When Ron asks him, eyes not meeting, as the sun sets on the second day, Harry stops.
He is thinking of crunching leaves and waving branches and vicious laughter and then silence.
“It’s like a punch in the stomach,” he says.When Hermione asks him, with a soft voice and her head on his shoulder, Harry frowns.
His parents’ graves spring to mind: strong and proud under all that snow.
“It’s like a burial,” he tells her.When George asks him, with too many tears in his desperate eyes, Harry holds his breath.
He is trying to remember how it feels to laugh.
“It’s like waiting for the punchline,” he lies.When Neville asks him, with a trembling voice and a nervous smile, Harry sniffs.
He can smell wet grass and stale dirt and the sharp scrape of fresh blood and a little bit of fear.
“It’s like tripping over your own feet,” he offers.When Luna asks him, with an expression that suggests she already know the answer, Harry sighs.
His head is starting to pound and his brain begins to buzz, bouncing around his skull.
“It’s like waking up in reverse,” he shrugs.When Ginny asks him, with sweaty twisted fingers and a dying fire in her voice, Harry has to press his hands against his face.
He sees popping lights and remembers a lot of green, a lot of red, a lot of noise.
“I don’t know,” he confesses.When Fleur asks him, sharp pointed syllables after too many glasses of wine, Harry almost laughs.
He feels something dripping at the corner of his mind, but doesn’t care to pursue it.
“It’s like the pause between two songs on the radio,” he answers.When a reporter asks him for the twentieth time, shuffled paper and an enchanted microphone in hand, Harry hexes her.
He hears voices ringing in his ears, can imagine tomorrow’s headline.
“None of your fucking business,” he chokes.When Teddy asks him all those years later, with a creased photograph that shows a tall man in grey robes and a woman with bubblegum hair, Harry closes his eyes.
He is back at the edge of the forest, staring at faded impressions of his family, wondering the same thing himself. His godfather’s words float through the air with a fragile sort of truth.
“It’s quicker and easier than falling asleep,” he whispers.Fucking poetry
This is amazing. Kudos to the author.
Tag: stories
Rest stops on highways are liminal spaces where the veil is thin and nobody can tell me differently
Explain
The explanation is that liminal spaces are in between places that bridge Here with There, so in fairy tales we often have the Fairy Ring, the Forest Clearing, the Sudden Misty Foggy Forest, the Bridge, the River, graveyards, in some cases
We also have a ton of american urban mythology around famous roadways and sites off the sides of roads
Archetypes like these occur to mark the places in the world where the veil goes thin and humans can have extra-worldly experiences, out of the ordinary way of living
So why wouldn’t transient spaces like rest stops where everyone is just passing through from one place to the next, never stopping for too long, not be a liminal space where spirits frequent, too
Especially since nobody would know if they were real or not
This…explains the feeling I get at rest stops really well…
i have to reblog this because this perfectly describes the way i feel about airports and hotel lobbies, and i know that a lot of people feel this way about airports, that they’re these surreal edge-of-reality transitional spaces, but i’ve never thought about them as liminal spaces connected to folklore and mythology, and that makes so much sense, in terms of why we subconsciously react to them the way we do, and i just love this a lot
also, the idea that liminal spaces have a mystic power to lie between two dimensions also really makes me think this is probably why airports and hotel lobbies play such a huge role both in inception the film and inception fanfic.
Lion Gets Stuck In A Tree Before His Brother Helps Him Down. All photos by Carters News via The Huffington Post ~ Please click through to see the gif they made of this hilarious incident. It was too big for me to post it here for you. 😀
The brother on the ground is displaying the most perfect face of “This asshole got stuck up a fucking tree again” I think I’ve ever seen.
I like the face he makes as he falls.
Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.
Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.
This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.
SCIENCE
thank you
this is one of the best comments this post has recieved
I have witnessed:
Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”
Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”
A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”
Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.
Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”
Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.
A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.
I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…
Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.
– I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”
– Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night.
– A whole swarm of older women – and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs – all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.
– At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road.
– “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”
– Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it.
a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work
“go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine” can i burn the results sir? “fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway”
Some examples just from the professor in the immediate family, he:
– Likes to tell increasingly outrageous lies and see how far he can take them before people catch on.
– Has been known to use his coffee spoon to catapult sugar lumps.
– Hung up a candle-snuffer on a “fire extinguisher” sign.
– Found a cow’s skull in the ground while staying at a resort, and put it up on a newel post to show the direction to the dining hall.
Mom-professor enjoys putting “Hi class!” on Wikipedia articles and showing them to her freshmen to illustrate why we use accredited sources and has been known to go out for possibly-drunk karaoke with her professor-friends at conferences.
-The head of my lab has missed his flight home from a conference because he was drunk/hungover/sleeping. Twice.
-My entire lab dressed up like Mario Kart characters and went go-karting.
-We hosted a party in the lab. We used the ice buckets to hold fruit. There was beer in the fridge next to our samples.
-For the record, 16 hours is a commonly used timepoint in studies because that’s how long something sits for when you set it up at 5PM and check it at 9AM, aka meaning you can just go home.
“I think I’d most like to spend a day with Harry. I’d take him out for a meal and apologize for everything I’ve put him through.” -JK Rowling
I WOULD LOVE TO BE A FLY IN THE SOUP AT THIS TABLE
harry: was it really necessary to kill my grandparents?
jk: plot device, harry.
harry: A BROOM CUPBOARD?
jk: they had to have sympathy for you
harry: tim. buttercup. sally. marry.
jk: what are you doing?
harry: I NAMED THE SPIDERS IN THE SODDING BROOM CLOSET, JOANNE
jk: oh
two hours later:
harry: thank you for giving me sass, at least
harry: downs his drink
jk: oh dear
harry:
{pulls out order of the phoenix and opens it to chapter 35} let’s talk about what in the hell you were thinking when you wrote this chapter, please…
jk: i’m going to need to buy another bottle of wine, aren’t i?
harry: damn straight. keep ‘em coming.
#amazing#this happened and you know it#‘MY HAND STILL HURTS JO’#‘umbridge had to be believable harry’#‘YOU KILLED EVERYONE CLOSE TO ME’#‘but like thank fuck I had ron tho’#‘what an awesome bloke’#‘you’re welcome harry’#‘BUT SNAPE’#‘oh no here we go’#‘WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING’#‘every series needs a creep harry’#harry despondently folds his arms and sniffs and turns away#Jo thinks that he’s broken#but then#he turns around#slides Jo twenty bucks across the table#‘so. how about that seven book marauders series eh?’#’harry…’#’THE FANDOM IS ANGRY JO’#’I can’t…’#’why not?’#’I’m sorry…’#’BUT JO YOU HAVE TO’#’and why is that?’#’YOU KILLED THEM ALL JO THIS IS THE LEAST YOU CAN DO’#harry#jk rowling#I love this ok (via alrightpotter)
ALL THIS AND MORE
the restaurant’s been closed for four hours:
very drunk harry: and ‘nother fing
very drunk jo: hmmm
very drunk harry: starts weeping. do- hiccups. dobby.
jo bursts into tears.
harry passes out.
he wakes up the next morning with a lipstick print on his forehead and her secret ao3 account scrawled on the coaster. she’s written him a dobby lives au.
i am a storm.
i am night, i am darkness, i am fear and i am fearless.
i am a predator.
i speak to no one, i answer to nothing, i rip out flesh with my teeth and paint my lips red with blood.
i am unholy.
i laugh in the face of death, i thrive in destruction, i tear down the world bit by bit.
i am iron.
i will not bend, i cannot break, i am a threat to the titans and the gods.
i am ruthless.
i hold a leather leash in my hand, i have all goodness attached to the other end, i yank it as hard as i can and watch hope fade away.
i am a flame.
i live to burn, i cannot be touched, i get stronger in the face of danger.i am a queen
and i rule all that is broken.
the mantra of chaos // [t.r.]
girl,
with an accent of blood
who speaks in foreign tongues
whose vowels are the sound of metal clashing.warrior,
with fire in her veins
and armor beneath her skin
who crushes the earth beneath her feet.immortal,
hair streaked with daggers
and iron filling her lungs
each breath invitingly toxic.princess,
with lips made of glass
and a voice cut from steel
features born from thunder and battle.heroine,
a grin made for war
and eyes flecked with ash
striding, powerful, into the arms of death.
seduce me with ur history knowledge
vikings made their woman handle the finances because they thought math is witchcraft
The idea that unicorns are only able tamed and captured by virgins originated as a medieval joke. The idea was that it took a mythical creature to catch a mythical creature.
There was once an English minstrel called Roland the Farter. He was awarded lands by the king on the condition that he turn up to the court every Christmas to perform his characteristic “whistle, leap and a fart”. His children could keep the lands after his death if they learnt and performed the same trick.
There is graffiti from the Norse invaders that reads (roughly) “ I slept with Ingiborg, the most beautiful woman in the world ”
A close friend of Alexander the Great named Dioxippus, once told one of his generals, named Coragus, to stop being so up himself, Coragus took offence and challenged him to a duel in front of all of his troops unaware that Dioxippus was a champion of Pankration, Ancient Greek Wrestling. Coragus turned up with all of his weapons and armour, Dioxippus turned up naked with a club, lathered in Olive Oil. The match was over in about 5 mins and Coragus got his arse well and truly kicked.
When an army of Swedes went off to war with the Norwegians, they left all the women to manage everything, however, in the village of Smaland, right on the Southern Border, they were attacked by an opposing force of Danes. The women, led by a woman named Blenda, responded to this by inviting the invaders in, feeding them, making them comfy and basically having a massive party to get them REALLY drunk. When all the invaders all passed out, the women slaughtered them all with anything they could find, and when the men came back, the King was so impressed that he basically granted them a bunch of new rights that were previously unavailable to them. From that point on, all daughters had the right to inherit property, money and land equally with their brothers, and were allowed to wear military-style garments around town and at their weddings. They were also given the prestigious right to wear the Royal Coat of Arms on their clothing – a tradition that has lasted to this day.
The term in Chess “Checkmate” is thought to have come from the Persian term “Shah Mat” which means “The King is dead”.
Captain Benjamin Hornigold, the mentor to Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, once captured a ship just so he could steal all of the crew’s hats, because his crew had gotten drunk the night before and thrown all of theirs overboard.
Napoléon Bonaparte, the Corsican soldier who eventually became the Emperor of France following the French Revolution and Maximilien de Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror”, was terrified of cats.
King George III of Britain despised the Whig politician Charles James Fox for being a bad influence on his son George, for teaching him such talents as vomiting in the street.
Peter the Great, the Tsar who built St Petersburg, could bend pewter plates between his hands, would insist on pulling his courtiers’ bad teeth, and beat his own son to death, was terrified of cockroaches.
Queen Elizabeth I used to have a habit of turning up at people’s houses un-announced, requiring both accommodation and lavish entertainment, and often demanding gifts off the poor house owners.
Today, I fucked up… by calling a locksmith when I was “locked out” of my car
I’ll preface this by saying I’m usually not a stupid man but I was at the end of my third 16 hour shift in a row and I was very tired. I’ll make this quick:
I got off work, went out to my car, hit the button for the doors on my remote unlocker – as usual. Nothing happened. I tried it a few more times, battery must be dead. I stand there for 10 minutes, mashing the little button, hoping for enough juice to open the doors. Nada.
I call a locksmith, explain that I’m locked out of my car. He says he’ll be right over. 20 minutes later he arrives. He walks up with his tools, inserts a thing that looks like a blood pressure cuff in the door jamb. He starts making conversation as it inflates, pushing the door open:
“So locked your keys in the car? No problem sir, I’ll have it open in a minute.”
“No, my keys are right here, my key fob is dead.” I replied.
He stops and for about 10 seconds. Doesn’t say a word. He sees my keys in my hands. Takes them from me, inserts them in the lock and opens the door.
I was mortified. I was so in a habit of opening the doors with my remote fob that I entirely forgot that keys could be used to unlock cars manually. He started laughing so hard I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. After he stopped laughing, he told me there was no charge. The story he’d have to tell was worth the drive out.
Secret cinema found beneath Paris.
In September 2004, French police discovered a hidden chamber in the catacombs under Paris. It contained a full-sized movie screen, projection equipment, a bar, a pressure cooker for making couscous, a professionally installed electricity system, and at least three phone lines. Movies ranged from 1950s noir classics to recent thrillers.
When the police returned three days later, the phone and power lines had been cut and there was a note on the floor: “Do not try to find us.” (via)
SECRET, MILDLY THREATENING UNDERGROUND COUSCOUS CINEMA
I WANNA GO
LET ME JOIN YOUR KIND, UNDERGROUND MOVIE PEOPLE
nO YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS ENTIRE CINEMA WAS HIDDEN BEHIND AN UNDER CONSTRUCTION SIGN THAT LEAD TO A CHECK-IN DISK WITH A FULL CCTV HOOKUP THAT WOULD TURN ON AND RECORD ANY UNREGISTERED VISITORS. AND IF SOMEONE SNUCK IN? A TAPE OF BARKING SECURITY DOGS WOULD BEGIN TO PLAY.
BEYOND THE CRAZY FRONT DESK AND THE MOVIE THEATER, THERE WAS A STOCKED BAR AND TABLES AND CHAIRS, MEANING THAT AFTER CATCHING A FLICK IN AN ILLEGAL PARISIAN CATACOMB THEATER, YOU COULD THEN EAT COUSCOUS AND SIP A COCKTAIL NEXT DOOR. THERE WAS A PROFESSIONAL ELECTRICITY SYSTEM SET UP, AND AT LEAST 3 WORKING PHONE LINES. THIS SHIT WAS LIKE A BOND VILLAIN.
BETTER YET? IT WAS RUMORED THAT THE PLACE WAS SET UP BY THE UNDERGROUND FRENCH ART GANG UX “Urban eXperiment”, WHO NAVIGATES THROUGH THE PARISIAN UNDERGROUNDS AND ILLEGALLY RESTORES ABANDONED WORKS OF ART, ALONG WITH HOLDING FILM FESTIVALS IN THE BASEMENTS OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS. THEY EVEN RELEASED A SHORT FILM ABOUT THEIR WORK RESTORING THE ICONIC PANTHEON CLOCK OVER THE COURSE OF ONE YEAR. NO ONE SUSPECTED THEIR INVOLVEMENT, UNTIL THE CLOCK BEGAN TO WORK AGAIN AFTER 60 YEARS OF RUSTING.
IF YOU DON’T THINK CATACOMBS AND THE PEOPLE WHO HANG OUT IN THEM ARE SOME OF THE COOLEST FUCKING THINGS IN THE WORLD THEN I IMPLORE YOU TO EAT SOME COUSCOUS AND RECONSIDER.
I'd Much Rather Have a Dragon 