but did you provoke him? by @RonsGirlsPatronus

advisories: consent issues, domestic abuse. 

this is a hard story. it's also a powerful story. snape has never been the most sympathetic of characters, to say the least, but in this melanie takes him and his family - and the glimpses we got of them in the original - and spins it out into this solemn, terrifying, spellbinding story. the themes running through it are disturbing and dark, but melanie deals with them with real, sensitive skill; nothing is exploitative or gratuitous and the characters are handled delicately and carefully, from snape and eileen, to lily and even tobias. 

if you can read it - and it's not a story for everyone - it's brilliant: it's gripping and horrifying and you'll be hooked on the central premise so so easily - who killed tobias snape?? it's a clever, twisting kind of thing and melanie's writing is packed full of beautifully cold and grim details and depth beyond the themes themselves which will linger with you: the way snape's walls are bare of posters or anything defining him as a teenager; the seething resentment which fills every interaction between snape and his mother; the swaggering way the hitwizards and aurors stumble into the whole situation - and alice longbottom, a lone voice of reason. it's a story about people, ultimately, and melanie's characters in everything are second to none and this - this shows that perfectly, if terrifyingly so.