iforgetcanon

[iforgetcanon]

why do i feel like i’ve already done this one

[iforgetcanon]

The Soulspace

Pairing: Sirius Black / Hermione Granger

Chapters: 4/4

Status: COMPLETE

Words: 46,788

Rated: Teen and up (for language and mentions of sex)

Author: EdnaRose

Summary:

Remus and Lily both scoffed at the spell, stating it was highly improbable such a ritual could truly work, or, that such a place as the "soulspace" could truly exist without having been thoroughly researched by now. Mary, Marlene and Sirius were skeptical as well, but James was properly enthusiastic. The catch was that the soul mate also had to use the spell in order for it to work— from any point in time or space. This, Remus scoffed, was a conveniently pitiful justification for a fruitless and phony incantation, seeing as how the scroll had been hidden for centuries and the chances of anyone else using it were close to none. ********************************** Hermione Granger does not believe in soulmates, but when she and Sirius Black meet in an alternate dimension, at the same age, as the result of a suspicious ritual, they're catapulted into solving one of the Wizarding World's most ancient puzzles. What is the Soulspace, and what is this mysterious incantation really capable of? Most importantly, how can Hermione use it to rescue Sirius from the Veil of Death?

[iforgetcanon]

The Soulspace

Pairing: Sirius Black / Hermione Granger Chapters: 3/4 Status: WIP Words: 35,203 Rated: Teen and up (for language and mentions of sex) Author: EdnaRose

Summary:

Remus and Lily both scoffed at the spell, stating it was highly improbable such a ritual could truly work, or, that such a place as the "soulspace" could truly exist without having been thoroughly researched by now. Mary, Marlene and Sirius were skeptical as well, but James was properly enthusiastic. The catch was that the soul mate also had to use the spell in order for it to work— from any point in time or space. This, Remus scoffed, was a conveniently pitiful justification for a fruitless and phony incantation, seeing as how the scroll had been hidden for centuries and the chances of anyone else using it were close to none. ********************************** Hermione Granger does not believe in soulmates, but when she and Sirius Black meet in an alternate dimension, at the same age, as the result of a suspicious ritual, they're catapulted into solving one of the Wizarding World's most ancient puzzles. What is the Soulspace, and what is this mysterious incantation really capable of? Most importantly, how can Hermione use it to rescue Sirius from the Veil of Death?

New chapter up! Please read the author's note. Important changes have been made.

[iforgetcanon]

Guys... guess what will be posted tonight by 8 p.m. MST?

👀

[iforgetcanon]

Mrs. Weasley’s plan to turn the hot water off to get the teenagers to cool off backfires.

[iforgetcanon]

Harry's hear me outs' consisting entirely of his enemies and his godfather.

[iforgetcanon]

dudley redemption is 100x more interesting and has more of a canon basis than draco redemption but yall aren’t ready for that conversation yet

[iforgetcanon]

fandom wide mandate that everyone has to re-watch the source material in steady intervals to minimize intense fandomization of tropes and characterizations that happens when people go without new source material for too long

[iforgetcanon]

“Sirius is dramatic”

“Sirius is irrational”

“Sirius is materialistic”

[iforgetcanon]

Every time Sirius Black is called handsome in the books

If he hadn’t known it was the same person, he would never have guessed it was Black in this old photograph. His face wasn’t sunken and waxy, but handsome, full of laughter. (Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban)

2. But the dementors don’t affect him, Harry thought, staring into the handsome, laughing face. He doesn’t have to hear my mum screaming if they get too close- (Harry Potter and prisoner of Azkaban)

3. Lupin had pulled out a book and was reading. Sirius stared around at the students milling over the grass, looking rather haughty and bored, but very handsomely so. (Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix)

4. And Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his godfather’s wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind and then fell back into place. (Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix)

5. Beside him was Sirius, carelessly handsome, his slightly arrogant face so much younger and happier than Harry had ever seen it alive. (Harry Potter and the deathly hallows) 6. he had the same dark hair and slightly haughty look of his brother, though he was smaller, slighter and rather less handsome than Sirius had been. (Harry Potter and the deathly hallows)

7. Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face. (Harry Potter and the deathly hallows)

[iforgetcanon]

I really do not want to discredit JKR, she created a fantastic world, with great ideas etc and I hate to be like "oh her success was just an accident!" especially to a woman. But that's what I feel about her getting praise for Snape. People say that the fact that there's so much debate about him now is a testament of JKR's writing skills, but on the contrary I think there is much debate about him now because she executed his character badly...or at least not in the level of genius I see her get praised for. I have always felt this way even before her views but I hate saying it now bc it'll come off as "revisionist" or something 😭 imo the fans have interpreted, analyzed, and broken down his character better.

JKR's success was absolutely not an accident. She dusted off and revitalized the dead School Story genre, she clicked things together in proportions that made a lot of sense, she's VERY good at marketing both herself and her work, she understands (and polices) brand identity and always has, she understands franchise potential, she made the *very* smart decision to age her series up along with her core fan base... but. This did create a few issues with the actual text.

There is a LOT of ambiguity in the Harry Potter series. Lines, scenes, entire characters (Snape is the poster boy, but not even close to the only one) that can legitimately be read in vastly different ways. And not Game of Thrones "oh this is a morally grey character in a complex situation." It's more like "you can interpret what is literally happening in this scene in about three different ways."

I see this ambiguity coming from two main sources, which are honestly kind of unique to the Harry Potter series.

The "Three Year Summer" Shift.

Books 1-3 are kids books, written like kids books, and Books 5-7 are young adult books, written like young adult books. It's not a new take that there are a lot of worldbuilding details and characterization choices that make perfect sense in a kid's book, but not if you're going for the added complexity and grounded tone of an adult book. Filtch is fine as a one-line joke comic villain, but if you're treating him as a fully realized person who actually exists in a more grounded sort of world - he becomes terrifying, tragic, and actually starts creating plotholes. It's like how Willy Wonka is whimsical in his own universe... but if you were to move him to one that's less stylized, now he's Julian Slowik from The Menu.

This leads to a backwards-compatibility situation where you're taking the "adult book" versions of the characters and trying to make them fit over the "children's book" character's actions. Often, the fit isn't super clean. So, you interpret these children's book scenes to make it fit - and you CAN, because children's book scenes are short, use simple vocab, and don't generally give you a *ton* of extra information. Why not interpret them with adult subtext? It's not contradicting anything. But it is essentially a version of that "open scene" acting class game where you get a scene that's like:

- What’s that? - My latest project. - It looks very interesting. - Well, I think so.

and then two actors run it though first straightforward, then sarcastic, then angry, then longing, etc.

2. Harry Potter is a mystery novel serial.

This is where a ton of the structure of the Harry Potter series comes from. Who opened the Chamber of Secrets? (we have suspects and clues) What is the monster? Who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire? (we have suspects and clues) How is Sirius Black getting into the castle? Who is the Halfblood Prince? Who is Snape loyal to? Like there are TONS of these questions (especially in the better books...)

And they make the books fun! They made speculating between the books a TON of fun. Buut.... suspects in a mystery story HAVE to be written ambiguously, or they're not very good suspects. The point is to have a scene that seems super suspicious on a first read but is actually completely innocent, and vice versa. So the scenes themselves fundamentally have to be written to support multiple meanings, in order to make the magic trick work. But the problem IS that in order to do that... you have to sacrifice cleanly articulated character development. There's a reason, in serial detective novels, that the detective goes to a new place and meets a new group of people every book. Ex-suspects have trouble going on to serve new functions in the plot, because who are they exactly? The point is that we don't know.

Lots of Harry Potter characters get hit by "suspect effect." In Book 3, Sirius Black is written to be a dangerous red herring (like why DID he slash the Fat Lady's portrait, in retrospect?) and in Book 4 he's this positive (but ultimately misguided) mentor whose function is to shift suspicious off of Moody and Barty Junior. So when we meet him in Book 5... and he no longer has a structural narrative role... who is he exactly? In a lot of ways, it's up to you the reader, and how you interpreted books 3 and 4.

Or Remus and Tonks. Their relationship is treated as a "mystery" in Book 5. So we get the reveal, but we don't get to see it develop. Because every time the relationship comes up, it needs to be discussed in a way that Harry can misunderstand. As a result, we don't get a good sense of what the dynamics of their relationship actually are.

And Snape... he's the red herring in Book 1, again in Book 4, AGAIN in book 5 and 6. Which means. That is there is at least one alternate way to interpret pretty much every single thing that man says by design. So of course there are going to be multiple ways to interpret his motives. Snape the literary equivalent of the face/vase optical illusion... only you have Word of God saying "it's for sure a vase."

[iforgetcanon]

I once again find myself needing to remind everyone that the spell James Potter uses to hang Severus Snape by his ankles in OoTP was a spell invented by... that's right, Severus Snape. The only way James would have learned the spell was if.... that's right, again, if Severus used the spell on someone else first.

And also, the scene might have been the first time that he called Lily a Mudblood, but to quote Lily, "you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

James wasn't bullying some innocent kid. He was bullying a wannabe death eater with his own spells.

[iforgetcanon]

found a rock in the kitchen and as I was about to throw it in the trash I thought "wait this is cruel I should let it outside" as if it was a living thing

[iforgetcanon]

Its been a minute since I've read TPT, so yeah, you're probably right. Still not looking good for Snape.

Thanks for the correction!

Your problem with Snape fans isn’t that they butt into conversations where they’re not invited. It’s that you talk about them and post screenshots of what they say and then bury your head in the sand because everything you spout is utter nonsense. You’re just a hater and they absolutely obliterate you every time.

come off anon babe 🧡

[iforgetcanon]

Oof.

Anon is claiming that Snape dislikers have their head in the sand?

Ok. First, I have to make something abundantly clear. It's a fictional world and everyone is entitled to their faves-- you're allowed to like the bad guy and no one deserves to be shamed for it (unless its playful shaming). However, making excuses for your faves to try to justify them is incredibly silly.

And a huge lot of Snape fans are notorious for this.

Canonically, Snape is at the very least verbally abused by his father and cases can be made for physical abuse. He's poor and he's picked on and doesn't have a friend in the world outside of Lily Evans. She recognizes him as a kind and helpful soul and sticks up for him.

Petunia is awful to him. But, in turn, he's awful to Petunia - both hate each other based on prejudice. She doesn't like him because he's visibly low-income and she's scared of him because he's magical. He despises her because she's muggle.

Since she's awful AND his father is awful, he creates a correlation in his mind that muggles are awful, a generalization which later morphs into a CLEAR prejudice against muggles and muggleborns. He keeps this prejudice his entire life despite the good the things he does for the Order.

Since childhood, Snape developed an interest, then a passion, for the dark arts. Whether that passion alone is enough to condemn someone is still debatable. However, Snape clearly did more than appreciate from afar; he dabbled and he experimented and he created. We are canonically led to believe that he created many dark spells for Death Eater use against Muggles and Muggleborns (as evidenced by Levicorpus in HBP when Hermione reminds Harry and Ron that they saw the hex in action during the riot at the Quidditch World Cup).

Snape, in his school years actively chose to be friends with students who admired Voldemort and reiterated themes of blood purity and blood supremacy and not-so-quietly repeated their house founder's disdain for muggles and the muggleborn. Remember, Salazar Slytherin hid, within the castle (a SCHOOL), a plan to KILL muggleborn students.)

Being in Slythetin's house isn't enough to criminalize someone, but in choosing to align himself with these ideologies, following these other students around and refusing to challenge their allegiance based on his own preconceived notion of muggle = bad, lowly and mean, that's what criminalized him in the eyes of his fellow students.

In terms we understand, even if Snape never joined the ranks of the death Eaters, he still wasn't on the right side.

Even if he never joined the Nazi movement himself, he still would not have helped hide a Jewish family, because he truly did believe they were the problem. Even if he wasn't a nazi actively contributing to genocide, he swallowed the nazi kool-aid and believed the world would actually be better without the Jewish population, the nomadic tribes and the homosexuals.

His true colors are shown when he calls Lily a Mudblood. The ease with which he spat out the term shows the reader how prevalent the term was in his daily vernacular. He didn't typically lump Lily in there, though, because he knew her. She was different.

My POC know what it's like to be told by a Trump supporter, "you're one of the good ones, friend."

She wasn't like the rest of them. He knew her and instead of letting her be an example he labeled her the exception to the Rule. Basic racist behavior.

Was his love for Lily real or was it an obsession? We can't truly answer that definitively, and we really don't have to. Ultimately, it makes no difference.

Enter the James Potter of it all.

Now, I'll admit, I do like James quite a lot. I will not defend his actions because what he did wasn't right, especially when it came to bullying Snape. I understand there was some stupid Gryffindor bravado and a desire to show how anti-dark arts he was. Doesn't make it right. There are better ways to show your allegiance and live your ideologies than to bully someone. Especially someone who is very close friends with your crush. Grow the fuck up, James.

However, he did exactly that. Canonically we KNOW Lily would have never given him a chance had he not grown up and changed his ways and started being more mature about the way he handled his disputes and settled differences.

And if we can forgive James and accept he grew up and changed, then we can do the same for Snape, right?

"He defected!? He joined the Order! He protected Harry! He must have changed!"

In the actual text that we all read, hopefully with our own two eyes, we have very little evidence of that.

Snape defected because Lily died. He asked Voldemort to let Lily live. Not "the Potters." Not "James and Lily and Harry." Just Lily.

Not, "hey you're blood supremacy message is gross, I won't support it." It was, "do what you gotta do, mate, to keep exterminating this scum, just please don't kill my girl."

But she was killed and Voldemort fell and Snape, heartbroken went to Dumbledore. "I'll do anything." So Dumbledore collects him as a double agent. Not because Voldemort is WRONG, but because voldemort killed Lily.

"Help protect Harry. He's her son."

So he does, in only the most basic sense - to keep the boy alive. The rest of the time, though, if it's not life or death, he actively bullies this kid who knows absolutely nothing about his parents just because he's James's kid. Just because he looks like him.

He further bullies many other students; Neville for apparent magical ineptitude, Hermione for being a know-it-all (and I can even make a case for muggleborn doliscriminatiom, too.) Ron for simply being a bit of a tool who doesn't excel at potions (from a family of known blood traitors). While these may be textually drawn inferences, it still stands that a fully grown man was actively bullying children and harboring a grudge against a dead man.

I don't know about ya'll, but as a former educator, when we see students struggling with the material, we don't call them names and humiliate them. We work with them until they understand.

It comes down to choices and the reasons behind them. Snape made good choices and he made bad choices and he made them for a colorful spectrum of reasons.

He was a bullied person and was justified in hating James. True.

As a bullied child, as an adult in my Early 30's I've had to make the (honestly very easy) decision to not bully the children of my bullies. In fact, it never occurred to me to do so. Find a way to heal that trauma. Choose to break the chain of abuse. People do it all the time. They have to choose and want to do better than they received. We never see evidence of Snape choosing that. We see the contrary.

Snape was brave and did a lot of good and even majorly contributed to the effort against Voldemort. We can respect that regardless of his motivation. Doesn't make him less of a bully. Doesn't make him less racist. Doesn't make him a hero.

Snape is a delightfully perfect example of an anti-hero. He never truly reforms but still contributes to the light side. He's not a good person. He's not justified in the behavior he chooses to employ. Even as a double agent.

"He had to act bad to be believable as a death eater!" Not after the fall of Voldemort, my lads. The rest of the death Eaters trying to not go to prison did their best to blend in and keep their noses clean. He could have just been a regular teacher. He could have just gotten by without being a total knob.

Even Quirell who literally carried Voldemort on his head with him never acted disparagingly toward his students. Besides, as far as Voldemort knew, Snape was trying to fool Dumbledore. A little bit of kindness wouldn't have been out of place. Dropping an adolescent grudge wouldn't have been suspicious.

Feel free to love Snape as a brilliantly complex character. He's fascinated and so well developed. Even if admire him as far as that goes.

Don't try to convince me that he owns ANY moral high ground. Fans who dislike him a person are justified. I wouldn't tolerate him a a teacher, a co-worker or even a random patron to my place of business acting the way he does and witnessing the way he treats people.

I understand finding comfort in relatable characters and a an abused or bullied person, clinging to him makes sense; but Snape is not a role model. Tbh, had he been real, he likely would have hated most of us for being "different" in our various different ways.

Its time, and I mean this in the gentlest way possible, to pull your own heads out of the sand. Snape isn't a good guy.

He's gray at best.

And it's still ok to like him. Liking a character or a problematic fictional trope does not make you a bad person. Fictional preferences do not reflect real-life personal morals and you don't have to waste energy defending bad-guy characters in an attempt to defend your own morals.

Its fictional. It's literature. Discussing literature is fun and we learn a lot. We like different things, but changing the narrative to defend characters and moralize them because we're scared of liking bad guys isn't helping.

Can we please remember how to engage with literature without so much defensiveness?

Your problem with Snape fans isn’t that they butt into conversations where they’re not invited. It’s that you talk about them and post screenshots of what they say and then bury your head in the sand because everything you spout is utter nonsense. You’re just a hater and they absolutely obliterate you every time.

come off anon babe 🧡

[iforgetcanon]

Propaganda I'm not falling for (fandom version)

Since everyone is making these, I'm going to follow along.

Sirius being anything less than acadmically brillant and being insufferably arrogant about it (any properly characterised Sirius needs these traits IN COMBINATION with each other).

Sirius being overly concerned with his looks.

Sirius being a misogynist- look he has his flaws can we focus on the ones he actually has instead of projecting fandom's views of female characters onto him.

Regulus being forced to become a deatheater while secretly wanting to hug muggles.

Orion being the good parent- he and Walburga were bad in different ways but she bears the brunt of fandom ire.....

Sirius disliking Lily

James leaving the baddie that is Lily Evans for Voldy fanboy (and Sirius from wish) Regulus Black.

Barty Crouch JNR being some smol uwu baby - he was a committed deatheater and an excellent actor/Dada teacher (give the man his credit).

Dumbledore being either evil incarnate or the epitome of good- my man was morally grey and a strategist.

Lily Potter the tradwife.

Bellatrix being 'mad'.

Alpha dog, cassanova Remus- please let this man be mid.

[iforgetcanon]

Remus who is just so so tired of being in pain so he buys weed from local dealer who's actually the cutest sweetest person nymphadora tonks. They fall in love bcs dora is obsessed with this grandpa looking man who is her most respectful customer. He is so shocked when she makes moves on him and she outright asks if he wants to fuck at least once and he runs away