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crack_van2011-08-18 12:15 am
perverse-idyll.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-08-18 12:15 am
Entry tags:
Souvenirs and Lost Luggage by girl_tarte (PG)
Fandom: HARRY POTTER
Pairing: Petunia Dursley/OFC (pre-slash), Dudley Dursley/Piers Polkiss (established)
Length: 5900
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girl_tarte/tarteaucitron
Author Website: Tarte's masterlist of fics
Why this must be read:
Oh,girl_tarte and her marvelous way with words. This is a fic full of gentle surprises, first and foremost the discovery that Petunia can be made human, uncertain, poignant and if not yet lovable, then comprehensible and intensely sympathetic. This isn't a trumpets-blaring sort of redemption, more of a wobbling baby step. Tarte's brilliant at holding new sides of old characters up to the light, finding the stirrings of independence, of second chances in even the shallowest, dried-up prune. This story leads Petunia inch by inch out of her withered shell and lets her stand blinking, lost and perplexed, almost newborn. There's a grace and hesitation to this tale, punctuated by the ghost of Petunia's acerbity, the awkward collision between her narrow-minded, loveless habits and her inarticulate longing to be someone new. Or to be someone old, the person she might have been if she hadn't betrayed herself. The girl she used to be, Petunia Evans. Lily's sister.
In this story, Petunia has left Vernon. The carapace she constructed for herself has finally cracked, and she has no job, no status, no suburban prison to fuss over, no sense of direction. Her son is living with another man. She's being counseled in how to face her past cruelties, her fragile and unstructured future. Anything is possible, and Petunia's bravery – because she has no idea how to conduct herself, how to sit in a coffeeshop alone, how to talk to her Indian neighbor, how to contemplate the fact that her nephew is willing to welcome her into his home – is supremely touching. By means of the simplest things, the smallest revelations, the fic throws both Petunia and the reader off-balance; Petunia because she's having to relearn who she is, and the reader because it's difficult to believe Petunia Dursley could have so much heart. Yet Tarte not only makes it believable but something you want to believe. I ended this fic rooting for Petunia's first shy struggles toward regaining her dignity, her sense of shame, her sense of self. It's a lovely and lightfooted story, delicate and shrewd, and magical enough to show us a pathetic cartoon villain in an entirely human light.
~~#~~
The smell of wet cement ends Petunia's marriage on the twenty-second of August, 2003.
It's curious how you can go for 33 years without inhaling the specific smell of something as mundane as builders' sand and water, and yet even with Vernon leaning precariously on the trellising, haw-hawing with Mr Fooks next door about the Poles beginning work on his rear-wing extension, and with the evidence of her married life in gnomes and buddleia at her feet, Petunia is immediately back in Broomhill.
In the summer of 1970, the wall at the back of their terrace was being repointed, all along, and Petunia had stared from the back door window at the loutish boys who stripped their shirts off when the sun came out, and winked and shouted at her for tea. Lily would have shouted back and cheeked them, put too much sugar in their teas. Petunia just stared, feeling their naked backs reflecting the sun like an obscure humiliation.
Lily was rarely found in the house that summer, out shopping most days, while the boxes of bizarre equipment in the spare room reached as high as the dado rail, or talking obsessively to the rude little boy down the road. Lily's life had expanded into the weird and the speciously wonderful, places that Petunia couldn't dream of and didn't want to; her own meanwhile withdrew into a corridor, narrowing at the end, doors barely open on each side. She hadn't even been able to see the faces of some of the men who stood in front of those doors then, blocking her escape; now with the cold mineral smell of cement slopping in the mixer, a dim flash of that cramped sense of recession glimmers again in her mind. It is a mirror of the misery of that summer, faint and hard to capture, but throwing enough concentrated light to spark a dry leaf.
"Cheer up, love," one of those boys had shouted, waving an arm in her direction. "A smile don't cost nothing." She had watched as his spadeful of cement splattered on the ground. Wet sand seeped in rivulets onto the lawn, suffocating the grass.
On the twenty-third of August, Petunia leaves Little Whinging, the gnomes and the buddleia, for good. It is four years before she can talk about it.
Souvenirs and Lost Luggage
Pairing: Petunia Dursley/OFC (pre-slash), Dudley Dursley/Piers Polkiss (established)
Length: 5900
Author on LJ:
girl_tarte/tarteaucitronAuthor Website: Tarte's masterlist of fics
Why this must be read:
Oh,
girl_tarte and her marvelous way with words. This is a fic full of gentle surprises, first and foremost the discovery that Petunia can be made human, uncertain, poignant and if not yet lovable, then comprehensible and intensely sympathetic. This isn't a trumpets-blaring sort of redemption, more of a wobbling baby step. Tarte's brilliant at holding new sides of old characters up to the light, finding the stirrings of independence, of second chances in even the shallowest, dried-up prune. This story leads Petunia inch by inch out of her withered shell and lets her stand blinking, lost and perplexed, almost newborn. There's a grace and hesitation to this tale, punctuated by the ghost of Petunia's acerbity, the awkward collision between her narrow-minded, loveless habits and her inarticulate longing to be someone new. Or to be someone old, the person she might have been if she hadn't betrayed herself. The girl she used to be, Petunia Evans. Lily's sister. In this story, Petunia has left Vernon. The carapace she constructed for herself has finally cracked, and she has no job, no status, no suburban prison to fuss over, no sense of direction. Her son is living with another man. She's being counseled in how to face her past cruelties, her fragile and unstructured future. Anything is possible, and Petunia's bravery – because she has no idea how to conduct herself, how to sit in a coffeeshop alone, how to talk to her Indian neighbor, how to contemplate the fact that her nephew is willing to welcome her into his home – is supremely touching. By means of the simplest things, the smallest revelations, the fic throws both Petunia and the reader off-balance; Petunia because she's having to relearn who she is, and the reader because it's difficult to believe Petunia Dursley could have so much heart. Yet Tarte not only makes it believable but something you want to believe. I ended this fic rooting for Petunia's first shy struggles toward regaining her dignity, her sense of shame, her sense of self. It's a lovely and lightfooted story, delicate and shrewd, and magical enough to show us a pathetic cartoon villain in an entirely human light.
The smell of wet cement ends Petunia's marriage on the twenty-second of August, 2003.
It's curious how you can go for 33 years without inhaling the specific smell of something as mundane as builders' sand and water, and yet even with Vernon leaning precariously on the trellising, haw-hawing with Mr Fooks next door about the Poles beginning work on his rear-wing extension, and with the evidence of her married life in gnomes and buddleia at her feet, Petunia is immediately back in Broomhill.
In the summer of 1970, the wall at the back of their terrace was being repointed, all along, and Petunia had stared from the back door window at the loutish boys who stripped their shirts off when the sun came out, and winked and shouted at her for tea. Lily would have shouted back and cheeked them, put too much sugar in their teas. Petunia just stared, feeling their naked backs reflecting the sun like an obscure humiliation.
Lily was rarely found in the house that summer, out shopping most days, while the boxes of bizarre equipment in the spare room reached as high as the dado rail, or talking obsessively to the rude little boy down the road. Lily's life had expanded into the weird and the speciously wonderful, places that Petunia couldn't dream of and didn't want to; her own meanwhile withdrew into a corridor, narrowing at the end, doors barely open on each side. She hadn't even been able to see the faces of some of the men who stood in front of those doors then, blocking her escape; now with the cold mineral smell of cement slopping in the mixer, a dim flash of that cramped sense of recession glimmers again in her mind. It is a mirror of the misery of that summer, faint and hard to capture, but throwing enough concentrated light to spark a dry leaf.
"Cheer up, love," one of those boys had shouted, waving an arm in her direction. "A smile don't cost nothing." She had watched as his spadeful of cement splattered on the ground. Wet sand seeped in rivulets onto the lawn, suffocating the grass.
On the twenty-third of August, Petunia leaves Little Whinging, the gnomes and the buddleia, for good. It is four years before she can talk about it.
Souvenirs and Lost Luggage
no subject
I really like your portrayal of Dudley here too. The details of sense make it feel so real, ther smell of cement, the flowers, the laundry. This is a treat.
no subject
I'm delighted you gave this fic a chance. I agree, it is amazing. :)