crack_van | The Glorious Tenth of May by vissy (NC-17)

perverse_idyll back again to drive the Harry Potter van off the beaten path. Usually I'm all about reccing Snape fic, but this time around I want to explore unfamiliar byways, with lesser-known characters brought vividly to life by writers of extraordinary skill. I may still sneak my favorite Potions master in before the end, but the competition is stiff. Furthermore, the majority of this month's recs will be femslash. \o/

Well, except for the first two. I want to start the month with a rare pairing by one of my favorite writers.

Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Dudley Dursley/Piers Polkiss
Length: 5400
Author on LJ:

vissy
Author Website: None that I know of
Why this must be read:
I've never given much thought to Big D except as Harry's buffoonish and bullying cousin, and Piers is scarcely a blip on my radar. So you could say, when I clicked on this story, that I wasn't exactly looking to buy, and the fact that I went from zero to sixty in my love for these boys sent me into an aesthetic tizzy. A writer who can do that to me has my undying devotion.

It's been a year since the Dursley family disappeared from Privet Drive. Nobody seems able to recall them, except for Piers, who misses Dudley like blazes. This fic, set a week after the final Battle of Hogwarts, is the story of their reunion. Such a feast of words and such funny, insightful, ventriloqual, canon-transcendent and canon-perfect characterizations. These are rude, semi-articulate teenagers, ordinary and extraordinary, touched by magical matters that lie outside their ken. They will make you laugh and perhaps grimace a little with fondness. The language is visceral and individual and informal, a poetics of slang and inadvertent truths. Among the various pleasures is a smattering of marvelously physical sex between imperfect lads, perfectly phrased in the vulgar but desperately affectionate idiom of bosom pals. For me it was one of the brightest jewels of this year's

hp_beholder, and reading it made me happy.

~~#~~
Piers wasn't that cracked yet but he did believe Dudley was dead, lost to the winter's horrible mists. The pall had lifted in the last week or so, as if the planet had finally broken free of the Twilight Zone, but there'd been no word of Dudley. Piers spoke of his suspicions to no one; it wasn't like anyone would pay attention to him anyhow. Nobody else had seen the way Dudley's nutter of a cousin once set a giant snake on them. Nobody else knew about the scar on Dudley's bum (and Dudley never did get past the second hub of Hexen, he was so freaked out by the Porkalator) or the way his tongue sometimes lolled too long from his mouth. And Piers was the only one who'd ever witnessed Dudley's sobbing nightmares.

But ghosts and giants were make-believe, witchcraft was Hollywood stuff, Doctor Dolittle was just a stupid kid's book; Piers would be laughed out of the Little Whinging constabulary if he tried to suggest otherwise. Fat lot of good it did anyone if Piers got himself carted off to the loony bin -- and Dudley wouldn't be any less dead.

Piers scrubbed at his wet cheeks; it was just sweat, really, and the catkins making every inch of his face crawl with itches. Hunger gnawed and he angled back in the direction of the school, squinting against the sun as the light flickered through the canopy and dried his face. All winter he had had the strongest, strangest feeling the leaf burst would not come this year, but proof otherwise surrounded him, right on schedule; even the ash trees were coming into leaf. His outstretched fingers trailed at the bark, hunting for luck as he passed.

Then his hand found another hand, shockingly hot and strange in the quiet of the forest, and fingers wrapped about his wrist, pulling him to a halt.

The Glorious Tenth of May

The Glorious Tenth of May by vissy (NC-17)

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