fic rec: The Fire and the Rose (Severus/Hermione, NC-17, humour/romance)

[arcanetrivia]

I think it was hobgoblinn who recommended The Fire and the Rose to me as a way of stomaching Severus/Hermione?

Well, it worked.

The fact that most of the plot was the farce of dealing the bodyswap went a long way towards making me temporarily forget that I don't like this pairing, and there were abundant quantities of good Snapevoice to boot (even though most of it, ironically, was actually Hermione acting the part). In fact, I even found myself mildly enjoying the erotic scenes rather than being squicked, since there was enough buildup that my disbelief finally managed to hover a few inches off the ground.

Best bit, I think, is from Chapter 26:

He looked at it curiously. "Pot Noodle" was written on the side; "Chicken'n'Mushroom flavour". Snape presumed it was some sort of food, and looked more closely at it. He found a list of ingredients and blanched - at least, he supposed this was food. The list read more like the ingredients for some Dark potion.

Comments

[helen99.livejournal.com]

"Best practice suggests the use 2g of tea - to a margin of error of plus or minus 2% - for every 100ml of water. It must be remembered that tea flavour and appearance will be affected by the hardness of the water used. The pot must be filled to within 4-6mm of the brim with freshly boiling water. After the lid has been placed on top, the pot must be left to brew for precisely six minutes. Milk should be added at a ratio of 1.75ml of milk for every 100ml of tea. The pot should be lifted with the lid held in place, then pour tea through the infused leaves into the cup. It goes without saying that one should always pour in the tea on top of the milk to prevent scalding the milk."

So that's the proper way to make tea... who knew.

I'm enjoying this. I think this works for me partially because they take quite a while to get to know each other ... er... themselves (uh, whoever), and partially because they're both essentially Snape throughout the story. Neither of them actually acts like Hermione too often, although one of them looks like her (much to 'his' chagrin).

The fact that the author keeps the pronouns from getting confused throughout the entire story is a miraculous accomplishment, imo...

[shalora.livejournal.com]

Now, granted, I'm only on chapter 12 at the moment, but I don't know that I'll ever get over Snape comparing Voldemort to a tampon, even inadvertently!