Unthinkable Wings

I read an early 2000s set Harry/ Draco fic set in Westminster (Harry is a Lib Dem MP, Draco is a peer. No, it's not a mundane AU) which someone was reccing on one of those forgotten fanfic classics blogs. The reccer warned for ancient politics, but - well, there's something quite relaxing about looking back on the pre-Referendum era, right? Those happy, innocent days.*

It's not a bad fic. I'm not a Harry/ Draco shipper, but I'm willing to suspend scepticism for the duration of a fic, and I like well done political settings - which this was. And it was a pleasure to note the little bits of detail they'd thrown in, like an encounter with David Blunkett's guide dog Sadie, Tam Dayell's retirement, and various jokes at John Prestcott's expense.

However.

The reccer did not warn for the fact that they'd made the - positively portrayed - Minister for Magic Boris Fucking Johnson (moonlighting as the editor of the Speccie). If ever a warning was needed - it rather spoiled the whole thing for me...


* Yes, I know. And yet...

For aris_tgd.

The whole fic is here.

( This is long, but I could have done the whole fic.... However, these two scenes are probably my favourite bit of the whole thing - or at least the bit I most enjoyed writing. )

Courtesy of the kids from the Youth Group on Facebook:

Harry: But there's one thing we've got that Voldemort can never have!

Hermione: What's that, Harry?

Harry: Noses.

A wonderful, funny Harry Potter- Sherlock crossover, The Case of the Unwelcome Owl, by pandarus. Looked at one way, it's crack. Looked at another way, it makes Sherlock canon a lot more comprehensible. Also, it's hilarious:

"That is an envelope, John. I realise that you didn't have the benefit of a truly first rate education, but I should have thought that even you would have been able to correctly identify such a simple object." Sherlock sounded rattled, John thought. Interesting.

"The owl brought it," John said, experimentally.

"Well, obviously," said Sherlock, as though everyone was perfectly well aware that the Royal Mail had a special owl delivery service.

The address, written in turquoise ink in a spidery hand, read:

Sherlock Holmes Esq.
Sulking on the sofa
In the living room
221B Baker Street
London
The United Kingdom.

Have a link to a very amusing cross-over: Harry Potter and the Harry Potter films, by minnow_53.

... it occurs to me that if TMS was on telly, not radio, it would have a massive RPF fandom, a la Top Gear: it's full of surreality and banter, and generally feels as much like eavesdropping on people in a pub in a parallel universe as it does like sports commentary as such.*

(If there is TMS slash out there, I don't think I want to know).

* I'm now vaguely reminded of Herbert McCabe OP on the Trinity:

Think for a moment of a group of three or four intelligent adults relaxing together in one of those conversations that have really taken off. They are being witty and responding quickly to each other – what in Ireland they call ‘the Crack’. Serious ideas may be at issue, but no one is being serious. Nobody is being pompous or solemn (nobody is preaching). There are flights of fancy. There are jokes and puns and irony and mimicry and disrespect and self-parody … Now this child is like us when we hear about the Trinity.

Short account of evening:

Went punting; had dinner with nineveh_uk and then went to see Harry Potter, which I very much enjoyed despite the over-excited audience. Rickman particularly good, Broadbent pretty good as Slughorn (but too thin!), Gambon good as Dumbledore (and I normally dislike him). Extraordinarily beautiful film, mostly in (sometimes tinted) monochrome, with effective use of colour as and when.

Broke key of bike in lock, so (a) will be walking home and (b) first order of business tomorrow, find bolt cutters (and somehow move bike from Parish Church to college, that being the most likely source of the aforementioned).

The Grauniad has been helpfully providing a series of Italian phrasebooks. I particularly liked today's, which told me how to say 'I saw you at the lunchtime Mass', 'What did you think of Fr X's sermon?', 'Is there a Mass in English?', 'I need to find a priest' and 'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.' It also included the necessary phrases for 'Would you like to come up for a coffee?' and 'Turn over, you're snoring'. Truly, it covers a multitude of.... bases.

A really marvellous bit of crack, in which Harry and Snape are forced to go undercover together in Ambridge, initially polyjuiced as Eddie and Clarrie Grundy. And after that, it gets complicated...

"Even if it's a plot, it would be a pretty daft one, wouldn't it? Sort of pointless?"

"Ah, summer in Ambridge", said Snape softly. "How could I forget it?"

Well, after spending altogether too much time this evening watching vids, I can only say thank you for the recs so far - I think my favourite so far is In Exchange for Your Tomorrows, a Snape-centric vid by Lim to 'The Houseof the Rising Sun' (in a rather unusual version).

Also, calapine's Timelords built this City on Rock and Roll will almost certainly never stop being amusing. Calapine is also responsible for The Man in Black: a Delgado! Master fan vid, which is wrong on many levels but still irresistible (much like the Master, really.)

I could link to Allchanges Doctor/ Jack vid to the Wise Guy's "Ohrwurm", but then one of you would kill me. What's more, I'd deserve it.

Though it is rather well done. Ich bin ziemlich penetrant, sonst wäre ich gar nicht so bekannt...