One of my favorite Hermione characterizations in fanfic is arsenicjade's Care of Magical Creatures. I've been meaning to recommend it for forever, but I think I just needed to dwell on it for a while. It's one of thoseAnyway, it's a novel-length, and it's all about personal recovery from the trauma of war, within the context of post-war reconstruction of ( Read more... )

I actually finished reading theatresm's Chaos is Come Again (Snape/Hermione) a while ago, but it took me a long time to get there and then I didn't actually like the end result -- but mostly because I was expecting it to go the way of most Snape/Hermiones. So I debated recommending it. But upon further reflection, I've rec'd plenty of stories I didn't ( Read more... )

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Poet by ladysisyphus and rahaeli.

Is this even fanfic? It's HBP done to the tune of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Actually, it IS The Waste Land, only set at Hogwarts. Actually, stop reading my attempt at description and just click on the link. Because whether it's fanfic or not, it is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. Hilarious and chilling ( Read more... )

T.S. Eliot seems to be making the rounds of fandom. In a Handful of Dust by yhlee is weird, poetic, desperate, and dark. I think I'm a bit out of touch with the strangeness of the Angel-verse, but this is evocative and sad yet hopeful, and it's an interesting ending to attach to the one we got.

There's a sort of house style in BSG fanfic already, all present tense minimalism with certain lines (over-)calculated for dramatic punch, and it doesn't always work for me. But svilleficrecs makes it work in Intra, which fills in some backstory for "33." The prose is unadorned, a bit rough at times, but the story takes a good long look at the characters and ( Read more... )

penknife's Ordinary Days is a quiet but strong little story in which Hermione takes it upon herself to learn something new about Ron. It's pretty much a slice of perfection. Set post-Half-Blood Prince.

If only all the post-Half-Blood Prince shipper hullabaloo had produced more like owlyscribblings' By the Sea. This is a story that gives proper credit to all of the relationships implicated by JKR finally settling the question. It understands that most people don't stay with their first loves -- and more importantly, that changes of heart are not swoony or ( Read more... )

So I thought I was the last person in fandom who hadn't read Night-blooming Heartsease by julad, but then sophia_helix told me she'd never heard of it, and I was like, HOLY FUCK. What if there are other people who haven't heard of this wonderful, wonderful story ( Read more... )

sangga's Supply and Demand is a quiet, gorgeous slice of life. It's three parts -- the link only goes to the first one, so use the little green arrows or the "next entry" link to get through the whole thing. It's the kind of story you read and think, "Yeah, that's what it's really like inside people's heads, when they're not acting like heroes, when ( Read more... )

Feeding my love of pre-series Kara fic is stars_like_dust's All Feelings But This One. This is a much deeper exploration of Kara's relationship with Zak than I've seen done, and it's totally plausible as backstory. Things do get that much more interesting when Lee enters the story, but Zak is so well-drawn here that I really wanted to know more about him. And ( Read more... )