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Fic:: Dirty Witch Doctors [HP]
So, I am totally doing mispresentation and duress in contract, and not watching Merlin, and not getting ready for the baby lawyers' Christmas ball, and definitely not co-writing fic with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
forthwritten.
Fic:: Dirty Witch Doctors (four reasons Kingsley Shacklebolt is glad to wear purple robes, and one reason he’s not)
byforthwritten and loneraven
PG, gen, Harry Potter.
1. When he was little, it was all about blending in. Eating the bland mashed potatoes and bland slices of meat and bland overcooked vegetables at school and never commenting on it, even though putting it in his mouth filled him with horror. It was reading the picture books filled with nice white families and not asking why people like him and his mum and dad weren’t in them. It wasn’t crying when, dressed in his black school trousers and black school jumper, they called him a darkie and a golliwog and asked how he could be seen at night. It wasn’t getting so angry that he could feel something bubbling and sparking inside him either.
When The Letter came, he decided that he’d had enough of being different.
2. “Be proud of who you are,” his mum told him.
“You come from a long line of wizards. When people in England were still clubbing each other over the head and grunting, we were healers and weatherworkers and storytellers. You’ve got magic in your bones, and nothing can take that away from you. No matter what they say,” she adds, with sudden fierceness. “You might have to work twice as hard to be recognised as half as good, but no one will ever call a Shacklebolt a dirty witch doctor.”
3. In a way, he thinks it’s because of Dumbledore. He’s always admired that gentle whimsical facade for the fierce intelligence underneath, how Dumbledore can appear to be fussing over the relative merits of sherbet lemons and Everton mints then ask a question so penetrating you wonder if he’s just performed Legilimency on you.
When he passes his exams, he decides that he’s going to have a Thing too, and goes to the shop near his parents’ house and fingers the bright cloth, still smelling faintly of spices and palm oil, and decides that bright cloth and ‘unusual’ clothes will be a good distraction technique. After all, he is an Auror and that’s what Aurors do.
4. He’s a proud man, from a proud family. It’s with pride that he stands for equality – not just between purebloods and Muggle-borns and Squibs and Muggles, but between all the global wizarding traditions and heritages and cultures. He’s proud of his people, and of people. And in a way, he thinks it’s his duty to be big and proud and fantastic and there, unmissable in his purple robes, if it convinces just one kid that there’s a place for people like them in this world.
5. Your enemy isn’t your master, is what they teach Aurors. You might lose today’s battles, but you’ll win the war; you don’t have to jump and come running whenever they knock on the door with their skulls and cowls. Kingsley isn’t so sure: he’s been fighting battles on every front ever since he can remember, fighting against the kids in the playground and the Death Eaters in the dark, fighting with words and wounds and wands and the double-edged sword his mother told him about, the fine art of living well.
So here’s a morning, frosty and cold, and yesterday a man dressed all in black called him a darkie, and when he was at school it was only ever his essays that the teacher seemed to lose, and when he was seven he beat up some kid who called him a golliwog, and his breath rises into smoke, a tiny smokescreen against the hugeness of the atmosphere.
Here’s a morning, he thinks, when he could wear black and fight just one war. He stands there, rubbing his hands together for warmth, thinking about that. And then he picks the purple cloth off the hanger, smoothes it out with care, and when he goes out the scent of otherness lingers in gorgeous clouds around him, diffusing sweetness into the freezing air.
end.
forthwritten.Fic:: Dirty Witch Doctors (four reasons Kingsley Shacklebolt is glad to wear purple robes, and one reason he’s not)
by
forthwritten and loneravenPG, gen, Harry Potter.
1. When he was little, it was all about blending in. Eating the bland mashed potatoes and bland slices of meat and bland overcooked vegetables at school and never commenting on it, even though putting it in his mouth filled him with horror. It was reading the picture books filled with nice white families and not asking why people like him and his mum and dad weren’t in them. It wasn’t crying when, dressed in his black school trousers and black school jumper, they called him a darkie and a golliwog and asked how he could be seen at night. It wasn’t getting so angry that he could feel something bubbling and sparking inside him either.
When The Letter came, he decided that he’d had enough of being different.
2. “Be proud of who you are,” his mum told him.
“You come from a long line of wizards. When people in England were still clubbing each other over the head and grunting, we were healers and weatherworkers and storytellers. You’ve got magic in your bones, and nothing can take that away from you. No matter what they say,” she adds, with sudden fierceness. “You might have to work twice as hard to be recognised as half as good, but no one will ever call a Shacklebolt a dirty witch doctor.”
3. In a way, he thinks it’s because of Dumbledore. He’s always admired that gentle whimsical facade for the fierce intelligence underneath, how Dumbledore can appear to be fussing over the relative merits of sherbet lemons and Everton mints then ask a question so penetrating you wonder if he’s just performed Legilimency on you.
When he passes his exams, he decides that he’s going to have a Thing too, and goes to the shop near his parents’ house and fingers the bright cloth, still smelling faintly of spices and palm oil, and decides that bright cloth and ‘unusual’ clothes will be a good distraction technique. After all, he is an Auror and that’s what Aurors do.
4. He’s a proud man, from a proud family. It’s with pride that he stands for equality – not just between purebloods and Muggle-borns and Squibs and Muggles, but between all the global wizarding traditions and heritages and cultures. He’s proud of his people, and of people. And in a way, he thinks it’s his duty to be big and proud and fantastic and there, unmissable in his purple robes, if it convinces just one kid that there’s a place for people like them in this world.
5. Your enemy isn’t your master, is what they teach Aurors. You might lose today’s battles, but you’ll win the war; you don’t have to jump and come running whenever they knock on the door with their skulls and cowls. Kingsley isn’t so sure: he’s been fighting battles on every front ever since he can remember, fighting against the kids in the playground and the Death Eaters in the dark, fighting with words and wounds and wands and the double-edged sword his mother told him about, the fine art of living well.
So here’s a morning, frosty and cold, and yesterday a man dressed all in black called him a darkie, and when he was at school it was only ever his essays that the teacher seemed to lose, and when he was seven he beat up some kid who called him a golliwog, and his breath rises into smoke, a tiny smokescreen against the hugeness of the atmosphere.
Here’s a morning, he thinks, when he could wear black and fight just one war. He stands there, rubbing his hands together for warmth, thinking about that. And then he picks the purple cloth off the hanger, smoothes it out with care, and when he goes out the scent of otherness lingers in gorgeous clouds around him, diffusing sweetness into the freezing air.
end.
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It's everything that fanfic should be. It's... transformative, is what it is.
healers and weatherworkers and storytellers
Yes. Just... yes. That.
And the whole of the last paragraph. And I love the meta-ness, and... *grin* I can't help but reading it queer, too; like you made him Everyman - Everyotherman, that is.
Thankyou.
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This is terrific. Damn right, and perfectly in character.
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