#delphini riddle

[mistapottaa]

Harry being KIND THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME ✅️✅️

Ronald Weasley being the untricked BFF until THAT happens ✅️✅️✅️

Bellatrix not being portrayed as a whore and having an actual personality before being her deranged self ✅️✅️✅️

Voldemort being a dilf ✅️🔥✅️✅️✅️🔥🔥✅️✅️✅️🔥✅️✅️🔥✅️✅️✅️

@metalomagnetic you made a cultural reset and I haven't been the same since.

[chiocchi]

I loved how attached Delphini was to Harry and how much she wanted him and Voldemort to be together and be a family.

Thank you for writing such a wonderful story! @metalomagnetic

[thecursedchildcomic]

I've been meaning to make a proper cover page so here! I had a lot of drafts for this but this is the best one yet!

Version without title below cut;

Do what you want with it idc

[rewritingcanon]

coming out as an official HATER of this video

[jlhynde-insanitybrilliance]

UDLTTOM DIALOGUE DRAFT #93

*Undersecretary Gaunt watches his daughter Delphini get bullied*

Gaunt (to Delphi): Hey what was that? Why didn’t you fight back?

Delphi: You told me to strive for verbal resolution.

Gaunt: Fuck verbal resolution! Here’s what you do, Delphi, you put that bitch on her back. You put her on her back and you gut her, understand? If someone comes at you, you put them and their whole family in the morgue. Otherwise you’re going to find yourself getting sold for a packet of cigarettes and stick of chewing gum, understand? Always answer violence with violence.

Delphi:… okay, daddy.

*Delphi proceeds to break a little ballerina’s arm*

Gaunt (grinning): That’s my girl.

[motherfuckingmaneater]

“Delphi’s kicking again, my Lord.”

The pregnancy has begun to tire her out. She is grateful however, even as she feels the little creature inside of her stir and stretch, longing to hear her father’s voice and feel the assuaging presence of his magic. So his hand comes to the swell of her inside her mother.

“Hm,” he agrees as his heiress settles, “strong little creature, isn’t she, Bella?”

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

If you had to pick a candidate for next Dark Lord/Lady post hp canon, who would it be (pretend Voldemort's lovechild doesn't exist).

Beautifully, anon, I would not have picked Delphi had you asked me and after having read the play think it's remarkably in character and a likely contender for what happens post canon.

But that's too hot a take even for this blog.

Delphi's not really Dark Lord/Lady material, she's just... a very troubled mess.

So, with her off the table, who do I pick?

There's always Hermione abusing her power, though I doubt she'd ever be labeled as Dark Lady for doing as much even though it's essentially what she's doing.

Harry's off the table as while he has a very warped sense of justice and the law that enables things like becoming a Dark Lord, I don't see him ever rising above abusing his position as head Auror/however far he makes it up the chain. He would never set himself in a position to have power over the country as a whole/where people would ever call him Lord.

I think I'm going to pick the ever-delightful Albus Severus Potter.

Taking Cursed Child into account (which I will do because I can), Albus grows up with a very large chip on his shoulder in regards to his father and his perception of himself. He believes himself to be the family disappointment in Slytherin, resents both his older brother and his younger sister for more easily being what his father wanted, and proves he's willing to go to terrifying extremes to one-up his father. And while things do work out in the end for him, and he and his father at least try to reconcile, I'm not convinced Albus has actually learned the lessons he need to.

Albus is one of those that will live his life punishing his father, and there is a path for him where the best way to do that is to spit in the face of all of Harry's ideals and become the Dark Lord Harry can't defeat. Then Harry will be sorry.

The other candidate is the ever-delightful Scorpius Malfoy, though he's an honorable mention. See, Scorpius wouldn't actually become a Dark Lord. Everyone would think he's a Dark Lord because everyone thinks he's Voldemort's bastard child thanks to an unfortunate rumor about his mother. Scorpius in no way acts like a Dark Lord, but finds himself increasingly persecuted because the Aurors and the Government believe he is. Albus then goes off the rail and does activities Scorpius ends up blamed for.

Scorpius cries.

[saintsenara]

1,8,18,21,22

thank you very much for the ask, @ashesandhackles. let's see how these go down...

[choose violence ask game here]

1. who is the character everyone gets wrong?

the last time i answered this question i said sirius - both fanon sirius and dark!sirius - and i stand by it, so this time, let's say... dumbledore.

and, actually, i think this for many of the same reasons which inspired my sirius answer. i really dislike dumbledore bashing, since it’s so frequently based in a complete misunderstanding of his character and the role he serves within the series’ narrative conventions - above all, the fact that the omniscient vibe he gives off in books 1-6 is not actually omniscience at all, as book 7 reveals; dumbledore doesn’t know that sirius is innocent, or that moody is barty crouch jr., or that kreacher is passing information to voldemort, because he’s just a human being. far too many criticisms of dumbledore don’t take this into account, ascribing to malice what is clearly just fallibility.

but, with this said, i dislike the anti-bashing turn in dumbledore-centric fics just as much, because many of these pair the idea that dumbledore is fallible (good and correct) with the idea that he is - for want of a better term - harry-ish. and this is just as bad a misreading of the character. dumbledore is not impulsive or reckless or radical - he holds radical views, but he does nothing to actually advance them in society (this is a man who is at the heart of the establishment for half a century, who does nothing with that power to dismantle the oppressive social structures which drive wizarding politics and prop up blood-supremacy). dumbledore is a hypocrite - he’s happy to be depended on by fudge, he is appalled that fudge might depend on lucius malfoy. dumbledore lives in an ivory tower. dumbledore projects his shame and self-loathing onto others in a way which is detrimental to their own happiness. and so on.

none of these things preclude dumbledore being courageous, but his ‘gryffindor courage’ is remarkably un-gryffindorish, and a lot of pro-dumbledore writing is surprisingly unwilling to confront this.

[also, there’s the other layer of pro-dumbledore writing i dislike - when authors make him hyper-whimsical. the man is stylish, rather than dressed like he ran into a charity shop and fell over. his sweet tooth is an incidental detail - and a trait which harry also shares - rather than his entire personality. he is not dithering and indecisive - he is a creature of inaction, but he tends to have settled on a single ‘right’ course very quickly in his mind. he is not silly. he is not a blushing fool in his relationships - all evidence is that he had just as much power over grindelwald as grindelwald had over him. he is not particularly emotionally demonstrative. he is physically strong. he is taller than voldemort. and, crucially, his mask of benign good humour is fake. all of his ‘whimsical’ traits are part of the act, the real dumbledore is ruthless and damaged and a nerd who loves reading and it’s iconic. let him be that way.]

8. what is the common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about?

there is no such thing as canon compliance.

by which i mean that ‘canon compliant’ is a useful tag to have on ao3 as an indicator of chronology - it’s a good shorthand for ‘the people who die in the series will die in this fic too’, ‘the main events which happen in the books will be mentioned here’, and so on. but i’m not sure that i think it goes beyond that.

and the reason for that, is that i have never seen anything which purports to be canon compliant beyond chronology - including my own work - which actually is.

there are several reasons for this:

the first is something which, if you’ve read other posts on this blog, you will know is a common refrain of mine - that the series is bound by specific genre conventions. if authors are transferring the action into a genre different from the ones the series makes use of, they are not writing something which is canon compliant, but canon coherent.

the second is that if authors are filling in gaps which are missing from the series - above all, the marauders-era or post-war-pre-epilogue timeline - they are doing something which is materially no different from writing a non-canon ship. i.e. writing exactly what they want. if your fic is crammed with original characters, or your marauders listen to cool muggle music, or you’ve spent more than twenty seconds thinking about the wizarding political or legal system then i love that for you - this is good and everyone should do it. but it’s not canon compliant. it’s canon coherent.

the third - and undoubtedly most controversial - is that you cannot write something canon compliant and hold the principle that the author is dead. because we know exactly how jkr thinks that canon should be interpreted, and this is often in ways which are - to borrow a phrase from ursula le guin - rather ethically mean-spirited. jkr’s views on fairness, violence, class, motherhood, love, and - of course - gender weave themselves into the narrative in ways which cannot simply be written off as ‘oh, it’s just harry’s perspective.’

i believe we have a moral imperative to know what she thinks and to interrogate the ways in which this appears in the canon text. i also think - obviously - that we don’t have to agree with what she thinks in order to write things which feel close to canon. and i don’t agree with her - not only when it comes to her views on trans people, which are actively harmful - but also when it comes to things like the fact that she’s clearly someone who’s rather vindictive, but who believes that this vindictiveness is really a strong sense of fairness (look, for example, at the dichotomy between how the text presents violence against people it thinks ‘deserve’ it - harry using the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow being a great example, neither harry, nor mcgonagall, nor the narrative give a fuck - and those it thinks don't). or the fact that her own experience of both motherhood and daughterhood - an experience which was clearly very traumatic for her (her mother died of multiple sclerosis, her first husband was violent towards her, she has an extremely difficult relationship with her father) - drives the series’ prioritisation of sacrificial motherhood, criticism towards mothers who don’t make their children the focus of their entire world, and certain coolness towards fathers (especially absentee ones - who will be blamed by the narrative for being murdered by their own sons). or the fact that she has extremely narrow views on cisgender women, even before her views on trans women are taken into account, which turn up again and again in how female characters we are not supposed to be sympathetic towards are written.

i am not, of course, suggesting that writing a fic which is heavily based in canon means that an author supports jkr’s views. what i am saying instead is that fics which engage with questions such as how harry understands violence against the bad guys in ways which go beyond ‘lol, lmao’ or which write lavender as a person whose fondness for stereotypical femininity doesn’t make her insubstantial or which point out that the narrative blaming merope gaunt for dying directly justifies everything voldemort believes are canon coherent.

and, actually, i think that this broader term - canon coherent - is a better one to talk about the non-chronological aspects of canon compliance. because the dividing line between canon compliant fics and canon divergent ones is incredibly arbitrary, and often doesn’t take into account how close to canon the writing in otherwise canon divergent stories often is. after all, if someone writes a story in which harry feels exactly like his canon self, except that the romantic partner he ends up with isn’t ginny, that is arguably more canon compliant than a piece of happy-ever-after hinny in which ginny is a doormat who gives up her career to be harry’s bang maid and harry speaks like he’s had twenty years of therapy. but only one of these pieces will be welcomed onto canon compliant rec-lists and into canon compliant discussion spaces.

[and it’s worth mentioning that plenty of canon compliant only spaces do allow flexibility - above all in being open to interpretations of characters such as james, harry, and hermione in which they are not white. this is good and they should continue to do this, but we can go further, especially in accepting queer interpretations of the main characters into canon compliant discussion.]

i also think - and i’m aware this may sound cruel - that thinking in terms of canon coherence, rather than compliance and divergence, would be good for everybody’s ego. i can acknowledge that plenty of people who diverge from canon can be dicks about it - and i think that the criticism people who prefer the canon endgame ships often get for being ‘boring’ (and, in the case of ships such as remadora, ‘homophobic’) is bullshit - but the canon compliant girlies (gender neutral) are, in many cases, no better. it is not harder to write something ‘canon compliant’ - not least because, as discussed, you’re not - and it is not evidence of an author engaging more seriously with the text and its themes. there is a tendency i have noticed in the fandom spaces i inhabit, many of which feature people whose preference is for the canon ships etc., for non canon pairings to be treated as - essentially - crack ships, especially in stories which are light or whimsical in tone. but when i say that writing on tomarry or snarry or snack or snapemort or drarry or riddledore or wolfstar or what have you can deliver characterisation and worldbuilding and narrative construction which feels infinitely more plausible than many ‘canon compliant’ pieces of writing, i mean this entirely seriously.

and i think it would be good if the dividing line which leads many people to say ‘i don’t read canon divergent fics’ or ‘i don’t read canon compliant fics’ was instead blended into a preference for fics which are canon coherent or otherwise. we would all learn something.

18. it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

delphini.

another reason why canon coherence over canon compliance is valuable is it means that one can pretend the cursed child doesn’t exist.

but i would like to make a case for the fact that delphini as a concept (so, nothing like the way she’s written in that play…) makes sense and is a character i’d like to see added to more stuff. she works within both voldemort and bellatrix’s canonical arcs, she gives rodolphus something to do post-war after he spends canon being futile, imagine how funny it would be if teddy had a crush on her, george-michael and maeby style (truly les cousins dangereux), imagine how funny it would be if she is the spitting image of her muggle grandfather and her dad’s having a crisis every time he sees her, imagine her trying to parent trap voldemort and bellatrix into actually falling in love…

you can do serious things with her too - in fact, i have - but, as someone who thinks anything is improved by someone spindly and vaguely sinister, i think she’s a hoot and she deserves to turn up in more things.

21: what part of canon do you think is overhyped?

my eyes were bone dry when dobby-ex-machina died.

22: what is your favourite part of canon, which everyone else ignores?

that harry is a luxury boy. let my man buy his solid gold cauldron, hagrid, don’t be a narc.

[in general, i don't love versions of harry which show him as really abstemious or austere - he's pretty careless with his possessions and he doesn't regard the expensive things he owns as something to be unusually protective over. in his adulthood, he's 100% making sure his shed is stocked with the best brooms on the market and buying himself a little treat whenever he's feeling spenny.]

[evawritesstuff]

Scorpius: HOW MANY OWLS HAS HE SENT YOU NOW

Delphi: straight as a circle

_________

Scorpius: I don't like this world, it's dark and plus what I really need is in my own world

People: you mean your crush,Rose?

Scorpius: ....yeah... Rose

________

Scorpius: Rose smells like fresh bread, Albus smells like love and happiness, I wonder if she will go out with me

[capriddle]

I can't say exactly why but I imagine Voldemort as a father who demands the best in terms of study, while he doesn't care much about the rest, perhaps only a little about education, because after all he can't be the father of a savage .

[themarauderslife]

Delphini Lestrange 🐍💚

[cursedwithwords]

I love the angst angle of Teddy not having really any family and that he's pulled into the Wotter clan because of Remus and Tonks but I think my absolute favorite headcanon is that, uh, he abso-fucking-lutely has living relatives.

Aside from Andromeda, Lyall, Draco, Narcissa, Scorpius and Delphini I mean.

I mean Hope Howell definitely had family. I bet the Howell family is still alive in Wales. Lyall was estranged from them because Hope passed away and he was overprotective of Remus, but when Teddy came along he bit the barrel and reached out to them, because goddammit this boy has family and he deserves to know them.

Teddy has family on Hope's side, muggles living in Wales. The Howell family were fishermen for generations, and they still are. Some of them are at least.

Teddy has cousins and aunts and uncles and they're all Muggles but they definitely know about magic and they fucking adore Teddy.

[scorpiusthedreadless]

nicknames for the next gen kids

Albus:

Al - only Scorpius and Rose get the honour of calling him this

Alby - James made it up as a joke and it kinda stuck (family members only)

Albussy - is the family wifi password.

Sev/Sevvy - Lily called him these when she was a baby/toddler

School Bus - James. Just James.

Scorpius:

Scorp - Albus couldn’t be bothered to say his whole name and now half of his friends just call him Scorp

Scor - Albus couldn’t be bothered with the extra ‘p’ on the end of Scorp. this nickname didn’t stick, but it’s still used occasionally

Scorpion King - used in the alternate reality and it kinda slaps tbh (also used by Rose at the end but just no.)

Malfoy the Unanxious - by himself

Scorpius the Dreadless - again, by himself

Corpse - kinda in his name ig?? and he’s pale asf

Jack Frost - the hair.

Rose

Rosie - Ron and Hermione think it’s cute (which it is oml) but Rose hates it

Posie - Scorpius teases her with it when they’ve become better friends later on

Scorp’s Girlfriend - used by literally everyone at Hogwarts bc they think they’re dating when they’re really not.

Hermione Granger 2.0 - usually comes from Albus but sometimes Ron joins in. this is not appreciated by Rose.

James-Sirius

Jamesy Wamesy - Albus wanted revenge for ‘School Bus’

Jamesy - kinda a better form of ‘Jamesy Wamesy’ which Teddy picked up

All The Marauders In One - Harry receives this comment on James’s report card VERY often (always from McGonagall)

Jam - all I have to say about this one is Teddy.

Lily-Luna

Lily - no one can be bothered with the whole Lily-Luna thing at this point

Lils - Harry started it bc he wanted to separate his child from his mother and he obviously didn’t call his mum Lils

Loony - stems from the second part of her name (Luna) bc Luna was called Loony Lovegood (we stan Luna)

Little Moon - Scorpius tried a little moon once and said it was soft and fluffy like Lily so it just kinda became a thing ig

Lilsy Pops - Harry tried it once and she immediately tried to shut it down. it did not work.

Delphini

(idk why I put her in btw I just had a few ideas for nicknames lmao)

Delphi - used by Albus and Scorpius and probably everyone else she’s ever met (not that she’s met many people)

Del - probably a her and Scorpius thing bc he seems like the sort of person who needs a special nickname for everyone

The Augurey - used by everyone in the alternate reality

Deli Deal - all imma say is someone got drunk. im not gonna say who, but someone definitely got drunk.

Teddy Lupin

Ted - James, like Albus, was too lazy to complete Teddy’s name in a sentence

Edward - his full name so technically not a nickname but let’s just pretend it is

T - Albus got even more lazy than before and only wanted to say one letter

Teddy Bear - James got drunk. or high. or both.

[rewritingcanon]

delphi’s evil laughter when shes been found out as the augurey is the vibe i bring to the function

[cursedchildsupremacy]

She was a fairy ✨🧚

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

I don't remember if you've talked about this before, but what are your thoughts about (inhales) Cursed Child?

OOOF. Okay. Thoughts on Cursed Child (bear in mind I've read it (a while ago) but never seen any live production of it). I'll split this response into likes, dislikes, and je ne sais quoi:

Likes:

Scorpius Malfoy is as cute as a button.

I do love me some Slytherin Albus Severus.

Time Turner magic being able to do more than go back a few hours. That's been very useful for my fanfic fun.

Delphini as Bellamort's child. I see Voldemort wanting a child not for his own sake but more as having another tool in his arsenal. I can see Delphi being a reward for Bella, who hasn't had children, but ultimately with the strings attached of "you both will do my bidding."

Strained parent-child relationships. No parent is perfect and sometimes they say stupid things, even Harry.

Dislikes:

Parents say stupid things but I think Harry would never go so far as to wish Albus wasn't his son.

Draco seems too soft and cuddly. I feel he'd be softer in his older age, sure, but he's still Draco Malfoy. He's not going to be joking around with Muggleborns and pooping rainbows.

Delphini as Bellamort's child. In theory I like her existence but in practice I have so many questions about what she would turn out to be like. I don't love the way she comes off in the play. I can't put my finger on it. I just don't like it.

Requited or unrequited Scorbus? Scorose? I mean for angst fun it's nice to have Albus be in love with his BFF and Scorpius be in love with someone else but IDK I feel like Albus deserves to find his own happiness somehow. Maybe there's a Gellert Jr somewhere.

Je ne sais quoi:

It reads like fan fiction, which is fine, because I like fan fiction. It's supposed to be canon, but that leaves more questions than answers.

Albus watching his grandparents get murdered: kid's going to need therapy forever.

Severus is super wise and Dumbledore-like? Uh. Uh huh. Okay. Sure. Sure.

IDK I wanted more Remus and Tonks and Sirius. More Teddy too. Give me all my favorites.

Time turner magic makes my brain hurt.

I'm torn on Scorose and Scorbus. I really like Draco and Ron as in laws.

So in short . . . it's aggressively okay. I don't hate it the way I hate some things, I don't love it, and I certainly wouldn't pay to see it live. I'd go if someone else bought the ticket and asked me to come, but it's not something I'd go out of my way for.

I hope that answers your ask!