13 Works by 181paperclips
Listing Works
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The little bracelet tells him that his name is Bartemius Crouch. Each night, with his chest aching like he's breathing in broken glass, he rolls the name around his tongue, spits it back into the air. Into the shaft of watery light from the corridor, which he’ll pretend is moonlight and not fluorescent strip lighting. The syllables don’t match his robes, don't fit right in his mouth. He hooks a finger into the bracelet and twists.
or;
Barty survives the Dementor's Kiss, loses his memories, and is consigned to St Mungo's. He's not one to let a little thing like memory loss get in his way.
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covered the wide waters by 181paperclips for whimsialt
Fandoms: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
07 Feb 2026
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The year Andromeda meets Perseus is the year the rains from Cyclone Cetus flood the Clarence River, the year the levee breaks and the whole town goes under, sandbags and flood warnings and evacuations be damned. She’d known, even then, that it’d barely make the news, but she’d still dreamed that some intrepid little drone would swoop low over the suburbs and capture her silhouetted in her bedroom window with the water rising over her ankles, knees, thighs.
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Andromeda and Perseus, but the *real* sea monster was the climate change we made along the way. -
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“How d’you think you’ll die?” Regulus asks, which is a normal question for a Tuesday. Barty thinks all Tuesdays are a bit morbid, especially the ones in which the sunset is bleeding red all over the sky and there's still dirt under his nails from burying his dead toad in the garden.
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it's the summer after second year, Barty's toad has just died, neither of them really know how to hold a funeral. -
i had rather walk than gather to thy side by 181paperclips
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
16 May 2025
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She'll die in the armchair in the sitting room, she thinks. Like an old cat, and the thought makes her grin, all wry and sour. She’ll return, pale and ghostly, in her wedding dress with wine spilled down the front, burgundy stains on creamy lace, and wail with wonderful fury.
No one decides when this vigil ends except her.
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The house is empty, and Mrs Crouch considers her choices. -
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Dorcas' initials are carved under the countertop at the Hog’s Head - right under the lip, a rough pair of letters scratched out with a stag handle pocket knife. Grooves in the wood, rubbed smooth by her fingers. She’d always sat under the rafters, where the pigeons spattered the floors with filth and feathers, for nigh on seventy years.
If the funeral had been up to him, well, Aberforth would’ve done it differently.
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Dorcas is dead. Aberforth mourns.
Series
- Part 2 of carrier pigeons were outcompeted by owls
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Magic, Dorcas' mother teaches her, is the rushing force of rivers and storms bottled up inside your chest. It is the wonder and peace of the wide blue open sky. Magic is a vulture, circling and circling inside until it dives, and it must be tamed, harnessed by your fingertips and pressed gently into the world as a single unbroken thread. Magic is not to make crowds applaud and fall starry-eyed at your feet. The best magic is the kind which barely seems like magic at all.
Dorcas disagrees.
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Dorcas Meadowes is born in 1877 and dies in 1981. A lot can happen in a lifetime of 104 years.Series
- Part 1 of carrier pigeons were outcompeted by owls
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starlight on broken columns by 181paperclips
Fandoms: The Oresteia - Aeschylus, Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
21 Dec 2024
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Three becomes two and two becomes one and all roads end with the stars blown off your windshield and the passenger seat empty and the dirt track dying out in rustling grass and empty winds. Electra was born at the end of the age of heroes and she’ll die after the last of them are buried.
(Electra drives and thinks about her family.)
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In September, maybe, when Evan had taken him to the train station, Pandora could’ve come and they could’ve walked through London together and pretended they were a proper family, and that she wasn’t married, and Felix wasn’t a bastard, and Evan wasn’t a Death Eater.
(Evan dies in December 1980. His brother finds out through the morning post.)
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No, Lily Evans isn’t having a cry in the fourth floor girls’ bathroom. She’s having a meltdown.
Lily can taste her gums, and that’s a new experience - they taste like metallic tap water and blood – like the taste of her own veins is leaching from under her skin to her tongue.
(An E in Potions isn't bad.)
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anywhere, nowhere, everywhere by 181paperclips
Fandoms: The Odyssey - Homer, EPIC - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Albums), Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
16 May 2024
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“Where am I, then?” She asks instead.
He knows this answer. She is in their bed in Ithaca, under their olive tree. Her hair has spilled over her shoulder like a wild running river. Her hands are gentle and strong and he does not deserve them.
“Home.” He says. “You’re home.”
(penelope comforts odysseus)
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bury it before it buries me by 181paperclips
Fandoms: The Iliad - Homer, The Odyssey - Homer, Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, EPIC - Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Albums)
02 Mar 2024
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It is a sharp-eyed stocky man, but the tilt of his head and the gore falling from his sword promise Andromache nothing. Her heart pounds, in her throat somewhere, and her child balls his fists in the fabric of her chiton. It is the snake of the Greeks, the king of Ithaca.
(just this once, Odysseus learns mercy)
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to the vultures by 181paperclips
Fandoms: The Iliad - Homer, The Odyssey - Homer, Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
01 Mar 2024
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It could've been her house, her and Clytemnestra, once. Before the bickering and the jealousy had grown up between them. Helen shut her eyes, lost herself for a second in the layers. Someone laughing, a shrieking child, the clattering of cutlery. Wished this could've been hers instead.
Penelope was arriving tomorrow – Helen wondered what she'd think of them both. Clytemnestra's words, maybe half-deserved, rang in her ears. Helen curled her hands into fists.
"You know what people are going to assume, right?" Paris' voice broke the silence. Helen opened her eyes.
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Helen, Clytemnestra and Penelope, and everything in between.
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Peter knows it won’t be a yes, but he writes home anyway, because there’s hope in Sirius’ eyes and Peter can’t just watch it go out. He starts to imagine it, then, almost thinks it could be nice, living with one of his best mates, and maybe he’ll finally be the friend he’s supposed to be, maybe this one gesture could make up for all the awkward draining silence and the stiffness of his comfort.
But he’s only seventeen, and it’s not his house to lend.
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The Potters die at the end of October.