Severus Snape

December 16, 2009
Title: The Christmas Robin
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus/Poppy
Rating: G
Words: 125
Prompt: Christmas Robin. Click on the link! It is worth it!
Author's Note: With kind thanks to 00sevvie for being my beta. I don't think I thank her enough. This is another offering for her Severus/Poppy canon.

( The Christmas Robin )

December 15, 2009
Title:  The Holly and the Ivy
Fandom:  Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters:  Severus
Rating:  G
Words:  541
Prompt:  Holly and Ivy
Author's Note:  With kind thanks to Pyjamapants for working as beta in the middle of the night.

( The Holly and the Ivy )

December 13, 2009
Title: Dance with a Real Friend
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus/Rabastan
Rating: PG
Words: 792
Prompt: Yule Ball
Author's Note: With kind thanks to Slytherinlaurel, my beta.

( Dance with a Real Friend )

December 12, 2009
Title: What Is an Angel?
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus, Abraxas
Rating: G
Words: 175
Prompt: Angel
Author's Note: The quote at the bottom, not counted in the word count, is from Hermann Hesse's Demian.

( What is an Angel? )

December 11, 2009
Title: Hansel and Gretel
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus
Rating: G
Words: 250
Prompt: Gingerbread House

( Hansel and Gretel )

December 9, 2009
Title: Parody Denied
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus, Lucius, Narcissa, Bella, Rodolphus, the Dark Lord,
Rating: G
Words: 200
Warning: Suggested mental infidelity (Bella/Rodolphus)
Prompt: Santa's Lap

It was the annual Death Eater Yuletide party and one of the attendees had recklessly drunken more than was decorous. Bella was petitioning the Dark Lord for added entertainment. Beside the fireplace Severus was decidedly sober. He stood next to Lucius, who was sipping an almost-clear Reisling, raising it elegantly at occasional intervals. Narcissa was at his other side with her sparkling mineral water and an open cucumber sandwich on thin rye.

"We can do it in parody of the Muggles, my Lord, and it will be fun! Not the presents of course... Just let us sit in your lap and tell you what we would like for Christmas. I'm sure we all want the same thing." Bella looked around at them in imperious assumption.

Rodolphus frowned into his scotch and soda across the room. He knew very well what his wife wanted for Christmas, from the way she was looking at the Dark Lord's lap.

"It would be a boon," she wheedled.

The Dark Lord frowned, and everyone stilled as he paused. Only Lucius' hand tightened on Severus' shoulder. It was not, Severus thought, in warning, but in shared offence and emotion. Father Christmas was sacrosanct to them.

"No. That would be ridicule of a great wizard, not Muggles." The Dark Lord rose to leave the company.

Somehow, he knew.

December 8, 2009
Title: The After-Christmas Tree
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus
Rating: G
Words: 974 (yeah, this is not technically a drabble. It seemed a simple little story, but it needed more words.)
Warning: Too much angst.
Prompt: Christmas Tree

( The After-Christmas Tree )

December 7, 2009
Title: Speculation and Certainty
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus
Rating: G
Words: 100
Prompt: Father Christmas
Notes references and contains spoilers for: Father Christmas, 1940

( Speculation and Certainty )

December 6, 2009
Title: Geminio Treat
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus
Rating: G
Words: 200
Prompt: Hot Buttered Rum

He was late to the meeting, as usual. His commitments to the Dark Lord were not such that he could move about freely. If his presence was desired elsewhere, that was where he would be. Yule was coming and even the kitchen at Grimmauld Place was cosy, presided over as it was by Molly Weasley. He could smell meat pies in the oven and hear the bubble of treacle on the stovetop for some after-dinner confection.

Everyone was already seated, nursing steaming cups of creamy drink. There were crumbs of biscuits left at each seat. Iced shortbread, he thought.

Severus seated himself quietly near the door. He had the good fortune, or otherwise, of sitting next to Sirius himself. Soon the other man naturally found an excuse to stand and move slightly off. Shortly thereafter everyone turned laughing to some jest of Tonks'. Severus had been waiting for this opportunity to cast a quick Geminio on Sirius' warm drink. He took the duplicate in his cold hands and sipped. No one would notice. It was hot buttered rum. He felt it flow through him, settling comfortably and comfortingly in his stomach. Even stolen, it was a distinct seasonal pleasure.

December 5, 2009
Title: Tinsel Findings
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus
Rating: G
Words: 100
Prompt: Tinsel

Sometimes, walking home from school, when the snow churned with spring mud, one of the children in rubber boots would see a shining glint at his feet. He would bend and extract a shiny magic thread. Blue was valued highly because such strands were rare, but even a silver tendril was precious, discovered in the small mill town.

They were saved carefully, wrapped around wrists or fingers, or curled tangled in a pocket. They became charms of luck.

Luck! At six, young Severus snorted internally. Real luck came from spells. Real luck came from potions. One made one's own luck.

December 3, 2009
Title: Home Fire Burning
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Severus, Tobias, Eileen
Rating: G
Words: 250
Prompt: Fire

Spinners End was not warm. It was not cheery. The ban on magic had removed the shine from everything his mother would have liked to quicken with her touch. Certainly it had removed the shine from Eileen.

The ban on the signs and signals of anything muggle and popular had removed the shine from everything his father wanted to share with his only son like smiling secrets. Certainly it had removed the shine from Tobias.

Severus studied his maths, history, science and English in front of the fire up to the end of junior school. Six years in muggle schools to make up for the seven he would spend at Hogwarts.

He liked the fire not just for its cheeriness and its warmth, not even for the white noise it provided to cover the sound of arguments and angry banging. It glowed, and not like the brutal stark glint of the bare light-bulb in his bedroom. The coal, with its black chalkiness and its distinctive scent that permeated the small house, became a friend. Lit, it glowed deeply with life, ever-changing, sometimes sparking or crackling as if it were trying to talk to him. The orange was the most vivid thing in his entire world and he liked to pretend it was magic.

Sometimes, alone, he would alter it and play with it using his tiny creative magic effects, as if they were working together. He knew the fire was science within itself, but it was still special.

December 3, 2009
Title: Hair Ribbon
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Snape, Abraxas, Narcissa
Rating: G
Words: 240
Prompt: Ribbons

The Prince (Snape) boy was a wonder with potions. He was keen, alert and brilliant with his magic. He was learning manners under Lucius' example and tutelage. He was even grateful and glad.

His hair was proving an annoying problem. The potions with which he worked all day in the Malfoy dungeons soaked it and fouled it, no matter how often he bathed. It trailed over his forehead, over his eyes. His nose stuck out the middle of it like a hook over which a towel had been hung.

Abraxas went to Narcissa, Lucius' beautiful new wife, sublime and a true Malfoy already. She gave him a handful of ribbon from her Yule packages.

He stood behind the boy in the mirror and brushed the black hair back as he had done with Lucius' when he had been less than half this boy's age. He was almost a negative image, but he was still and acquiescent. His refinement of Bubotuber... properties... had ensured his skin was perfect. When the hair had been drawn back from his face in dark wings, he was very nearly presentable.

He bound it at the base of his skull in Narcissa's green and silver ribbons. He lay his hand on the boy's shoulder, his thumb brushing his bare white neck. "This is how you will appear in my house."

"Yes, sir." The reflection of the newly-visible black eyes looked back into his, opaque, reading him.

December 2, 2009
Title: Plum Pudding and Marchpane
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Snape
Rating: G
Words: 175
Prompt: Christmas Pudding

At Christmas feasts, Severus cherished the plum puddings, each individual, each a little hill, round and rich, gently steaming with fruits and nuts made hearty, steeped in brandy and candied pumpkin juice, the peak snow-covered with a thick blanket of marchpane. It was his very own, and he whispered the wandless spell to envelope it with a short flickering blue flame.

At home, they had never had Christmas Pudding.

"Muggle Holiday!" his mother forbid.

"A thimble, a button, an anchor and a sixpence? Fortune Telling! A wish while stirring? No magic potions or deceitful trickery in my home! Ever." His father was more than firm.

Even at Yuletide it had certainly not been part of the school lunch program he had endured before he had come to Hogwarts.

Here he seemed to crouch over it protectively, but he was unaware of his posture as he lived for a moment in a wonder of perfect flavour and redolent aroma, sweet and spiced with heavy otherworldly tang. The small hill of pudding was a Christmas vista.

Title: House Unity Candles
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing/Characters: Snape, Dumbledore
Rating: G
Words: 150
Prompt: Red Candles

It was Severus' first year teaching and he was not yet secure in his position, despite the vows he had sworn to Dumbledore. Apparently part of the obligatory camaraderie at Yuletide was partaking in the jollity of the Headmaster's Secret Santa exchange.

The brightly coloured bags, topped with fluffy tissue paper enticingly crowded one of the festooned end tables while they all sipped tea and nibbled cakes and sweets.

"Lemon, and sugar, just as you like it." His blue eyes twinkled at Severus as he poured.

He was shy and took the last bag left. It was red and yellow candles. "Gryffindor!" the Headmaster cooed. "A tribute to House unity."

Severus was socially nudged into a compliment. "There is... er... a spiderweb pattern. Spiders... er... kill noxious insects."

"Light it! Light it! Lets see it all lit up!" came the chorus.

Obediently he did so with a soft reluctant, "Fuego."

Title: Worth Dying For
Author: janus
Characters: Severus, Abraxas, Lucius
Rating: G
Word Count: 200
Warnings: dark thoughts, war, violence

It was war.

Severus fought and killed, and so he died a little, inside, as happens in war.

His side had the dreams. Was it always that the offensive side was the one with the dreams? Those on the defence dreamt only of peace, an end to fighting.

Perhaps Abraxas had asked or arranged it - his squire and his son - but Severus was always paired with Lucius on missions for their Dark Lord. Lucius, for all his concrete sublimity, dreamt stronger than anyone, as if his dreams were a certainty, a formula, that only needed time and this constant duty of violence to reach inevitable fulfillment. His future was assured.

Severus' own dreams were more aethereal. He dreamt of a chance, pride, a life, straining to the stars of possibility, or... beyond mere stars. He pictured a straight burning phosphorescent line into endless space, trailing an arrow of greatness. He pictured the arrow shot from his soul, his hand, his ingenuity.

This shone for him, illuminating Abaxas' and Lucius' perfect alabaster world of purity and right by magic.

Magic, freed and all-triumphant, was everything. It was worth fighting for. It was worth killing for. It was worth dying for.

TUPPERWARE??!!!
Author: janus
Recipient: wyomingnot
Prompt: Snape/anyone. timing. temerity. Tupperware.
Word count: 100
Rating: none

Severus bent, frowning, to the first years' scrolls. None of them read their books beforehand. None. He blinked. Two stood out, written cheekily in rainbow-coloured ink. Fred and George Weasley.

Someone knocked. "Enter."

"Excuse me, sir. My father discovered these containers. They have snap-down lids to keep food fresh. You could use them for your potion ingredients, sir. To preserve them. Look - different colours!"

"You have the temerity to disturb me with this muggle rubbish? Plastic? PLASTIC? Do you have any idea how that would taint even the simplest material? GET OUT!"

Percy's timing could not have been worse.

Recruitment Strategies
Author: purplefluffycat
Recipient: verus_janus
Prompt: A cheery merry Gellert breaks out of Nurmengard in '79 luring Snape and Abraxas to his cause.
Word count: 108
Rating: Um, PG-13 for implications, perhaps?


**************************************************************************


The manor's drawing room was dark and foreboding; it's crackling fireplace barely emitted warmth. No, to Severus, the only source of light was the stranger lounging in the wingbacked chair - golden curls a halo, smile a crescent moon.

“A little more wine, Abraxas? I have so missed it.”

Their host poured graciously. “I do hope you'll stay with us awhile, Herr Grindelwald. It is indeed a privilege to welcome Prussia's future ruler.”

The stranger chuckled. Glancing at Severus: “The dark haired boy is a delight. And I hear that your son is equally lovely. May I?”

Abraxas smiled, home and dry. “Please do.”

Title: Shame
Author: janus
Characters: Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall
Rating: G
Challenge: Written for snape100's prompt #309: "Honi soit qui mal y pense" "Let him who thinks ill there be shamed."
Word Count: 200
Warnings: None

"Don't call me Coward!" he had cried, propelling fury, pain and desperation from him with the explosive power of sheer feeling required for a Patronus.

After he had betrayed his soul, his honour and any fine feeling for himself he had ever wanted to possess, this was the one thing he had left: He was not a coward.

At breakfast he read The Daily Prophet, but also The Times to gage Wizarding effects on the Muggle world. The standard caught his eye, and he deciphered its words of old French via Latin. "Let him who thinks ill there be shamed."

That would teach them, if they read it. He remembered the garter story from his first, Muggle school. McGonagall ought to be ashamed of thinking poorly of him after everything she should have seen and deduced.

But he thought ill of himself also, he realised. So much he had done sickened him. If he heeded the motto, he could be ashamed for judging himself so.  If he did not heed it, he could condemn himself without shame.  He lifted the corners of his mouth bitterly, appreciating the irony.

He vanished the newspaper and turned back to far more damning concerns.

Title: You Could Have Knocked Me Over with a Feather
Author: janus
Characters: Severus Snape, Poppy Pomfrey
Rating: G
Word Count: 150
Warnings: het
Prompt: Severus/Poppy, September, feather, kiss,
Notes: Poppy stories are a gift to my dear friend 00sevvie and in no way extend the world of my otherwise consistent Severus.

( story! )

Title: Whisked from Death
Author: janus
Characters: Sirius, other characters unlisted for surprise value.
Rating: G
Word Count: 300
Warnings: silly. remember that these Saturday Night Drabbles are funny challenges and not what I would usually write. canon character deaths. Dark Magic.
Summary: Sirius escapes the veil and is thrown forward in time into an awkward situation.
Challenge: Saturday Night Drabbles

( story! )

Title: Black
Author: janus
Characters: Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore
Rating: G
Word Count: 300
Warnings: out of character
Summary: Severus is obliged to don a Halloween costume for the feast. He does.
Challenge: Saturday Night Drabbles

( story! )

Title: Medicinal Cocoa
Author: janus
Characters: Severus Snape, Poppy Pomfrey
Rating: G
Word Count: 200
Warnings: het
Summary: Poppy encounters Severus outside on a cold night collecting ingredients for her potions.
Challenge: Saturday Night Drabbles

( story! )

Title: Contrast
Author: janus
Characters: Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, misc. OC
Rating: NC-17 for violence
Word Count: 717
Warnings: Extreme violence, Dark ideas
Summary: After a Death Eater murder, Severus and Lucius demonstrate the differences in their characters.
Challenge: For the_iscariot

( story! )

You may see it drawn HERE.

Severus was the big hit of the Magic Convention Cruise!
All the magicians were amazed and impressed with his levitation trick!

Watch it being drawn HERE!

I'm having computer problems with the heat, but Severus was counting on me to give him a proper holiday! How could I let him down? I'm giving him my holiday.

Rabastan

Rabastan stands by the open window, curtain drawn slightly to the side so he can peer out onto the street, lost in thought. Today they are going out to buy the plants that they had decided on, having poured over all the books and debated over what would be best for their garden. Though Rabastan has been outside whenever he has had the chance, the only person he has interacted with has been Severus. And seeing children running up and down the street, the occasional adult talking to another over hedges, and groups of teens walking up and down the block like small gangs, makes him a bit… apprehensive. He doesn’t like the thought of walking amongst people, about the inevitable brushes of shoulders or bumps into his person, and he somehow feels as if he is too weak to handle such indifferent interaction. Each will jar him to his bones, it feels, until they rattle them from their sockets and Rabastan will be left skeletal on the sidewalk. It doesn’t help that he is not allowed his wizarding robes, as shabby as they are, for they are going to a muggle market and undoubtedly he would stand out. But now he is even more aware of how thin he has become, the bones in his wrists jutting out like the end of a wand, and he can feel his ribs beneath his fingers when he breathes. And though the clothes fit as well as he could have hoped, they are alien. Strange. He walked a few curious paces around the room to see how they felt, and it was disjointed. The top and the bottom were separate entities, and it looks odd to be able to see his legs go through the motion of walking. Bellatrix would scoff, he knew, if she would see him dressed such, would narrow her dark eyes as if she could burn such offending garments off of him with her disdain alone. The old Rodolphus would have laughed, delighted at his no doubt clownish appearance. For a moment he is both sad that they are not here, disapproving and mocking, and glad that they are not. They are not the same people anymore, either. It would be hard, to know how they would react. Everything feels odd, surreal, as if Rabastan is not here. But where else would he be?

But, he reasons to himself as he lets the curtains fall closed, turning to head downstairs, that he has kept Severus waiting long enough. He is a convict yes, but not to muggles. He is nobody to them. The thought is as comforting as it is terrifying. He can be anyone now. He can be no one. It is all up to him. And for the moment, he wants to be a nobody. He feels as insubstantial as one, as foreign. Being here has already been therapeutic, he is excited to start a garden, he can safely say, but a trip to the market? What can he expect? But even prisoners have to be let out sometime, he supposes, or else they just wilt and die. And Rabastan has fought too long and hard to do the latter. So, nervously, ignoring the urge to fidget like a child in hand me down clothing, he descends the stairs, looking for Severus.

“I am ready.” He says when he finds his friend, even if the words are rather far from the truth.

You may watch it being drawn HERE!

Title: Severus Visits Paris Alone
Character(s): Severus
Pairing(s): None
Rating: G
Warning(s): None.
Challenge(s): snape100 #287: The Solar System: Mars
Word count: 100
Author's notes: April 5, 1794 Danton, Desmoulins et al were beheaded at the Place de la Révolution. Desmoulins had led the assault on the Bastille in 1789. You probably know, but just in case...

Usually, Severus takes vacation at school, which is home; or Spinners End, which is not. Easter, 1994 he crosses the channel to Paris - 200 years after another failed revolution.

He stands in the centre of the Champ de Mars, his black high-buttoned clothing appearing almost revolutionary. Marat perhaps, though he is the age the young adjutant - Desmoulins - died.

He stretches out his arms in shape of crucifixion, to feel some trace of surging idealism gone awry, ending in rivers of blood. He tries. The breeze touches his cheek, but no finger of the cold past.

His friends are in Azkaban.

When... we stormed through the wall - of the prison - they told us - would outlast us all.

Sign-ups open until June 30!

There is half a month left for sign ups, time enough to spread the word and invite your friends.

Sign ups are open for writers, artists/artisans and betas/cheerleaders.
This isn't a traditional big bang, we are open to almost anything. We want for our birthday boy to have a resounding bang of your creativity as a gift, no matter which genre or ship you prefer.

So, please read the Rules and our steadily growing FAQ, and sign up.

The sign up posts can be found here:

For fic: Writer sign up page

For art and crafts: Artist and artisan sign up page

For betas and cheerleaders: Beta and cheerleader sign up page

Though you may not have time or inclination to sign up to write, do artwork, or make something special, we enthusiastically welcome betas and cheerleaders!

by Arrogant Mage


"I'm not your imaginary friend," the brown-haired boy insisted.

"There's no such place as Midgard, or Flenceburg. The most famous wizard is not some woman named Lorenta, it's Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of my school. There's no such place as Valhalla except in mythology and folktales. And there is no way you can do the things you say you can do." Severus rattled off the list of his reasons, eyes shut tight against the once-welcome visitor. "I don't believe in you. I made you up when I was lonely, and I don't need you any more."

The brown-haired boy laughed. It was no longer a comforting sound. "You made up my name?"

"That's why it's such a preposterous name. Lezard Valeth. Like a fairy-tale name."

"You never had any use for fairy tales," said the brown-haired boy. "You were always too old for those stories, even when you were young. You and I are alike in that too. Those books are only good as quarries for what's true in them. The Deathly Hallows, for instance, hmm? The Philosopher's Stone? I'm still looking for the Philosopher's Stone, here in Midgard, and one day soon I'll find it, you know."

Severus resisted the temptation to plug his ears with his fingers. It would be childish, and the imaginary boy would laugh at him, if he did that. "Go away. I have a real life now. I'm going to have a patron, and be a potions master."

"I will be a greater patron than any old man your world can offer," the boy insisted. Boy, really, still; though he and Severus were both sixteen now -- Severus sixteen, anyway, and the other boy at least that old. "And I will have more wealth than any of them, too. Forget Slytherin; what other friends do you need? I can travel between dimensions already, and soon I'll be able to bring you back with me..."

"You're imaginary," Severus snapped. "Enough!"

The voice was silent for a moment, and behind screwed-shut eyelids Severus wondered if that had done the trick, banished the illusion. This time there was not even the laughter he'd grown half to love, half to dread.

Instead -- a weight tugged the pillow his head rested on, a soft clove-scented breath stirred his lank hair. Lips brushed Severus' ear.

"Can an imaginary friend do this?"