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Review: "When the Rose and the Fire Are One," by Perverse Idyll
Title: When the Rose and the Fire Are One
Author perverse_idyll
Rating NC 17
Warnings She warns for rough sex, but I wouldn't have seen it that way. I mean, what is a little nibbling between friends? There's a character death, but not in the main pairing and it's not harrowing. It's AU in terms of taking liberties with the ending of Book 7.
Word Count 81,000 elegant words. Save this one for when you have a whole afternoon free, eh?
Summary Harry's haunted by guilt. Snape's warded by roses. Each must free the other in order to free himself.

I don't know where to start. Perhaps first with my astonishment that this is the first HP fanfic that this author has ever written. As far as I know, the first story she's ever posted (hard as this is to believe, on the evidence). Where has she been hiding this light, I ask?

I'll admit it. Sometimes the Snarry palls, even for me. I've literally read hundreds upon hundreds and one's appetite is blunted, after a certain point. Even sated. But this story rekindled my taste for the pairing (as it did for

atrata, too) and made me realize all over again why I fell in love with it. I found myself comparing it to first one, then another of my favorite Snarries: its strengths reminded me, in turns, of In Between Days, Home Fries Nazi, Penance is the Play, a bit of the dynamic you get in Rex Luscus' stories, and several other wonderful Snarries. And yet, the story's central motifs are all its own. This story is, in some respects, the Platonic ideal of Snarry. Let me list the ways:

Plot Oh, yes. The plot is an elegant Catch-22: Harry and Snape are both trapped in different ways, each provoking the reader's compassion and mounting desperation, to see them escape. The solution is elegant.
Characterization Is master-class level, here. This is one of the top 10 Snape voices in all of Snape fanfic, for me. My God, what a tongue that man has on him. And Harry's voice is equally well-realized. There are also several engaging OCs, deftly sketched in and completely believable. There are small sideplots involving canon characters like George or Hermione that were utterly believable, and thought-provoking. This story makes all of them come alive for you; and her Snape is so compelling that I defy any non-Snape-centric reader to come away untouched. Are you tired of hearing H/D or other shippers say, "Oh, I just don't like Snape. He's just nasty"? Send them here.
Erotica: Holy Jesus on toast. This is jaw-droppingly good erotica. There's a dark, tense quality to the erotic attraction that rivals the best dark Snarry fanfic, but then again . . . it's not dark. The sex is completely consensual; Harry is certainly adult; and there is really no violence (apart from a slap). And yet the erotic attraction between them was so fraught, so tense that I was left wrung out.
Prose: OK, I'll admit it: she knows a lot of words. 50 cent words and not nickel words, too. And she uses them. Perhaps this story could have been a little more streamlined. But not much. The prose simply flows, packed with details and observations that made me pull up short, again and again. She's imagined so many details about how the wizarding world and households work, about magical theory, and about the nature of love. Her touch, when it comes to setting up a particular mood or atmosphere, is note-perfect.

One thing that made this story so satisfying is the skill with which the writer walks the line between what we might hope for in a romantic story and what we know to be true in this pairing: we might crave a happy ending, but we know that with Snarry, that is very unlikely. This story knows that while Snape and Harry are deeply engaged with each other in canon, that it's still not a relationship that can be simply asserted or assumed. You have to sell me on it. Show me how it happens. And this story does that: I think it would convince even a die-hard Snupin person that this pairing is plausible.

And the very qualities that make it hard to bring them together weigh against a happy ending. A "happily ever after" ending is usually hard to buy, for Snape and Harry (unless you really sell me on that, too. Like . . . . stranding them in Arizona with no magic and no one to understand but each other, I mean. Or the forced bond device, which is made for these two guys.). This story knows that it's just not that easy. It respects our intelligence, both in how it brings the two characters together and how it resolves their problems. And it ends on a note of hope.

And this is her first story. I sure hope it's not her last.