(no subject)
TITLE: History Fell in the Heart Broke Open
PAIRING: Umbridge/Margaret Thatcher
FANDOM: Harry Potter
SUMMARY: Idolization and vague RPS. Written in 2nd person, set during OotP.
xxx
You met the Iron Lady in 1981, on the day riots broke out in Brixton. Ten minutes of tea and biscuits, perched on an overstuffed chair in a floral-print room, letting Crouch do all the talking - and it was the single best moment of your life. You still remember the way her hand felt in yours when you shook it, so light it was almost weightless, thin fingers laying limply in line with your own. You knew then as you know now, that those hands could take the life out of someone much larger and physically stronger than her. That contradiction fascinated you.
She wasn't beautiful, just a bland sort of pretty, but her eyes were vicious and she had lines around her mouth that were screaming blatant evidence of her power and stature, her ruthlessness. Permed hair propping up party lines and bomb shelter signs, pearl necklace like a choke cord.
And didn't you wish that you could be like her.
xxx
You work with Dumbledore like you think she would. Him and his would-be-Labour politics, his long hair and his goddamned earnestness. His weak socialism. It's nothing that a sweet smile and a back-hand deal or two can't solve.
(But sometimes...)
Words and actions that seem honourable coming from Maggie's lips and fingers just seem petty in yours. You know that this has something to do with levels of power: the fact that she could set fire to whole countries at a time, and all you can do is make children afraid.
Still, you don't even pretend not to enjoy it when they cringe.
xxx
You still carry around a battered copy of the 1983 Conservative Manifesto and a pearl necklace, broken in two places. And the quill, the quill you made for her, that moves something deep inside you (in the places you long since consigned to history) with every drop of blood that is spilled. You learned this first-hand, in front of a child, and you're lucky that your face doesn't quite remember the right expressions; that lust comes out as a sickly-sweet smile and love is a snarl, and that resentment is just part of the job description.
And rarely, very rarely, on those nights when your smile is wilting and the voice that comes out of your mouth isn't quite yours, you find the quill in your hand and the nib on paper, writing over and over: I will not be weak. I will not be weak. I will not be weak.
There is borrowed iron in the blood that wells.
xxx
PAIRING: Umbridge/Margaret Thatcher
FANDOM: Harry Potter
SUMMARY: Idolization and vague RPS. Written in 2nd person, set during OotP.
xxx
You met the Iron Lady in 1981, on the day riots broke out in Brixton. Ten minutes of tea and biscuits, perched on an overstuffed chair in a floral-print room, letting Crouch do all the talking - and it was the single best moment of your life. You still remember the way her hand felt in yours when you shook it, so light it was almost weightless, thin fingers laying limply in line with your own. You knew then as you know now, that those hands could take the life out of someone much larger and physically stronger than her. That contradiction fascinated you.
She wasn't beautiful, just a bland sort of pretty, but her eyes were vicious and she had lines around her mouth that were screaming blatant evidence of her power and stature, her ruthlessness. Permed hair propping up party lines and bomb shelter signs, pearl necklace like a choke cord.
And didn't you wish that you could be like her.
xxx
You work with Dumbledore like you think she would. Him and his would-be-Labour politics, his long hair and his goddamned earnestness. His weak socialism. It's nothing that a sweet smile and a back-hand deal or two can't solve.
(But sometimes...)
Words and actions that seem honourable coming from Maggie's lips and fingers just seem petty in yours. You know that this has something to do with levels of power: the fact that she could set fire to whole countries at a time, and all you can do is make children afraid.
Still, you don't even pretend not to enjoy it when they cringe.
xxx
You still carry around a battered copy of the 1983 Conservative Manifesto and a pearl necklace, broken in two places. And the quill, the quill you made for her, that moves something deep inside you (in the places you long since consigned to history) with every drop of blood that is spilled. You learned this first-hand, in front of a child, and you're lucky that your face doesn't quite remember the right expressions; that lust comes out as a sickly-sweet smile and love is a snarl, and that resentment is just part of the job description.
And rarely, very rarely, on those nights when your smile is wilting and the voice that comes out of your mouth isn't quite yours, you find the quill in your hand and the nib on paper, writing over and over: I will not be weak. I will not be weak. I will not be weak.
There is borrowed iron in the blood that wells.
xxx