Rec: Salazar's Curse
May. 8th, 2013 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magnetic_poleSalazar's Curse, Snape/Yaxley, 7300 words, rated mature for sexual situations
Yaxley drew a long breath before answering. "I don't know," he said finally. "I just can't believe it. I – if it's true, then it means that there are probably more wizards out there as powerful as you and the Dark Lord, wizards who are not pure-bloods. I guess I can't believe that because if it were true, why wouldn't you have already gone up against us, already stopped this war?"
For me, there's nothing quite like fanfic that takes an individual action from canon and tries to figure out what needs to be true about society, more generally, in order for that action to make sense in the world the author has created. It's a delight for HP especially, because JKR has such a phenomenal sense of character and motivation and such strong world-building that you can't help but get caught up in it all as you read along, but when you close the book and take a step back there are fascinating gaps and contradictions. What is magical ability, and where does it come from? How is it related to power, status, or personality? What does blood purity have to do with anything, anyway? Why is it that humans with this particular set of abilities live among their own? And how does the wizarding world define and maintain itself in the face of the sheer number of Muggles out there? (Because really, if someone told you that you could either marry one of the kids you went to school with or select from the millions of other human beings living nearby, which would you chose?)
Salazar's Curse focuses on Snape in the aftermath of Dumbledore's apparent murder--more specifically, on the newfound status Snape must have enjoyed among the Death Eaters as they discovered he had killed one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Bellatrix now trusts him, which is disconcerting. Then Amycus Carrow propositions him, which Snape finds hard to take seriously. (Who finds Severus Snape attractive, anyway?) But he's already beginning to see what makes him different now that Dumbledore is dead:
his power. He had surprised them all when he had killed Dumbledore. They all believed that Dumbledore's power was so strong that it would take a group of them to do it, or the Dark Lord alone, to kill him. They had all been prepared for Draco to fail so that in the end, after an assembly of them had finally defeated Dumbledore, they could put the boy before the Dark Lord as a sign of the failure of the House of Malfoy – the elite, beautiful, silver-edged scions of the full-blood wizarding world.
They certainly had not been prepared for Severus to do it. Not a half-blood, certainly not the son of a squib.
Yaxley approaches him in his rooms that night, hard on the heels of Carrow's awkward proposal. He's more thoughtful than Carrow, and more open about what he's seeking. He doesn't understand how Snape--the son of a squib (there's some interesting and creative back story here) and a "dark" wizard, physically unlike the pale elite of the wizarding world--managed to kill Dumbledore or gain so much power. Snape's apparent magical power challenges what Yaxley's been taught to believe about the wizarding world and causes to him to wonder if things that seemed attractive to him before--light coloring, blood purity, an illustrious family tree--might be inadequate somehow, or weak, or even degenerate.
I love the way this fic picks up on the decidedly creepy physiognomy of the books (where the physical features of wizards indicate something about their abilities or personalities) and spells out the racism implicit there. I love the way it also constructs a complex genealogy for Snape that links him to the Blacks--the "dark" family to contrast with the blond Malfoys--and locates him at the center of a family scandal over blood purity and magical ability. It makes so much sense that these characters would obsess over family connections, magical ability, and the transmission of this ability from one generation to the next--to the point of finding them compelling reasons for physical attraction and romantic relationships--because these are the things that wizards seem to value as a way of distinguishing themselves from others.
Yaxley's proposal is unclear--does he want sex? Power? An alliance? Training or mentoring? Is he attracted to something exotic? To something transformative or radical? It's hard to tell, but the ambiguity might just be the point.
I rarely say this (see the bit about short fic in the previous post), but this story could have been twice as long, there's that much under the surface. A thinky fic--my highest praise!--and one you'll keep mulling over. Enjoy!
Yaxley drew a long breath before answering. "I don't know," he said finally. "I just can't believe it. I – if it's true, then it means that there are probably more wizards out there as powerful as you and the Dark Lord, wizards who are not pure-bloods. I guess I can't believe that because if it were true, why wouldn't you have already gone up against us, already stopped this war?"
For me, there's nothing quite like fanfic that takes an individual action from canon and tries to figure out what needs to be true about society, more generally, in order for that action to make sense in the world the author has created. It's a delight for HP especially, because JKR has such a phenomenal sense of character and motivation and such strong world-building that you can't help but get caught up in it all as you read along, but when you close the book and take a step back there are fascinating gaps and contradictions. What is magical ability, and where does it come from? How is it related to power, status, or personality? What does blood purity have to do with anything, anyway? Why is it that humans with this particular set of abilities live among their own? And how does the wizarding world define and maintain itself in the face of the sheer number of Muggles out there? (Because really, if someone told you that you could either marry one of the kids you went to school with or select from the millions of other human beings living nearby, which would you chose?)
Salazar's Curse focuses on Snape in the aftermath of Dumbledore's apparent murder--more specifically, on the newfound status Snape must have enjoyed among the Death Eaters as they discovered he had killed one of the most powerful wizards in the world. Bellatrix now trusts him, which is disconcerting. Then Amycus Carrow propositions him, which Snape finds hard to take seriously. (Who finds Severus Snape attractive, anyway?) But he's already beginning to see what makes him different now that Dumbledore is dead:
his power. He had surprised them all when he had killed Dumbledore. They all believed that Dumbledore's power was so strong that it would take a group of them to do it, or the Dark Lord alone, to kill him. They had all been prepared for Draco to fail so that in the end, after an assembly of them had finally defeated Dumbledore, they could put the boy before the Dark Lord as a sign of the failure of the House of Malfoy – the elite, beautiful, silver-edged scions of the full-blood wizarding world.
They certainly had not been prepared for Severus to do it. Not a half-blood, certainly not the son of a squib.
Yaxley approaches him in his rooms that night, hard on the heels of Carrow's awkward proposal. He's more thoughtful than Carrow, and more open about what he's seeking. He doesn't understand how Snape--the son of a squib (there's some interesting and creative back story here) and a "dark" wizard, physically unlike the pale elite of the wizarding world--managed to kill Dumbledore or gain so much power. Snape's apparent magical power challenges what Yaxley's been taught to believe about the wizarding world and causes to him to wonder if things that seemed attractive to him before--light coloring, blood purity, an illustrious family tree--might be inadequate somehow, or weak, or even degenerate.
I love the way this fic picks up on the decidedly creepy physiognomy of the books (where the physical features of wizards indicate something about their abilities or personalities) and spells out the racism implicit there. I love the way it also constructs a complex genealogy for Snape that links him to the Blacks--the "dark" family to contrast with the blond Malfoys--and locates him at the center of a family scandal over blood purity and magical ability. It makes so much sense that these characters would obsess over family connections, magical ability, and the transmission of this ability from one generation to the next--to the point of finding them compelling reasons for physical attraction and romantic relationships--because these are the things that wizards seem to value as a way of distinguishing themselves from others.
Yaxley's proposal is unclear--does he want sex? Power? An alliance? Training or mentoring? Is he attracted to something exotic? To something transformative or radical? It's hard to tell, but the ambiguity might just be the point.
I rarely say this (see the bit about short fic in the previous post), but this story could have been twice as long, there's that much under the surface. A thinky fic--my highest praise!--and one you'll keep mulling over. Enjoy!
