that conversation with your grandfather, but his words lingered in your mind like a shadow.

No matter how hard you tried, the image of Tom Riddle remained etched into your thoughts.

There was something about his face that made it impossible for you.

It wasn’t just the stories your grandfather had told you either.

Though he had never sugarcoated Tom’s cruelty, the warnings only fueled your fascination rather than extinguished it.

You knew it was wrong, but you couldn’t help wondering what Tom might have been like if things had been different.

What if he hadn’t been born from a love potion? What if he had known love, friendship, or even the simple human connection?

Soon art became your outlet.

Driven to create—to somehow capture that beauty, that impossible idea of who Tom Riddle could have been.

It had started innocently—just a way to recreate the beauty you saw in the photograph you eventually secretly stole from your grandfather’s study.

Countless rough portraits were sketched. And when that wasn't enough, you turned to sculpting without magic.

Now here you are: currently standing in the Room of Requirement surrounded by the fruits of your labor.

You stepped back from the marble figure, wiping the dust from your hands as you admired your work.

Months of tireless effort, sneaking into the Room of Requirement every chance you got to bring him to life through stone.

The statue was life-size as it stood tall, it was so perfect it almost unnerved you.

Every detail of had been meticulously crafted—the sharp lines of his cheekbones, the delicate curve of his lips, even the way his hair fell across his forehead.

But this wasn’t the Tom Riddle your grandfather described, the one who had become Voldemort.

No this was different.

It was the version of him you had imagined—one if he hadn’t been burdened with his loveless past.

A chill ran down your spine. You couldn’t decide if it was from the cool air of the room or the eerie realism of the statue.

This was your finest work. Your masterpiece.

And it terrified you.

You had fallen in love with the image of a boy who no longer existed.

A boy who had become something far more dangerous, something twisted.

But it wasn’t the monster you loved. It was the potential—what he could have been if his life had turned out differently.

The thought gnawed at you constantly in a strange mixture of guilt and fascination.

You weren’t naïve enough to romanticize who Tom Riddle had been, but you couldn’t deny the pull he had on you.

Reaching out hesitantly, your fingers brush the smooth marble of his cheek.

Despite having poured so much of yourself into this creation, it was just a statue: cold, unmoving, forever frozen in the marble.

You could recreate his beauty, but you couldn’t bring him to life.

That thought stung more than you'd admit. Pushing it aside you start cleaning your tools.

You had poured blood, sweat, and tears into this project; and for now that would have to be enough.

As you made your way toward the Great Hall the sound of laughter and excited chatter grew louder.

You frowned noticing groups of students rushing past you, their faces flushed with excitement.

The hell's going on?

Just as you sat at your House table, a sleek and familiar black owl flutters down from the open window with a wrapped package neatly tied to its leg.

Your family owl.

Curious, you unfastened the package and tore open the brown paper. A stunning dress is revealed, the fabric shimmering in the low light of the hall as a small note falls out.

Apologies for the late delivery! I just know you’ll be beautiful tonight. Here’s a charm for your hair—just wave your wand twice and it’ll set. Enjoy the ball!

- Love, Mum.

You stared at the letter as a wave of confusion wash over you. For the night? What was she talking about?

"Oh wow! That dress is gorgeous!!" A girl sitting next to you leans over, eyeing the dress with barely concealed envy. "You’re going to look so amazing at the Yule Ball."

You froze, the blood draining from your face.

The Yule Ball.

Of course. How could you have forgotten?

"W-what?" you stammered eyes wide. "The Yule Ball's tonight?!"

The girl raised an eyebrow. "Yes? The boys have been asking all the girls out. Haven’t you noticed?"

You stared at her dumbfounded as her words slowly sank in.

You struggled to recall any moments like that. Nothing specific came to mind; just fragmented memories of the usual day at Hogwarts.

Your heart sank. No one had asked you.

And even if they did, you had been so wrapped up in your own creation that the world around you was forgotten.

A heavy sigh escaped your lips and you glanced down at the beautiful dress, its fabric mocking you with its elegance.

"Merlin were you under a rock this whole time?" the girl next to you asked still watching your reaction.

You force a smile, shaking your head as you tried to laugh it off. “No...”

Finally turning away back to her own group of friends, your smile drops, bitterness creeping in as you looked around the Great Hall filled with excited faces for tonight. '....I was in the Room of Requirement.'

*.·:·.☽✧✧☾.·:·.*

That night you stood in front of the mirror staring at your reflection.

The [color] dress shimmered in the candlelight, hugging your figure before cascading in soft waves.

It was beautiful.

Your mother’s charm had worked wonders—your hair was styled into an effortless updo that framed your face perfectly.

By all appearances you looked like someone who belonged at a grand event like the Yule Ball.

But the smile you forced didn’t quite reach your eyes.

The sound of laughter and excitement echoed faintly from the corridors outside.

You took time getting ready, dragging out the process to avoid the awkwardness of arriving alone.

The thought of walking into the ball by yourself, surrounded by couples and groups of friends, made you sick.

But you couldn’t avoid it forever.

Snapping a quick picture to send off to your family, you slip out of your room and head toward the Great Hall.

Music and laughter filled the corridors as you approached, the excitement of the ball palpable from a distance.

Your stomach twisted a little upon stepping through the grand doors.

The hall was packed with people; groups of friends and couples dancing, talking, and enjoying the night.

You had expected it of course—this was the Yule Ball after all—but seeing it now made you feel even more out of place.

You hovered near the entrance for a moment, your nerves getting the better of you.

No one seemed to notice your late arrival (and for that you were grateful), allowing you to scurry to sidelines in attempt to blend into the background.

You weren’t sure what to do with yourself.

Boys and girls alike passed by, casting appreciative glances at your dress—some murmuring compliments alike.

But beyond that no one approached.

As you stood by the refreshment table, occupying yourself with idle bites of food and sipping from your goblet, your eyes drifted across the room.

Friends laughed and danced under the sparkling lights while couples happily swayed together in the middle of the floor, holding each other close.

The warmth of their connections was so palpable it stung deep upon realization:

Once again, you were on the outside, watching in.

Because the truth was, no matter how much effort you put into fitting in tonight, you were always an outsider.

Most students at Hogwarts came from families that had chosen a side—either in support of Voldemort or against him.

But your family had chosen neither.

To some you were traitors; cowardly for not standing with the Dark Lord and despised for somehow escaping unscathed.

To others you were untrustworthy; too ambiguous in your loyalties to be considered true allies.

It didn’t matter that you had nothing to do with it.

Your last name was enough to create an invisible barrier between you and everyone else.

You took another sip of pumpkin juice, eyes scanning the room again in hopes of hoping seeing even a single familiar face.

But the groups were tightly knit with everyone lost in their own joy. Loneliness clawed at your chest.

Turning toward the large balcony doors, you step away from the crowded hall and out onto the balcony.

Soft slow music drifted out to you.

You glanced back through the doors watching as even the loners—the ones who had come alone like you—were being asked to dance.

Some hesitated at first but soon gave in to the invitation, smiling shyly as they were led onto the dance floor.

The romantic waltz filled your head, stirring something bittersweet inside you.

You leaned against the railing and look up at the starry sight.

A shooting star suddenly blaze across the sky and without thinking you make a wish that's whispered into the night.

It was silly really. The idea of wishing for something more than this.

As you looked up at the sky your heart ached for connection, for someone who could understand.

Not your family’s complicated history, not your place in the world: just you.

You knew it was pointless though; no one understood. No one saw you the way you wanted to be seen.

They only saw what they expected to see—your family’s name.

The tears welled up before you could stop them.

You blinked rapidly trying to push them back, but the weight in your chest only grew heavier.

You didn’t want to cry here in the middle of the ball. You didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s night with your sadness.

So you did the only thing you could think to do. You fled.

You rushed through the darkened corridors, your steps echoing off the stone walls as you made your way toward the one place you could be alone.

The Room of Requirement.

When you reached the familiar stretch of wall the door appears as if it had been waiting for you.

Without hesitation, you push it open.

The moment you crossed the threshold you knew something was different.

There was no longer an art studio. Instead it had transformed into a ballroom: the walls were draped with rich gold fabric while the ceiling was a grand skylight, letting the stars shine down and casting the room in a soft ethereal glow.

It was breathtakingly beautiful.

But the beauty of the room only made your pain sharper.

It was everything you had wanted tonight to be—and yet here you were, alone, as always.

Tears blurred your vision as you stumbled toward the center of the room, emotions too heavy to bear.

Your legs gave out beneath you and you collapse to the floor, the sobs you had been holding back finally breaking free.

All the loneliness and sadness you had pushed down over the years spilled out in waves.

For once there was no one around to see. No one to judge.

“To see beauty shed a tear before me...” a voice breaks through the silence—a deep soothing voice filled with warmth.

You freeze.

Breath caught in your throat, your sobs halt in shock. For a moment you thought you had imagined it.

It was impossible. You were alone—weren’t you?

Slowly you lifted your head and what you saw left you speechless.

Standing just a few feet away from you was a him. The statue. Your creation.

The same Tom Riddle you had painstakingly sculpted for months now stood before you, gazing at you with something akin to love in his eyes.

You could hardly believe what you were seeing.

He was exactly as you had imagined him; tall and striking with perfect and elegant features, just as you had carved them.

But now instead of marble his skin is flushed with color, and his eyes.

Those eyes were glowing with warmth instead of the coldness of the photo that started it all.

"...breaks my heart into two," he finishes, breaking you out of your trance. His voice is so soft and filled with affection that made your breath hitch.

He looks down at you with in awe as if you were the one who had been brought to life.

You could only gape at him, unable to form a coherent thought.

Was this real? Was this some cruel dream your mind had conjured in your moment of vulnerability?

He released a low chuckle at your stunned silence and take another step forward.

This was a different Tom, a gentler version of the boy your grandfather had known—the boy you had wished existed.

"Perhaps a kiss will mend it?" he says with a teasing tilt as he knelt before you.

Reaching a hand out before you could react, he cups your cheek.

The moment his skin met yours you shuddered. The touch was real. Too real.

His thumb brushed the tears from your face and the sensation sent a tremor through your body.

For a moment neither of you spoke, and just stared at each other.

"I’ve watched you," he whispered almost reverently. "Watched you create me with such care, such love. I’ve waited for the day I could come to you like this."

"T-Tom?" you stammered, barely able to breathe. "Am I dreaming? Is...is this real?"

His smile grew causing his eyes to crinkle at the edges as if your disbelief amused him.

"As real as the beating of my heart," he take your trembling hand and place it against his chest.

You gasped at the sensation—underneath your palm you felt the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat.

Warm.

Alive.

Real.

"As real as my love for you." With that, his lips met yours in a kiss.

73 notes · View notes

blouisparadise · 6 months ago

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Today we have the second part to our long fic rec list! These fics are all 100k words or more. If you missed the first part to this rec list, you can check it out here. If you enjoy our rec lists, please be sure to like and reblog this post to help spread the word.

1) The Rose of Whitechapel | Mature | 100,181 words

Jack the Ripper AU - Detective Constable Harry Styles and his partner, DC Liam Payne, lead the case on the Whitechapel murders. Louis Tomlinson, the Rose of Whitechapel, is harbouring secrets of his own, along with a dark and sordid past. When their paths cross, truths are revealed, and perhaps hearts are mended… A darkness is brewing, and it’s finally come to collect on the promise it was made.

2) The Maddest Obsession | Explicit | 100,974 words

One fears the dark. One rules it. Harry Styles, the dangerous mob enforcer, finds himself entangled with Louis, the strong-willed mafia-princess. As they navigate the treacherous underworld of New York, their forbidden love sparks a deadly game of loyalty, betrayal, and passion. Will their devotion to each other overcome the chaos surrounding them, or will their love be their downfall?

3) Shadow Dances | Mature | 101,591 words

Louis Tomlinson has a begrudging gift, he’s able to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Often against his will, and almost always at the most inconvenient of times. He and his partner, Zayn Malik, work for a covert division of the New Haven Federal Bureau of Investigations. They aid in all kinds of cases, though their talents lie in the obscure and unsolvable. It’s when a strange new case falls onto their desks that they’re left questioning the extent of their abilities, and whether they were ever truly alone. Harry Styles was brought into the FBI for not only his skills, but his ability to mitigate the influx of spirits surrounding the elusive and obnoxiously infuriating sharp-tongued medium he’d been assigned to. Louis gets under his skin, he’s impulsive and a risk to the team according to Harry. They do however have to find a way to set aside their sordid history, and their reluctant attraction, to track down the murderer plaguing their coastal city.

4) Billow And Breeze (Islands And Seas) | Explicit | 102,506 words

It was bright; that was the first thing Louis could recall. With a groan, he winced at the throbbing behind the sockets of his eyes and rubbed his temples in an effort to soothe the pain. Maybe he really did hit his head when he took his tumble. The omega squinted as he looked at the surrounding rolling hills and fog hanging over the countryside. As strange as it was, the world felt different, though it looked practically the same. Disoriented and confused, Louis padded through the moss and listened for his husband. “Liam?” he croaked shakily. Nothing but a symphony of woodland creatures met his ears. His footsteps were muted by mossy green grass beneath his feet and soil fragrant as he neared the crest of the hill. At the top, he froze, lips parted in horror and eyes widening at the expanse of empty farmland—not a soul in sight. It had only been less than ten minutes prior that he could see Inverness from the crest, but now there was nothing. “Impossible,” he whispered to himself, shaking his head in disbelief—his mind not quite able to make sense of it.

5) Praise the Mutilated World | Explicit | 106,668 words

An enemies to lovers dystopian au where Harry is an elite alpha and Louis is a rebel omega with too much to fight for. Every move made is monitored, and a fertile omega’s purpose in life is one thing: to give children to their alpha.

6) My Kind Of Love | General Audiences | 108,178 words

Harry marries Louis for one year. Louis has no choice other than marry Harry fucking styles. There is a reason behind Harry’s sudden marriage with Louis and Louis has no idea about that. Maybe Harry married Louis for revenge.

7) Only You And Me | Not Rated | 109,836 words

Note: This is the sequel to this fic.

Louis goes on with his life after Harry, he hopes Harry comes back to him but is also on the search for something new. Will Harry reach out to Louis, or will Louis get over him and find something better?

8) You’ve Got A Higher Power, You’re Once In Any Lifetime | Explicit | 113,444 words

Giving up and letting them think they’re right were never valid options in Louis Tomlinson’s mind. In a society full of prejudices, finding a family and being accepted, also seemed like an unrealistic utopia. Louis sets out to do what no other of his kind ever has before and in doing so, he finds love, friendship and more about himself than he thought he would.

9) Like Water Over Fire (Like Water On Fire) | Mature | 119,264 words

Prince Harry has 46 men and 13 weeks to find the husband of his dreams, Louis has a limited amount to time to live out a royal fantasy. They might just be exactly what the other needs.

10) Tainted Saints And Velvet Vices | Mature | 126,057 words

A self-fulfilling Hogwarts AU in which Louis is new to seventh year and Harry is the resident devil-may-care Slytherin set to make his entire experience a living misery. Due to less than favourable circumstances they’re forced to forge an unwilling, tentative relationship for their own survival. Repressed emotions, decidedly unromantic ballroom dancing, Triwizard Tournament tasks, creative jinxes and twilight flying above the Forbidden Forest ensue.

11) Chandeliers And Fake Smiles | Mature | 145,010 words

On the brink of winning their first Grammy; up-and-coming rock band One Direction find themselves in the midst of the biggest scandal of their career - right before tickets for their world tour go on sale. in order to save their reputation, Louis Tomlinson must find it in his heart to forgive pop singer and heartthrob Harry Styles after his first impression rubbed him entirely the wrong way. after all, they cannot sell a relationship if it looks like they hate each other.

12) Buy Me Purple Flowers First | Teen & Up | 157,728 words

Louis Tomlinson is a 24-year-old rock star who tends to be rebellious and known as a “brat” in the extended media. The Omega has yet to find a mate and has no interests in being in a committed relationship. Harry Styles is a 22-year-old Alpha Bodyguard known for his past of protecting some of the most important politicians and musicians of their time. He has settled on a temporary job as a favour of a friend to look after the famous Louis Tomlinson to finish the leg of his European tour.

13) How Many Times Will It Take (To Get This Right) | Explicit | 157,805 words

Harry was watching her go, unable to meet Louis’ eyes again now that they were alone, and that’s how he saw him when the young boy leaned around Jay to peer at his mum and Harry. Harry’s jaw went slack, his mouth falling open in disbelief when two green orbs identical to his own found him and stared unwaveringly calm into Harry’s sunglasses-covered face. His small features were undeniably close to Louis’. Their noses, their lips, even their brow line was the same, but the pup’s eyes were an eerily familiar shade of emerald, and much rounder than Louis’. His hair fell in dark ringlets around his small face, which was also much too round to really say the child looked like Louis, despite the similar features. Harry sputtered when his alpha roared in his chest that Harry should follow the kid–should protect his pup. But there was no fucking way.

14) Charmed | Mature | 163944 words

Louis had always felt he was different, but he had never understood why. At least until one particular event devasted hum, turning his life upside down forever and bringing to the surface a past he didn’t know, a present he thought he knew, and a series of unexpected events that will trigger the beginning of a future he’s not sure he wants to live.

15) Sewn Into You | Explicit | 167,486 words

Harry Styles thinks soulmates are a fairytale, or in other words-a lie. He has no interest in entertaining anything that has anything to do with the very name that had been etched along his collarbone since his eighteenth birthday. Louis Tomlinson won’t be answering to another alpha for the rest of his life if he can help it. Fuck happy endings, his soul mate can choke on it. Problem is, Harry needs a personal assistant to save his family’s business, Louis needs the cash to officially move off of his childhood best-friend’s couch. They can manage. Surely, nothing will go wrong.

16) Don’t Let It (Me) Break | Explicit | 168,297 words

The one where Harry is oblivious, Louis is broken, Zayn and Liam are in love, Gemma and Lottie are lovely, and Niall is just waiting for everyone to get their shit together.

17) Non-Disclosure | Mature | 170,219 words

Being a world class Director, producing some of the best rated Romance movies to date, Louis was easily a sucker for the ‘Happy Ever After’. Except, in a world where he pretends and imagines true love. He was stuck inbetween what he thought was the love of his life and everything trying to stop them. “I did a lot of thinking when I was gone and every scenario I came up with ended with you. I’m fucking scared and I have no idea what will happen from now but I’d risk it all, if you could promise me a lifetime”

18) You Smell Like | Explicit | 185,369 words

The one where Louis is the Alpha’s mate and everyone is aware of it except for Louis and Harry. Go figure!

19) Three Days in February | Explicit | 187,642 words

How close is too close? Harry and Louis are about to find out after a drunken night leaves Louis cursed. With only a week before tour starts, the race is on to fix things before they lose Louis forever. Oh, and Harry has to keep his long-time crush on Louis a secret while the lad can literally hear his thoughts. Easy, right?

20) Collision | Not Rated | 226,294 words

Mythology/Fairytale!AU in which Louis is a dainty fairy with a temper who wants to be intimidating and Harry hurts people. Naturally, they hate each other.

21) Truth Behind Golden Eyes | Explicit | 228,727 words

Louis is a royal servant born with magic in a kingdom where his sole existence is outlawed with a war he has no idea he has a part in upon him. Harry is the prince on whom the burden of mending a broken kingdom falls upon and he might be willing to risk it all for a simple servant if only he admitted it to himself.

22) Join Me In The Afterlife | Explicit | 262,289 words

Louis is a simple guy - all he wants from his summer break is to spend some quality time with his mother, get to know her new husband, and learn to play the guitar. Nothing out of the ordinary, that is for sure. However, life has a funny way of working and when Louis finds a strange boy sitting on his bed one sunny day, his summer break takes a turn for the better (or worse) when he discovers a ghost has stolen his heart from the get-go.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

#bottom louis #top harry #larry #fic recs #blp fic recs #blp #long fics

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hlficlibrary · 4 months ago

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HL Fic Library 🩶 Ghost Fics

Remember to leave kudos and a comment on the fics you enjoyed to show your appreciation! You can find the library's other recs here.

🩶 Through Eerie Chaos by MediaWhore / @mediawhorefics {G, 102k}

For as long as anyone can remember, Old Hillsbridge Manor has always been believed to be haunted. Everyone in the village agrees and keeps a respectful, fearful, distance. New in town after a bad breakup and an internship that led to disappointment rather than a permanent job, Harry Styles figures taking pictures of the decrepit building could be a great new creative project. Or at least a much-needed distraction while he searches for a job and crashes at his parents’ new house. No one warned him about the apparitions though; about the music, the laughter, the people who flicker and vanish when you call after them, the echoes of a past that should be long gone… Harry has never believed in spirits but even he can admit that there’s something weird going on. What starts as mere curiosity evolves into a full-blown investigation and soon enough, Harry finds himself making friends with an aristocrat from the 1920s and struggling with finding the best way to tell him that he’s dead.

The Ghost Hunter AU where Niall lives to prove ghosts are real, Zayn is a skeptical librarian and Harry gets caught up in a century-old mystery and catches feeling in the process.

🩶 Shadow Dances by @itsmotivatingcara {M, 101k}

Louis Tomlinson has a begrudging gift, he’s able to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Often against his will, and almost always at the most inconvenient of times.

He and his partner, Zayn Malik, work for a covert division of the New Haven Federal Bureau of Investigations. They aid in all kinds of cases, though their talents lie in the obscure and unsolvable.

It’s when a strange new case falls onto their desks that they’re left questioning the extent of their abilities, and whether they were ever truly alone.

Harry Styles was brought into the FBI for not only his skills, but his ability to mitigate the influx of spirits surrounding the elusive and obnoxiously infuriating sharp-tongued medium he’d been assigned to. Louis gets under his skin, he’s impulsive and a risk to the team according to Harry.

They do however have to find a way to set aside their sordid history, and their reluctant attraction, to track down the murderer plaguing their coastal city.

Or A FBI - Medium AU

🩶 Tied to Fate by @littlelouishiccups {E, 52k}

After his estranged father’s death, Harry inherits a castle in England that has belonged to his family for generations and he knows nothing about. When he breaks up with his boyfriend, Harry decides England is the perfect place for a small vacation. He isn’t prepared to meet Louis Tomlinson, a ghost who once lived in the castle and has haunted it for over five hundred years. He’s even more unprepared to fall in love with him.

🩶 haunted by the ghost of you by @missandrogyny {E, 49k}

He’s tall—that’s the first thing that registers in Louis’ head when he spots him, standing with his hands behind his back. Tall, with curly hair, staring at them with the widest, greenest eyes Louis has ever seen. And wait, are those dimples? Louis didn’t know ghosts could have dimples.

Because he’s definitely a ghost, this boy. At first glance he looks normal, standing there pigeon-toed in a band shirt (The Ramones, Louis can’t help but note incredulously), dark jeans, and some boots, with rings on both hands, and tattoos littering his left arm—a sleeve made of anchors and names and roses and other completely unrelated things. But he’s also a little bit translucent; if Louis focuses, he can see the outline of the furniture, the design of the wallpaper through him.

“Hi,” the boy—the ghost—says to Louis. His face shifts; somehow his dimples dig deeper into his cheeks. His eyes flit from Louis, to Niall, to Liam, and finally to Zayn, and his face goes from shocked to elated. “I’m Harry.”

At in that exact moment, standing between three of his best friends and staring at a (quite handsome) ghost, Louis can only think one thing.

Nick Grimshaw was right.

🩶 Ghosts in the Attic (series) by kiwikero / @icanhazzalou {E, 36k}

When Liam Payne inherited his great aunt's mansion, he never expected it to be haunted. With the help of famous ghost hunters Harry and Niall, Liam is hoping to evict the ghost and sell the house once and for all.

There's just one problem: Louis has been in that house for a hundred years, and he doesn't much feel like leaving.

Alternatively; come for the ghost sex, stay for the feels.

🩶 Close to Nowhere by @angelichl {E, 34k}

“I will kill you in your sleep,” Louis threatened as he quickly stepped out of his jeans.

“I don’t think that would work very well baby, seeing as you talk to dead people all the time.”

“I’ll kill you in your sleep and ignore your ghost. And don’t call me that.”

Louis and Harry are psychics who kind of hate each other. They go to Tennessee to investigate a haunting.

🩶 The Haunting of Louis Tomlinson by @helloamhere {T, 31k}

“I'm not afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.

Every single magnet unstuck itself from the fridge and fell to the floor in a clattering cascade.

“I'm only a little afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.

OR: Louis is a plucky Gothic Heroine, Harry is a Mournful Spirit, and Big Country Houses are full of mystery and suspense, as Big Country Houses ever are!

🩶 On Christmas Day (In The Morning) by @lululawrence {NR, 26k}

Louis was on his way to get his weekly fancy coffee and pastries for breakfast when he once again came upon the piano.

It was finally a day off, and Louis was not going to chance missing the piano again. Not when luck would have him passing it three times in less than two weeks. He was clearly meant to have the piano.

Louis sat himself down on the bench and immediately sputtered a laugh. The largest sign yet, it was a ripped piece of cardboard and on it in all caps were the words, “HAUNTED PIANO! FREE!”

“How exactly do they know the piano is haunted?” Louis asked with a chuckle.

Or an advent fic following Louis and his adventures with a free piano and the ghost that comes with it.

🩶 If You Ever Did Believe by patdkitten / @babyarcanacasey {E, 25k}

Harry Styles runs a moderately successful travel blog where he writes about ghosts and has published a few books on the subject while he travels the country in his RV. While doing research for his newest book, he winds up in a quiet little village with a whole lot of ghost stories and rumours waiting to be discovered and a single man who happens to have just as many stories and rumours that follow him as well.

🩶 Gracious Goes the Ghost of You by @haloeverlasting {NR, 25k}

And there it was again. That heaviness, that shift in the air that makes everything feel just a little slower. It’s like just moving forward makes him sore from the exertion. It’s not in the least physical, it’s his heart and mind and soul that feels stretched and pushed too far. It’s those moments, where his heart feels like it’s thudding only because it still can, that Louis feels the itch to glance at the clock. When he aches to know how long it’s been and maybe a part of him is wondering how long it will be. If this time, when he checks the clock, he’ll feel the same shame for his long stint of grief, but it will be followed by some sort of pride. He’s made it this far, and “because it still can” is a perfectly good reason for his heart to keep beating.

“What are you thinking about?” Harry asks.

Louis hums, shifting a little to rest his head on top of Harry’s. “Is this your new question?"

“Yeah,” he whispers, softly.

“Just… thinking about how long it’s been. And how long it may be before it doesn’t hurt so much anymore."

Harry is a ghost who comes to visit. Louis feels like a ghost, himself. In forgiveness, they find their way back to life.

🩶 I Am the Blinking Light by @dearmrsawyer {G, 19k}

There is a legend of a lighthouse far out to sea. It can’t be found on any map, and those who do find it never return. They say a ghost haunts the lighthouse, and you can hear it calling out in loneliness on the ocean waves.

🩶 In the Strangest of Ways by SunTomato / @sun-tomato {NR, 17k}

Louis Tomlinson is a historian with English Heritage, specialised local history and folklore. When he is hired to research the origins of a mysterious music sheet, he soon finds he’s not the only one at the manor; a dark presence keeps following him around. The more time he spends at the historic site, the clearer it becomes that something tragic happened here. And when the haunting sounds of a melancholy piano piece accompanied by the vague shadow of a beautiful male figure appear, Louis is determined to find out who this beautiful man was and what happened to him…

🩶 The Marmonton Hotel by @jaerie {E, 15k}

For several months, The Marmonton Hotel had been dark. Harry walked past it on his way home and knew they had closed their doors pending some major structural repairs that needed to be made to continue to operate commercially. The last Harry heard, the owners were thinking of tearing it down which Harry thought was a shame. Each night he looked at the building and thought about everything it had witnessed over the long history of the town. It stood over and watched generations of celebrations and tragedies.

One night, in the light of the moon, he looked up to see a figure standing in the vacant hotel. The emotion in the eyes of the stranger was too tangible for his brain to conjure it up, a mix of fear and shock that Harry couldn’t place. He looked conflicted about being seen, hovering in the space just out of full view, but not so much that Harry thought the man had broken in. It wasn’t that type of feeling.

The next night he returned, and this time, he was pulled to walk in. He finds more than he was expecting and an unexpected history lost to time.

Or the story of the ghost at The Marmonton Hotel.

🩶 Harry The Helpful Ghost by tempolarriefics / @tempolarriefix {E, 15k}

“I just like to help.” Louis blinks at the ghost in shock. “Were you the one who fixed the lights yesterday as well? And made me food?” “I helped you,” Harry says simply. He raises his eyebrows, nodding towards where Louis’ hands are folded in his lap to cover his erection. “Could help you out with that as well, if you wanted.”

Or, the one where louis buys a house that may or may not be haunted and harry just wants to be helpful.

🩶 Veni, Vidi, Amavi by @fallinglikethis {E, 10k}

“Do you think it’s true?” Louis asks.“That soulmates really exist?” “Of course they do,” Harry’s answer is immediate. He catches Louis’ wrist and brings his hand to his lips, pressing a kiss into his palm before placing it over his own heart. “I already found mine.” Louis smiles. “Does that mean that you’ll love me forever?” He asks, whispering against his lips. “Even in the afterlife?” “Perhaps,” Harry grins slyly, nudging their noses together lightly and teasing Louis with a brush of his lips before pulling away again. They haven’t said those words yet, though Louis must know. Harry tells him in every single other possible way. “I wouldn’t even go to the afterlife without you.” “You’d stay with me? Haunt me?” He asks, wrapping a hand around the back of Harry’s neck, tangling his fingers in Harry’s hair. “I’d stay,” he agrees. “I’d wait for you forever.” “Promise?” Louis asks coyly, moving to straddle Harry’s lap. “I promise,” Harry answers, pulling Louis to him so that they can finally share that kiss.

Harry remembers why he stayed now, why he’s always had that feeling of waiting. He was holding out for Louis, his soulmate. He was keeping his promise.

🩶 You and Me and the Devil Makes Three by moodlighting / @mooodlighting {M, 10k}

AU. Louis moves in next door to Harry. Louis has a ghost, Harry has an extra futon and a crush.

🩶 Down the Backs of Table Tops (and Ticket Stubs in the Attic) by LadyLondonderry / @londonfoginacup {G, 7k}

There's only two of them stuck to the house now, two souls tied to the walls and floor and pipes and appliances. Two souls stuck in a world that's moved on without them. Well, two souls and a cat.

He holds up the red fabric for Harry to get a good look at."We're going to decorate!"

Harry thinks this might be an odd shut-ins version of retail therapy, and he looks to Grimmy for guidance on how to explain to Louis that this will not at all help his cause.

🩶 Haunting Beauty by 4ureyesonly28 / @evilovesyou {G, 6k}

It’s 1988. Harry has just finished his first year of teaching English and looks forward to a relaxed break. Louis is a poltergeist and has different plans for Harry’s summer.

🩶 Ain't a Drop of Bad Blood by LetTheMusicMoveYou / @letthemusicmoveyou28 {E, 4k}

“So, did you have a chance to talk to Harry about that problem you’ve been having?”

Louis sighs, he’d suspected this had been coming. “No I didn’t, but it doesn’t matter because there’s nothing to tell.”

Niall raises a brow. “So it’s stopped then?”

Before Louis can answer a book flies off the shelf above him and hits him squarely on the head. Louis sighs again as he rubs the quickly forming bump on his temple and reaches down to grab the book.

Being tormented by some kind of ghost with a bad sense of humor, was really not on Louis’ list of things to do today.

(Or the one where human Louis is being haunted by a spirit, and he's reluctant to ask his vampire boyfriend for help).

🩶 Lipstick stain fades with time by @lunarheslwt {G, 666 words}

“You came.” “Of course. You called.”

Louis learns to let go, and as Harry promised, he is always there.

78 notes · View notes

therealslimshakespeare · 11 months ago

Text

Friends in the Crucible

MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU

1: Welcome to Hell Island

Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt

AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.

Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏

Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.

Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!

There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.

So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.

But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.

It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.

Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.

Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?

Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.

Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.

Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.

“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”

Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.

He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.

“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”

“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.

Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—

“All personnel prepare for landing.”

Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.

“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”

To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.

“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.

The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.

“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.

There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.

“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”

“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”

Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.

“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Lemons, sir.”

“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.

“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”

“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.

Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”

The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.

That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.

She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.

Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.

But no.

Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.

Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.

“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.

Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.

Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.

Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.

Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.

“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”

Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.

Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!

Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.

The sergeant looked away to the other side.

Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.

The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.

Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.

The sheet was tugged up all the way.

That triage was over.

Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.

“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-

“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”

“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.

They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.

“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ��em under the wings!”

There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.

“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.

“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.

Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.

All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.

They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”

He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.

“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.

“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”

“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.

The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.

Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.

“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.

“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.

A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.

Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.

Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.

Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?

For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.

“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.

“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.

“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.

“Sir-“

“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”

“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.

“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”

“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.

“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.

“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.

“Yup, and we leave in ten.”

“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”

The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.

“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.

“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”

“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.

Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.

“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”

Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.

“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.

“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.

“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”

“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”

Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.

“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.

“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.

“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”

“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”

The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.

“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.

Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.

Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“

“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.

There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.

“You hit?”

“No. Read me, Benny-“

“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.

“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.

Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.

“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.

“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.

Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”

“You got it, commander.”

More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.

“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”

Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.

“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.

“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.

A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”

“How bad?”

“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.

Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.

“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.

“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.

“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.

“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.

“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.

“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”

“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.

“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”

Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”

“I know sir.”

“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”

“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.

“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.

By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.

“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.

“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”

The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.

It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.

“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.

She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.

Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.

He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”

“What the hell for?” Egan balked.

“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.

“I repeat -what the hell for?”

“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”

“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”

There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.

“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.

Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:

“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”

The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.

“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.

Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.

It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.

“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.

John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.

“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”

“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear

Leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.

“Leaning, leaning

Safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.

That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”

There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.

“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.

A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.

“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.

“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”

Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.

“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”

“So should you.” she hinted kindly.

“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”

“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.

“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”

“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”

“Kiss ‘em better?”

“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”

“She scares me.” he objected.

“And I don’t?”

“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.

“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.

“Buck!”

“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”

“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.

“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.

“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.

“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.

“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.

“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.

“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”

“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.

“What?”

“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”

Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.

“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”

“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.

“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.

“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.

“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.

“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.

That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“

“Well, mine do.”

“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“

“-you do though.”

“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”

Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“

“-What?”

“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .

“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”

“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”

“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”

“I am.”

“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”

“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”

“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.

“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.

“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”

“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.

“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”

“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.

“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.

Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“

“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”

Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.

When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.

Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.

“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”

Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.

She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.

“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.

“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”

“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.

“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”

He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.

She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.

The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.

As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.

“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“

“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.

“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.

“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”

Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”

“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”

“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.

“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.

“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.

“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.

“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”

“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”

“But it was pretty.”

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.

“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”

“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”

“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.

“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.

“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.

“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.

“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.

Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.

Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.

“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”

“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”

“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”

“Alright.”

“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”

Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.

Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.

“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“

“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”

“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”

“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.

“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.

“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”

“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.

He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”

Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he’d secured the fabric.

“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”

“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.

“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.

“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.

Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo

Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added for my MOTA fics)

@stylespresleyhearted

@ab4eva

@earth-to-lottie

@suraemoon

@blurredcolour

@steph-speaks

@crazymadpassionatelove

@rubyfruitjungle

@taestrwbrry

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#mota fanfiction #mine #archive #friends in the crucible #Gale Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven #austin butler #austin butler fanfiction #austin butler imagine #masters of the air #Bucky Egan #doc Egan #Maureen Kendeigh #iwo jima #hbo war #john egan #callum turner #Callum Turner fanfiction

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erinwantstowrite · 6 months ago

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Okay, help me. I'm going crazy about the psych au-

I watched the full show weeks ago (going to watch the movies eventually), and I'm so going crazy about this.

Peter may be the "psychic," but he's obviously a lot more like Gus, and Harry is Shawn, which makes so much sense and comedy.

I need banter, I need obscure references, I need begrudgingly helping each other, I need fights just for the other to come back immediately!

I also need.. The classic "suck it" scene.

Peter: Suck it!

Harry: No you suck it!

Both Harry and Peter: Suck iiiiiit~

YOU GET ITTTT !!!! I love Psych so much dude and I really love turning the Shawn and Gus dynamic around when it comes to Peter and Harry,,, Like they both have their moments where they're more like Shawn or Gus, but Peter is so clearly Gus and Harry is a lot like Shawn. I can't wait to include the pineapple bit in the background,,, I need the Bats and Supers to have their moments as the other cast (Juliet, Lassie, etc) because it's just. So much fun to think about!!! I pray my writing lives up to the classic Psych feel,,,

#erinwantstowrite #peter parker #peter parker in gotham #harry osborn #psych au #thank you for the ask!#psych

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nioumin-draw · 9 months ago

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After a trolls AU list there my favorite fanfiction Severitus list :

A patchwork family @aspionagee ( Snape adopt Draco and Harry , I love it because this little family is very special , Snape also learn to be a good dad for his two boys 🥰🥺) Complete

To trust @clairdeloon-abie ( ravenclaw harry adopted by Severus 🥺 lovely story , Harry have problem to trust people specially adult and lose any reason to live 😭😭 in this story and Snape will learn him that he'll always be here for him and how life is important 😭😭 ) Complete

Second chance @anonhpwriter ( ⚠️ contains CP in this one ⚠️but the most important: if you like sweetness and fluff who will make your teeth rot and shake your heart go head XD 😂 because there a lot and I love how close Snape and Harry got close as father and son that why I love this fanfic and I add on my list and without this fanfic I couldn't discovered Severitus 💞💞 ) part 1 and 2 Complete part 3 WIP

As potter is to Snape @scarlettwriter91 ( honestly I there many reasons to check anx like this story buuuut I let you discovering it by yourself while you'll read it 😉) Complete

True heart @mandancieforever ( one of the very first Severitus story I discovered with second chance it's because of it I love Severitus and want read more 🥺 and draw art of it , she deserves more support ! ) WIP

A Thousand Words ( still WIP unfortunately but very good fanfiction...I hope the author will come back again)

Obscured ( with a Slytherin and Obscurial Harry Potter 👀 .. Snape have a lot of work for fixing the broken boy ) @illisius WIP

little freak, Jezebel (you sit high atop the kitchen counter) @alexandriastark76 WIP

Harry's new home by Kbinnz Complete

Mine (on potions and snitch website that been suggested by my follower the talented @squid1442 who also do Severitus art 🥺)

I love reading and make art for Severitus fanfic 🥺🥺🥺

Any other Severitus story to suggest to me ?

#harry potter #severus snape #severitus fanfic #fanfiction severitus #severitus #snape adopts harry #snape adopt harry #severus snape adopt harry #snape adopt draco #severitus fanfiction #hp fanfiction #favorite fanfics #favorite list #list of favorite fanfic

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draco-dormiens · 1 year ago

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THE STRANGEST OF PLACES - Chapter Twenty Three

draco x fem!ravenclaw reader / postwar au series

warnings: strong language, sexual themes, implied sex, bit steamy but hey, they deserve it, right? ;) (characters are 18+)

wc: 3466

masterlist

taglist is now closed - i’ve officially run out of tags! thank you all

The Element of Surprise

Draco lands with a thud just outside the Weasley's home. He pulls himself off the ground and dusts down his black suit trousers. As he looks up to gather his surroundings, he notices the most delicious smell protruding the air and the sound of laughter coming from inside the topsy turvy building that the Weasley family calls home. Light is spilling out from the wonky windows, casting long golden paths over the ground, as he cautiously moves to peak inside the nearest window.

"So, we waited for Goyle to come around the corner," George Weasley, one of the red heads that Draco recognises, is telling a story that seems to have the table in stitches, "and as soon as he did, he spots the cupcakes - which we'd put Puking Pastilles in, don't forget - and being the greedy so and so he is, eats them all up," laughter sparks up again, "but the best bit hasn't even happened yet, because just as he gollops down the last one, Millicent Bulstrode - you remember her, Harry? Plump, nasty little thing in Slytherin? - shows up just as Goyle's greedy guts come spilling out all over the place… and all over her!"

Another roar of laughter from everyone, but Draco can only see so far down the table. The other end is obscured by the kitchen cabinets. He can see Potter, Ginny Weasley, George, Granger and, of course, Weaselbee. He fears if he moves anymore, they'll see him, and he still hasn't decided on his course of action. Naturally, Weaselbee won't take kindly to his presence, and there's the possibility that you'll want him driven out as well. Not to mention the other Weasleys, or Potter for that matter. No one in that room particularly liked him. But then, as he's pondering his options and not paying attention to how visible he is, he hears a loud HEY! from just inside.

"What the bloody hell is he doing here?" Ron shouts, getting up off his chair and pointing at the window, as Hermione gets up to see what on earth he was talking about, "get off my property you bloody idiot!"

"Oh my God," Hermione exclaims, and starts telling everyone to sit down and not panic, "I'll go and see to him- oh, no, Mrs Weasley please sit down- Mr Weasley there's no need for wands- RON! GET BACK HERE!"

Startled, Draco can barely move from witnessing all the commotion he's caused by just standing there, as Ron comes barging through the door and into the front yard, a face like thunder.

"Explain yourself," Ron points an angry finger, "you have no business here, Malfoy."

"Malfoy?" Harry's voice comes from behind Ron, who moves aside to see Hermione storming over with Harry in toe, "what on earth are you doing here?"

"Get back inside, both of you," Hermione instructs them, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

"Come to curse me, Potter?" Draco smirks, shoving his hands in his pockets, "'fraid I'm not here for a duel in the loo. I'd like to speak to Granger, if you gentlemen don't mind."

"Hermione?" Ron scoffs, "what do you want with her? I'll hex you into next week-"

"BOTH OF YOU. INSIDE. RIGHT NOW," Hermione bellows, coming between the three of them, "and you, Malfoy, keep it zipped or I'll hex you into next week. Ron," she spins abruptly to face him and jab a finger into his chest, "you have soup to finish. Inside. Now."

The rest of the family were all pressed against the window, trying to get a glimpse of the drama unfolding outside. Reluctantly, Ron and Harry make their way back into the house, looking back and chuntering between themselves. Out of everyone he was expecting to run into, the one person he was most eager to see hadn't shown themselves..

"Come with me," Hermione said, grabbing Draco by the arm and taking them away from the prying eyes at the window to the edge of the wood near Ron's home, "I can't believe you've shown, what happened? Did you leave Astoria?"

"I can explain later," he dismisses her questions, "she's here, right? Or is she hiding inside because she hates me that much?"

"That's not it," said Hermione, "well, I'm not sure about the 'hate you' part... she's not come out to see you because, well... she's not here."

"At all?" Draco raises his eyebrows, and Hermione shakes her head, "you have to be kidding me, I just caused all that ruckus for you to say she's not even here? Where is she, then? Wait.. don't fucking tell me. Chambers asked her out again, didn't he? Slimy git."

"She's not with Edward," Hermione says loudly, and Draco's angry mumbling stops, "in fact, she's not with anyone. She didn't come tonight because she didn't feel like it... can't say she's in the best frame of mind right now."

Draco's guilt hits him once again. Picturing you, alone and miserable, because of everything that he's done. Everything that he said to you that night; it stall haunts him, so he's not surprised if it haunts you, too. You don't even want to see your friends - he's well and truly done a number.

"Where is she right now?" He then asks, in all seriousness, and Hermione sighs.

"She's at home," she tells him, "as far as I know, she's spending the last few days before graduation there. She... doesn't want to be at Hogwarts right now."

"Then we'll go to her," Draco said, getting his wand from his pocket, "location?"

"It's in a muggle village, Malfoy, you can't just apparate there," she explains frantically, "Merlin knows who will see you, and besides, I'm not entirely sure how she'll react-"

"Can you stop waffling on?" said Draco irritably, holding his arm out for her to take, "the quicker you give me a location the faster we'll get there."

Hermione hesitates slightly, but grips his arm anyway, and within a few moments, the world around them is swirling and contorting into a jumbled mix of colours and sounds, until eventually, they both land on a hard tarmac road in the middle of a quiet muggle village. Draco sways slightly from the second apparition of the day as Hermione steadies herself. He looks around at the road they appeared on - houses, all similar in structure, line the streets. Each had a little garden at the front, with trees and flower pots lining the paths that winded through the quaint village. It was quiet, almost silent, with street lamps that lit the way up the road.

"I should've told Ron we were leaving," Hermione then complains, more to herself, "he'll be thinking you've kidnapped me or something."

"Don't worry," Draco jokes, "Old Weaselbee knows I'd be sending you back in a heartbeat."

Hermione shoots him a look of displeasure, before pointing at the street before them.

"Y/N's house is just up ahead," she explains, "come on."

They walk, in silence, up the winding road, passing muggle cars, street signs and phone boxes. Eventually, Hermione stops in front of a house right at the end of the street. Plant pots decorate the front of the house with flowers of all colours. A car sits in the driveway, and a black cat scurries from underneath it and crosses the freshly mowed grass, to disappear behind a trimmed hedge. Draco watches as its tail slithers out of sight, before looking up at the front of the house. A light is on in the very top window.

"That's her room," Hermione points out, and turns to face the blond Slytherin, "if you say anything to upset her, I'll personally see to your demise, Malfoy." She gives him a stern look that reminds him of his mother, and then prepares to apparate back to the Burrow, "just knock. I think her parents are out tonight. I really should get back before Ron sends out a search party."

"Thanks, Granger," Draco said sincerely, "I owe you one."

"Just don't hurt her ever again," said Hermione, readying her wand, “I'll consider that repayment."

Soon enough, with a flick of her wand, she was gone into the night, and Draco was standing alone in front of your house, in a muggle street, in a muggle village. He hesitates to knock, but raps his knuckles on the painted wood and waits for a reply. Nothing happens for a long moment, so he goes to knock again, when he hears the door unlock from the otherside. After a few excruciating seconds, the door creaks open to reveal a sight Draco could never get tired of.

You, shock all over your face and a baggy hoodie over your frame, looking back at him like you've just seen a ghost, and yet, he's never seen a more beautiful being. He aches to pull you in, but knows, just from your expression, you wouldn't welcome him so easily.

"Why are you here?" is the first thing you say, your voice quiet and cautious.

Draco notices the way you observe him cautiously, as if you were ready for him to say something that would only cause you more heartache. He can't stand it - the way you don't fully show yourself to him, how you look at him like he's hurt you. He wants to take it away, to make it better, and so, he slowly inches closer to the doorway.

"I came here," he says softly, eyes never leaving you, "because I had to see you. Speak to you." He stops just before the doorway, inches away from you now.

"But you chose her," you croak, and his heart breaks all over again, "you chose them."

"And I'm a fucking idiot," he laughs sadly, "please, please, Y/N. Can we at least talk? That's all I'm asking. Afterwards, I'll leave and never come back if that's what you want."

After some slight hesitation, you let him inside and softly shut the door behind you both. Draco notices the warm feeling your home seems to have. Family portraits and photos of you in your Hogwarts uniform over the years cover the walls and surfaces. You tell him to wait in the living room as you brew a pot of tea, leaving him to wander around whilst he waits. He looks at the photos individually; some of just you, some of you and your parents, even some of you and Granger in your younger years. There are trinkets, a mug that says 'Best Daddy Ever' and some drawings you must have made as a child. Everything in the room reminds him that a family lives there, and that they love each other. Something he's never really seen before.

"Here," you announce as you enter the room, placing the tray on the coffee table, "we only have breakfast tea. Hope that's okay."

"That's perfect," he smiles across at you, and you return it slightly before pouring tea into two china cups. He takes a seat on the couch as you pass him a fresh cup, to which he thanks you. For a moment, you both sip tea and say nothing, until Draco breaks that silence.

"Your house is very nice," he compliments, looking across at you, noticing how you're reluctant to look him in the eye, "I wish my home was as welcoming as this."

"This house is nothing compared to yours," you scoff lightly, and he smiles.

"Yeah," he breathes, "exactly."

"How did you know where I was?" you ask him, still refusing to meet his gaze.

"I know some people," he says lightheartedly, but then turns serious, "very good people."

You don't answer that. Your best hunch is Hermione, but how he knew where to find her was beyond you. After all, she'd never disclosed what she was up to in the dungeons that night. A thick silence falls over you again, but the question you really wanted to ask him was hanging by a thread at your lips.

"So," you suddenly say, voice a lot bolder than before, "are you here because you're an engaged, sorry idiot who wants to clear his conscience?"

He places his cup down, and turns to face you. When you don't respond, he gently places a hand on your face and brings your eyes to his. There's a look of pure emotion and genuinity in them, as he rubs his thumb across your cheek, and then along your bottom lip.

"Engaged, no," he whispers to you, "but sorry idiot? That I am."

It takes you a second to process his words, but then the frown on your face evens out and a look of relief washes over you, eyes brightening to shine a little like they used to, and Draco's heart swells to double its size.

"You didn't do it," you mutter, and he shakes his head.

"No, angel, I didn't," his hand moves slightly to rest against your neck, the coldness of his rings causing goosebumps on your skin, "I had a little help... to realise what a fool I was being."

"But what about your parents? Astoria? Aren't you in heaps of trouble now?" you said, concern replacing your relaxed features, "aren't they going to make your life hell?"

"No more than usual," he smirks playfully, eyes flickering over your face like they used to, as if he's memorising every inch of it, "but I don't give a shit about that right now. Right now," he pauses, before taking both of your hands in his, "I just need you to hear something."

You allow him to take his time, as his thumbs run over your knuckles a few times, before he brings them to his lips and kisses each of them delicately.

"Y/N," he mutters against your hand, pressing one last kiss for good measure, "my precious, beautiful girl," he looks up and your eyes lock, "I was so unreasonably cruel to you that night in the woods. I guess I just didn't know how it would feel... to lose something so important to me."

He takes a break, and looks down at your intertwined hands. You remain silent.

"I let you down, and I understand if you never want to see me again after this," he takes a deep breath before looking up again, "but, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me for being so unbelievably late, then I promise to give you the world. Everything I have. All that I am," tears begin to well at the corners of his eyes, "because I'm so in love with you, Y/N. Mind, body and soul, I love you."

A tear trickles down your cheek, and he wipes it away with his thumb. You look at him for a long moment; the man you've come to love, the man who has completed the other half of your soul. A few months back, if someone had said to you that one day, Draco Malfoy would be confessing his feelings for you on your couch, in your muggle home, you'd think they were insane.

But right now, as he looks at you as if the world resides in your eyes, it feels like the most sane thing to happen in weeks. You take your hands from his and cup his jaw, feeling the way he leans into your touch with such contentment. He kisses your palm, gently holding your wrist.

"I love you," you whisper, and those steely grey eyes find yours once more, "I love and have loved you, Draco Malfoy. For longer than you might think."

He smiles a watery smile, and his eyes drop to your lips. Hunger swims in them, and you'd be lying if you said you hadn't waited for this moment with utter anticipation. "Kiss me," is all you can manage to mutter, and he wastes no time in obliging to that. His lips capture yours in a hot, hungry kiss, his hands taking your face as yours fist at his shirt. You feel his fingers lace in your hair, pulling a satisfied sound from your lips. He swallows it eagerly, tilting his head to deepen the kiss and run his tongue along your bottom lip. Of course, you allow him access, and he pulls you impossibly close to his body, thumbs rubbing small circles just under your ears. It's blissful and full of passion, his lips breaking from yours to kiss across your jaw and down under your ear, to rest at the pulse point in your neck.

"Fuck I love you,” he purrs against the sweet spot, leaving wet kisses as your hands snake up to tangle in his hair, “my angel, my darling girl.”

“Stay with me,” you find yourself pleading softly, as his gaze returns to your hazy expression, “sleep beside me, Draco. Please.”

Hastily, his lips find yours once more in a rushed, messy kiss. You can taste the wine on his lips, and feel his emotion simply through the way he handles you - as if you were a prized possession he simply cannot break.

“There’s nothing I want more,” he said breathlessly, so you take him by the hand, and lead him through the house to the comfort of your bedroom.

Hours seem to pass. His hands wander - and you let them. Just the two of you, enjoying one another in complete harmony, in solace and peace. You’re sure, at this point, there’s not an inch of you he hasn’t kissed, and there’s not an inch of his skin you haven’t touched. It was innocent and vulnerable; just two people, hopelessly in love, savouring one another.

"You’re so beautiful," he breathes against your bare shoulder, pressing tender kisses to the skin as you lay there, tucked safely under the duvet, back pressed to his chest, “thank you,” he mumbles, “for trusting me with you.”

You hum, turning over to face him. He looks so at peace; features soft and sleepy. Draco truly was the most handsome man you’d ever laid eyes on. Gently, you smooth back his hair and press a light kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"Thank you," you whisper to him, "for coming back.”

You feel his hand at the small of your back, pulling your body into his. His fingers brush hair behind your ear, and then trace down your jaw to your chin, where he gently brings you in for a soft, tender kiss. His lips linger against yours for a long moment.

"I would have lived every day in regret if I hadn't," he confesses quietly, your limbs intertwined and skin pressed against skin, "I should be thanking you, for giving me the courage."

"Me?" you furrow your eyebrows, "but you did this, Draco. You came here, despite all the odds."

"Do you remember that night we sat in the attic? That room with the big window," he recalls, and you nod, smiling to yourself at the memory, "well, I passed that staircase and, I don't know, it just... flooded back to me. All those memories, the way you make me feel... I just knew, in that moment, I couldn't do it. I couldn't be without you."

"Oh, Draco," you sigh lovingly, nuzzling your nose against his, "you are truly a treasure, my love."

My love. He wants to hear that every day for the rest of his life. Draco closes his eyes, relishing in the love and comfort you provide him, feeling the delicate little kisses you place on his cheek. He's unworthy of such affection, unworthy of feeling your skin on his, gliding his fingertips over the crevices of your body. He's obsessed. Entranced. His entire being and every sense is overtaken by your scent, your touch. And he is at peace, despite what the morning may bring, at this very moment, he is at peace.

"What happens now?" you then ask cautiously, and he opens his eyes into yours, "about your parents... what will they do?"

"Despite what they may think, I'm a legal adult," he smirks, and some sort of relief flickers in your eyes at his lightheartedness, "but, they might have a few things to say. They'll get over it, they have to. You're mine now, after all."

A triumphant grin spreads across his handsome face, a light pink blush spreading over your cheeks at the sentiment. Once more, he presses his lips to yours; not once, twice, but three times, taking his sweet time in parting on the last one.

"Whatever happens," you whisper against his mouth, "I'm here for you. Always."

"In that case, anything is possible, angel," he said sweetly as you cuddle into his chest, the sudden urge to sleep overbearing, "but, for now, let's just rest, hm? Think we deserve it."

A little hum of agreement passes your lips, eyes growing heavy as sleep greets your peacefully. Draco, who had forgotten how exhausted he truly was, feels his eyes droop willingly, as his breathing evens out, and a well needed sleep finally takes over.

Whatever the dawn may bring, you will face it.

Together.

disclaimer: i do not own hp or any of the characters in this story

tags:

@lovesanimals0000 @cappgyuccino @lightning1ce @onlygetaway @honeyyypeach @namelesslosers @ghostyv @mikadorbs @redactedhimbo @morganadpl @scarecrowscaresthomas @camille-1019 @valkyrie418 @animeloverfreak310 @budugu @marplest @torresbarnes @bunny24sstuff @champagneesupernova @serafilms @siriusly-parker-main @lovely-maryj @i-bitch-you-bitch @astablacksword @sun-fiower-seed @tinafuentes @venusjustleft @omgitstatertot @aangsupremacy @ilovezy @leclerc16s @aslanvez @talesofadragon @3vasaur @the-skys-musical-echo @yeolsbubbles @idk-dolans @xx-kiraa-xx @sunbruized @vinkiesz @snickersmee @fandomrulesall-blog @astheraa @idkatee @marsanhwa @vintageoldfashion @63sucker @j-n-i-c-o-l-e @anarchistsons @smallsweetvanillabean @newbooksmell777 @tangomangroves @neoteezrenyoung @l0v3lies @delusionally-loveless-by-choice @higanbanagirl @ace152435 @arcanebabe @slythermuf @hea-vin @zucchinimalfoy @carolineesnell

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snarryauctoberfest · 3 months ago

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2024 Snarry AUctoberfest Anon Masterlist 💚❤️

Below is the complete AUctoberfest 2024 list of Anon Works. Reveals will happen on the 9th November.

Thank you to all the wonderful participants who made this year so special, and to all the Snarry fans who have helped celebrate and enjoy the works created for this fest.

Our Guess the Creator Game will be coming soon, for anyone who wants to try figuring out who some of our talented participants were before reveals happen.

View the collection on AO3.

Podfic

Title: Lively Days at Potter House by khaleesisophie - a Podfic Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Length: 2:12:47 Summary: Podfic of Lively Days at Potter House by khaleesisophie Harry, who has a misplaced understanding of his own skill in matchmaking, attempts to strike a match for his dear friend, Draco Malfoy. A tale of misunderstanding and romantic misadventures. Or, the Emma Snarry AU we always needed. 💚❤️ Listen on AO3 💚❤️

Art

Title: A Dragon's Treasure Creator: ??? Prompt: 2023-171 Snarry as Dragons! Maledictus for drama? Animagus for fluff? Them just being dragons as very AU (without any ‘they-were-human-at-one-point’)? Httyd crossover? Obscure battle magic to fight Voldemort? Rating: General Audiences Word Count: ART and 278 words Summary: It is only in the world of legends and myths that dragons live today. They are matters of stories and tales told to children at night, fantasy so wondrous only the bravest of us dare to let our minds wander. 💚❤️ View on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Fanart: You Are... Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-199 - Snarry, but with dinosaurs Rating: General Audiences Word Count: Art Summary: What does Harry have to do to get Severus' attention? 💚❤️ View on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Illicit Goods Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-231: That trope where a character is told to disarm themselves of all their weapons but they keep pulling more and more out, but it's Snape. Harry is unbearably turned on the more weapons show up. Rating: Mature Word Count: Summary: Harry is very interested in what is in Snape's pants… and his bag, and his coat, and… 💚❤️ View on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Muggle Adventures (Alligators Edition) Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-82: An alligator features prominently in the fan work Rating: General Audiences Word Count: Artwork Summary: You want alligators? I'll give you alligators. 💚❤️ View on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: positions of love Creator: ??? Prompt: 2020-32 - Someone of your choice is producing a gay wizarding version of the kama sutra and needs to hire two wizards to model each position for the illustrations. Harry and Severus are the ones who get the job. Rating: Explicit Word Count: Summary: A few pages of a gay wizarding version of the kama sutra, starring Severus and Harry 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

Fanfic - In alphabetical order

Title: A Prize Worth Any Price Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Explicit Word Count: 7.7k Summary: Defeated by the Rogue King and his army, the remaining nobles of Voldania sacrifice omega Severus Snape as a war prize. They know the propaganda about the Rogue King's marauding ways and discarded lovers. The nobles laugh about sending an old, 'ugly' omega and taunt Severus with predictions that he'll be hate-ravished or killed outright for the insult. Meanwhile Harry thinks he's agreed to an arranged marriage for the peace contracts. He knows about the spy who worked for the resistance during Voldemort's reign. He's excited to have such a dashing spouse. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: After Spinner's End Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Mature Word Count: 4.2k Summary: When Harry left his aunt and uncle's he hadn't meant to end up in Cokeworth. But he'd fallen asleep on the bus; it was late, and now he needed somewhere to stay until morning. While the crooked, empty house on the corner looked like it would do just fine in a pinch, had Harry bothered to ask, the locals would have told him the house at Spinner's End might look empty, but it wasn't. Something lived there; whatever it was, it was best left alone. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: After the Orchard Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-110: Newly widowed Harry has trouble getting his son to sleep. One night Hermione sends him a podcast of Severus Snape talking about his time during the war, and it puts his son directly to sleep. Even though the man had never answered any of Harry’s letters through the year, he decides to reach out and tell him about this new development. Rating: Mature Word Count: 20.8k Summary: Same as prompt. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Bad Ideas Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-82: An alligator features prominently in the fan work Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 684 Summary: A romantic weekend gets run aground when a hunt for mythological creatures finds “something.” 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: baring my arse (baring my heart) Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024 09 - Naked wedding. That's it, that's the prompt. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 5k Summary: "Why do we have to be naked again?" 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Beginnings Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-154 - Harry is the God of Earth and Severus the God of the Nightsky Rating: General Audiences Word Count: 3k Summary: In the beginning there was nothing… A retelling of the beginnings of time and the world as we know it. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Blonde Tresses Creator: ??? Prompt: Prompt: 2024-115 - Severus had sworn never to kneel before another wizard again. But he had to try proposing one last time. Rating: Mature Word Count: 1.2k Summary: Same as prompt. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Chance Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-66 Harry sends a dick pic to the wrong number. Oops. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 27.8k + art Summary: Severus did not receive a lot of text messages. Especially not to his work phone. Especially not from unknown numbers. Especially not dick pics. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Chords of Affection Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-130 - When the bartender says 'Someone bought you a drink' both Severus & Lucius assume it's for Lucius. Both are surprised when they're told it's for Severus. Lucius pushes Sev to talk to the gorgeous green-eyed man staring at him with a glass raised. (Lucius ships snarry). Rating: Explicit Word Count: 18k Summary: Severus is distracted by his newest admirer. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Conditions To Bloom Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-11: Severus is a plant doctor who takes in people’s sick plants and nurses them back to health. Harry is a well-meaning plant dad whose poor plants are constantly on death’s door. Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word Count: 9.8k Summary: Severus lets his gaze fall to the sagging aloe plant in front of him, and it hardly takes a cursory glance before he has his diagnosis. “Root rot,” he says. The man’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead. “But how do you–I’ve hardly been watering it at all!” Supporting a drooping leaf with the tip of his pen, Severus eyes the unnatural lean of the stem and gives the customer a disbelieving raise of one eyebrow. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Deceit and Debauchery Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-37 Regency AU, would love if it's Bridgerton inspired. Maybe Kanthony? (unfortunately I don’t know Bridgerton that well but I hope this regency smut fest will suffice). Rating: Explicit Word Count: 13.8k Summary: Severus' curiosity as to who Tracey Davis is going to try to entrap into marriage pays off when he see's that it is none other than Harry Potter. He knows he has the chance to save his friends son from what will certainly be a disastrous marriage but what will be Severus' rewards for his efforts? 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Don't You Wanna Mess With Me? Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-106 - Harry runs his own successful bakery after the second wizarding war. His treacle tart is famous throughout the wizarding world, but the recipe remains a closely guarded secret. Severus runs a rival bakery, and tries to sneak into Harry's kitchen after hours to steal the recipe for himself. Harry is startled and manages to tip an entire batch worth of batter over Severus in his shock, triggering an epic food fight that rapidly devolves into a filthy fuck. Bonus points for a sickly sweet ending. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 3.3k Summary: Things get messy when rival bakery owner, Severus Snape, pays Harry a visit in his kitchen. 😘 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Fate's Blind Date Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-58 - Harry gets stood up but sees Severus walking along the street and invites him out instead. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 29.8k Summary: When Severus indulges himself with a walk along the West End after work, the last thing he imagines is that he will get invited to a show by a gorgeous young man. Things only get more astounding after that when their casual meeting evolves into something more and Severus finds himself pulled into a family feud that threatens to bring his dark past to light. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: First Impressions Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-216: Trope reversal: Snape was forced into multiple arranged marriages by his grandparents. The spouses kept dying. Very mysterious. But Harry isn't worried when he winds up the latest candidate. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 24.6k Summary: When Harry is forced to marry a complete stranger, he tries to make the best of things. After all, he's a Healer, he can take care of himself. And his new husband seems nice enough… But why, exactly, has Severus already been married three times before? And why have all three of those previous spouses died unexpectedly? Is Harry next? Or will he fall in love with his new husband after all? 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Flutter Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-76 Apartment Life Harry's been warned to steer clear of the 24th floor. Curiosity got the better of him and Harry checks it out. Its deserted except for apartment 2444. Harry notices signs of life—a faint light under the door, soft sounds of movement. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 30.2k Summary: He said uselessly, "Sev, don't go." "I'm s-sorry-" Harry cupped Severus' face and gazed into his eyes. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, sad, raven, mine. "These stay the same," Severus said. "Remember that when you look at me. Remember, it's me.” Flutter does my heart, When you ask me to stay. I want to live in the moment But the past keeps me a prey. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Gwindr Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Explicit Word Count: 11.9k Summary: After a couple of bad relationships, one abusive the other unsatisfying, Harry is desperate to find himself the perfect Dom. His friends are trying to help but their lack of understanding makes them more of a hindrance. Turning to the new wizarding dating app for men, Gwindr, he hopes to be able to find a diamond in the rough. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Help Stepdad, I'm Stuck! Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-67 - Help Stepdad, I'm stuck! Rating: Explicit Word Count: 6k Summary: After years of marriage, Severus can feel his relationship with Lily waning. He had already been contemplating ending things when his stepson, Harry, proposes something that he struggles to refuse, although will he ultimately come to regret it? 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Leak Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-165 - Harry is a plumber (hot daddy type with hairy chest - I beg for it). He was called to Spinner's End. The door was answered by a pissed off, soaked wet bloke in a silk robe and lace stockings. Harry had never been turned on by the sight of another man in his entire life. Well, until now. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4.3k Summary: Same as prompt. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Mating for Life - Breeding Season in the Highlands of Scotland Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Explicit Word Count: 3.3k Summary: “Among the ruins of an ancient castle in the Highlands of Scotland lives a human species like no other.“ Dudley watches a very educational documentary out of boredom. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: (Not Quite) As You Wish Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-124: After Nagini's bite, due to some unresolved life debt stuff, Severus becomes Harry's Genie in a Bottle… And he desperately wants to make Potter's life as difficult as he can - until he hears what Harry actually wishes for. Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word Count: 6.5k Summary: It’s post-war, and Harry is still hearing voices. A voice. One, very specific voice. A voice that wants something of him. And it’s the one thing he doesn’t do. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: On thin ice Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-14 Avatar the Last Airbender crossover fic. Is Harry the Avatar? Is Severus the cabbage man? Up to you! Rating: Explicit Word Count: 6.2k Summary: During a ritual at the South Pole to reconnect with her Avatar spirit, Harriet runs into trouble. Snape is hunting her, tasked with bringing her back to Fire Lord Voldemort. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Raven King Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-78 - James warned Harry not to go. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 5.4k Summary: Against his father's wishes, Harry and his friends, freshly graduated from Hogwarts High, visit the elusive Euphemia Club. Where for the right price, dreams come true. “The head is too wise. The heart is all fire.” ― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Reckoning Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-51: Corporate Snarry! CEOs, IT guys, or just regular employees finding love. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 31.2k Summary: Harry discovers that there is something wrong at his company and sets out to visit it undercover, pretending to be the new Happiness Manager. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Rock Bottom Creator: ??? Prompt: Prompt #1: Wildcard Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word Count: 10.1k Summary: Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you want to fuck a student. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: sanguis nocte Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Explicit Word Count: 17.7k Summary: When Harry is forcefully turned into a vampire, he turns to the only person he knows will be able to fix him. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Saving Magic Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-170 Time travel (how is up to you). Harry and Severus are now in the same year in Hogwarts. What year? What happens? Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word Count: 6.5k Summary: "What do you want now, Zir?" Harry asked cautiously. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Second Chance Inheritance Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-232 - The Prince family has a different sort of inheritance, the secret to their success: When they come of age, members are taught the Second Chance spell. One chance to go back in time and fix things. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 32k Summary: Following a tragedy, Severus Snape is determined to tap into his estranged family's greatest legacy. He finds himself with more chances to woo the love of his life than he ever thought possible. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Explicit Word Count: 11.8k Summary: There's an outbreak of Hanahaki, and Curse Breaker Hyacinth Potter is brought onto the case, to work closely with the Aurors and Unspeakable Sulpicia Snape. Snape doesn't have a romantic bone in her body, and Hyacinth is happily in love with Ginny Weasley. They have nothing to worry about...right? 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Something Wounded Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-132 - cyborg AU Rating: Explicit Word Count: 8.1k Summary: After surviving the galactic wars, Severus just wants to run his cyborg shop in peace. He lives on Ceplor, a distant, lonely planet. Then, one day, Harry fucking Potter walks into his shop. The infuriating young man traveled across the universe to find him. Why? Because Potter is a cyborg, too. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Synthesis Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-21 - Non-magical AU: “You’re a wizard, Harry.” Rating: Explicit Word Count: 11.2k Summary: Severus is a brilliant but hard-to-work-with chemistry professor, who only teaches because he has to but would much rather spend all his time doing research. Harry is the grad student that either Albus or Minerva - the head of the chemistry department on paper, even though everyone knows Severus always gets what he wants - has assigned to essentially follow Severus around and tell him “no” when he’s being unreasonable. Harry is tasked with keeping Severus on budget and preventing all his students from quitting his class. Severus takes this as a personal affront. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: The Tenth Rule Creator: ??? Prompt: N/a Rating: Explicit Word Count: 11k Summary: Harry’s new master is strange. He dresses Harry in clothes. He cooks Harry food and tells him to bathe when he is dirty. He lets Harry sleep in the bed. He has not touched Harry since he got here. Harry keeps waiting and waiting. Or: Harry is a slave. Severus is his new owner. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Too Hot To Handle: Wizarding Edition Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-102: wizards discover reality TV. Rating: Explicit Word Count: 92.7k Summary: In a world where Voldemort died during the blitz and the Wizarding War, led by Bellatrix Lestrange, ended for good in 1981 when the attack on the Potters led to the Death Eaters being captured without incident, the Ministry is at a loss. The younger generation are not showing any inclination to settle down and have children, as their parents did before them. They considered a number of ideas but the development of the two-way mirror allowed for reality television to become a viable option. Welcome to Too Hot To Handle: Wizarding Edition, a show designed to encourage contestants to form deep and meaningful connections, punishing anyone who breaks the rules. Making more meaningful connections often has unforeseen consequences and what people intend to happen isn't necessarily what actually happens. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

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Title: Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville Creator: ??? Prompt: 2024-80 - A fanwork inspired in some way by the works of the late, great Jimmy Buffett. Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word Count: 2.1k Summary: Severus Snape hanging out in a resort, life in shambles, enjoys a frozen margarita or three and eyes the bartender. 💚❤️ Read on AO3 💚❤️

🧡 2024 Snarry AUctoberfest Entries || HOS Tumblr || Discord 🧡

#2024 snarry auctoberfest #house of snarry #snarry fanfic #snarry #pro snape #snarry fanart #snarry podfic #Auctoberfest 2024 roundup #anon creator Auctoberfest 2024 roundup

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