As Potter Is to Snape

Creator: ScarlettWriter91
Rating: T/PG-13
Warning(s): mentions of child abuse
Word Count: 213,402
Summary:

Severus Snape has agreed to take in Harry Potter during the summer before his Third Year. Temporarily. Just until the end of summer and not a day longer. But secrets about Harry’s home life are being revealed and things are changing too fast for Harry to keep up. Can he and Snape survive their time together? If not, it’s going to make for a very long summer. I’ve moved up the blowing up of Marge to the very beginning of summer.

Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Petunia Dursley (née Evans), Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley, Severus Snape, Sirius Black, Vernon Dursley
Pairing(s): Albus/Minerva
Why You Should Check It Out:

This is a (slightly AU) Severitus story that manages to keep Severus in character even as it explores a side of him we don’t see in canon and that is often unbelievable in fic. Not here.

ScarlettWriter91 manages to thread the needle between depicting an in-character (read: grumpy, often mean) Snape and imagining the man he might have become had someone (anyone!) intervened during his miserable youth.

The depictions of PTSD and Severus’s methods of helping young Harry are so poignant and painful (and content warnings all around, BTW, for anyone potentially triggered by depictions of child abuse), and the story’s resolution so satisfying without being saccharine or unbelievable. (It’s actually a bit heartbreaking in a meta sort of way to see what might have become of Severus had he received any support as an adolescent.) Read it with a hankie close to hand.

Spoiler Alert!

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