Flail, Part II
There are any number of lines I love:
His bones felt like slowly melting lead
"I'm proportionate!" I seriously screamed aloud at the glory of this fine Flitwickian felicitation.
as surely as an owl trainer was betrayed by his missing digits. Haha!
he quickly learned to keep mum about his hobby of dabbling with items on the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects. I love this sort of inspired detail of wizarding bureaucracy.
the beautifully studious Imogen Wiggins Now you've got me wanting Imogen Wiggins fic.
I was in the middle of pruning my Babbling Bush Ahaha! Double-entendre heaven.
She'd come, though, with forgiveness in her tea tin and reconciliation in her eyes Exquisite.
Your characterizations are as effective as your language, though of a piece, of course, since each informs the other. For instance, take your initial presentation of the world from Flitwick's perspective -- how spot-on is that? You hint delightfully at the sexual passion we find in him, and yet, of course it's realistic: his vision would be filled with balls and buttocks; no wonder a pair of enchantingly-lopsided breasts intrigues him.
Then there's the perceptive way you present the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff essences of both characters: Flitwick with his brilliance at charms, his subtly-presented dashing past; Pomona the nurturer who is all the more appealing for being unsentimental in her care-giving.
And I just adore the way you make Pomona's dirt and imperfections -- her crooked teeth, her dimpled thighs -- so wonderfully attractive. The flaws and follies of their sexual relationship are so poignant and so warmly-human at the same time that they're undeniably funny, as I think Filius and Pomona would be the first to admit.
Yet the so-real pain of it all, the misunderstandings, that breath-taking scene of Pomona's slap. This whole paragraph is simply brilliant: "You're beautiful when you come, y'know. Seeing you and touching you and being able to do . . . that with you--" Her voice quavered, recovered, and wobbled on. "--is more than enough pleasure for me." Without pausing, she slapped his cheek fiercely, wrapped her robes around her naked body, and stalked to the fireplace. As she reached for the Floo powder, she hissed, "I'm nobody's whore." Her ferocity and dignity juxtaposed with the delicacy of "You're beautiful when you come, y'know." Now this is writing.
And if the scene weren't powerful enough, you top yourself with this line: Filius lay there in silence for some time, his cheek stinging and a stray quill digging into his left buttock. That "stray quill" is a touch of genius. Absurd and pointed at the same time, it's an emblem of what I love about this story: how well you show us that all the "grands" of literature -- tragedy, love, passion, loss -- are not the province of only the heroic or the young or the beautiful. They're the lives of all of us, even those unglamorous heroes that the world too often would seem to cast as merely tertiary characters upon its stage. I'm not saying exactly what I mean, I'm afraid. But it's moments like this one that make this story so beautiful and funny and heartbreaking and satisfying that it brought me to tears.
I'm off to rec it now, like a madly-pleased thing.
(But I can't leave without saying how inspired the Weasley ending is. "I said you wouldn't believe me." Priceless. And Filius's ARTICLE -- omg. What a total Ravenclaw ftw. Seriously, you’ve reduced me to inarticulate netspeak fangirl flailing.)
(Okay, I was almost gone, but I'm back to say that the scene in the Shrieking Shack is beyond powerful. And this line -- the two twined hands and left in search of solitude and an intact teapot. Yes. Just. . .yes.)