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saintsenara · 11 months

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rare pair tag game

thanks for the tag, @said-snape-softly :)

i'm pretty sure everyone has done this by now, but if you'd like to, please consider this a blanket tag.

apart from all the tomarry and the odd dabble in remadora, i am a rare-pair enthusiast, so i am delighted to spread some propaganda here... the criterion i've used for a rare-pair is less than 2500 works on ao3.

pairs, little metas, fic recommendations, and some suggestions for authors to follow under the cut.

sirius black/severus snape

why i ship it:

this one can just about claim to be a rare-pair.

sirius and severus are narrative mirrors, whose complicated relationship to themselves and to each other is crucial for driving several of the most important arcs in the series.

in particular, sirius - constantly haunted by guilt and grief over his role in the death of the man he loved [you can decide if his love for james is platonic or not, but i definitely think the text thinks it isn't...], trapped in his childhood home, unable to have his real loyalties acknowledged before his death by the fact he's on the run - leads harry through his journey in hero-worshipping, then being disappointed in, then forgiving james. and then promptly dies.

this is one of harry's most significant areas of personal growth - it begins to chip away at his rather black-and-white morality, which is finally destroyed by his ability to confront the complexity of dumbledore in deathly hallows - but it is also key narratively: harry coming to understand james starts to hint to the reader that it is lily - otherwise absent from her son's conception of himself - who is the key to the mystery...

which brings us to severus - constantly haunted by guilt and grief over his role in the death of the woman he loved, trapped in his childhood home, unable to have his real loyalties acknowledged before his death by the fact he's a spy - who gives harry, and us, the final piece of the puzzle. and then promptly dies.

put them together, though? well, you get the delicious tension of two fundamentally broken people - who cannot comprehend the possibility of their own redemption - bound to each other. can they forgive each other and themselves? is it a disaster? the story can go either way.

and even in fluff there is so much potential for d r a m a between sirius' recklessness and severus' cunning, sirius' emotional control and severus' temper, the fact that sirius is canonically hot and severus is canonically not, how they react to harry and draco [i don't usually accept the fanon that severus is his godfather, except when it means snack can be fighting about it], and so on.

and i'm a sucker for two bitter old men getting a happy ending. sue me.

want to give it a read?

if you trust nothing else i say in my life [and why should you] you can trust this - second life by nwhiker and cassandra7 is one of the greatest pieces of writing i have ever seen, not only in this pairing but in this fandom full stop. it's a profound and solemn meditation on loving and grieving, choice and chance, and the great pain caused by the divide between the magical and the muggle worlds.

then, for gorgeous angst with a happy ending - two boys kissing by @writcraft and the merit in trying by brightened

albus dumbledore/tom riddle | voldemort

why i ship it:

the facetious answer is because they wouldn't be so obsessed with each other if there wasn't some sexual tension underneath it.

the facetious and nsfw answer is because it appeals to the part of me whose favourite book aged 11 was lolita

the serious answer is that they should be horrifying together: they're both liars; both incredibly self-righteous; both living behind masks which conceal their true emotions and motivations; dumbledore took one look at tom as an eleven-year-old, said "he reminds me of gellert", and then did nothing about it; tom thinks dumbledore's a hypocrite and is right, although not for the reasons he thinks; there is a colossal age gap; there is virtually no scenario in any timeline where they could be openly in a relationship unless one of them is concealing his identity; and - really, this seems quite minor in the grand scheme of things - they are constantly trying to destroy each other.

but.

intellectually, they are the only two characters in the series who could be the other's equal - i'm sure that violent arguments about the twelve uses of dragon's blood trigger the majority of their sexual encounters, and a man who's passionate about your research is hot.

if either of them ever fancy being honest - so, no - there is a shared cavernous [although, in tom's case, unacknowledged] grief in their lives which has shaped their not-as-divergent-as-the-text-thinks-they-are views on death, love, duty and so on. their active refusal to understand each other [i.e. dumbledore entirely misreading voldemort's motivations in the job interview scene] and commitment to constantly underestimating each other [i.e. voldemort bouncing around like an idiot in the chamber of secrets instead of using his brain and remembering what a phoenix is] could, in time, lead to something almost resembling acceptance. i mean, just imagine the hurt/comfort sex which happens when voldemort finds out about grindledore.

the way dumbledore describes the young riddle - "self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless" - is also an exact description of him. that each sees himself in the other canonically drives their hatred of each other, but it could also appeal to two very vain men in a much racier way. after all, who doesn't want to bang their narrative mirror?

and being an orphan probably doesn't seem so bad when you realise your boyfriend's family is aberforth.

want to give it a read?

i can't recommend concordance by @laeveteinn enough, particularly for one of the best-written dumbledores i've ever seen. i find dumbledore is often written either as far more whimsical than i'd like, or far more fiery and radical [when one of his most interesting personality traits in canon is his tendency towards inaction], but this dumbledore is the perfect balance of contradictions, while tom is his canonical feral self, longing to perceived, rather than the emotionless sociopath of so many other stories.

i also recommend as an entire ocean in a drop by eldritcher, which really leans into just how similar these two are underneath all the artifice.

albus dumbledore/severus snape

why i ship it:

well, we've had dumbledore with one lost boy, let's have him with another [i haven't been brave enough to venture into dumbledore/harry yet, but i'll take recommendations...]

as with riddledore, we have the potential for horror here: a vast power imbalance; enormous age gap; the fact dumbledore sends snape out to potentially die every time he goes off to voldemort; and - this is the crucial one - the fact that dumbledore's recognition of himself in snape is pure self-loathing ["you disgust me"] manifested in punishment [allowing snape to be humiliated in front of fudge, not stopping the presumed-to-be-real moody searching his office, making him give harry occlumency lessons, not letting him teach defence against the dark arts].

but then this stops, when snape does the tremendously brave thing of agreeing to kill dumbledore, and their dynamic equalises, as dumbledore recognises that snape is courageous, steadfast, and redeemed. i'm always struck in half-blood prince by the fact that dumbledore has it with harry's sniping about snape and straight-up tells him to shut up, as well as by the fact that he very nearly gives the game away and confesses why snape switched sides [the thing he promised not to do] when harry finds out it was snape who gave voldemort the prophecy.

and within this equalised dynamic - so this hot geriatric sex is happening in the afterlife, i guess - we have two men who are intellectual close-to-equals, who understand grief and guilt, whose aesthetic senses are charmingly mismatched, who are rarely honest but might be for each other, and who have lots of profound similarities which might lead somewhere...

want to give it a read?

cheerfully disregarding everything i've just said about how snumbledore could work, i highly recommend in infinite remorse of soul by @perverse-idyll, which is a chilling look at how dumbledore uses the power imbalance between the two to assuage his own guilt through snape's humiliation.

for something much more wholesome, i'm a big fan of byzantium by eldritcher

petunia dursley/severus snape

why i ship it:

because vernon is a dick.

i'm fond of petunia, who i think is one of the most interesting characters in the series because of how full of contradictions she is, and who i think is also a victim in fandom spaces of how the adult cast was aged up for the films [in canon, she's only in her early twenties when lily dies, and the implication is that vernon is a good deal older than her)] which makes her inadequacies, such as her inability to truly care for either child in the household, seem much more nuanced than they do if she's pictured as a middle-aged woman with considerable life experience.

like snape, she teeters on a knife edge between various chasms: she is a working-class girl from the midlands made good in middle-class surrey, he is a working-class half-blood boy who spends most of his life in pureblood circles; she ends up with her whole life wrapped up in a square little house when she's barely out of her teens, he ends up with his whole life wrapped up in spying at the same age; she hates the wizarding world and yet covets it, he hates the muggle world and yet cannot escape it; she loves lily and she hates her and she loathes her for dying, he... well, you know the rest.

want to give it a read?

i was first convinced by this pairing by the lovely regretfully yours by @maria-de-salinas, which takes both snape and petunia's awkwardness and bitterness and moulds it into something really tender.

i also highly recommend barking at the moon by rinsbane, the summary of which speaks for itself.

merope gaunt/tom riddle sr.

why i ship it:

our first canon pairing, and probably the most problematic of the canon relationships, since the series never acknowledges that tom sr. is a rape victim.

but i have found myself recently in my merope era and, in particular, in an attempt to give her more nuance than she gets in canon. as i've said to anyone who'll listen in the three broomsticks discord server, i loathe the implication in canon that merope dies because she just cba to live [since it directly justifies voldemort's belief that her death was shameful] and prefer to see her as someone who was desperate to escape a truly horrifying life [the fact she's going to be forced into an incestuous relationship with morfin is right there in canon...] and so did something she didn't have the capacity to understand the implications of [this is not a woman who's ever heard of consent] because she thought it would give her the first chance to be happy in her life, watched it all crash and burn around her, and would have very much liked to have lived to raise her son.

i doubt there was anything real or tender in her relationship with tom sr., of course, and his escape - while merely a brief stay of execution from his son's perspective - is tremendously brave. it's impossible to write tom/merope fluff [although i respect you if you're inclined to try] but fanfiction gives a space to explore the intricacies of their relationship which canon doesn't allow, and i'm obsessed.

want to give it a read?

i'm recommending myself here, and assuring you that you will enjoy: enchanter's nightshade, which explores how merope's attempts to keep her husband enslaved fail; the snow child, which treats the relationship as folk-horror; and the shack at the end of the lane, in which there is redemption, in the end.

the best exploration of tom sr. dealing with the fallout of the relationship is @phantomato's exquisite ganymede, which feels so truly embodied that you can't pull yourself away from the page.

bellatrix lestrange/tom riddle | voldemort

why i ship it:

our second canon pairing, i am obsessed with these two and the tragedy and - to some extent - tenderness bound up in their relationship [which can be proven to be there because noted softy @whinlatter loves them].

i've written before about my conviction - in contrast to a lot of bellatrix fans - that her relationship with rodolphus is utterly miserable, and that voldemort is the only man in her life who can understand her desire to make a life for herself which is not constrained by the gendered expectations of her social class.

obviously, lord voldemort is not a shining paragon of a boyfriend [and he is an awful choice as a baby daddy, bella, get it together], but i think the enormous power imbalance is perhaps slightly less enormous than is sometimes assumed - certainly, she tells him to his face in half-blood prince that he's wrong to trust snape [she's a clever woman], voldemort never physically punishes her for anything [rip to lucius malfoy, who seems to get picked for this in her stead], and voldemort tolerates a surprising amount of nonsense from her which shatters his mystique.

all of which is to say... the scream when she dies isn't just because he's losing the war.

want to give it a read?

tee hee, i'm recommending myself again, and encouraging you to take a look at: atramentum, bellamort's last afternoon together before voldemort goes to the potters; nor all that glisters gold, bellatrix's life - including her relationship with voldemort - through sirius' eyes; and death (eaters) in paradise, because murderous psychopaths deserve crack fics too.

draco malfoy/tom riddle | voldemort

why i ship it:

because the ship name is taco.

these two are a pairing which i enjoy with my tongue firmly in my cheek [and tom's tongue firmly in draco's], as i do with most other things in which draco is a main character [do i want to read drarry angst? no! do i want to chuckle? absolutely!], although this should not be taken as saying that many of taco's fabulous authors don't manage to make the pairing entirely plausible.

in fact, consensual taco [non-con is, of course, its own beast] often has some of the best characterisation of both tom [fretful, mercurial, stubborn, and nowhere near as charming as he thinks he is] and draco [prissy, a very good judge of character, someone who likes being taken care of, and much braver than he appears if he absolutely has to be] i've seen in the fandom, largely because - unlike other voldemort-centric ships [especially tomarry, but also voldemort + any of the adult death eaters] - there's no sense of inevitability there. these two aren't connected by a shared bit of soul, or a prophecy, or having gone to school together, or having been hooked in by voldemort in the first war when he was unassailable.

they have to choose each other. or, more accurately, draco has to choose tom, and tom has to get chosen.

and the results have me entertained.

want to give it a read?

then you will want to have a look at the travelling cabinet by @the-paper-monkey [and its sequel, bluebeard], truly the gold standard of taco content with an absolutely brilliant draco, whose sheer capacity to cling on and make himself an irremovable part of tom's life may just end up changing the course of history.

narcissa malfoy/severus snape

why i ship it:

because i am in deep with the conspiracy theory that it's canon. i am absolutely certain that narcissa is the person that voldemort is referring to at the end of deathly hallows - "he desired her, that was all, but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him". it seems highly unlikely to me that the canonical voldemort would give a shit about snape fancying any random pureblood [although the snapemort version is, naturally, hugely jealous], but snape having had some sort of liaison with narcissa, and the ability knowing this gives voldemort to humiliate snape, narcissa, the memory of lily, bellatrix, lucius, and draco is definitely information he would go out of his way to remember...

plus, how do you know where he lives, babe? v suspicious.

want to give it a read?

if you want some fluff, you will very much enjoy the incredibly sweet the reformed man by gingertart50, which features narcissa nursing snape back to health post-nagini and is a favourite re-read for me when i'm drunk and it's christmas.

if you want some very-much-not-fluff, other women and of purer blood by yours truly will scratch the itch...

minerva mcgonagall/severus snape

why i ship it:

because i'm an equal-opportunity age-gap fan, and there is far too little older woman/younger man in the fandom.

and look, i'll admit it, i'm a fan of the fanon that snape and mcgonagall are friends prior to dumbledore's death - i'm not sure it's canonically plausible, but this sign can't stop me because i can't read - and i like the idea of that blossoming into something more, especially in fics where snape survives the second war. after all, he is a man who definitely needs to be treated quite strictly [and i don't just mean in the staff room], there is a shared loneliness and grief to them both, they're intellectual equals despite the age gap, and bickering about quidditch is absolutely fine as a method of foreplay.

plus, you can't tell me dumbledore's portrait doesn't ship it.

want to give it a read?

for a fic which shows minerva at her acerbic - and yet still sensual - best, always but not necessarily forever by gingertart50 is an old, fluffy, and very funny, favourite.

for something much more bittersweet, that good night by kelly_chambliss has my heart.

severus snape/tom riddle | voldemort

why i ship it:

because voldemort is canonically down bad for it - there is no need to believe snape's ridiculous cover story for not attending his resurrection, to try and spare lily as a treat for his man, and to give him a nice, painful death which allows the narrative to move on and harry to defeat him if the dark lord isn't firmly in his simp era.

more seriously, they obviously have an enormous amount in common, particularly in terms of their backgrounds [harry draws a connection between all three of them, but actually the fact that harry is rich in the wizarding world, not a slytherin, and with a muggle mother, therefore giving him a pureblood name, means he can't relate to the post-childhood experience of both halves of snapemort].

as a result, i think snape is the death eater who comes the closest to understanding voldemort's motivations - above all, the fact that he's not seeking an oligarchy, which the malfoys etc. obviously believe - while voldemort is someone snape feels understands his intellectual interests and his creativity.

want to give it a read?

boy, are you in luck, because i myself have a snapemort wip - scylla and charybdis. it is not wholesome.

tom riddle/myrtle warren

why i ship it:

because it started as crack and now i love them.

in particular, i just have so much respect for being incredibly annoying as a method of seduction, and i think myrtle's commitment to just following tom around chattering at him - and, therefore, without her realising it, preventing him from committing all sorts of crimes - is iconic.

want to give it a read?

then my unhinged rom-com - bookbinding - shall provide.

tom riddle | voldemort/ginny weasley

why i ship it:

because i enjoy seeing my dear friends who ship hinny shake and cry.

but also because ginny and tom have an enormous number of similarities, right down to the fact that they both have yew wands [if you're sick of people saying harry has an oedipus complex, you'll be delighted to be confronted with the mountain of evidence ginny reminds him of the villain who keeps trying to kill him instead].

they are both very good liars, quick thinking, remarkably resistant to shame, possessed of nerves of steel, predisposed to violence, brown-eyed, so hot they have harry gagged, and the profound enemy of someone whose surname is smith.

despite what he claims, tom was absolutely not just sat politely in that diary gritting his teeth while ginny complained about having second hand robes and idiot brothers. as he says, he opted "to start feeding [her] a few of my secrets", and i think it's justifiable from canon that they were at the very least half-truths [for example, i would not be shocked to discover he tells her he's a half-blood orphan brought up against his will in the muggle world - there's no other reason, i think, for him to successfully make her tell him these things about harry without it], which means that ginny has lots of lovely emotional leverage over him.

plus, as with tomarry, you have the element of "this is kind of inevitable" in the relationship, and the mysteries of fate are always sexy.

want to give it a read?

this is a tommary/hinny/tominny triad, but it has had me in a chokehold since the first time i read it - shameful company by merrivale, which, truly iconically, manages to be epilogue compliant.

#asenora fic recs #rare pair tag game #starprince #snirius #snack hp #riddledore #snumbledore #petunia dursley x severus snape #merope gaunt x tom riddle sr #bellamort #tom riddle x draco malfoy #snarcissa #minerva mcgonagall x severus snape #snapemort #tom riddle x myrtle warren #tom riddle x ginny weasley #lots to read

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