#harry potter backstory

[starry-bi-sky]

I'm in A Mood™ (stressed) so im going back to my roots of melting two character together into one person. So bruce wayne!danny fenton. Danny Fenton who, for eight years, grew up in a beautiful gothic manor with his mom and dad under the name "Bruce Wayne". Playing piano with his mother, running around the manor with his father.

Then when he's eight it's ripped away from him. There's blood on his hands and pearls pooling at his feet, and both his parents are dead in front of him.

And he gets shipped off to distant relatives "the Fentons" shortly after, Alfred close on his heels because someone needs to take care of him, someone that knows him. Bruce goes to the Fentons for the safety of anonymity. Gotham's press wants to sink its teeth into him.

Danny misses his city even if it took everything from him. There are shadows in his eyes and he's pale as a sheet even beside his distant cousins, and they change his name to "Danny Fenton' because nobody should know that their newest child was illustrious orphan Bruce Wayne.

They call him Bruce behind closed doors. Danny prefers it that way, he clings onto the name -- the one his parents gave him -- like a lifeline. He makes friends with Sam and Tucker. Tucker takes one look at the willowy, morbid little boy standing in the corner like a shade, ghosts in his eyes, and drags him out into the sunlight, and takes him over to Sam.

When Danny is twelve, he's still not over it -- and he's a little obsessed with the Fentons' research, with the morbid. He has books upon books on death, murder, detective work. Anything he can get his hands on. And stars. He loves stars.

Alfred owns the apartment next to them and comes over regularly. Danny clings to him.

When Danny is twelve, he's still quiet, meek, a shy little thing prone to being bullied. Freaky little Fenton with the night in his eyes and too-cold skin even before he put one foot in the grave. in a sleepover in his room with Sam and Tucker, he tells them the truth. They're his friends, he trusts them.

"My name is Bruce." he murmurs, voice quiet as the breeze, always quiet. he's staring at his star-covered sheets.

"Like Bruce Wayne?" Tucker asks, a joking tone in his voice.

Danny smiles a little, lamb-like with insecurity. "I am Bruce Wayne." And he takes them down to the lab, disrupting Maddie and Jack, to prove it. Sam tells them of her own wealth then shortly after. They start calling Danny "Bruce" in private too -- its trust. Thats what it is. It's trust.

Sam goes to media functions and comes back with aching feet and complaints on her tongue -- and Danny soaks it up all like a sponge, splayed across a beanbag chair with Tucker in her room. He's not envious of her, he used to go to events with his parents and they kept him safe from the ugly of Gotham's Elite. For the most part. He's had comments made at him, he doesn't miss them.

Alfred returns to the manor semi-regularly, Danny goes with him. he wanders the hallways and helps Alfred clean, the last thing either of them want is for their home to fall into disrepair. He brings Jazz with him next time, then Tucker, then Sam. They all help him clean, and he shows them his room. The one across from his parents', it feels strange.

When Danny dies when he's fourteen, the first adult he tells is Alfred. He and Jazz go over to his house more often than they stay in the Fentonworks building. At least at Alfred's, the food doesn't come to life. Alfred sits at the kitchen table and weeps when Danny tells him, Jazz is upstairs, and its just the two of them.

Danny's ghost form wears pearls around his wrist and the gloves look stained with some kind of black substance. He looks like a child who died in a lab accident, but he also looks like a child who has shadows dripping off his shoulders, curling at his feet, hanging from his eyes.

because amorphous blob batman has my heart always and danny/bruce will not escape it even in death even if that IS the only reason im giving him Mild BatBlob Vibes...so far

when they go to the manor, alfred helps danny make a pile of stones between Martha and Thomas' graves, nobody but the two of them (and sam and tucker) will know what it means. (not even bruce's children later down the line, not for a long, long time)

danny dives into ghost fighting on shaky feet and not half as witty as he once was in one world. he's skittish, skittering between blasts from shadow to shadow and clumsily making his way through each battle. but helping people lights a fire in him. he still has shadows dripping off his feet but there's a purpose in his eyes.

and god help him, he's going to help people.

[sexiestwerewolf]

I feel like Dumbledore has done irrefutable damage to the "wise older mentor who takes the traumatized kid under their wing" trope just because Rowling can't write father figures properly and now everyone expects every "wise old man who takes the traumatized kid under their wing" to be some inherent evil who's actually the spawn of Satan and only looking to harm said kid

I've seen it time and time again to many characters, but the ones I think of the most are All Might and Wu even though, objectively, they're great teachers and don't expect their kids to literally give up their life to stop the big bad. they made a few mistakes but literally everyone to ever exist is gonna make mistakes, but it doesn't make them bad people

in general I just really hate "character bashing" especially that of which I'll see in fanfiction and genuinely believe that if you stopped looking at all those characters through the lense of black and white and instead actually take the time to look into their characters and why they may act that way or make those mistakes and even, for fanfic writers, utilize those and expand upon them you'll find so much more depth

also usually I'm finding people giving more sympathy towards villains than characters who slighted the MC just a little bit and don't get me wrong I love my villains (huge garm fan here duh) but forgiving one but being overly critical of the mistakes of another is so weird

anyways I love my fanfiction writers who make old wise teachers flawed and human (so to speak in Wu's case) instead of irredeemable monsters who only have it out for the mc

[100jewels-between-teeth]

First time meeting Professor Sharp

[iwasbored777]

I don't know about you but these are my official four horsemen of a villain/antagonist who would've won easily and/or long time ago if he focused on the fight more and stopped talking when he shouldn't have

[shrimpalbuspotter]

Having a convo with another Marauders era fan but I'm an "as canon accurate characterisation as possible" fan and they are an "ATYD is the textbook" fan

[oneluckygoose]

Something something soldiers something something raised in a war something something the nature of the place they were put in something something unjust persecution something something fighting back something something the start of the conflict something something first act disaster something something story structure something something doomed by the narrative

[rarepears]

Cho Chang's name is pretty racist.

What's also true is that a lot of Asian babies were adopted by white families.

What's not to say that this doesn't also happen in Wizarding Society?

Cho Chang is the adopted daughter of a white pureblood family, doesn't understand much of her Asian roots - not even the language or the cuisine - although she would very much like to and the trauma involved of being adopted and alienated from her birth culture.

Now that would be a fascinating lens to explore the Harry Potter world.

[greenerteacups]

Are there any other wizarding families that are underexplored in canon and pique your interest in a similar way to the Blacks?

This is a unique function of what food my brain worms like to eat, but no one's doing it like the Blacks. The drama? The intrigue? The Gothic horror? The prodigal sons and lost daughters and killers and sinners and martyrs and saints? The wizard Catholicism of it all? The story of the House of Black is the best book never written.

[deathnguts]

Don’t hate me but Bipolar/Bpd James Potter is actually just Harry Potter

[short666bread]

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[foe-of-fate]

Currently thinking about how almost none of the Harry Potter characters have character growth. I mean sure they grow, they’re kids and we do see their mental state change as they grow, but from the beginning to the end of the books the characters themselves don’t really change at all.

[waterlilychaser]

euphemia as the star chaser on the gryffindor quidditch team. effie getting to play with her long time boyfriend fleamont potter. effie becoming team captain. effie going pro quidditch after she graduates. effie having a long and successful career, but being somewhat unsatisfied because in her constant physical stress, she hasn’t been able to support a pregnancy. effie finally retiring from quidditch, but believing she’s now too old to get pregnant. effie being beyond surprised and overjoyed when she finds out she’s having a baby. her miracle baby. effie being the best mom to her son, who she sees herself in so very clearly. who she hopes beyond all else gets to live as beautiful a life as she did.

[artbyace]

i will never get snape because like why are u beefing with an 11 year old just cuz u didn’t like his dad

[ala-baguette]

Just finished reading Knowing Where to Look, what a beautiful piece of fiction!! Congrats on finally finishing it, you must feel very accomplished :)

... and if you ever feel inspired to write a whole fic about Ben Harrows, the love of my life, nobody will try to stop you 😂

There is no surer form of flattery than someone telling me they love one of my OCs even one tiny iota as much as they love the canon characters. Thank you! While a whole fic about Ben Harrows is unlikely (tempting, but that would be a rather niche target audience), I have no doubt Ben will have a few cameos in future fics here and there. I love him too much to say a true goodbye to Ben. However...while not exactly a fic, what I can offer you now is an excerpt from my initial outline (circa 2009) containing the character analysis and (rather depressing) backstory I wrote for Ben. Definite KwtL spoilers, so if you have not read it, proceed at your own risk!

Ben, at first glance appears to be a highly open, out-going, fun-loving sort of individual who says what he thinks.  He is all goofy smiles and wit and charm and is loved by everyone who meets him.  The truth of the matter is, however, in certain areas, Ben is quite the reverse from what people think.  Early on, he discovered subconsciously or otherwise, that if he was loquacious and friendly, those around him received the impression that he had told them everything, and thus they did not bother to look deeper.  If he talked about the insignificant enough, they forgot to ask about the significant.  There are certain aspects of his life which he discusses with no one.  He is, in reality, extremely private when it comes to these things. This is a product of his upbringing and, of course, past trauma.

Ben, born ‘Brian O’Harrow’, was born in Belfast in 1972.  He is, in the technical definition of the word, Muggle-born, however, he was never ignorant of magic. 

Ben’s mother, Fiona, was the younger sister of a Muggle-born wizard, Eamon O’Callaghan.  Growing up, Fiona and Eamon were very close and Eamon was very protective of his little sister.  Fiona, therefore, heard all about the magical world and everything that happened at Hogwarts whenever her brother came home for the holidays. 

Fiona left her family home in Cork to attend university in Belfast when she was eighteen.  There she met Kevin O’Harrow.  They fell in love, married, and settled down together in Belfast and had Ben a few years later.  This was, unfortunately, just as the Troubles were gearing up.  Kevin was young, idealistic, and nationalistic—he was eager to be in the thick of things at this time, but Fiona was much more reticent and worried about her small family’s safety.  As the violence escaladed, she frequently suggested they move back to Cork, but Kevin was insistent they stay. 

Ben began displaying signs of magic at a young age, and Fiona immediately recognised it for what it was.  At Fiona’s urging, Eamon, who had no partner or children of his own, came to settle down in Belfast to be near his sister and to support Ben.  Fiona promoted a strong connection between her son and her brother; knowing Ben would eventually enter the wizarding world, she wanted him to have someone to go to with any problems that she knew she and Kevin would be ill equipped to help him with.

Meanwhile, the first war against Voldemort was underway.  Eamon, as a Muggle-born now had a target on his back.  He was very idealistic and considered himself to have less to lose than most; he took it upon himself to do everything in his power to waylay the Death Eaters, working largely independently, loath to put anyone else at risk.  Even so, Fiona found herself trapped between two very separate wars without really being a part of either.  She lived in constant fear for her family and especially Ben who straddled these two worlds, both of which were full of danger for him.

Heedless of his sister’s warning, Eamon continued his quiet rebellion.  When Ben was six years old, Eamon snuck into a Death Eater gathering place and stole some parchments detailing meeting times, locations, and certain members.  As he made his escape, however, he was seen and recognised by someone with whom he had gone to Hogwarts. 

The Death Eaters had recently acquired a new recruit, a young boy, only seventeen years old. They decided that it would be a good and relatively simple test to send the boy to kill Eamon and retrieve these documents.  Eamon, however, was not at home when the young Death Eater broke into his flat—something the Death Eater was quite relieved about, though he wouldn’t have admitted it.  He set about ransacking the place, searching everywhere he could think of for the papers, secretly hoping that he could find them quickly and return them to his colleagues before Eamon came home and that maybe they would forget about the whole killing part of the assignment.

Fiona, who had been passing nearby Eamon’s flat at the time with her son in tow, decided to stop in and say hello to her brother and see if he might be available to watch Ben while she did some shopping as a six-year-old really does slow down the process.  After going up the stairs to Eamon’s flat and letting herself in, she followed the sounds of rummaging coming from her brother’s study.  When the door opened, the young Death Eater, on high nerves, whipped around and let loose a Killing Curse without even looking to see who it was. 

When he saw what he had done, the young Death Eater was horrified.  He stood there and stared at the young woman he had just murdered in cold blood and her six-year-old son who was kneeling on the floor looking confused and in shock, still holding her hand.  It was the first person Regulus Black had ever killed and it was the first in a line of occurrences that would eventually turn him to give his life to destroy a horcrux.  Regulus ran from the house, determined to tell the Death Eaters that the parchment wasn’t in there.  Eamon later came home to find his sister dead on the floor and Ben still beside her, still holding her hand.

Kevin O’Harrow did his best to raise his son after that.  He loved Ben very much, but he was well beyond depressed after the death of his wife.  He was detached and no longer seemed to be able to muster the energy to show his son how much he cared, something he knew Ben needed to see.  After a few months, Kevin realised he couldn’t give his son what he needed, and he sent Ben to live with his Uncle Eamon.  Kevin, in turn, channelled his anger deeper into the Northern Ireland conflict, diving into the fight for his country’s independence.   

Eamon was also crushed by the death of the sister he had loved so much, most in particular because he was convinced it was his fault.  He took his responsibilities toward Ben very seriously, however.  He was determined to raise and love him like a son and to do everything in his power to make it up to his sister.  He immediately cut off his risky, anti-Death Eater life style, but quickly realised it was too late; he had already made a name for himself as being outspoken against Voldemort.  War ranging on both sides, he decided to take Ben away and go into hiding.  Eamon tried to convince Kevin to go with them, but Kevin insisted that “Ireland was the only thing left in my life that’s worth fighting for.”  These words Ben would carry with him for the rest of his life.

Eamon took Ben to England where a friend from school had offered him a safehouse.  Fearful of public perception of the Irish, he anglicized Ben’s name and taught him to speak with an English accent.  Eamon cared and loved Ben like his own son and did everything in his power to ensure he had a safe and happy childhood going forward.  Knowing the risks to Muggle-borns, Eamon even had forged documents drawn up to claim Ben was his biological son.  It was these documents that would later save Ben in the second war when the Death Eaters started their purge at the Ministry.

A year after going into hiding, Voldemort was defeated by the Boy Who Lived and the political climate began to calm, at least in the wizarding world, if not so much in the Muggle one.  Eamon and Ben emerged from hiding to discover that Kevin O’Harrow had died a few months previous in a car bomb explosion.  Reports from those who knew him suggested that he had been intentionally putting himself in danger for quite some time.

The years passed and Eamon did as he had promised and raised Ben as a son, supporting him through his years at Hogwarts and later through his Auror training.  A year and a half after Ben qualified as an Auror, Eamon O’Callaghan passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack.  Ben mourned him like he would a father, but was grateful that he had lived long enough to see what Ben had become.

At the time of this story, Ben is now twenty-six years old, only having qualified to be an Auror five years previous, not long before Tonks.  He has no political aspirations and is included in the initial meetings at Grimmauld Place merely as a body guard. He was chosen because Kingsley has worked with him in the past, trusts him, and quite simply, likes him. 

Since qualifying, Ben has been discretely using his connections as an Auror to discover the identity of the Death Eater who was responsible for the death of his mother.  The trauma-clouded memories of a six-year old boy, however, did not prove enough, and he never found out anything more about it.  Until the evening in the Black family home when he stumbled upon an old photograph of Regulus Black.  I want you to understand the turmoil in his mind at learning that the man he had spent the past twenty years hating had, in fact, reformed and given his life to help defeat Voldemort. 

Early on, I had a lot of questions about why he (and other characters) stayed at the Ministry even after it fell, and to that I will say this: While very idealistic, he is also practical.  Eamon was careful to teach him this, learning from his own mistakes. Ben is as influenced by his trauma in the first war as Gawain is, though in a different way.  Moreover, with Eamon gone, Ben has no family and, while many friends, none who would risk their lives for him if he were to get on the wrong side of the Death Eaters. That is not to say he didn’t find his own ways to fight back.  Remember Yaxley’s raining office in “Magic is Might” DH?  That was all him.

And, as a bonus, here's an AI generated image that very roughly looks like the Ben in my head, for those interested. Very roughly... this bloke is a little too classically handsome for my liking, but AI can only seem to manage handsome or deranged and nothing in between.

[aurevoiralways]

Lazy colored pic of my self insert oc and a couple doodles of him and Snape :) His name is Vincent Rosario. He teaches alchemy at Hogwarts in an au I've been writing. I look forward to dumping more of my silly self indulgent drawings on this account.

[labyrinthhofmymind]

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS CANON SIRIUS BLACK LIKE I DO GRRRRRRR