Recs!

[rymenhild]

strangeselkie expressed to me the wish that (and I quote) "Sirius and Remus had..." Since the major reason to read fanfic in my world (at least that fanfic not written by ajhalluk, who is the best writer in fandom but believes that Lupin is straight) is to correct Rowling's omission,

Seven Things That Didn't Happen On Valentine's Day At Hogwarts, Or Maybe They Did by lupercali. Set during the seven years in which James, Sirius, Remus and Peter attended Hogwarts. Hilarious. The author rates it "R for language and psychosis" and summarizes it with the sentence "This is the weirdest Valentine's Day yet," Peter mused. / "But not 'ever,'" Remus said dryly.

Stealing Harry by copperbadge. I can't improve on the author's summary, so I'll just paste it in.
What would happen if Lucius Malfoy got to Peter before Sirius did? And if Sirius followed his godson, forbidden to do more than watch him from a distance? Until, one day, Harry found Padfoot...
Anyway, it's adorable. Remus and Sirius are too, too cute, and nothing is cuter than eight-year-old Harry. The AU setting permits the story to move in the general direction of Happy Ending, which is occasionally nice after the sobfest that is post-OotP Remus/Sirius. Some chapters come in two sets, kid-friendly and not kid-friendly, so ten-year-olds can read the story and R/S can still get some. Still a work in progress, but the author appears to be updating fairly regularly, and there are twenty lovely chapters to keep readers busy at the moment.

Sublimation and the Snitch by Remus Lupin, as ventriloquized by copperbadge. Not an R/S fic per se, but classic. Remus's senior thesis at Hogwarts explores everything Freudian about Quidditch. Best footnote: It has been observed that Jung was, in fact, a squib of Wizarding parentage, which may explain some of his views on the nature of the universe. To Muggles, these do seem a bit nutty.

Actually, I'll just rec everything copperbadge has ever written, although he does tend to set Remus up with just about everyone who's ever graduated from Hogwarts. (Which, I may note, is a large improvement on the rest of HP fandom. May I say that I don't get Remus/Hermione at all... although prosewitch will probably like the one by Laura Smith in which Hermione goes to a costume party as Little Red Riding Hood and Remus is the wolf. Rated Ewwwwww, Far Too Much Information For rymenhild To Deal With. Back to Remus/Sirius now.)

Ephemeris by penknife. Rated NC-17. In Grimmauld Place, Remus tries to decide whether to be prudent and keep emotional distance from Sirius... or not. I rather like the author's choice to have no prior relationship between S. and R. - this text feels like one of the ones most congruent to what we know of canon. Also, it's excellently written and horribly sad.

Beyond the Veil by Helene. The very best of the "He's not dead, he's getting better!" school of HP fans. If Rowling does decide a resurrection is in order, I'd hope she resurrects the man the same way Helene does. I would be really, really peeved if he comes back to life only to find true love with Nymphadora Sue or some equivalent. Great portrayals of all characters involved, but I especially like Helene's treatment of Snape. Rated PG-13. Sorry, there are popup ads.

It occurs to me that all but one of the stories I just recommended are linked at musesfool's recs journal unfitforsociety. While the stories above are my favorites, if you're looking for more Remus/Sirius, unfitforsociety has a list that incorporates most of the high-quality R/S out there. See also The Howl Kingdom, which archives all stories relating to the relationship that they refer to (horribly annoyingly) as "Puppy Love".

And, because I don't expect to be posting recs pretty often, I might as well recommend, to the few of you who are still reading, the best of the best in Harry Potter fandom. The collected works of ajhalluk, including two novels, an amazing novella crossover with the Vorkosigan books by Lois Bujold, three short stories and a number of snippets, are (in the opinion of many fans, among whom I include myself) actually better than Rowling's own writing. (This is not hard, but never mind..) I'm not going to tell you much about the plots or even the central characters and pairing in AJ Hall's writing - find out for yourself. They do, however, almost all take place after the graduation of Harry and his year from Hogwarts. Hall recommends reading the texts in roughly chronological order, but I personally would recommend starting with the novel Lust over Pendle. Rated R for language and violence, but all sex is offstage.

That should be enough to keep you all busy for a while. However, muchabstracted, feel free to post anything obvious I missed in the comments.

Comments

Yum! Thank you.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

We are muchly pleased. Thanks so much for taking the time!
Selkie

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

That seems pretty comprehensive. Although, if you're as lost to shame as I am, Azkaban's Lair has a lot of occasionally awful, mostly okay, and occasionally great stories.

Thank you for the link to AJ Hall's snippets. I was wondering where they were. I was just too lazy to ask you.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I am not *that* lost to shame. If I am dying for more reading material, I look for well-recced stories with other pairings or in other fandoms before stepping into the abyss that is random hunting among archive sites.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

You'll notice I didn't say I look in fanfiction.net for stories. Azkaban's Lair has a decent track record, and, okay, I'm pretty much lost to shame.

On the other hand, there are some awful well-recced stories. For the sake of kindness, I will avoid naming names. (Actually, rymenhild, that wasn't the particular awful, well-recced story I was thinking of. But that's another one.)

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

I'd second Helene's Beyond the Veil.

Piping up with a nearly random list of suggestions culled from my prior fic posts, none of which is actually Sirius/Remus, because most writers' versions of Sirius bug me (incl. JKR's in OotP) and I've begun avoiding him: these (http://www.livejournal.com/users/greythistle/51278.html), "Four Moments of Mourning (http://www.geocities.com/kanzeyori/4moments.html)" by permetaform, "To Sever the Lining from a Cloud (http://www.astronomytower.org/authors/textual/TSTLFAC.html)" by textualsphinx, The Palmer Method (http://www.thedarkarts.org/authorLinks/Cedar) (Percy/AK) by cedarlibrarian, and, if you like chess, Midnight by the Weasley Watch (http://fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1216035) (gen).

Oh, wait! "Christmas in August (http://www.riddikulus.org/authorLinks/Essayel/)" by essayel has Sirius and Remus, though as best friends; it's humorfic and slides a little ooc, but it's brilliant humorfic.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Always need more things to do when taking evening off. :)

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your kind words and recs.

On a point of information, however, I do not believe Lupin is straight. What I think he is, is bisexual. I also think that being a werewolf and broke having its disadvatages on the chatting up front, he takes his chances when they come. I am not a subscriber to the "werewolves mate for life" myth. If anything, I'd say he was probably self-sufficient to the point of being commitment-phobic.

I will however confess I don't see the Remus/Sirius OTP at all (though if anyone wants to put forward a theory that much of Pettigrew's actions can be explained by him having a massive unrequited crush on James, which James responded to with his customary delicate diplomacy, I'll be listening all ears).

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Thank you for dropping by, and for the correction!

I do like your Pettigrew / James theory muchly.

To be honest, though, I'm not sure my Sirius / Remus OTP springs from very much more than the fact that they were the first pairing I found in fandom, so I fell in love with the idea at once. Also, I tend to find the Marauders' generation on average much more interesting than Harry's generation.