If You Are Prepared; The Tea Series

[slytherin-gypsy.livejournal.com]

Snarry Table.

Claim: Harry Potter – Harry Potter/Severus Snape.

Prompt: 50. Reccer's Choice.

Title: If You Are Prepared.

Author: cybele_san. 

Rating: NC-17.

Length: Epic.

Brief summary: "A task he can't refuse. A boy he doesn't want to refuse."

I'll confess that when I first started this series, I liked it well enough, but couldn't really understand why it was so revered as one of the great Snarry classics. And then I got to the end, and it suddenly made perfect sense. This is one of those stories that sneak on you and the end feels like a punch to the gut, but is definitely worth reading.

Link: If You Are Prepared.

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Claim: Harry Potter – Harry Potter/Severus Snape.

Prompt: 07. Love.

Title: The Tea Series.

Author: Telanu (somniesperus). 

Rating: NC-17.

Length: Epic.

Brief summary: This is a series of seven stories (“A Most Disquietening Tea”, “Almost, At Times, The Fool”, “Like A Glass”, “Corresponding”, “A Wizard Song”, “Possession” and “Fire by Fire”) that chronicles the relationship between Harry and Snape.

 

I've definitely saved the best for last. The "Tea Series" is more than just a Snarry classic. It is, unarguably, the best fanfiction I've ever read, in all the fandoms I've dabbled in and ranks high up there with some of my favorite books. Telanu manages to write complex and engaging characters, while developing a very interesting plot. The progress of Harry and Severus’ relationship – including its sexual side – is beautifully done, in a way that’s rarely found in most slash fiction.

The black-clad shoulders almost seemed to be slumping. Harry wanted to touch Snape. He wanted so badly to touch him. It felt as if he hadn't touched anybody in weeks. But he was still angry, and didn't understand anything, least of all this man he loved in spite of everything.

Now, that brought him up short.

Staring at Severus' back, Harry swallowed hard as the bittersweet information once again imparted itself: he did love Severus. He couldn't seem to stop -- well, not yet, anyway. Given time, maybe he could. But he didn't want to have to. Severus probably didn't have a lot of people who loved him, just as Harry didn't have a lot of people to love. They fitted each other in strange ways, and Harry supposed he had to take the bad with the good.

Severus had turned a little bit and Harry could see his profile -- that big ugly nose standing out in sharp relief, the sallow, hollow cheeks, the limp, stringy hair. Harry had touched or kissed all of those unattractive things, and taken pleasure in doing so. It fitted in with everything else. It was easy to love someone for their good qualities; Harry didn't have much practice with this sort of thing, but he suspected that it was rare to love them for their faults, too. But he did love Severus for those. It was easy to admire Severus' strength and courage and intelligence. It was even easy, a little bit, to love his cruelty and his insults and his loneliness and his sheer bloody-mindedness, because those were faults everybody could see and anyway, they just reminded you of that same strength and intelligence. They reflected the good qualities, somehow. It was harder to love him for being a little bit broken -- for his pettiness, for the cowardice that had made him push Harry aside when things got difficult, for every little unsavoury thing that sometimes made him less than a human being should be.

Harry didn't like any of these things. But he did love them, because he loved the man they were a part of. And maybe tomorrow, or in five minutes, he could stop loving them -- but he loved them right now, in this moment, and that seemed important.

- from "A Wizard Song"; Chapter 12: Mutual Destruction.

Link: The Tea Series.

As per the author's request, the link will take you to her home page. After you enter her site, just click on her "Fiction Page", read the warnings, click on "Harry Potter", read the other warnings and you will find all her HP fics.