It Sings the Tune Without the Words

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Author: schemingreader
Title: It Sings the Tune Without the Words
Word Count: 99
Rating: G
Challenge: Feathers
Characters: Remus/Severus
Author's Note: References to poems Americans sometimes learn in school (links in comments)


Rarely at Hogwarts, the weather is cold enough for the snow to fall in large, dry, downy flakes. This creates its own magic. Remus recalls the aftermath of one fifth-year Care of Magical Creatures class on magical birds when the Gryffindors and Slytherins were stomping off the snow in the front hallway of the castle. Remus thought Severus in his cloak looked like a great black bird with a dusting of white feathers over his head and wings. But his face when he turned to Remus was suddenly suffused with blood, and then surprisingly, another famous thing with feathers.

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I like this, I really do. But I don't get the last line and it's very frustrating ^^;. Then again, I'm not American. Link to the poem in question would be greatly appreciated ^^

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I am sorry that I was obscure; I know they are very American poems. The main reference is to Emily Dickenson's "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" (http://www.bartleby.com/113/1032.html). Here's the first stanza (of only three) :

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all

I was also conscious of ripping off a slightly less sublime but no less well-known poem by Robert Frost, "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening" (http://www.ketzle.com/frost/snowyeve.htm). ("easy wind and downy flake.")

I don't know if Remus would know these poems or not.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the links. Those two poemes beautiful. I knew the Frost one but wouldn't have recognized the line, and I didn't know the Dickenson.

And, now, it all clicks in the drabble and it becomes beautiful and makes sense as I knew it would. Wonderful ^^

[busaikko]

Nice image! I'm sure I'm the only one who feels this way, but it quite reminds me of Snow White: the queen contemplating the white of the snow, the black of the stone, the red of the blood thing. Er. Ne'er you mind. But the use of colour is striking.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Oh, so pretty. The way you use feathers to evoke the snow, the birds, Severus's appearance, and hope all together within 100 words is lovely.

[stoicstella.livejournal.com]

Lovely. This is something my highschool literature teacher always gave me a hard time about, I could pick out a literary allusion but I never could place where it was from. The link in the comment was helpful, once I knew what was going on the piece came together quite beautifully. I almost wished I had recognized the poem, there is a smug satisfaction in recognizing obscure references and getting things without having to be told, which is what makes drabbles like this so satisfying. (I think my comment is probably longer than the drabble at this point so I'll stop) well done.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

The problem with drabbles like these is that people don't recognize the literary allusions, and then the whole thing falls apart.

One reason I remember the Dickenson poem is that Woody Allen wrote a book of plays and short stories called Without Feathers. Did you ever read it? There is also a joke in it:
"How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not 'the thing with feathers'. The thing with feathers has turned to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich."