rarepairs_mod (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rarepairs_mod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rarepair_shorts2010-02-13 10:34 am
rarepairs_mod) wrote in rarepair_shorts2010-02-13 10:34 am
Fic for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellychambliss
Author: tetleythesecond
Recipient:kellychambliss
Title: Sous le ciel…
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2,000
Warning: some language (or other)
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall has one more thing to do.
Author's Notes: This is brought to you with the help of a beta whom I badly want to serenade with a valse-musette for her help and patience. Dearkellychambliss, thank you for a prompt so full of wonderful pairings. I fervently hope I could do it some justice!
People who didn’t know the woman who strode down rue Chabanais one morning in May would naturally have thought that she was going to work. Not in one of the fashion shops of avenue Montaigne or even the less upmarket Forum des Halles, for sure, given that neither the cut nor the shade of her dress were exactly what you wanted that season, but perhaps a desk job at the Hôtel de Ville or the Palais de Justice. Or the Bibliothèque Nationale. Senior level, on the homestretch to retirement. She had that slightly weary look, despite the briskness of her gait.
They’d have attested her confidence and probably brains. And they might have thought that she’d spent a quiet night in a single bed, with a book or a cat at most, unless they were the types who couldn’t look at a woman with a bun and an upright posture without their fancies taking wilder flights. But however their minds worked, they probably wouldn’t have believed her to have evacuated a school, organized and fought a life-and-death battle, duelled scores of enemies and one dear friend, experienced mortal fear, white-hot rage, relief and deepest grief—all within the last nine hours.
How could they.
She hardly believed it herself.
Minerva McGonagall slowed down as she reached a building whose blue neon lights identified it as a bar. This had to be it. She unfolded a small piece of parchment.
Le Licorne qui rit.
Poppy had said that it was enough to think it.
She stepped back.
No-one of the people who pushed past her on the pavement with a “pardon”, an “excusez-moi”, or a simple “tut” took any notice of the two tenements that contracted with deep, nasal moans, much like accordions in the hands of a non-player. They paid no mind to the soft shimmer in the space that emerged between the buildings, or the façade that appeared where seconds before there had been nothing but a copper pipe and a crack in the plaster. It was light grey, like all of them, and moderately clean. Slightly rusty wrought-iron banisters and a petunia here and there adorned French windows, and a relief of a laughing unicorn greeted from above the door.
So that was it.
That was where Wilhelmina had spent the last eight months.
Minerva reached into her bag for a handkerchief.
Curse the lime-tree flowers.
~~~
Poppy and Pomona had kept the secret. With the Carrows at Hogwarts, with Minerva as exposed as she was, and with Wilhelmina refusing to register with Umbridge’s office, the four of them had agreed that it would be best for Minerva and Willa to part until all of it was over. For better or for worse. And Minerva had agreed, reluctantly, that she shouldn’t know Willa’s whereabouts until it was safe for both. Legilimens and lack of scruples were a lethal mix. They’d seen its effects.
As to fleeing together, they hadn’t even discussed that. Neither woman would have forgiven herself, had Minerva abandoned Hogwarts. And, quite honestly, neither was sure if being on the run together, sharing cramped hotel rooms, guilt and paranoia, being forced into inactivity and dependence on a few good souls was good for the love of two headstrong elderly ladies, each of whom needed her space. And one of whom bore the nickname Snore-kack.
So they had endured it. Sending letters, on occasion, letters that carefully (if not always successfully) tried for the fine line between sparing the other unnecessary worries and taking her for a fool. They’d sent them through Pomona, who’d passed them on to Olympe through some channel or other. As long as Olympe had been alive, that was.
And then, suddenly, the battle was over. The dead had been recovered, the injured tended to, the survivors safely assembled, and Minerva had slumped down on a chair in a corner of the Great Hall, well out of sight from the crowd. Feeling frail, exhausted, older than ever. Old.
Poppy had caught her eye and approached her, holding a small piece of parchment that she slipped into Minerva’s hand. “I trust you’ll be fit for long-distance Apparition, my dear.”
Minerva had refused at first. So soon. She hadn’t even collected her thoughts. Would probably be needed around here, just wanted to catch a breath. There would be matters to… But after a stern glance from Pomona, who had already given the spokes of her wheelchair a hefty spin in order to head off Kingsley, (“My most hopeless charge a Minister now! Oh, if the Mimbulus Mimbletonia you traumatized into premature shrivelling had lived to see the day!”), Minerva disappeared behind the small door near the High Table and pictured a tiny alleyway behind the Old Paris Stock Exchange.
That had been half an hour ago.
~~~
A bell rang as Minerva entered the narrow, gloomy reception area.
When her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she saw a woman sitting behind the desk. Not a girl any more, judging by the fine lines around her dark eyes, though a thick shock of shoulder-length, blond hair and smooth, full cheeks spoke of either a dab hand at preservation charms or remarkably good genes. Both, most likely. The woman was leisurely leafing through an issue of Sorcière-Hebdo, a cigarette in a perfectly-manicured hand. From the wireless on the counter, a voice like a bubble bath was praising some new dairy product that tasted of baby chicken, or whatever coquelicots were. It had been a while since Minerva’s last French lesson.
“Madame Dorléac?”
The woman looked up, a pleasant but distant expression in her face. “Oui?”
Minerva took a breath. Paris could be so lovely. If only … “Je… je voudrais voir Mme Grubbly-Plank, s’il vous plaît.”
The woman put aside her magazine and gave Minerva an intense look.
“So you’re the one.”
Orange-coloured lips let out a plume of white smoke.
“Difficult colour, green.”
Minerva raised an eyebrow. It would be a cheap pleasure to tint her emerald dress just a tiny bit toward the common-tree-froggish. A temptation she could easily resist.
But Minerva McGonagall felt that she had done her share of resisting for the day.
The blonde broke into a hint of a one-sided smile, deposited her cigarette in an ashtray, and scribbled something on a notepad.
“No need for a security question, I see. Medium emerald to deep lime without a wand; you must be the professor herself.”
She ripped the sheet off its pad and handed it to Minerva.
“Jardin des Tuileries. One of the park benches on the southern flank. That’s her place on Mondays. Just follow the dogs.”
She took a last puff of her cigarette, stubbed it out, and took the magazine back to hand.
“About time you came.”
~~~
Paris in May was lovely. There was nothing yet of the stifling summer heat that drove all Parisians who could afford it out of the city each mid-July. Trees in bright shades of green lined the river and the parks, and fathers had come out with their children to let small, wooden sailboats crisscross the minuscule pond in the Tuileries.
Buses discharged their loads of Italians, Germans, and Japanese at rue de Rivoli. A small group of middle-aged Dutch was conferring over a map. Two backpackers were kissing by a bus-stop.
Minerva had no eyes for them.
She strode along the streets, tapped her foot at a traffic light that took forever to change – she didn’t dare interfere with it; some things were better left to Muggles – and crossed the Tuileries, circling tourists, construction sites, and ice-cream vendors with little patience but nearly unfailing composure.
At the southern side of the park, something caught her eye. An old man in a shabby coat, carrying a scruffy mutt of an indefinite colour. A young woman with untidy hair and torn clothes, walking slowly next to a large, limping mongrel.
Follow the dogs.
Minerva looked down the tree-lined gravel path. What she saw there was almost a procession. A tiny yelper in the arms of an almost-as-tiny old woman. A Great Dane of monstrous proportions, with a gash on its too-skinny flank, wincing as its owner, who looked barely fit to be out of a hospital himself, tried to coax, lure, and pull it onward.
And there, on a bench...
She stopped still. Hardly felt how someone bumped into her, muttering an excuse in some Slavic language. The chatter, the honking of the cars on rue du Quai, the chipper tone of a tour guide blended into each other, faded into background noise for the pulse in her chest and her temples, for her breath that she forced to keep going.
For there, on a bench between two cherry trees, frowning as she examined what must be the front end of an exceedingly hairy dog, then taking off a thin glove as she began rummaging in her healer’s bag, was Willa.
A guardsman with a Rottweiler caught Minerva’s gaze and approached her.
“Quite a sight, isn’t she? Comes every week. Attracts quite a colourful crowd. Homeless people, poor people, runaway teenagers. It’s forbidden, but I leave her.” He looked at his dog. “Saved him once, too. Poisoned treats.” He shook his head. “Some people…”
“Yes,” Minerva said, absent-mindedly. “Quite a sight.”
She left guardsman where he was and took a few more steps.
Willa had grown thinner. Greyer, too, her back a bit rounder, her chin a bit more prominent. She wore a pair of Muggle khakis, light brown where they weren’t sprinkled with the imprints of paws and muzzles in all sizes. And a white shirt, sparkling clean, its sleeves rolled up. The sight made Minerva’s fingers clench around the crumpled handkerchief in her bag. “Nonsensical colour for a shirt, white,” Willa had always said. “Can’t wear them for half a day.” She’d continued to hold that opinion even after she’d learned what the sight of her in a white shirt did to Minerva. But once in a while, she would wear one. Though not for more than half the day if Minerva had a say in it.
She didn’t know how long she stood there. Watching Willa apply a liquid into the dog’s eye. Check the pupils of a scrawny young girl; give her a satisfied pat on the cheek and a word of praise before turning to her Shepherd mix. Distract the owner of the Great Dane so he wouldn’t notice the flick of her hand that numbed the flesh around the gash.
All she knew was that all of a sudden, Willa looked at her.
Double-checked the bandage and handed the leash of the Dane back to the owner.
Got up.
And slowly, Minerva and Wilhelmina approached one another.
Step by step. Just as they’d circled each other during all those years. The seventies, when one was in a relationship and the other available, then the eighties, when it was the other way round. And later, when one was the other’s superior, not knowing if an advance would be proper, albeit probably welcome.
Inch by inch. Like their hands that had found each other at last, one Monday morning, when Willa had been examining Potter’s owl and asked Minerva to hold its wing. Inch by inch, like their lips had come together, almost, had it not been for Minerva accidentally leaning on the owl’s bad wing.
And breath by breath, as slowly as they had undressed, kissed, loved each other, first once, then night after night, two bodies that bore the marks of the years, two minds, independent, stubborn, unalike yet kindred.
Like that, they approached each other.
Their hands touched.
They looked into each other’s eyes.
And there was nothing slow about the way in which Minerva flung her arms around Willa’s neck, and they held each other, closely, tightly, kissing a cheek, the corner of a mouth that had acquired another crease or two, a pair of lips that had become a bit softer, gingerly, fondly, then ardently, celebrating the touch and the warmth and the aliveness of each other, right on the gravel path of the southern flank of the Jardin des Tuileries.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
“Shameless display,” growled a man as he walked past the two strange-looking, elderly women who were kissing – passionately, his wife would say – in the middle of the park alley.
“Yes, Vernon,” his wife said.
And sighed.
tetleythesecondRecipient:
kellychamblissTitle: Sous le ciel…
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall/Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2,000
Warning: some language (or other)
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall has one more thing to do.
Author's Notes: This is brought to you with the help of a beta whom I badly want to serenade with a valse-musette for her help and patience. Dear
kellychambliss, thank you for a prompt so full of wonderful pairings. I fervently hope I could do it some justice! People who didn’t know the woman who strode down rue Chabanais one morning in May would naturally have thought that she was going to work. Not in one of the fashion shops of avenue Montaigne or even the less upmarket Forum des Halles, for sure, given that neither the cut nor the shade of her dress were exactly what you wanted that season, but perhaps a desk job at the Hôtel de Ville or the Palais de Justice. Or the Bibliothèque Nationale. Senior level, on the homestretch to retirement. She had that slightly weary look, despite the briskness of her gait.
They’d have attested her confidence and probably brains. And they might have thought that she’d spent a quiet night in a single bed, with a book or a cat at most, unless they were the types who couldn’t look at a woman with a bun and an upright posture without their fancies taking wilder flights. But however their minds worked, they probably wouldn’t have believed her to have evacuated a school, organized and fought a life-and-death battle, duelled scores of enemies and one dear friend, experienced mortal fear, white-hot rage, relief and deepest grief—all within the last nine hours.
How could they.
She hardly believed it herself.
Minerva McGonagall slowed down as she reached a building whose blue neon lights identified it as a bar. This had to be it. She unfolded a small piece of parchment.
Le Licorne qui rit.
Poppy had said that it was enough to think it.
She stepped back.
No-one of the people who pushed past her on the pavement with a “pardon”, an “excusez-moi”, or a simple “tut” took any notice of the two tenements that contracted with deep, nasal moans, much like accordions in the hands of a non-player. They paid no mind to the soft shimmer in the space that emerged between the buildings, or the façade that appeared where seconds before there had been nothing but a copper pipe and a crack in the plaster. It was light grey, like all of them, and moderately clean. Slightly rusty wrought-iron banisters and a petunia here and there adorned French windows, and a relief of a laughing unicorn greeted from above the door.
So that was it.
That was where Wilhelmina had spent the last eight months.
Minerva reached into her bag for a handkerchief.
Curse the lime-tree flowers.
~~~
Poppy and Pomona had kept the secret. With the Carrows at Hogwarts, with Minerva as exposed as she was, and with Wilhelmina refusing to register with Umbridge’s office, the four of them had agreed that it would be best for Minerva and Willa to part until all of it was over. For better or for worse. And Minerva had agreed, reluctantly, that she shouldn’t know Willa’s whereabouts until it was safe for both. Legilimens and lack of scruples were a lethal mix. They’d seen its effects.
As to fleeing together, they hadn’t even discussed that. Neither woman would have forgiven herself, had Minerva abandoned Hogwarts. And, quite honestly, neither was sure if being on the run together, sharing cramped hotel rooms, guilt and paranoia, being forced into inactivity and dependence on a few good souls was good for the love of two headstrong elderly ladies, each of whom needed her space. And one of whom bore the nickname Snore-kack.
So they had endured it. Sending letters, on occasion, letters that carefully (if not always successfully) tried for the fine line between sparing the other unnecessary worries and taking her for a fool. They’d sent them through Pomona, who’d passed them on to Olympe through some channel or other. As long as Olympe had been alive, that was.
And then, suddenly, the battle was over. The dead had been recovered, the injured tended to, the survivors safely assembled, and Minerva had slumped down on a chair in a corner of the Great Hall, well out of sight from the crowd. Feeling frail, exhausted, older than ever. Old.
Poppy had caught her eye and approached her, holding a small piece of parchment that she slipped into Minerva’s hand. “I trust you’ll be fit for long-distance Apparition, my dear.”
Minerva had refused at first. So soon. She hadn’t even collected her thoughts. Would probably be needed around here, just wanted to catch a breath. There would be matters to… But after a stern glance from Pomona, who had already given the spokes of her wheelchair a hefty spin in order to head off Kingsley, (“My most hopeless charge a Minister now! Oh, if the Mimbulus Mimbletonia you traumatized into premature shrivelling had lived to see the day!”), Minerva disappeared behind the small door near the High Table and pictured a tiny alleyway behind the Old Paris Stock Exchange.
That had been half an hour ago.
~~~
A bell rang as Minerva entered the narrow, gloomy reception area.
When her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she saw a woman sitting behind the desk. Not a girl any more, judging by the fine lines around her dark eyes, though a thick shock of shoulder-length, blond hair and smooth, full cheeks spoke of either a dab hand at preservation charms or remarkably good genes. Both, most likely. The woman was leisurely leafing through an issue of Sorcière-Hebdo, a cigarette in a perfectly-manicured hand. From the wireless on the counter, a voice like a bubble bath was praising some new dairy product that tasted of baby chicken, or whatever coquelicots were. It had been a while since Minerva’s last French lesson.
“Madame Dorléac?”
The woman looked up, a pleasant but distant expression in her face. “Oui?”
Minerva took a breath. Paris could be so lovely. If only … “Je… je voudrais voir Mme Grubbly-Plank, s’il vous plaît.”
The woman put aside her magazine and gave Minerva an intense look.
“So you’re the one.”
Orange-coloured lips let out a plume of white smoke.
“Difficult colour, green.”
Minerva raised an eyebrow. It would be a cheap pleasure to tint her emerald dress just a tiny bit toward the common-tree-froggish. A temptation she could easily resist.
But Minerva McGonagall felt that she had done her share of resisting for the day.
The blonde broke into a hint of a one-sided smile, deposited her cigarette in an ashtray, and scribbled something on a notepad.
“No need for a security question, I see. Medium emerald to deep lime without a wand; you must be the professor herself.”
She ripped the sheet off its pad and handed it to Minerva.
“Jardin des Tuileries. One of the park benches on the southern flank. That’s her place on Mondays. Just follow the dogs.”
She took a last puff of her cigarette, stubbed it out, and took the magazine back to hand.
“About time you came.”
~~~
Paris in May was lovely. There was nothing yet of the stifling summer heat that drove all Parisians who could afford it out of the city each mid-July. Trees in bright shades of green lined the river and the parks, and fathers had come out with their children to let small, wooden sailboats crisscross the minuscule pond in the Tuileries.
Buses discharged their loads of Italians, Germans, and Japanese at rue de Rivoli. A small group of middle-aged Dutch was conferring over a map. Two backpackers were kissing by a bus-stop.
Minerva had no eyes for them.
She strode along the streets, tapped her foot at a traffic light that took forever to change – she didn’t dare interfere with it; some things were better left to Muggles – and crossed the Tuileries, circling tourists, construction sites, and ice-cream vendors with little patience but nearly unfailing composure.
At the southern side of the park, something caught her eye. An old man in a shabby coat, carrying a scruffy mutt of an indefinite colour. A young woman with untidy hair and torn clothes, walking slowly next to a large, limping mongrel.
Follow the dogs.
Minerva looked down the tree-lined gravel path. What she saw there was almost a procession. A tiny yelper in the arms of an almost-as-tiny old woman. A Great Dane of monstrous proportions, with a gash on its too-skinny flank, wincing as its owner, who looked barely fit to be out of a hospital himself, tried to coax, lure, and pull it onward.
And there, on a bench...
She stopped still. Hardly felt how someone bumped into her, muttering an excuse in some Slavic language. The chatter, the honking of the cars on rue du Quai, the chipper tone of a tour guide blended into each other, faded into background noise for the pulse in her chest and her temples, for her breath that she forced to keep going.
For there, on a bench between two cherry trees, frowning as she examined what must be the front end of an exceedingly hairy dog, then taking off a thin glove as she began rummaging in her healer’s bag, was Willa.
A guardsman with a Rottweiler caught Minerva’s gaze and approached her.
“Quite a sight, isn’t she? Comes every week. Attracts quite a colourful crowd. Homeless people, poor people, runaway teenagers. It’s forbidden, but I leave her.” He looked at his dog. “Saved him once, too. Poisoned treats.” He shook his head. “Some people…”
“Yes,” Minerva said, absent-mindedly. “Quite a sight.”
She left guardsman where he was and took a few more steps.
Willa had grown thinner. Greyer, too, her back a bit rounder, her chin a bit more prominent. She wore a pair of Muggle khakis, light brown where they weren’t sprinkled with the imprints of paws and muzzles in all sizes. And a white shirt, sparkling clean, its sleeves rolled up. The sight made Minerva’s fingers clench around the crumpled handkerchief in her bag. “Nonsensical colour for a shirt, white,” Willa had always said. “Can’t wear them for half a day.” She’d continued to hold that opinion even after she’d learned what the sight of her in a white shirt did to Minerva. But once in a while, she would wear one. Though not for more than half the day if Minerva had a say in it.
She didn’t know how long she stood there. Watching Willa apply a liquid into the dog’s eye. Check the pupils of a scrawny young girl; give her a satisfied pat on the cheek and a word of praise before turning to her Shepherd mix. Distract the owner of the Great Dane so he wouldn’t notice the flick of her hand that numbed the flesh around the gash.
All she knew was that all of a sudden, Willa looked at her.
Double-checked the bandage and handed the leash of the Dane back to the owner.
Got up.
And slowly, Minerva and Wilhelmina approached one another.
Step by step. Just as they’d circled each other during all those years. The seventies, when one was in a relationship and the other available, then the eighties, when it was the other way round. And later, when one was the other’s superior, not knowing if an advance would be proper, albeit probably welcome.
Inch by inch. Like their hands that had found each other at last, one Monday morning, when Willa had been examining Potter’s owl and asked Minerva to hold its wing. Inch by inch, like their lips had come together, almost, had it not been for Minerva accidentally leaning on the owl’s bad wing.
And breath by breath, as slowly as they had undressed, kissed, loved each other, first once, then night after night, two bodies that bore the marks of the years, two minds, independent, stubborn, unalike yet kindred.
Like that, they approached each other.
Their hands touched.
They looked into each other’s eyes.
And there was nothing slow about the way in which Minerva flung her arms around Willa’s neck, and they held each other, closely, tightly, kissing a cheek, the corner of a mouth that had acquired another crease or two, a pair of lips that had become a bit softer, gingerly, fondly, then ardently, celebrating the touch and the warmth and the aliveness of each other, right on the gravel path of the southern flank of the Jardin des Tuileries.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
“Shameless display,” growled a man as he walked past the two strange-looking, elderly women who were kissing – passionately, his wife would say – in the middle of the park alley.
“Yes, Vernon,” his wife said.
And sighed.
no subject
Just a few of the things that delighted me:
--the "warning" -- haha!
--Paris. In May. (Only idiot American tourists [like the delighted idiot who received this fic] would go in July. It's hot then.)
--The wonderfully magical way that the Laughing Unicorn manifests itself.
--Minerva's French. (Quite similar to that of a certain idiot American who went to Paris in July; took me a while to puzzle out "Sorcière-Hebdo.")
--"Follow the dogs."
--The white shirt (yowzah!! *fans self*)
--The so-sharply-characterized blond with the cigarette and the color critique.
--The excellent cameos from Poppy, Pomona, and (sniff) Olympe.
--The entire inspired "step-by-step / inch-by-inch / breath-by-breath" section. Loved that part, just loved it. (And I can't tell you how happy I am to have a behind-the-scenes version of the Harry's-owl bit. I'm actually writing my own version right now, for a story of my own with this pairing.) So romantic -- and then Min leans on the poor bird's wing! Ahahaha!
--That wonderful opening: the journey from the first line to Minerva's name is perfectly paced, with each word so precisely revealing.
--Vernon
Some lines I adored:
two tenements that contracted with deep, nasal moans, much like accordions in the hands of a non-player Great simile; so descriptive
unless they were the types who couldn’t look at a woman with a bun and an upright posture without their fancies taking wilder flights. Some people have such perverse imaginations.
The sight made Minerva’s fingers clench around the crumpled handkerchief in her bag Such a telling image; we know just what she feels.
As to fleeing together, they hadn’t even discussed that. Neither woman would have forgiven herself, had Minerva abandoned Hogwarts. And, quite honestly, neither was sure if being on the run together, sharing cramped hotel rooms, guilt and paranoia, being forced into inactivity and dependence on a few good souls was good for the love of two headstrong elderly ladies, each of whom needed her space. And one of whom bore the nickname Snore-kack. I love this entire paragraph. It's so perceptive, IC, painful, and true -- and then you end it with just the right amount of humorous leavening, exactly as our stiff-upper-lip heroines would do.
two strange-looking, elderly women who were kissing – passionately Ah, yes -- perfection. No, wait, I mean ...a shameless display, shameless.
Dear Mystery Author, I serenade you and your lovely beta with an entire orchestra of glee and a Wagnerian chorus of squee.
I loved every word.
no subject
no subject
Only idiot American tourists [like the delighted idiot who received this fic] would go in July. Trust me, it's not half as idiotic as going in December. On a day trip. No special flight offer, however cheap, will ever tempt me to do a similarly silly thing again.
no subject
I really wish I could be more coherent, sicne this deserves loads of specific praise, but I think I just need to think about it a bit and get back to you.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
J'ai deux amours ...
People who didn’t know the woman who strode down rue Chabanais one morning in May would naturally have thought that she was going to work. Naturally. Even if they have the kind of perverted mind that cannot look at a woman with a bun and an upright posture without their fancies taking wilder flights, in the morning one would still assume work.
I love the homestretch to retirement, such a brilliant description.
like accordions in the hands of a non-player That hint of the bal-musette. Great.
a building whose blue neon lights identified it as a bar Who needs – what would the Parisian branch be called? Madame Chatoeiller? – when this is on offer? I’m already thinking how they may celebrate the reunion there. Beats the Weasley Patented Daydream anytime.
le licorne qui rit You really have a gift for magical diary products! Hilarious.
Minerva reached into her bag for a handkerchief.
Curse the lime-tree flowers.
Perfect, just perfect. Normally I take out blank lines to keep to a reasonable comment-length, but everything you’ve written in that blank line is too good to miss.
with Wilhelmina refusing to register with Umbridge’s office Love the idea of Willa as Muggle-born.
And one of whom bore the nickname Snore-kack. [Bad username or site: ”KellyChambliss” @ livejournal.com] beat me to rhapsodizing over this whole section. I couldn’t agree with her more.
As long as Olympe had been alive Zut alors doesn’t begin to express it. But since this an open post, I'll not go further.
older than ever. Old. Love the distinction between ‘older than ever’ and ‘old’.
Sorcière-Hebdo I want a subscription. Surely it must be more interesting than the British counterpart?
some new dairy product that tasted of baby chicken, or whatever coquelicots were. It had been a while since Minerva’s last French lesson. Laugh out loud funny. Trust witches to come up with this flavour. Great colour, great taste I think, and the magical side-effects one might hope for?
A small group of middle-aged Dutch was conferring over a map. Ah. If only … I want to hop over straight away, even though it will be cold.
she examined what must be the front end of an exceedingly hairy dog Love the way you put in a small touch of humour, just as we are chocking up.
But once in a while, she would wear one. Though not for more than half the day if Minerva had a say in it. Oh, the whole white shirt bit. I love it. The description, and again, everything you’re not saying.
unalike yet kindred. Stunning.
Re: J'ai deux amours ...
Funny, I hadn't even thought of possible side effects of poppyseed yogurt. Not that the girls should need them, I hope...
no subject
just brilliant - so far from the truth as could be.
Wilhelmina taking care of the dogs was so very nice and the ending with them seeing each other (sigh). And the last paragraph with Vernon - superb!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Apart from the lovely and colourful, three-dimensional background, this is really a wonderful, beautiful story. Beautiful descriptions of strong, alife characters, wonderful cameos, lovely inventions - the Sorcière-Hebdo is so perfect *big grin*. I just could hear Minerva's pronounciation and had to supress a wide grin at the thought.
The only thing that I could object is that it's so short, I would so love to read more of this pair from your feather!
I'm off reading it again...
no subject
Afraid I can't claim Sorcière-Hebdo. It's the official translation of Witch Weekly.
no subject
no subject
This is absolutely magnificent. So vivid and sensory - I can see it and feel it, very nearly smell it - and the characterisations were wonderful. Also, hee, 'difficult colour, green'. Nice intertextual reference, there *grin* *is a massive geek for that sort of thing*. Beautiful ending, too. I love that whole last section. It's so very real and packed with emotion and just gah. Love.
no subject
no subject
I knew this one was you. Knew it *g*.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Because I prefer the immediate illusion that I’m sharing the protagonist’s experience,) I don’t usually care for openings which show the characters from an outsider’s or omniscient narrator’s perspective, but your first paragraphs work excellently. I even get the impression that Minerva could assume that outsiders see her like that, and there isn’t any information she doesn’t possess, is there? Above all, of course, the contrast between the outside image and her recent experiences open the story effectively – and appropriately, too, because it’s soon followed by the essential account of Minerva’s need to leave the scene of those experiences so soon and to come abruptly to experience something completely different.
And then – or rather all along – the vivid, atmospheric, detailed, also humorous descriptions of the setting and people around. The clever remarks, the clever omissions of unnecessary explanations, e.g. of spelling out the reasons why the white shirt would not be worn for more than half a day – or why Willa might have chosen to wear it today. Just wonderful all around.
The whole of the story’s slow progress towards Willa fits perfectly what Minerva’s thoughts reveal to us about the development towards their relationship. And that development is shown to us excellently, in turn, within the final moments when they slowly get so close, to revel in the solidity of each other.
This became terribly convoluted, but I must post, in my longing for such love and intimate connection your writing has evoked.
Your comment on Sous le ciel...
Again, thank you for reading and commenting!
no subject
no subject