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hollowed-theory-hall · 6 months

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what would tom riddle's patronus?

Okay, it took me some time to answer this ask since I needed to spend some time thinking. I didn't really have an answer in mind until your question. It's just something I apparently never thought about. So I was interested in finding the most canon-adjacent answer I can for if Tom Riddle/Voldemort could cast a patronus, what would it be.

So, my approach to finding the right animal was based on a few factors, the first of which:

How exactly is the form your Patronus takes determined?

Because we don't actually get a straight answer in the books. We know Patroni can change with a person, but we don't exactly get an answer on what their form represents and why some couples have matching Patroni.

Basically, I don't know what you expected, Anon, but what you're getting is some rambling about the magical theory behind the Patronus charm followed by why that means Tom gets a certain animal over another.

So, let's start with the basics, the incantation:

"Expecto Patronum"

This is in Latin and literally translates to: "I await/expect a defender"

And Remus Lupin explains what the Patronus charm is as:

“Well, when it works correctly, it conjures up a Patronus,” said Lupin, “which is a kind of anti-dementor — a guardian that acts as a shield between you and the dementor.” ... “The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon — hope, happiness, the desire to survive — but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the dementors can’t hurt it. But I must warn you, Harry, that the charm might be too advanced for you. Many qualified wizards have difficulty with it.”

(POA, page 237)

We also know the patronus is cast by thinking of a happy memory — well, not really. The memory isn't really important; the emotion is. The memory is to help you have the right happy feelings that can fuel a Patronus. "You got to mean it" just like with an unforgivable.

So, what does it tell us about the Patronus:

We have a defender made out of happiness, literally.

This already sounds like something Tom Riddle would struggle with. I don't really see canon Tom Riddle/Voldemort being capable of producing one, but let's assume he can in some hypothetical AU. Let's take a look at a few patroni to see how their form is chosen and why.

Obviously, we have Harry's (and James') stag. A stag symbolizes many things in different cultures, but deer (both Stags and Does, like Lily and Snape) in general symbolize:

The cycle of life and death

Agility and grace

Bravery

Nobility

All this fits the Potters quite well. The nobility and bravery of Gryffindor and the cycle between life and death. Stags actually represent regeneration, as in a return from death, which fits with the Potters' connection to the Paverells and death perfectly.

Stags also symbolize authority, strength, leadership, and fatherhood, while does symbolize femininity, grace, intuition, and devotion. All in all, both animals fit James and Lily well. And while the stag does fit Harry (to a degree), I don't think his Patronus represents him.

I think Harry's patronus is a stag because James' patronus was a stag. Harry was actually convinced his father cast the Patronus when he first saw it in POA. And it makes sense.

I don't remember where I saw this theory, but it essentially was that your patrons would represent a person or an idea that you feel will defend you. It's why certain couples have matching Patroni, why a Patronus can change when you or your feelings about people change.

And Harry, when he casts his Patronus, the idea of his father who he never knew but would have protected him is the idea represented in Harry's Patronus. It's a stag like James' not because Harry and James are so similar (they have very different personalities actually) but because Harry's Patronus is James. It's a stag because James was a stag, and Harry is calling the concept of his father to defend him.

Following this logic, Lily's Patronus is a doe, because she is the doe. Lily's defender is herself. Courageous, noble, graceful and devoted. Lily's devotion to her son is what literally sets the series into motion. The reason she and James match is that they always have. He was always represented by the stag and she was always represented by the doe. Their Patroni aren't matching because of their relationship with each other, but because they are so compatible their Patroni matched from the get-go.

Snape's Patronus is a doe because of Lily. Lily is represented by the doe. As she was Snape's first friend and defender, whenever he calls for a protector, it's Lily.

Let's look at a few other Patroni, like Hermione's otter:

Playfulness

Joy

Family and close-knit friendships

Loyalty

All of this doesn't really sound like Hermione. Ron's Jack Russell Terrier on the other hand:

Loyalty

Courage

Playfulness

Cleverness

Protectiveness

Tanasity

Does sound very in line with who Ron is.

But then who does Hermione's otter represent? Well, an otter is from the weasel family and the list of characteristics looks closer to Ron's list of traits than Hermione's. I think Hermione's otter represents Ron who did step in to defend her since the troll incident in their first year multiple times.

So, where does that leave Tom Riddle?

Well, we established the Patronus becomes your defender, and in Tom's case, it'll be himself. Tom is distrustful and sees himself as more capable than anyone else. Not to mention he never had a real connection or person in his life he could call upon to defend him. So, whatever animal his Patronus is would represent himself as his own defender.

So, which animal represents Tom best?

The first animal I thought of, is of course: the serpent. Snakes are heavily associated with Tom (for obvious reasons) and is an animal we know he has a soft spot for. When looking at what snakes represent, you can see why he is associated with them:

Deceit

Transformation

Power

Regeneration and rebirth (shedding their skin)

Healing (Cadcadeus)

For the most part, the list seems to fit him well. Specifically their association with rebirth and the cycle of life and death by shedding their skin. Deceit and power are also right up Tom's alley. And even transformation considering he rewrote his entire identity to become Voldemort.

But, just "snake" wasn't good enough for me, I wanted to know which kind. And as I wanted his Patronus to be as rare as Harry's stag, I went to the list of official Pottermore possible Patroni to find a snake that is as hard to get in the test as the stag while not being magical.

(Magical Patroni are incredibly rare and to have yourself represented by a magical creature in your Patronus you need to be incredibly unique or incredibly full of yourself. At least, that's how I see it)

And low and behold, there was one on the aforementioned list:

The King Cobra

So I looked up if this snake has any interesting additional unique symbolism that would fit Tom. And, well, there was:

Authority and Leadership

Aggression and Fearlessness

Destruction and Creation

Intelligence and Cunning

Which all in all sounds fitting for Tom Riddle.

I also continued reading and apparently, snakes are associated with lightning by some Native American tribes. And when I saw that I was sold on the idea. Considering how the killing curse is represented by lightning (Harry's scar and the lightning-struck tower being the name of the chapter Dumbledore dies in). It feels appropriate with Tom's connection with snakes.

The King Cobra is actually not really a Cobra and is considered a unique breed of snake, which Tom would approve of. It's also the longest venomous snake and its venom can result in a rapid fatality, as soon as 30 minutes following a bite. It's also a cannibal snake that eats other snakes, including its own kind.

Overall it just fits perfectly, both in traits, symbolism, and how rare and dangerous it is. So, for your question, I think Tom Riddle's Patronus, if he could cast one, would be a King Cobra.

#harry potter #harry potter thoughts #hp #hp thoughts #lord voldemort #hollowedheadcanon #voldemort analysis #voldemort #tom riddle #tom marvolo riddle #patronus #patronus charm #hp headcanon #anon asks #asks #anonymous

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sideprince · 4 months

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Snape's Doe Patronus

'Well, when it works correctly, it conjures up a Patronus, which is a kind of anti-Dementor — a guardian which acts as a shield between you and the Dementor. The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon — hope, happiness, the desire to survive — but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can't hurt it.'

Lupin explaining what a Patronus is to Harry, Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 12

The essence of a Patronus, as we see Lupin explain, is hope, happiness, and the desire to survive, though this last point may be specific to the use of Patronuses as a defense against Dementors. It's unclear whether a Patronus has any other use, or was specifically invented to protect against Dementors, and if Dumbledore and the Order's use of them to communicate was specific to them or part of a more general practice and purpose. While I don't necessarily think that extra-textual references have a reasonable place in meta discussions, the Harry Potter Wiki also has the following quote from the Wonderbook: Book of Spells video game that JK Rowling contributed to and is attributed to the fictional character of Miranda Goshawk, which offers a bit more insight:

"This ancient and mysterious charm conjures a magical guardian, a projection of all your most positive feelings. The Patronus Charm is difficult, and many witches and wizards are unable to produce a full, corporeal Patronus, a guardian which generally takes the shape of the animal with whom they share the deepest affinity. You may suspect, but you will never truly know what form your Patronus will take until you succeed in conjuring it."

The key points here are that a Patronus is a projection of a person's most positive feelings, and takes the shape of an animal with whom they share the deepest affinity.

Based on this information, it makes sense that Tonks' Patronus changed form when her unrequited love for Lupin became all consuming. We see how much it affected her because in all of HBP she's consistently described as sad, downcast, and unlike her usual cheery self. The change in her Patronus is specific to her personal emotional state and isn't necessarily a statement on whether Patronuses change form any time a person is in love. Therefore we can conclude that a person's Patronus changes based on their emotional or mental state, not based on whether or not they're in love. Whether a person is even able to conjur a Patronus is also dependent on these factors. This is supported by the way we see characters who had previously been able to produce corporeal Patronuses struggle to do so when under stress:

The air around them had frozen: Harry’s breath caught and solidified in his chest. Shapes moved out in the darkness, swirling figures of concentrated blackness, moving in a great wave towards the castle, their faces hooded and their breath rattling … Ron and Hermione closed in beside him as the sounds of fighting behind them grew suddenly muted, deadened, because a silence only Dementors could bring was falling thickly through the night … ‘Come on, Harry!’ said Hermione’s voice, from a very long way away, ‘Patronuses, Harry, come on!’ He raised his wand, but a dull hopelessness was spreading through him: Fred was gone, and Hagrid was surely dying or already dead; how many more lay dead that he did not yet know about; he felt as though his soul had already half left his body … ‘HARRY, COME ON!’ screamed Hermione. A hundred Dementors were advancing, gliding towards them, sucking their way closer to Harry’s despair, which was like a promise of a feast … He saw Ron’s silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly and expire; he saw Hermione’s otter twist in mid-air and fade, and his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling … And then a silver hare, a boar and a fox soared past Harry, Ron and Hermione’s heads: the Dementors fell back before the creatures’ approach. Three more people had arrived out of the darkness to stand beside them, their wands outstretched, continuing to cast their Patronuses: Luna, Ernie and Seamus. ‘That’s right,’ said Luna encouragingly, as if they were back in the Room of Requirement and this was simply spell practice for the DA. ‘That’s right, Harry … come on, think of something happy …’ ‘Something happy?’ he said, his voice cracked. ‘We’re all still here,’ she whispered, ‘we’re still fighting. Come on, now …’ There was a silver spark, then a wavering light, and then, with the greatest effort it had ever cost him, the stag burst from the end of Harry’s wand. It cantered forwards, and now the Dementors scattered in earnest, and immediately the night was mild again, but the sounds of the surrounding battle were loud in his ears. ‘Can’t thank you enough,’ said Ron shakily, turning to Luna, Ernie and Seamus, ‘you just saved -”

Deathly Hallows Ch. 32

We know Harry, Ron, and Hermione can conjur a Patronus, but it's their hopelessness and the trauma they've experienced in the battle so far after a year of isolation searching for Horcruxes that affect their ability to do so, or whether or not a Patronus is corporeal. There is a connection between how able a person is to conjur a Patronus based on their emotional state, and what shape their Patronus takes based on the same.

How does this, then, inform what we know about Snape's Patronus? We know it symbolizes Lily, because he conjurs it in a moment when he's trying to prove a point to Dumbledore:

‘But this is touching, Severus,’ said Dumbledore seriously. ‘Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?’ ‘For him?’ shouted Snape. ‘Expecto patronum!’ From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: she landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. ‘After all this time?’ ‘Always,’ said Snape.’

Deathly Hallows Ch. 33

We don't actually know if Lily could conjur a patronus, let alone if the shape it took was a doe. We don't know if James could either or what shape it would have taken, we only know that James' animagus form was a stag, and that we are meant to conclude as a result that his wife is therefore symbolized by a doe, and that Snape's Patronus reflects his love for her as a result.

At its core, based on the above definitions of what a Patronus is, we can conclude that Snape's source of hope and happiness was Lily. All we know for a fact, based on canon text, is that they were best friends until their fifth year at school. There are varying opinions on whether Snape also felt romantic love for Lily, but we know he definitely felt love for her as a close friend, and his Patronus alludes to him continuing to feel this way after she ended their friendship and they stopped talking, not to mention how much this was compounded by his guilt for his role in her death.

I would take this further, though, and argue that Snape's Patronus was a reflection of him, ie. that it wasn't a projection of his affection for Lily but rather of the hope and happiness that he felt in their friendship and that, if we're taking the Miranda Goshawk quote at face value, his Patronus reflected his "most positive feelings" and "the animal with whom [he] share[s] the deepest affinity."

This definition implies that Snape's doe Patronus reflects that he and Lily were kindred spirits. That's why they were best friends, and why the doe is both reflective of Snape and symbolic of Lily. This isn't surprising when you consider that they were the only magical children of their age in a small midlands factory town. They grew up in different classes, but the same culture, with the same isolating factor of being able to do magic while surrounded by muggles. Childhood friendships create a strong bond, and how much more so with such factors at play? As a result, I think Snape's doe Patronus doesn't just symbolize his attachment to Lily, but that he was like her in many ways. We see this in the glimpses we get of Lily - that she was a brilliant student as described by Slughorn, that she had a righteous temper as demonstrate in Snape's Worst Memory, and that she was not afraid of what others thought of her whether it was the best friend she was challenging unflinchingly or the popular jock bully who she told off when no one else was willing to. Though we only Snape and Lily's interactions at school as ones where they're at odds, their personalities share many similarities and it quickly becomes apparent why they became such fast, and close, friends.

We don't know if James had a Patronus, but we do know that he's represented by a stag since it was his animagus form. We're shown clearly by the text that Harry's stag patronus is a reflection of his father's spirit living on in him. While the author's intention, I think, was that as a stag and doe James and Lily were a pair, she may not have understood how these animals mate. I'm not concerned with her intentions, though, and the fact that stags and does don't spend their lives together actually offers a more interesting reading of the conclusions the reader is meant to draw from the symbolism of the doe Patronus.

After mating stags leave does to raise the offspring on their own. While this interpretation has been used by some people to circumscribe James as a negligent parent and partner, I'm not convinced of this. James demonstrated selfishness and immaturity in his tendency to sneak out under his invisibility cloak even while he and Lily were in hiding, but ultimately we learn almost as little about James as we do about Lily so it's difficult to define his whole character based on limited information. It's worth noting that he did also put himself between Voldemort and his wife and child, knowing he would be killed, and though he did so while foolishly having left his wand in the other room, this kind of self-sacrifice is antithetical to the reading of the stag/doe symbolism that highlights stags' tendency to abandon does after mating.

There is, nevertheless, an interesting metaphor for the way the two animals come together for a higher purpose - that of survival of the species and continuation of life. In this way Harry and Snape reflect James and Lily respectively. The two of them had more potential for friendship than either was willing to see, and though they were enemies (or at least they had a lot of animosity towards each other - I would argue Harry saw Snape as an enemy but not vice versa) they nevertheless they came together - at times aware of it, at times not - for the greater purpose of defeating Voldemort, ie. the survival and continuation of life in the wizarding world.

And this, the knowledge we gain by the end of the books, that Snape's main purpose in life as he saw it was to protect a child and help raise him safely while working to defeat an existential threat, is what best explains why his Patronus is a doe. In fact, he goes out of his way and risks his life for much more than Harry, fighting for the safety of all the students in his care, and anyone else he is able to save. As the text shows us, just before he reveals his Patronus to be the doe, he has the following infamous exchange with Dumbledore:

‘How many men and women have you watched die?’ ‘Lately, only those whom I could not save,’ said Snape.

Deathly Hallows Ch. 33

If we interpret the doe as symbolic of Lily, a self-sacrificing parent who put the life of her child before her own, how much more so does Snape embody that symbolism, having given his life after risking it repeatedly for the sake of countless people, including the very same child Lily gave hers for? Had Lily's Patronus also been a doe, it would have reflected who she was at her core, and those aspects of her character which gave her strength and hope - and which reflected all she had in common with Snape. Therefore I would argue that Snape's Patronus symbolizing only his unrequited love is a reductive reading, and that it was, in fact, reflective of him as an individual as well, and of the qualities he possessed that were the reason for his bond with Lily.

#meta #patronus

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sitp-recs · 3 months

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hi!i'm looking for some fic where draco and harry have age gap,can you recs some.thanks so much

Hi there! I’m sure I did a list about it in the past but I couldn’t find it so here are some recs - these are a mix of time travel and de-aging focused on romantic age gap. I also gotta mention Away Childish Things since it’s a fandom classic 🙌

Draco at Nineteen by birdsofshore (E, 5k)

It's the middle of the night and Harry Potter is sitting on my bed looking distinctly weird. I've had some fucked-up dreams in my time, but this one... this one is something new.

Not Nineteen Forever by @sorrybutblog (E, 6k)

A rogue charm hits on a mission and suddenly, Draco is nineteen again. Harry is still thirty-five and doing his best to look after his de-aged Auror partner (and forget about his long unrequited crush) until St. Mungo’s can brew the antidote.

The Eighth Tale by lettered (E, 12k)

Draco Malfoy tries to fix the past, but instead mucks it up some more. For Harry, it all becomes quite clear.

Wish You Were Here by cryptonym (E, 18k)

[Snape] leans on the table, towering over me like a vulture watching its prey, his eyes boring into me. “If I were in your position, I would be considering my history as I know it. If you are here now, you were always meant to be here.”

Twenty by leontina (E, 23k)

Just minutes after Voldemort’s defeat at the Final Battle, Harry is struck by a curse that sends him into a magical coma, and is only saved by being placed under a Stasis Charm that also prevents him aging. It takes 20 years to find a cure, and when Harry awakes again he is 18 and the rest of the world has moved on.

Just a Matter of Time by gracerene (E, 23k)

Draco's in a bit of a rut. He's nearing forty, divorced, and he still can't figure out how to make his Time Turner reconstruction work. He's bored, he can admit it, so he's not nearly as concerned as he should be when his pet project malfunctions and sends him twenty years into the past.

Fast Forward, Two Steps Back by emmagrant01 (E, 36k)

Everyone knows that Draco Malfoy died in the Room of Requirement ten years ago. So when he suddenly reappears at Hogwarts ten years later, still seventeen years old, Professor Harry Potter's life gets very complicated.

#asks #anon #drarry reclist #age difference #de-aging & time travel

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whinlatter · 10 months

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sirius and ginny: a meta (part 1)

“Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking.’

are you a very brave, very reckless, very hot self-destructive rebel with a treacherous sibling and a flair for christmas decoration, harbouring complex feelings about your mother, close ties to crookshanks the cat and spend your days plagued by the memory of your worst mistakes and dark past? do you find yourself constantly being begged to stay in a state of protective confinement to save your life by a young man with a lightning scar, bad hair and crippling abandonment issues? if so, congratulations! you might be one of harry potter's chosen family members, sirius black and ginevra molly weasley!

basically - i want to talk about sirius and ginny. these are two characters who don’t share a lot of scenes in canon but who, i think, have some clear (if overlooked) parallels: stubborn, fiercely protective of harry, self-sacrificing, admired, principled, haunted (in different ways) by traumatic pasts and betrayals, with complicated relationships with their families and entirely uncomplicated devoted relationships with someone else’s cat. their narrative arcs are successive, with ginny ascending in significance in the series during sirius’ period of decline and ultimate death. and ultimately, they’re also the two people who become, over the course of the canon series, family to a protagonist desperately seeking to build one. sirius and ginny are the two people harry in canon most worries about, wants to protect, and thinks of as someone who embodies the promise of family and home.

sirius and ginny aren’t mirror images of each other. ofc, ginny also has parallels with the only other family members harry claims in the series, lily and james (i mean, especially james - she’s literally a cocky funny flirtatious chaser with a years-long debilitating mega crush who can also catch a snitch like a champ. come on now). it’s also clear in canon that sirius means more to ginny as a hero/role model/ally against her mother than ginny ever means to sirius. nevertheless, the text puts in work to let the reader know we should think about these characters together as somehow aligned. from the beginning of ootp, there are clues and signals in the text that foreshadow ginny’s emergence as someone important to harry, and that subtly let the reader know that the baton of being harry’s ‘person’ is about to be passed from sirius to ginny, two kindred spirits, after sirius’ death. so that's what this meta is about! (consider this my 700th attempt to show that, as the popular fandom complaint/all of reddit still insist, ginny as a character, and especially the harry/ginny romance, did not ‘come out of nowhere’.)

the following meta is part one of two (and yet it's still too long! sorry about it). o in this part, i look at the period from the end of goblet of fire thru the start of half blood prince, exploring how the text sets up the sirius and ginny parallels as a way of foreshadowing ginny’s emergence as harry’s main love interest and place as a family substitute. the second part (tbc) will be what the memory of sirius does for harry’s view of his relationship with ginny, and the kind of positive - and negative - ways this shapes harry’s ideas about love and what family do for each other. i wrote this meta as a way of thinking through some characterisation choices for my current WIP, beasts. if you're following along with that fic, this meta can be seen as a companion piece especially to my thinking behind chapters ten and eleven, so hope proves helpful for some of my thinking behind the sirius and ginny friendship that appears in that project. it's also dedicated to @ashesandhackles, queen of metas, who has reminded me to post this meta precisely 9 million times because she is a long-suffering saint.

ok - sirius and ginny. let’s goooooo!

sirius and ginny before ootp

before OotP, ginny is absent from any plot connected to sirius. ginny doesn’t know the truth about sirius’ innocence, nor does she know that harry, her brother and her friend are in regular contact with sirius and that harry now as a surrogate father/big brother figure to confide in and seek comfort in. in fact, in one of ginny’s few appearances in GoF, the narration is unusually insistent that the reader knows how little ginny knows about sirius:

“And have you heard from — ?” Ron began, but at a look from Hermione he fell silent. Harry knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. Ron and Hermione had been so deeply involved in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic that they were almost as concerned about Harry’s godfather as he was. However, discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea. Nobody but themselves and Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence. “I think they’ve stopped arguing,” said Hermione, to cover the awkward moment, because Ginny was looking curiously from Ron to Harry. “Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?”

the only other tiny crumb of sirius and ginny we get is the news that the owl sirius bought in PoA and gifted to ron as a replacement pet for scabbers has been embraced and named by ginny. sirius gifting a tiny little spitfire of an owl that annoys ron? it's giving foreshadowing, your honour.

the reader, though, knows who sirius is to harry by GoF. throughout this book, for the first time in the series, harry has a person he can claim as something like a family: someone to worry about, someone who cares about him,who can advise, guide and mentor him, as well as offer him support and consolation in difficult times (‘someone like a parent…’) although sirius has not been able to offer harry a stable alternative home to the dursleys due to his status as a wanted man, he’s still filling a role that previously had been vacant in the series: he’s harry’s person, the surrogate parent chosen for him by james and lily. he’s close by, either by the floo or eventually living (at great personal cost) as padfoot in hogsmeade, and he’s present emotionally for harry in ways that prove incredibly meaningful to his young godson. in times of great of distress, sirius is there for harry to meet emotional needs that ron and hermione (understandably, no shade to them) can’t always meet. the floo scene early on in GoF, during harry’s row with ron, is a particularly good example of this:

“Never mind me, how are you?” said Sirius seriously. “I’m —” For a second, Harry tried to say “fine” — but he couldn’t do it. …Before he could stop himself, he was talking more than he’d talked in days — about how no one believed he hadn’t entered the tournament of his own free will, how Rita Skeeter had lied about him in the Daily Prophet, how he couldn’t walk down a corridor without being sneered at — and about Ron, Ron not believing him, Ron’s jealousy . . . Sirius looked at him, eyes full of concern… He had let Harry talk himself into silence without interruption’.

harry derives enormous comfort from sirius’ presence in his life during GoF. he writes to sirius, he repeatedly turns to him for advice, he worries for him more than he does any other person. sirius fulfils harry’s desire to be kept abreast of important information about voldemort and death eaters, doesn’t sugarcoat news for harry, and makes him feel important, cared for and understood. (harry even shows off to sirius telling him about how much of a slay the first task was. ugh). by the time of the third task, sirius is sending harry daily owls, a constant flow of reassurance and concern (‘He reminded Harry in every letter that whatever might be going on outside the walls of Hogwarts was not Harry’s responsibility, nor was it within his power to influence it. If Voldemort is really getting stronger again, he wrote, my priority is to ensure your safety.’) when harry returns from the graveyard at the novel’s end, it’s sirius who races to his side to advocate for him and offer him both words of comfort and physical affection as he processes the traumatic series of events that constitute the climax of the book’s plot. (my personal favourite part is where harry says ‘wormtail cut me with a knife’ and the text says sirius made a ‘vehement exclamation’, which i can only assume is children’s book speak for ‘fucking hell’.) harry goes to bed: sirius stays with him, a literal guard dog as he recuperates. after the most traumatic events of the series to date, the reader is at least consoled that harry potter has a person now, someone he loves for him to worry about and to worry for him, who catches him on the other side of traumatic events and makes them that bit much more bearable.

sirius and ginny during ootp

with sirius' role in harry's life established in GoF, OotP begins with harry, cooped up and restless at privet drive, angry with ron, hermione, sirius, and dumbledore for abandoning him at privet drive and keeping him in the dark. harry arrives at grimmauld place to find an anxious ron and hermione, with whom harry is angry and frustrated for having left him out of their summer hangs and having neglected him, by his assessment, in surrey. it’s the most conflict we’ve seen in the trio in terms of harry vs ron and hermione, and sets up one of the important themes of the book, which is harry no longer being solely emotionally fulfilled by the people he is closest to, including his two surrogate parents best mates but also his godfather. when he encounters sirius for the first time after the order meeting, he finds him surly, bitter, and depressed, furious that he is confined to his childhood home, and (understandably) much less able or willing to offer harry much in the way of comfort, apology or cheering words (‘Harry, who had expected a better welcome, noted how hard and bitter Sirius’s voice sounded.’) in this sense, the book opens with harry disappointed and/or more distant from all the people on whom he most depends and is usually closest to, and that there therefore is already an absence of a certain kind of emotional support in harry’s life that the plot demands be filled.

fresh off the back of harry’s row with ron and hermione is ginny’s reintroduction to the reader. after years of being so shy in harry’s presence she was often nearly mute, the reader finds that ginny is not only now speaking, but that her presence turns out to be remarkably refreshing. from her opening scene where ginny enters harry’s bedroom at grimmauld place, the reader discovers the new ginny is confident, up to no good, in cahoots with her most troublemaking brothers trying to intercept the order meeting, enterprising in her mischief (and very happy to lie to her mother’s face about it). she’s thoroughly unfazed by harry’s great display of rage that has just startled and upset ron and hermione. (side note: in both ootp and hbp, ginny’s opening scene is her entering harry’s bedroom, which is the kind of foreshadowing i personally find delicious). everyone else is behaving pretty much as they have been up to this point, but it’s ginny who is showcasing behaviours new to the reader, a signal that she might be about to play a different role in the series than she has done up to this point.

cut to the dinner scene. sirius and ginny are in the room together for the first time. sirius is moody: though he’s still able to laugh, enjoying displays of mischief and humour (the twins and the knife), he’s more bitter than harry and the reader have seen him since PoA. it’s an important scene for lots of reasons (not least the sirius v molly beef), but it’s also one where sirius and ginny are repeatedly drawn into mental association in the reader’s mind. it’s also a great scene because the behaviour of crookshanks the cat literally serves to foreshadow the behaviour of harry james potter in ways that are frankly extremely fun.

so! the sirius and ginny hints start small. from the start of the scene, ginny is amused by mundungus the crook (a man, we will learn, so disdained by her mother):

“Some’n say m’ name?” Mundungus mumbled sleepily. “I ’gree with Sirius. . . .” He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused. Ginny giggled. “The meeting’s over, Dung,” said Sirius, as they all sat down around him at the table. “Harry’s arrived.”

sirius and harry, sat at the end of the table, are both greeted by crookshanks, sirius’ old accomplice from PoA:

'Harry felt something brush against his knees and started, but it was only Crookshanks, Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, who wound himself once around Harry’s legs, purring, then jumped onto Sirius’s lap and curled up. Sirius scratched him absentmindedly behind the ears as he turned, still grim-faced, to Harry…

when fred and george’s levitation goes awry, flinging a knife at sirius (now that’s how you foreshadow a death), crookshanks bolts:

‘Harry and Sirius were both laughing… Crookshanks had given an angry hiss and shot off under the dresser, from whence his large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness…’

during the meal, ginny’s with hermione, having a laugh with tonks, a character harry has just met but whom he has already decided to both admire and like. after the meal, when harry’s cheered up a bit and had his crumble (the man loves dessert), crookshanks finally emerges from his hiding place, having been coaxed out from his sulk by - you guessed it - one g. m. weasley:

‘…Ginny, who had lured Crookshanks out from under the dresser, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling butterbeer corks for him to chase.’

a grouchy character, initially drawn to sirius, but prone to lashing out and locking himself away, only to be lured back out into comfort and safety by ginny weasley? wow………. radical

after dinner, the argument between sirius and molly kicks off. sirius is arguing hard for harry’s right to know, though he makes no attempt to advocate for any of the other weasleys or for hermione. ginny’s noticeably singled out in her reaction to this scene, the text highlighting that she is particularly struck by this conflict as if it is of particular personal resonance, including someone standing up to her famously overprotective mother for once:

‘Ron, Hermione, Fred, and George’s heads turned from Sirius to Mrs. Weasley as though following a tennis rally. Ginny was kneeling amid a pile of abandoned butterbeer corks, watching the conversation with her mouth slightly open. Lupin’s eyes were fixed on Sirius.’

of course, molly loses the argument: harry gets to stay for juicy order deets (‘Sirius was right, he was not a child.’) after the row, ginny is the only person forbidden from hearing information about the order’s activities. suddenly, the roles are switched: it’s ginny who’s now furious and bitter to be kept out of the action:

‘“Fine!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “Fine! Ginny — BED!” Ginny did not go quietly. They could hear her raging and storming at her mother all the way up the stairs, and when she reached the hall Mrs. Black’s earsplitting shrieks were added to the din. Lupin hurried off to the portrait to restore calm. It was only after he had returned, closing the kitchen door behind him and taking his seat at the table again, that Sirius spoke. “Okay, Harry . . . what do you want to know?”’

it’s not just the parallels of confinement between harry, sirius and ginny that are so revealing, it’s also the dual maternal conflicts. ginny loud raging at her own mother sets off the howling relic of sirius’, serving to underline two characters who continue to grapple with maternal relationships that are complex and full of conflict, though by no means solely negative (sirius i see you sleeping in your mother’s bedroom babe. don’t think i think your relationship with walburga is just one of straight hate ok). when ginny later gets knocked down the stairs by fred and george, there’s more direct mrs weasley/walburga parallels, with the two of them literally shouting over each other during the ordeal lol. as such, the readers see that the conflicts being set up for sirius’ character in this book - frustration at confinement, conflict with a mother figure, drawn to more reckless and arguably irresponsible characters (mundungus, the twins) and courses of action - are also conflicts subtly playing out with the new ginny we’re meeting, too.

as the rest of the summer at grimmauld wears on, there are more examples of sirius and ginny foreshadowing. the scenes where the two characters interact serve to place ginny and sirius firmly in the same camp of people harry admires and has fun with, the troublemakers and the rebels. over the prefects issue, ginny not only is sat chatting with the troublemaking adults harry likes most, but actively draws sirius into conversation on the issue, likely knowing the answer will comfort harry, but also showing a curiosity and interest in sirius that suggests she admires him:

“I was never a prefect myself,” said Tonks brightly from behind Harry as everybody moved toward the table to help themselves to food. Her hair was tomato-red and waist length today; she looked like Ginny’s older sister. “My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities.” “Like what?” said Ginny, who was choosing a baked potato. “Like the ability to behave myself,” said Tonks. Ginny laughed; Hermione looked as though she did not know whether to smile or not and compromised by taking an extra large gulp of butterbeer and choking on it. “What about you, Sirius?” Ginny asked, thumping Hermione on the back. Sirius, who was right beside Harry, let out his usual barklike laugh…’

ginny’s choice to try and draw sirius into the conversation bears fruit: sirius confirms james was never a prefect, and harry’s sour mood is suddenly lifted. (‘All at once the party seemed much more enjoyable; he loaded up his plate, feeling unusually fond of everyone in the room.’) ginny is thus beginning to provide harry with subtle comfort and reassurance, especially as sirius, struggling with his own confinement, is taking a less active role in trying to cheer harry up. what i also like is that we have evidence of how ginny views sirius - she’s curious about him and his past, she clearly thinks he and the other new rebellious adults are cool as shit, and she’s drawn increasingly away from her mother’s cautious overprotective approach towards these resistance fighters who prioritise the fight over safety. (it is noticeable to me that ginny does not become a prefect in HBP, suggesting sirius' example proved instructive).

we see more small parallels between sirius and ginny during the cleaning scenes. the battle against grimmauld place is an important symbol of one of the important themes of OotP as a book: a battle over past traumas and their persistent and unwieldy symptoms that are seemingly never-ending. while it’s harry’s experiences that, of course, take centre stage, sirius’, too, loom omnipresent throughout the text. it’s significant, then, that ginny’s own past gets brought up for the first time in three books here, albeit briefly:

'They found an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scuttled up Harry’s arm like a spider when he picked it up, and attempted to puncture his skin; Sirius seized it and smashed it with a heavy book entitled Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. There was a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune when wound, and they all found themselves becoming curiously weak and sleepy until Ginny had the sense to slam the lid shut…'

in this moment, we see sirius and ginny singled in the larger group as quick-thinking, shrewd characters, with a good instincts and common sense (if a bit of a tendency to get scrappy). their respective dark pasts are subtly alluded to. sirius whacks a spider trying to attack harry with a book that might as well be entitled my big book of family trauma. ginny, meanwhile, steps in when everybody present starts to be enchanted by a mysterious object luring them into danger by whacking it shut (gee i wonder why!) given this is the book that will see ginny mention the events of CoS for the first time in errrrr three years, it’s significant that the text is careful to draw ginny into this broader theme that unites sirius and harry, the constant reminders of traumatic pasts at every turn. we also see here the revelation that regulus black was a death eater. coming after news of percy weasley’s betrayal, sirius’ bitter dismissal of his younger brother deliberately mirrors ginny and the other weasleys’ attitude towards percy, this sense of pureblood families split over wizarding politics, often fatally.

while harry fears his expulsion from hogwarts prior his hearing, he continues to fantasise about coming to live with sirius at grimmauld, and about being with a family member and finding an alternative home to hogwarts. sirius, as hermione astutely observes, tries to manage harry’s expectations and not to get his own hopes up: still, when harry is exonerated, sirius is visibly depressed, showing the beginnings of an emotional dependency on harry that harry feels great guilt over.when leaving grimmauld for the start of the school year, sirius, as padfoot, accompanies harry to king’s cross: unlike in GoF, though, he is spotted, and harry begins to worry much more actively about sirius’ vulnerability to capture, about his recklessness and about his judgement. concerned for sirius, and absent ron and hermione, who are in the prefects carriage, the person who stays with harry and offers him company is ginny. she sacrifices her own train journey (presumably with her own boyfriend) to find a carriage with harry and make sure he’s not lonely, bringing him to neville and luna and sorting him out after his embarassing cho run-in. it’s not a coincidence that once again we see ginny here taking care of harry crookshanks:

'“Where’s Crookshanks?” “Ginny’s got him,” said Harry. “There she is. . . .” Ginny had just emerged from the crowd, clutching a squirming Crookshanks. “Thanks,” said Hermione, relieving Ginny of the cat. “Come on, let’s get a carriage together before they all fill up. . . '

once harry’s back at school, having left sirius behind to languish miserably in london, we see he's more isolated and alone than ever. he’s tormented by umbridge, endlessly (though often unfairly) frustrated with ron and hermione, ghosted by dumbledore, yet absent the more stable, reassuring sirius he came to know in GoF, unable to write candidly to him and faced with a much less well sirius in the opportunities they do have to speak face-to-face. as sirius’ mental health declines as he is shut up at grimmauld, his ability to support harry and comfort him starts to falter, and he becomes a much more uneven source of advice and support, particularly during his car crash floo appearance, where he’s much ruder than he has previously been (cutting off, ignoring their pleas for him to be more cautious, the infamous ‘the risk would have made it fun for james’ moment). this new sirius, clearly struggling, is much more happy to do up guilt trip to his godson than we have seen him to up this point (‘I’ll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?’ - you petty little shit, padfoot). all of this serves to increase harry’s anxiety about sirius’ wellbeing and reinforce harry’s sense of emotional isolation. even sirius’ encouragement on the DA is, as hermione points out, partly bound up in more selfish motivations (‘I think he’s really frustrated at how little he can do where he is… so I think he’s keen to kind of… egg us on.’)

ginny’s largely absent in this section of the novel. in the brief moments she does appear, it’s to inject humour (eg. her impressions at the DA meeting) and in little reminders that she now has a boyfriend, no longer harbours romantic feelings for harry, making sure the reader continues to hold her mentally apart from harry. harry, meanwhile, misguidedly tries to seek out a relationship with cho chang, who is showing clear signs of her own emotional distress and inability to meet harry’s emotional needs given her own grief. still, among this, there’s still room for some small subtle sirius/ginny parallels. once the DA plot picks up, we have another little sign that ginny weasley and sirius black think somewhat alike:

“Yeah, the D.A.’s good,” said Ginny. “Only let’s make it stand for Dumbledore’s Army because that’s the Ministry’s worst fear, isn’t it?”

“Trained in combat?” repeated Harry incredulously. “What does he think we’re doing here, forming some sort of wizard army? “That’s exactly what he thinks you’re doing,” said Sirius, “or rather, that’s exactly what he’s afraid Dumbledore’s doing — forming his own private army, with which he will be able to take on the Ministry of Magic.”

with harry's isolation and need for more emotional support established in this first term, christmas at grimmauld offers more opportunity to subtly develop the sirius and ginny parallels, as well as to highlight ginny’s ability to fill the gaps left by sirius’ decline. after the attack on arthur weasley, the group arrive back at grimmauld:

‘Sirius was hurrying toward them all, looking anxious. He was unshaven and still in his day clothes; there was also a slightly Mundungus-like whiff of stale drink about him. “What’s going on?” he said, stretching out a hand to help Ginny up. “Phineas Nigellus said Arthur’s been badly injured —”

could this be sirius literally lifting ginny up into plot significance? why yes it could

ofc the weasleys then argue with sirius about their right to go see their father. despite his own frustrations at being trapped at grimmauld, sirius proves the voice of reason and rational decision making against both ginny and the twins’ hotheadedness (ginny asks to borrow cloaks to go to the hospital: sirius: ‘Hang on, you can’t go tearing off to St. Mungo’s!’) crucially, though, when sirius points out that there are bigger things at stake - the work of the order and the resistance movement - it’s ginny who listens:

“Your father knew what he was getting into, and he won’t thank you for messing things up for the Order!” said Sirius angrily in his turn. “This is how it is — this is why you’re not in the Order — you don’t understand — there are things worth dying for!” “Easy for you to say, stuck here!” bellowed Fred. “I don’t see you risking your neck!” The little colour remaining in Sirius’s face drained from it. He looked for a moment as though he would quite like to hit Fred, but when he spoke, it was in a voice of determined calm. “I know it’s hard, but we’ve all got to act as though we don’t know anything yet. We’ve got to stay put, at least until we hear from your mother, all right?” Fred and George still looked mutinous. Ginny, however, took a few steps over to the nearest chair and sank into it. Harry looked at Ron, who made a funny movement somewhere between a nod and shrug, and they sat down too. The twins glared at Sirius for another minute, then took seats on either side of Ginny. “That’s right,” said Sirius encouragingly, “come on, let’s all . . . let’s all have a drink while we’re waiting…’

there’s a lot going on here: ginny’s willingness to follow sirius’ orders, but also her willingness to accept an argument based on some idea of the greater good before any of her brothers. she and sirius are aligned here, and it’s her decision to accept sirius’ reasoning that proves the catalyst for her brothers to follow. we see here how ginny has come to see sirius: someone she looks up to and admires, an adult whose judgement she trusts and whose worldview she subscribes to. (as a character prone to hero worship - see her view of her big brother bill - i think this is noteworthy, and is behind a lot of my characterisation choices for ginny towards sirius in beasts). but we also see that ginny agrees with sirius' worldview. there are some things worth dying for, and self-sacrifice is part of that.

when harry goes to sirius for reassurance about witnessing arthur’s attack, he finds sirius unable to properly console him and convince him that he was not to blame for arthur’s attack. the reader gets the impression of sirius withholding information from harry (‘He could only see a sliver of Sirius’s face; the rest was in darkness’), and the scene ends with sirius clapping harry on the shoulder and leaving him ‘standing alone in the dark’. while sirius throws himself into christmas preparations, obviously delighted to have company, harry shrinks from the cheer and isolates himself. in the end, ofc, the only person that manages to pull harry out of his dark, brooding thoughts is ginny. the text is careful to note she’s sitting beside him on the tube back from st mungo’s, when he looks very unwell. then, in the ‘lucky you’ scene, she showcases some of the same skills harry first came to appreciate in sirius in GoF. she tells it to him straight: she’s sympathetic, but not overly gushing, and she reminds him of her own intensely frightening experience which she endured alone, something harry can relate to, even if the experience of possession is not. it’s an important scene for lots of reasons, but it’s also, crucially, the intervention that causes harry’s mood to lift, and he gets to enjoy a christmas with his godfather, the thing he had most wanted in the run-up to christmas, and which becomes the only holiday period harry and sirius ever spend together:

‘I’m not the weapon after all, thought Harry. His heart swelled with happiness and relief, and he felt like joining in as they heard Sirius tramping past their door toward Buckbeak’s room, singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs” at the top of his voice.’

of course, once christmas is over, sirius slips back into a depressed, gloomy state. harry wants a better goodbye than he gives him, merely giving him a quick one armed hug (there’s a real theme throughout harry and sirius’ relationship of very sparing physical contact on sirius’ part, which is obviously a hole in harry's life ginny will fill in - er - a big way). back at school, harry returns to umbridge’s increasingly draconian rule, maks a disastrous attempt at forging a relationship with cho, and continues to feel lonely, paranoid, and angry. unable to speak to sirius properly via letter or floo - and unwilling to open the present sirius has given him to communicate directly with him, the two-way mirror - harry is increasingly sullen, a mood that only worsens after seeing snape's worst memory.

the easter egg scene is obviously important for hinny for lots of different reasons. but here i just want to highlight how the scene serves to show ginny as both the conduit to sirius for harry, and someone whose behaviour echoes that of sirius in GoF when harry first began to open up to and seek comfort in him. harry is distressed by his now complicated feelings both towards the father he previously revered and towards sirius, who seemed to encourage james’ bullying behaviour. ginny hands harry a chocolate easter egg covered in snitches: chocolate, a canonical source of comfort against dark thoughts, and an egg that reminds him of the love of parent. the act makes him suddenly emotional, though he at first denies he’s upset. ginny presses carefully and sensitively, asking the right questions to get him to confess the source of his worry, waiting for harry to take his time to speak - all behaviours that echo sirius’ own effective listening techniques. ginny’s acquaintance with sirius, and knowledge of how significant he is to harry, is important here, too, and a subtle sign to the reader that he trusts ginny with knowledge about sirius after a long time of having her in the dark about his godfather. the reader leaves the scene having seen ginny breakthrough to harry emotionally in a way for the second time in the novel, in a way no other character has done (‘he felt a bit more hopeful…’)

of course, the course of action ginny has set in motion is itself risky and reckless (‘anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve’ is very marauders as a philosophy). the decision to go ahead with the plan the twins come up with is one harry sees as a decision on whether to be more like james and sirius - a risk taker - or to abandon the hero worship for the marauders he has lived with for so long. in the end, of course, it’s a win for the reckless troublemakers: he chooses to go ahead with the plan the twins have crafted and that ginny has set in motion, and to speak to sirius.

and yet. sirius is still alive - there is not need for ginny yet. for the remainder of the book, ginny has to beg to be included in the trio's plans and to be allowed to be a part of the plot to rescue sirius. she’s is often in conflict with harry, showing a lot of sirius’ bitterness at attempts at containment and to keep her out of the fighting. she grates against harry’s insistence that she is too young and inexperienced, and having to remind the trio that she, too, has come to care about sirius and wants to see him safe:

“I’ve got a broom!” said Ginny. “Yeah, but you’re not coming,” said Ron angrily. “Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking.

of course, it all ends in tragedy: sirius, desperate to go to harry’s aid and absolutely gunning for a fight after months of confinement, is killed, leaving harry alone. there a subtle clues that something has shifted in ginny’s relationship to harry and the trio in the scenes after sirius’ death, including ginny positioned as the mirror image to harry in the hospital:

‘Harry was sitting on the end of Ron’s bed and they were both listening to Hermione read the front page of the Sunday Prophet. Ginny, whose ankle had been mended in a trice by Madam Pomfrey, was curled up at the foot of Hermione’s bed…’

despite this, in the immediate aftermath of sirius’ death, harry is extremely alone. he is unable to work out what he needs (‘Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.’) he tries to go to hagrid’s, but regrets it (‘He was starting to wish he was alone again’), leaving after hagrid reminds him of sirius’ core traits, an inability to stay out of the fight when he believes in the cause:

“But still, Harry . . . he was never one ter sit around at home an’ let other people do the fightin’. He couldn’ have lived with himself if he hadn’ gone ter help —”

unlike at the end of GoF, harry is isolated by his grief and the revelation of the prophecy's contents by the end of this book. he goes alone to a secluded corner of the lakeshore, ‘sheltered from the gaze of passersby behind a tangle of shrubs’, and ‘[stares] out over the gleaming water’, and cries alone. there is no sirius or other person to catch him and console him in his grief. his person has died, and there’s a gap in his life again, just waiting to be filled:

‘Wanting to impress Cho seemed to belong to a past that was no longer quite connected with him. So much of what he had wanted before Sirius’s death felt that way these days. . . . The week that had elapsed since he had last seen Sirius seemed to have lasted much, much longer: It stretched across two universes, the one with Sirius in it, and the one without.’

ginny and sirius parallels in HBP and DH

after sirius’ death, the parallels between sirius and ginny become more important as ginny moves into the centre frame as a character. at the start of HBP, harry arrives at the burrow and discusses his grief over sirius’ death with dumbledore in the burrow broom shed, acknowledging how profoundly the loss of a family member who cares singularly about him is affecting him. ('He felt stupid for admitting it, but the fact that he had had someone outside Hogwarts who cared what happened to him, almost like a parent, had been one of the best things about discovering his godfather . . . and now the post owls would never bring him that comfort again. . . .' beasts readers: there's a reason harry clings to letters!) of course, having reminded the reader of the gap in harry’s life that now needs to be filled, harry goes to sleep, the active reflection on his grief for sirius put to one side so the novel's plot can get underway. he'll go to bed mourning sirius and wake up in a sunlit bedroom. of course, ginny will walk into this bedroom too, only now things will be different: harry potter is back to the search for a loved one, for a family, and he's about to realise ginny is the one he wants to fill it. thus the start of the plot of ginny stepping into the role vacated by sirius beginneth.

so much of who ginny is in HBP is reminiscent of sirius. she frequently leaps into battle as harry’s protector (‘You’re taking orders from something someone wrote in a book?’, ‘Give it a rest, Hermione’), she’s scrappy (RIP zacharias smith), she’s funny and laughs easily in a way that less recalls sirius in the time harry knew him than sirius as harry sees him as a young man, in photographs or memories. she's the one who commits to the insane christmas decorations, determined to cheer everyone up over the festive period as sirius did the year before. she even enjoys the widespread admiration and lust of her peers, a trait that directly recalls sirius being eyed up by his peers in snape's memory. by the novel’s end, after dumbledore’s death, it will be ginny who goes to harry’s side after the climax of the plot and catch him in his grief just as sirius did in GoF, this time over dumbledore’s death:

‘He did not want to leave Dumbledore’s side, he did not want to move anywhere. Hagrid’s hand on his shoulder was trembling. Then another voice said, “Harry, come on.’ A much smaller and warmer hand had enclosed his and was pulling him upward. He obeyed its pressure without really thinking about it.’

their breakup has sirius all over it. taking place at the lakeshore, the place where harry wept alone over sirius a year prior, harry draws on the circumstances of sirius’ demise as a reason he must break up with ginny (‘Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to.’) the breakup does little to shift what ginny has become in harry’s mind, though, and he spends all of DH thinking of her as he once thought of sirius: the person whose safety he most craves, the person he misses, someone he claims as his, and whom he associates with (now banished) hopes of a home and a family:

“It’s not a problem,” said Harry, sickened by the pain in his head. “It’s your family, ’course you’re worried. I’d feel the same way.” He thought of Ginny. “I do feel the same way.”

of course, echoes of sirius will also come into play during open war. it’s now ginny, not sirius, who is the one left behind for her own protection: in the run-up to the battle, harry finds himself once again faced with the prospect of confining his loved one for their safety, despite their desperation to fight and do the right thing. but these are thoughts for part 2…….

#meta #sirius black #ginny weasley #it's not NOT an aged up sinevra ship agenda #hp meta #hp analysis #hinny #marauders #black family #beasts

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saintsenara · 7 months

Note

if you are still doing ship game, thoughts on jily?

thank you very much, anon - i am always taking questions both on romantic ships and on characters' platonic vibes, the more unhinged the better.

although jily can't really be described in those terms, not least because their narrative purpose in canon is to be little more than blank canvases onto which harry can project as he goes through his series-long character arc, shedding his initial hero worship of james when confronted with the reality of his father's behaviour in order of the phoenix and starting both to fully appreciate lily's centrality to the course his life is taking and to see his dad with nuance as a real and fully-rounded person, flaws and all.

this narrative role means that the glimpses we get of them in canon feel kind of superficial - their bantering during snape's worst memory is basically high-school-teen-movie level, the snapshots of their life under lockdown in deathly hallows lovely and bittersweet but also just colour to a storyline which is already all of those things.

and this is not to say that i find jily uninteresting as a ship - i completely reject the common anti-jily position that they didn't really like each other, that they had nothing in common, or that their backgrounds made them incompatible [i'll expand on this below, but while i do think that their respective blood statuses and the impact of these on their relationship are worth thinking about, i loathe fics which portray james as chafing against his marriage because, as a pureblood, he'd be more comfortable with someone 'of his own kind'. this is bullshit, and there's far, far too much of it in this fandom]. my views on one of james' most frequent non-lily partnerships are well known, and i share the outrage many jily fans have for the way lily in particular is treated in a subfandom increasingly dominated by rigid fanon which prioritises giving depth to male characters [even if those characters are, in essence, oc's] and slash relationships over exploring the canon female characters, partnered or not.

but i do also find that a lot of jily falls into the same trap as much of the hinny i dislike - that is, a tendency to present as a sunshine-and-roses fairytale a relationship which is much more interesting if the things which canon implies [and which can be reasonably inferred outside of canon scenes from a canon coherent engagement with the text] might have introduced an element of dysfunction into james and lily's partnership are taken into account.

the shadow of the war is obviously one of these things. what role lily actually plays in the resistance is something which preoccupies me [she is never mentioned in canon to have taken a combat role - and i find it considerably more plausible that any attempt voldemort made to recruit her was at snape's request and connected to her potions prowess] particularly because, as we see in the way her death is memorialised in deathly hallows, the series regards the defence of the integrity of the nuclear family as a key aim for the good guys. how does she interact with james and his wartime role when she's pregnant, nursing, or in hiding for the vast majority of her time in the order? how does she feel about her husband being a soldier if she's behind the scenes?

indeed, what role james [and sirius] plays in the order is also something i'm obsessed with thinking about - not least because so much of the inherent tragedy of the marauders' storyline is caused by the fact that james and sirius think they're fucking invincible and that their plans to keep the potters safe are foolproof. it's entirely reasonable to read james and sirius as being pretty gung-ho about being paramilitaries - and my headcanon is absolutely that more battled-hardened order members didn't like them very much [moody does not, after all, seem massively fond of sirius] - and lily seems affected by this too [she's not holding her wand either!], and what they thought they were doing as 1981 rolls around is compelling to me.

james and lily's divergent backgrounds is also something i'd like to see explored more in fandom - not, as i've said, in the dull 'james should have married a pureblood' way, but in a way which deals with the fact that their relationship follows wizarding norms. molly weasley can blame the war all she likes, but [although i doubt this was jkr's intention] the evidence of canon is that witches and wizards marry and have children extremely young as a social standard, that couples generally don't live together before marriage, that divorce doesn't seem to be common, and that married women tend not to work. lily - a mother at twenty and, therefore, presumably married at nineteen - is coming of age, then, in a magical world which thinks about gender very differently from the muggle world of the 1970s, and i think that tension is worth exploring.

[similarly, the way in which her marriage is self-protective - lily gains a pureblood name and the social cachet which comes with it at a time when she's in rising danger on account of her birth - is something i think it's worth looking at when considering the pairing.]

there are other flashes of dysfuntion which i adore thinking about in relation to jily - lily's relationship with the other marauders [you can pry the reading that sirius resents her for stealing the love of his life - and i certainly don't mean lupin - away from him from my cold, dead hands]; how much of his misbehaviour at school james conceals from her; the fact that lily becoming more overtly interested in james from her sixth year onward must have a little bit of attempting to make snape jealous mixed into it - and whenever i stumble upon them in fics i say oh ho like horace slughorn and kick my little feet in the air.

i care rather less about 'we're so hot and flawless and not doomed' as a trope.

but i do stan james for beefing with vernon dursley even though lily told him to behave. the man really is just that annoying.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #jily #james potter #lily evans #is this an 'i'm in danger' one?#only time will tell

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roach-works · 6 months

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Hi!!!! I recently read When the Wolf Comes Home and I loved the premise the where the fic was heading. I know it hasn't been updated since 2017 so I was wondering if there was any intention of finishing it? I know it's possible you've moved on from that fandom and that is totally fine! If you are, would it be possible to share where you wanted to take the fic? Thank you, I absolutely loved your writing!!!

im a little stuck on that one because yeah i do sometimes noodle a little more on it and i had a pretty solid plot for the first year, after which i was going to be Very Firmly Done because so many rewrites attempt to take on the whole seven year span and founder on the complexity. but the problem is im really ambivalent and undecided on how much i want to participate in harry potter fandom at this late date, with JKR going mask-off nazi sympathizer. it's a weird situation where you can't argue for death of the author when the author is annoyingly alive and arguing that you should be dead.

im deeply reluctant to denounce people still participating in a fandom that i myself found incredibly fun and rewarding for, yknow, several decades of my life, and i don't think i'm better than them, just fortunate to be more interested in other projects.

but ambivalence towards the fandom and deep resentment towards the creator aren't really a productive headspace to actually write in, and i also don't want to finally work through my own doubts, finish another chapter, and then get my head torn off by people who are certain that i'm supporting JKR's toxic fuckwittery.

all in all it's easier and more rewarding to play with other fandoms and work on my many original projects.

where the fic was going:

as far as i remember, in When The Wolf Comes Home, draco was going to get his dad to hire lupin as his defense against the dark arts tutor and rent out the shrieking shack for the man to work out of, thus circumventing the curse on the DADA position and giving draco a werewolf mentor and independent bolt-hole.

quirrelmort was going to continue trying to figure out how to use or dispose of draco on his way to get the philosopher stone, a side-plot draco knew almost nothing about. draco would continue to try to maneuver harry into quirrel's way and snape out of his way, with indifferent success. harry and ron, lacking any voice of reason to temper their enthusiastic partnership of 'baby griffindors looking cool in front of their first real friend ever', would continue to believe that draco, the saddest wet puppy, was an evil monster and the cause of all their misfortunes. draco would continue to be the most mentally and emotionally unstable kid in the castle, taking all the heat off neville, who would end up looking fairly cool and collected by comparison. rita skeeter would feature somewhere in there, hired by narcissa to write little puff pieces on how tragic and brave draco was being about going to school with such a tragic disability.

remus lupin would end up with a full schedule tutoring DADA students about to take their NEWTs and OWLs and make a bunch of money. with lucius as his patron and PR agent, he would be accepted in hogsmeade as a dashing and heroic warlock who had been off having reams of secret agent adventures as dumbledore's key man in the muggle world. remus would not really know what to do with this but eat as much as possible and smile gamely when lucius showed him off to people.

eventually towards the end of the year quirrel would get rid of draco by orchestrating a fight between ron and draco where ron cut his fist on draco's teeth. this would count as a bite and draco would get thrown in azkaban and belatedly realize that he had completely and totally forgotten about sirius black's whole Saddest Wet Dog situation. sirius would do his best to take care of his tiny insane werepuppy cousin until the malfoys and longbottoms and weasleys combined to lever draco back out, using ron's ashamed testimony. draco would immediately turn around and reveal scabbers. the malfoys would end up looking like champions of truth and justice and the weasleys would, unfortunately, have to just stand there and smile gamely for the cameras.

while all this was happening harry would go after quirrel with hermione and neville and take him down. dumbledore would show up at the end, when voldemort was defeated and sirius was exonerated and several deep family feuds had been laid aside, to dispense twinkling paternal wisdom.

draco would kick him in the fork.

THE END.

#time traveling baby werewolves #writing #fic

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em-dash-press · 2 years

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How to Write a Character’s Death Effectively

It’s a strange thing to think about—writing a death effectively. You could come up with endless ways for a character to die and they’d all accomplish the same goal of removing them from the story.

However, deaths always have meaning in fiction. The ones that make it to print are the deaths that are written well.

Here are a few things to avoid and a few others to strive for when writing a death scene.

Things You Consider When a Character Dies

1. Who Is Essential to Your Story?

Think about which characters are essential to completing your plot/theme. If someone isn’t essential, their death won’t be as meaningful to the reader or as purposeful to your plot.

This isn’t to say you can only kill protagonists and your most important secondary characters. But if you only have one death in your book or short story and it has little to no effect on the plot, that character might better serve the purpose of your story by living.

You should also consider who is integral to a character’s future development if you’re writing an ongoing series. The protagonist may have a best friend in Book 1, but by the end of the book, they go their own ways. Books 2 and 3 don’t feature the best friend, so if they die in Book 1 and your projected plot developments don’t change, their death isn’t essential

2. What Is the Reason for the Death?

Real life deaths don’t always have a reason, but the vast majority of fictional deaths do. Unless you’re writing about a theme specifically involving a purposeless death (maybe to write about grief or another way a character handles what happens afterward), each death should have a meaning.

Reasons for Deaths in Fiction

Bitter irony (example: a character who fears driving dying in a car crash)

Bringing the character’s story back to close foreshadowing threads (example: a character gets introduced into the plot by defending someone getting robbed, then they die in a robbery gone wrong)

Betrayal (example: a character’s best friend betraying them in a way that leads to their direct/indirect death)

Growth (example: a selfish or evil character learning to be selfless/good, then giving up their life to save someone else)

Other character’s growth (example: a book about forging your identity while grieving would likely start off with a death that’s meaningful to the protagonist in the beginning of the story) (Warning—be careful about this one turning into bad death tropes! Read the next section for examples.)

Good and Bad Deaths: Examples

Good: Beth March in Little Women

Beth’s character is supposed to exemplify a person who is 100% good and pure of heart. She dies remaining steadfast in her positive demeanor and giving nature. Her death causes the other members of her family to spin into different directions for their character developments. Most notably, Jo March decides to be kinder and more giving to those around her, which leads to the events in the rest of the book.

Reasons this trope works: Beth is the trope of an angelic, faultless young person dying without ever having done anything wrong. However, it’s not necessarily bad because it doesn’t erase an otherwise unrepresented group of people and doesn’t serve the purpose of a male character’s growth.

Bad: Fred Weasley in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

In the book, Fred dies after the floor explodes while he, Harry, and others regroup during the battle of Hogwarts. Harry (and the reader) are shocked when the dust settles and Percy can’t get Fred to respond to anything.

This death has been described as “realistic” by the author who has lost all of my respect for being a transphobic bigot, so she won’t be named, because she said that it was unrealistic that every Weasley family member survived the battle.

Reasons this death doesn’t work: This death is supposed to be a shock. That’s it. It adds to the surviving characters’ collective grief, but does it change any of their personal developments? Does it alter the world around them? Does it affect their futures? I would argue no. If a Weasley death was supposed to be significant to the plot/purposeful, it would have been a more well-known and loved Weasley like Ron, Ginny, or Molly.

3. Are You Unknowingly Writing Death Tropes?

Here are the most common death tropes to avoid in your writing. They ultimately are hurtful cliches that serve no purpose. Your writing will be much stronger and more meaningful to readers if it doesn’t include these types of deaths:

“Stuffing Women in Refrigerators”: a female character dies so a male character can grow (Think: every superhero who has a dead mom) (Read more about the trope here.)

“Black Dude Dies First”: a person of color dies for seemingly no reason (especially when there are little to no POC left in the story). This trope comes from a history of racism and devaluing characters of color, so be aware that none of your characters’ deaths reflect this trope by filling your stories with representation/deaths of more than just POC. Also, any deaths of POC should not serve solely as the vehicle for a white protagonist’s development. (Read more about the trope here.)

“Bury Your Gays”: an LGBTQ+ character dies for seemingly no reason. They might also die to advance the straight protagonist’s narrative/when there are no other LGBTQ+ characters. It comes from a history of bigotry and prejudice

The Resurrection Trope: a character’s death doesn’t mean anything because it’s reversed/repeated in cycles. They never stay dead and neither do any other characters. If death has no consequences, it’s meaningless. (With the exception of very specific story lines, like Groundhog Day or Russian Doll.)

If you want to really do a deep dive into death tropes, this website has an excellent list of tropes that work for both fiction and movies/TV shows.

-----

Writing and workshopping a death to make it as meaningful and plot-essential as possible might take some time. You might even discover that the death shouldn’t happen at all.

Either way, learning about death tropes and effective techniques is a great way to improve your writing skills and your future stories.

#writing death #death tropes #writing advice #writing tips #writeblr #tropes #writing tropes #writers of tumblr #writing

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mybutcheredtongue · 8 months

Text

I'll Love You 'til the Grass Around My Gravestone is Deceased

harry potter timeline sirius black x fem!reader

CHAPTER EIGHT (see full series list here)

1993

On the first Thursday evening after school returns from the Christmas holidays, you leave the Astronomy Tower for the History of Magic classroom. Remus told you he was going to teach Harry how to cast a patronus and asked you to come along and help, and you're more than happy to do so. Anytime you get to spend with your godson is time well spent, and getting to hang out with Remus is just another plus.

You turn up and find Harry and Remus standing in the classroom, Remus heaving a large packing case onto Professor Binns' desk.

Harry gives you a bit of a surprised look and Remus smiles, greeting you with your name. "I hope you don't mind my inviting her, Harry, but she is an excellent witch who can cast a perfect patronus."

You roll your eyes with a smile, chuckling lightly as you look at Harry. "He's going to pretend as if he isn't an excellent wizard himself who can also cast a perfect patronus."

Remus huffs quietly, shaking his head, and Harry smiles back at you, before turning his attention to the large case on the desk. "What's that?"

"Another Boggart," Remus answers, stripping off his cloak. "I've been combing the castle ever since Tuesday, and very luckily, I found this one lurking in Mr Filch's filing cabinet. It's the nearest we'll get to a real Dementor. The Boggart will turn into a Dementor when he sees you, so we'll be able to practise on him. I can store him in my office when we're not using him; there's a cupboard under my desk he'll like."

"Okay," Harry says, sounding a little apprehensive.

"So..." Remus takes out his own wand, indicating that Harry should do the same. You follow suit, slightly unsure of whether you're going to be of any help when Remus seems to have this perfectly under control already. "The spell we are going to try and teach you is highly advanced magic, Harry — well beyond Ordinary Wizarding Level. It is called the Patronus Charm."

"How does it work?" Harry asks.

"When cast correctly, it conjures up a Patronus," you say. "A Patronus acts as a sort of guardian...it protects you from a Dementor, drives it away and places itself between you and the Dementor."

Remus nods, before saying, "The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon — hope, happiness, the desire to survive — but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can't hurt it. But I must warn you, Harry, that the Charm might be too advanced for you. Many qualified wizards have difficulty with it."

"But you two can do the charm, right? Was it hard to learn for you too?" Harry asks curiously and you laugh.

"Very hard, but we were young and would do anything to avoid studying," you reply with a laugh, making Remus smile.

"That is very true," he says in agreement.

Harry nods, before asking, "What does a Patronus look like?"

"Each one is unique to the wizard who conjures it," Remus says.

"And how do you conjure it?"

"With an incantation, which will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory."

Harry pauses for a moment, clearly thinking hard, before saying a very concentrated "Right."

"The incantation is expecto patronum!" you say slowly.

"Expecto patronum," Harry repeats under his breath, "expecto patronum."

"Excellent! Concentrating hard on your happy memory?" Remus reminds him and Harry quickly nods, remembering what he was supposed to be doing.

"Oh — yeah — expecto patrono — no, patronum — sorry — expecto patronum, expecto patronum —"

A wisp of silvery gas suddenly whooshes out of the end of his wand and his face lights up excitedly.

"Did you see that?" he grins. "Something happened!"

"Incredible for your first lesson!" You encourage and Harry beams.

"Yes, very good," Remus says, smiling. "Right then — ready to try it on a Dementor?"

"Yes," Harry says confidently, gripping his wand tightly and moving into the middle of the classroom.

You stand to the side, wand at the ready, as Remus grasps the lid of the packing case and pulls. You watch as a Dementor rises slowly from the box, its hooded face turned towards Harry, one glistening, scabbed hand gripping its cloak. The lamps in the classroom flicker and then die out. The Dementor steps out of the box and starts to sweep in that sickeningly eerie Dementor way towards Harry, drawing a deep, rattling breath.

"Expecto patronum!" Harry yells desperately. "Expecto patronum! Expecto — "

Harry begins to falter, and his grip on his wand weakens so much that it drops from his hand and he too drops backwards to the floor.

You and Remus both spring to life, as Remus shouts a quick riddikulus! at the 'Dementor' and it morphs into a bright full moon, the lamps returning to their former glow with it.

You run to the boy lying flat in the middle of the room and gently shake his arm, saying, "Harry!" and snapping your fingers.

He quickly jerks back to life, looking around himself as he sits up, beads of sweat trickling down behind his glasses. You pull a handkerchief from your pocket and hand it to him with a small smile, and he accepts it gratefully, patting his face down with it.

"Sorry," he mutters.

"Are you all right?" You ask.

"Yes..." Harry pulls himself up on one of the desks and leans against it.

"Here — " Remus hands him a Chocolate Frog. "Eat this before we try again. I didn't expect you to do it the first time. In fact, I would have been astounded if you had."

"It's getting worse," Harry mutters, biting the Frog's head off. "I could hear her louder that time — and him — Voldemort — "

You glance at Remus, his face has turned pale and you inhale slowly, stomach churning.

"Harry," you say gently. "That's what Dementors do. They make you remember the worst memories, your worst fears...that way, you let your guard down and let your happy memories and feelings slip into their grasp. But if you keep that happiest memory strong in your mind, it'll protect you."

Harry seems to think about this for a moment, and Remus says, "Harry, if you don't want to continue, I will more than understand — "

"I do!" Harry says fiercely, stuffing the rest of the Chocolate Frog into his mouth. "I've got to! What if the Dementors turn up at our match against Ravenclaw? I can't afford to fall off again. If we lose this game we've lost the Quidditch Cup!"

Okay James.

"All right then..." Remus says, slightly taken aback. You know he's thinking the exact same thing you are. "You might want to select another memory, a happy memory, I mean, to concentrate on...that one doesn't seem to have been strong enough..."

Harry moves to the middle of the classroom again, wand gripped firmly in his hand.

"Ready?" Remus asks, gripping the lid of the packing case.

"Ready," Harry replies.

"Go!" Remus says, pulling off the lid. Once again, the lamps flicker out and it gets icily cold, sending shivers down your spine. The Dementor glides forward towards Harry, drawing its rattling breath and extending one rotting hand out to him.

"Expecto patronum!" Harry yells. "Expecto patronum! Expecto pat —"

Once more, Harry's face goes blank and he tumbles to the ground, dropping his wand in the process. He lays on the ground, shaking, his face contorting in pained expressions and you move to him again while Remus quickly sorts out the Boggart, coming to his side too.

"Harry! Harry, dear, wake up..." you say, tapping him hard on the face. He opens his eyes, looking very disorientated, looking around like he doesn't know where he is. Then he shakes his head slightly and clears his throat.

"I heard my dad," he mumbles. You feel your heart start to ache. "That's the first time I've ever heard him — he tried to take on Voldemort himself, to give my mum time to run for it..."

You notice glistening tears wetting Harry's face, and when he bends down to do up his shoelace, they've been wiped off.

"You heard James?" Remus says quietly, almost as if he's forgotten where he is. You glance up at him, catching the sad look in his eyes.

"Yeah..." Harry looks up at Remus. "Why — you didn't know my dad, did you?"

"I — I did — we did, as a matter of fact," Remus says quickly, gesturing to you. "We were friends at Hogwarts. Listen, Harry — perhaps we should leave it here for tonight. This charm is ridiculously advanced...I shouldn't have suggested putting you through this..."

"No!" Harry cries, getting up again defiantly. "I'll have one more go! I'm not thinking of happy enough things, that's what it is...hang on..."

There's a brief moment of silence as Harry racks his brain for an even happier memory than his last.

"Ready?" Remus says, though you can tell he's doing this against his better judgment. You give him a look and he grits his teeth. "Concentrating hard? All right — go!"

He pulls off the lid and the Dementor emerges again.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Harry bellows. "EXPECTO PATRONUM! EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

To your shock, a huge, silver shadow bursts from the end of Harry's wand, hovering between him and the Dementor. Though Harry has nearly produced a proper Patronus, he begins to sway again and you spring forward, roaring, "Riddikulus!"

There's a loud crack and Harry's wispy Patronus disappears along with the Dementor and he sinks into a chair, legs shaking. You're no longer focused on him though, because once you've stepped in front of the Boggart it contorts into a familiar figure.

Sirius Black stands before you, dressed in an Azkaban prisoner's clothes, filthy and grubby. His long curls which you once loved running your fingers through are greasy and matted, and his face is sunken and pale. His eyes are wide, staring at you, and his face twists into a cruel smile.

"It was me," he says, though the voice isn't his. This voice is full of cruelty, malice, and even though it sounds like him, you know it's not.

No, no. This isn't real. You know this isn't real. Why are your eyes stinging? Why is the ability to breathe suddenly lost on you?

His body starts to shake in silent laughter. "You are so fucking stupid. I never even cared about — "

"Riddikulus!"

You blink. Remus is forcing the Boggart back into its packing case with his wand; it has turned into the moon again.

Remus gives you a quick once-over from where you stand, stock-still, staring at the packing case. He chooses instead to focus on Harry, forcing a smile. "Excellent! Excellent, Harry! That was definitely a start!"

"Eat the lot, or Madam Pomfrey will be after my blood. Same time next week?"

You stand, staring at the packing case. You don't even know what's going on, you've completely zoned out, thinking only of the 'man' that was in front of you mere moments ago.

"If you knew my dad, you must know Sirius Black too."

You snap out of your daze, spinning around to face Harry and Remus.

"What gives you that idea?" Remus says sharply. You remain silent.

"Nothing — I mean, I just knew that they were friends at Hogwarts, too..."

"Yes, I knew him," Remus says shortly, glancing at you from the corner of his eye. "Or I thought I did. You'd better get off, Harry, it's getting late."

Harry turns to you, Lily's eyes staring at you inquisitively. "And you, Professor...your Boggart..."

"Yes, well, yes, it's him," you reply curtly. "It shouldn't be a shock that I am afraid of a...a crazed — " your mind runs wild trying to find any words, "— um...a — a man like that."

"But you did know him?"

"Yes. Really, Harry, Professor Lupin is right...bed, now. You have class in the morning." You turn around, suddenly busying yourself with something on Binns' desk.

Harry hesitates for a moment before you hear him leave behind you, the door closing and leaving you alone with Remus.

You sigh gently and look up at him. He says nothing, just opens his arms and envelopes you in a comforting hug.

"Perhaps it's best to let you handle the Boggarts from now on?" You joke with a weak smile and Remus chuckles lightly.

"I think you might be right."

✧⁠*⁠。✧⁠*⁠。

January turns to February. Harry's all-important Ravenclaw game draws nearer, and Harry seems to grow more frustrated at each unsuccessful Patronus lesson. However, with each try, even though he doesn't know it, he is making progress.

"You're expecting too much of yourself," Remus says sternly in your fourth week of practice. "For a thirteen-year-old wizard, even an indistinct Patronus is a huge achievement. You aren't passing out any more, are you?"

"I thought a Patronus would — charge the Dementors down or something," says Harry dispiritedly. "Make them disappear — "

"The true Patronus does do that," Remus replies. "But you've achieved a great deal in a very short space of time. If the Dementors put in an appearance at your next Quidditch match, you will be able to keep them at bay long enough to get back to the ground."

"Besides, we'll be there too. You have nothing to worry about," you say with an encouraging smile.

"But you said it's harder if there are loads of them."

"We have complete confidence in you," Remus says, smiling. "Here — you've earned a drink. Something from the Three Broomsticks, you won't have tried it before — "

He pulls three gold bottles from his briefcase and Harry's face lights up.

"Butterbeer!" says Harry. "Yeah, I like that stuff!"

Harry, the boy who has never set foot in Hogsmeade?

You give him a sceptical look.

"Oh — Ron and Hermione brought me some back from Hogsmeade," Harry says quickly, smiling awkwardly.

"I see," Remus says, though he looks equally as suspicious as you. "Well, let's drink to a Gryffindor victory against Ravenclaw! Not that I'm supposed to take sides, as a teacher..." he adds hastily and you snort, rolling your eyes.

"Once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor, Remus," you say with a wink and he shakes his head amusedly.

You take a sup from your Butterbeer, the room quiet as you all drink, before Harry breaks the silence by saying, "What's under a Dementor's hood?"

Remus lowers his bottle thoughtfully. "Hmm...well, the only people who know are in no condition to tell us. You see, the Dementor only lowers its hood to use its last and worst weapon."

"What's that?"

"They call it the Dementors' Kiss," you answer with a small shudder. "It's terrible. It's what the Dementors do when they want to utterly destroy someone. There's some kind of mouth under that hood because they attach their jaws to the mouth of the victim and...suck out their soul."

Harry accidentally spits out his Butterbeer. "What — they kill — ?"

"Oh, no," Remus says. "Much worse than that. You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self any more, no memory, no...anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just — exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever...lost."

Remus drinks a little more Butterbeer, then says, "It's the fate that awaits Sirius Black. It was in the Daily Prophet this morning. The Ministry has given the Dementors permission to perform it if they find him."

You nearly choke on your drink, placing it down on the table as you cough. "What?"

"Did you not see that?" Remus asks in confusion and you shake your head, stunned.

"No, I didn't," you respond dejectedly. "I — I slept in this morning, missed the post — meteor shower last night..."

"He deserves it," Harry says suddenly.

You turn to him, shocked. "Harry!" you say breathlessly, looking down at the wooden desk.

"You think so, Harry?" Remus says lightly. "Do you really think anyone deserves that?"

"Yes," says Harry defiantly. "For...for some things..."

"It's inhumane," you spit. "If you knew half of what goes on in Azkaban, you would think it is punishment enough."

Harry doesn't respond to that, just thanks you both for the lesson and Remus for the Butterbeer before leaving.

As soon as he's gone you turn to Remus. "The Kiss?"

"I thought you had read it," Remus says apologetically, looking very guilty. "I would have told you otherwise."

"It's fine, Moony, really...I don't care about that. Just...like, what the fuck? This is just great. Exactly what I needed to hear. What a brilliant year this has been!" You say bitterly, standing up from your seat and running a hand down your face, laughing humourlessly. "Just fucking brilliant."

✧⁠*⁠。✧⁠*⁠。

->-> read chapter nine here!

→ all kinds of interaction are appreciated ♡

#sirius black x you #sirius black x reader #sirius black #marauders #the marauders #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #hp #hp fanfic #angst #angst with a happy ending #fanfic #fanfiction

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trumpkinhotboy · 9 months

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Chronic protective brother syndrome

Pairing: big brother!nick nelson x little sister!reader

Type: Request (thank you so much!!)

Warnings: Mention of fainting, having a chronic illness, but nothing too intense

Word count: 1900

Requests: Open! For Heartstopper, twilight wolfpack, chronicles of narnia and harry potter

A/n: honestly… i dont have much to say except that i love writing for requests and that big brother nick makes me weak in the knees. Hope you enjoy angels xxx

*gif is not mine

Summary: The reader has been living with diabetes her whole life. She's grown quite accustomed to it and manages it well with the help of her supportive family. Although sometimes, support can feel a little suffocating...

Through your 14 years of existence, you have grown quite accustomed to life with type 1 diabetes. As you grew up and became more conscious of what it meant to live with a chronic disease, you learned to accept and care for yourself quite well.

Your mother, Sarah, was a real trooper and never let you down, always carrying you when you felt exhausted and done with your condition, which did happen more often than you care to admit. Luckily, you also had someone else in your corner: your older brother.

Nick is known to be quite protective. Especially with the people he cares for. However, that aspect of his personality gained a new high when you were born, and your mother explained why you could never do everything just as he did. Of course, you would still be able to do most of them. You would simply need to be a little more careful.

Sarah remembers very clearly the look in little Nick’s eyes when she explained why you were always sick. You were resting in bed after a substantial flare-up when his eyes welled up with tears. That's when he finally understood that there was something in your own body that would always try to fight and hurt itself. That’s also when he promised himself he would do everything to protect you. Your mum still tells that story with a few tears welling up in her eyes.

Nick knew you could have a lot of complications from your disease. To avoid them, he always made sure you had everything you needed at all times. You usually didn't mind, seeing how your ADHD sometimes made it a little harder for you to remember to pack your stuff. Plus, the fatigue diabetes often fogged you with did not help in that department.

The thing is you were now 14 years old, finally starting to make new friends and explore the jungle that is social life in high school. So when your 16-year-old brother comes over, and all your lady friends swoon over him, or worse, when he comes over to baby you, it gets a little irritating. Luckily, Nick was quite stubborn about that stuff and was not about to let you get hurt just because of the image you wanted to project.

That was until you made quite a scene in front of everyone.

You had been feeling particularly irritated and moody that day. So when you saw your brother walk over to you with a backup diabetes kit, which was his creation, you felt anger boil in your blood.

It did not help to hear some nasty year 10 make jokes from a picnic table near your friends and you. "Oh, would you look at that? Diabetes Nelson still needs her big brother to bring her her little drugs. I don't understand how someone like him could be related to her."

It was stupid. It wasn't even a good insult. Plus, the people who kept making comments were not something to be impressed with. Still, you couldn't help the shame from creeping on your cheeks.

So this time, when your big brother came to check on you and offered you your safety pouch, you refused.

"I already have the normal one. I don't need this one."

"I know, but I don't think you've put the new insulin shots in. I brought you the safety one just in case."

The snickers you heard from the people behind had you gritting your teeth. You couldn't understand their exact words, but you knew it wasn't positive.

"Don't you have anything better to do than watch over me all day?" you hissed. "I'm not stupid Nick."

Your diabetes also made you prone to mood swings, mostly when your blood sugar levels were too high or low. That's why Nick usually did not make a big deal out of these outbursts, but this time felt different. Hurt flashed in his eyes, and briefly, you regretted the words.

"I never said that. I just want to make sure you have everything you need. You know the risks." His tone was soft, his gaze focused on you. He tried as much as he could not to make a big deal out of this, but your reaction had the exact opposite effect. He knew how the fear of being judged could make a person act in such a terrible way.

"I don't need you to remind me how weak and useless my body is, okay? I'm the one living with diabetes, Nick. Not you." You whispered angrily.

You grabbed your bag and left him planted there without looking back. Nick and you were usually like two peas in a pod, and to leave him there hurt much more than you would care to admit.

You got back in class, trying to act normal, but after an hour in, you felt queasy and feeble. You had indulged in some sweets some friends offered after your altercation with Nick, brushing off the risk with your ongoing anger. Subtly, you pricked your finger and couldn't help your eyes from growing two sizes when you saw the little numbers your tracker presented. You were in hyperglycemia and urgently needed to get a shot of insulin. Swiftly, you asked to be excused from the class and headed for the bathroom. The walls seemed to shake around you, and your vision kept warping up. Cursing yourself for being this dumb, you opened your bag with shaking hands, searching for your shots.

"Shit."

There was only one thing worse than fighting with Nick, and it was when you realized he had been right. You mumbled under your breath, trying to stay calm and figure out a quick solution because this was becoming urgent, and you needed the care right now. Calling Nick would do no good since he was at Truham anyway. You decided to head back to class to ask for your teacher's help, but once you tried climbing the stairs, a thousand little dots started dancing around. You were able to mutter an 'I feel kinda dizzy' before everything turned black.

You awoke to a commotion. Distorted sounds and everything around you moved too fast to register. Someone was holding your hand while you felt a pinch in your arm.

"It's okay, it's okay Y/n. You're going to be okay. I'm here."

You knew that voice. You lifted your gaze with an effort and only saw a flash of red hair before darkness swallowed you once more.

This time, when you woke up, everything was silent and peaceful. You were lying in a bed, a hospital bed, with an IV drip set up in your arm. Nick was resting in the chair next to you, his worried eyes set on his phone as he quickly typed.

"Hey," you croaked.

His head whipped up in surprise when he heard your voice. He immediately dropped his phone to come by your side. His hand flew to your forehead. The coolness of it felt incredibly refreshing as you leaned into the touch.

"Hey, kid," he whispered. He tried putting a smile on his face, but it couldn't hide the worry he was truly feeling.

"So, I'm guessing I fainted? And someone found me? And they panicked ?"

"Panicked is an understatement."

He explained that Imogen found you at the bottom of the stairs. She didn't know whether you had fallen from them or just fainted at the bottom, so she immediately called for help and texted him.

"I ran to Higgs faster than Charlie ever could," he added with a smirk, his joke stealing a chuckle from your chest.

"I'm sorry for causing such a commotion. I should wear a bracelet that says fainting is normal for me so people won't worry."

His gaze hardened at your comment. "Fainting is not normal for you. It's a bad sign, and you know it."

You sheepishly dropped your gaze. Okay, he wasn't ready to make jokes about it yet. Charlie would have laughed, you secretly thought.

"I don't understand why you pulled that crap. I just wanted to help you."

You lay back in bed with a sigh and covered your eyes with your forearm. You did know Nick only wanted to help, but still. His kind gestures irritated you so much sometimes.

"It's already hard enough to be the sick kid. That was my only thing when I was in middle school. I thought now I could step away from it, that I could be someone else. Be known for other things than my messed up immune system."

You noticed Nick's expression softened once you uncovered your eyes.

"And I know you want to help and trust me, I appreciate it. It's just that sometimes it feels like you don't believe in me. Like you don't think I'm capable of doing stuff. Instead of helping me become stronger, you keep worrying me with your horror scenarios."

It was now Nick's turn to look all sheepish and guilty. You might have been right in saying he tended to get a little paranoid when you wanted to try new things. He only thought about protecting you. He never realized the effect it would have on your self-esteem.

"I'm tired of being afraid. I've looked it up, and there are so many people with diabetes who are doing amazing things. I can stay healthy and still be a badass kid who tries new stuff."

He looked up, his eyes holding so much uncertainty and fear. Though through it all, love was the strongest thing in his gaze. He grabbed your hand once again with a tight smile.

"I hear you, I'm sorry. I never thought it would make you feel like this, or else I wouldn't have done it."

"Nick." You gave him a knowing look.

"Okay, okay. I might have still done it, but only because you're my baby sister, and I want you to be healthy and have a long, long life, okay?"

You nodded while tightening your grip on his hand.

"I promise I will be less overbearing, and I will support you in whatever new thing you want to try."

"Thanks, Nick, and for school, could you maybe not come and do your big brother number in front of all my friends? I appreciate the gesture, but I'm over dealing with the dumbasses."

He sighed heavily but still agreed to your request. "About that, just a piece of advice. I've learned that sometimes the thing we are afraid will show our weakness or vulnerability only does when we allow it to. Once you reclaim your power and own it, it all switches around. Anyone who has something to say about it will suddenly disappear, or you won't care what they have to say anymore."

You nodded sheepishly. You honestly didn't care about your diabetes. I mean, it could be a gigantic pain, and you would have to be careful for the rest of your life. But all in all, you were pretty lucky. You had your condition mostly under control when you weren't a sassy dumbass, and you had the best support system someone could wish for.

"Look at me. You're going to be okay kiddo." Your brother squeezed your hand tighter in a reassuring motion.

You lifted your head to meet his supportive gaze and smiled in return. Yes, you would be okay.

#ilya writes #nick nelson #nick nelson x little sister!reader #nick nelson x sibling!reader #heartstopper #heartstopper fic #nick nelson fic #nick and charlie #alice oseman #kit connor #anon request

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chlobliviate · 1 month

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Wolfstar Microfic - Faster

Words: 839

@wolfstarmicrofic

🌙✨🌙✨🌙

Remus would forever be grateful to Sirius for spotting the moon, dragging him back into the shrieking shack, kissing his temple and locking the door before he could transform. Even with the wolfsbane, he wouldn’t wish it on Harry and his friends to witness the transformation.

Even with Remus' mind, the wolf was restless. He could smell Sirius and Peter. Peter. He knew Hermione had hit him with incarcerous, but worried all night about whether they’d finally got him.

After he turned back, groggy and exhausted, but uninjured, the door swung open. He swallowed the disappointment at not Sirius standing there, but Dumbledore.

“Good Morning!” He said jovially as if the events of last night were a regular occurrence. “How are you feeling?”

Remus frowned, “Albus, tell me—”

“I’ll get to that, Remus. How are you feeling? Was the potion adequate?”

“Yes, thank you.” He muttered, “I didn’t sleep much, but I’m fine.”

“Glad to hear it!” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “Mr Potter, Mr Weasley and Miss Granger are all safe and unharmed, other than Mr Weasley’s leg which is already on the mend. Severus is… his usual self.” Remus snorted, “He has made a point to inform the ministry of your condition, which will no doubt filter down to parents and students in due course. I want to make myself absolutely clear, Remus, that you belong here. No complaints from parents or questions from the wizengamot will change that. I hope that you will stay.”

Remus stared at the wall, everyone would know. Surely parents would withdraw their children, and send them to Beauxbatons where they weren’t being taught by a monster. Of course, he couldn’t stay.

Dumbledore interrupted his train of thought, “The students respond to you and they enjoy your lessons. You would be doing yourself and them a disservice if you let this change things. Just, think about it.” He nodded, “Onto more serious matters.”

“Is he…”

“Aurors came to collect Mr Pettigrew in the early hours of the morning. He is awaiting trial now.”

“So he gets a trial? Not just thrown in Azkaban, no questions asked?” Remus snarled. “He spent twelve years in there, Albus.”

“I’m well aware,” Dumbledore Held up a hand, “He will be given a full pardon. He’s in the hospital wing currently being fussed over by Poppy.”

“He’s not… they didn’t take him back?” Remus blinked at him.

“No, Remus. He’s a free man.”

Remus didn’t care if he was being rude. All he could think of was Sirius, and he ran from the shack, through the tunnel and out of the Whomping Willow, not caring if anyone saw him exit. He ran faster than he ever had and when he came skidding to a halt in the hospital wing, a small sea of curious faces greeted him.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were gathered around Sirius’ bed while Madam Pomfrey hovered. Sirius sat cross-legged on top of the sheets, chatting animatedly to Harry, wearing clean robes, with his hair tied back and, wow, he didn’t know that Poppy could work miracles, but apparently she could.

Sirius instantly leapt from the bed to the protests of Harry and Hermione and threw his arms around Remus.

“You’re alright.” Remus whispered, “I’ve got you.”

🌙✨🌙✨🌙

“I am pleased to introduce you to our new Astronomy professor, Professor Sirius Black.” Dumbledore smiled over at him.

Sirius got to his feet and bowed slightly, smiling at the cheers coming from the Gryffindor table. As he sat back down, Remus’ hand returned to his thigh and he linked their little fingers together.

Remus, after much debate with Sirius and Harry, had agreed to stay on at Hogwarts. When Dumbledore offered Sirius the Astronomy position he’d pinched himself several times because being back at Hogwarts with Sirius seemed too good to be true. Dumbledore had written to them a week after term had ended to ask if they’d like separate quarters, or to share, and that had shattered the levy that had been holding back everything they hadn’t said since they were teenagers. Choked ‘I love you’s, angry ‘I missed you’s and serene promises. Forevers.

Travelling on the Hogwarts Express with Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville was delightful. Much better than it had been for Remus the previous year, not a dementor in sight. Sirius slung his arm across the back of the seats and Remus leaned into his shoulder. He noticed Hermione shoot Ron an ‘I told you so’ look, but that was all. They’d told Harry over the summer when he’d finally come to live with them at Grimmauld Place and he was thrilled for them, Lily and James’ son through and through. They’d absolutely gutted the house, slashing the portrait of Walburga until the ribbons of canvas were finally silent. All the silver adornments changed to gold, and heavy, dusty curtains were thrown away to let the light in.

It would only be their home for a few months a year for the foreseeable future, but it was their home. Better late than never.

#fanfic #wolfstar #ao3 #fanfiction #remus lupin #sirius black #remus x sirius #marauders #wolfstar microfic #remus loves sirius #sirius loves remus #fix it fic

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mkmgwrites · 25 days

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Goblet of Shadows on AO3.

Please mind the tags. This is a very dark fic.

Chapters 43, 44 and 45 have now been released on the GOS Discord Server.

Summary:

Voldemort has won. The Order has fallen. Harry Potter is dead.

Five years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione Granger is pulled from Azkaban and forced to compete in the Dark Tournament against fellow fallen Order Members.

The Goblet of Shadows assigns each high ranking Death Eater a Champion. The Champion who wins the games will get to go free and their master, one of Voldemort’s Scions, will have secured their position as his Successor.

With Hermione being assigned to Draco Malfoy, the highest ranking Scion, she may have a chance.

There can only be one victor, one survivor and one shot at freedom.

Let the games begin.

#dramione #dramione fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #draco x hermione #hermione x draco #ao3 fanfic #dramione fanfic #draco fanfiction #hermione fanfiction #hermione granger #triwizard tournament #voldemort wins au #hunger games au

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hollowed-theory-hall · 2 months

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Hi! I have read through all of your harry metas and I love them!!! And it made me wonder whether you had any personal head-cannons regarding him? Like any unpopular ones that are not mentioned in the books or discussed by the fandom. I found only a precious few posts regarding this matter, so yeah I would like to know yours if u do have any.

Hi, thank you so much! 💕

Honestly, I'm pretty sure I just sprinkled Harry headcanons throughout my various posts but I'll try to comprise a list of some of my headcanons that popped into my head here. As such, these are all my random headcanons about Harry, some have more reasoning behind them than others. So, here are some of them in no particular order:

1. I think Harry is gay (could be demi but I don't think he's interested in women and he is interested in men. Personally, I headcanon him as gay).

I have a whole post about it here, but I don't know how common of an opinion it is since I see mostly bi Harry and not gay ones.

2. I see some fanon Harry's portrayed as very small, but I don't think he is. In my head, he's about 5'11 (by book 7) and in canon, he can lift Mundungus by the throat with one hand so... I think he's pretty fit actually. (Though he's very thin due to malnourishment). He's just always compared to Ron, who is like, ridiculously tall. I also think he was short for his age up until and including book 4. Between books 4 and 5 is when he had his first real growth spurt.

3. I think he was born Master of Death and that a lot of his miraculous survivals are because of that.

4. Harry has ADHD. It's my way to explain his tendency to be very observant of some things and not others, his crazy good selective memory, and his tendency to fail when he starts overthinking. Idk, I have ADHD and I'm getting these vibes from him (or projecting, who knows).

5. In my head, the epilogue isn't canon, so Harry breaks the curse on the DADA position, like, 5 years after the war, and starts teaching it. Until then, McGonagall just made sure to hire teachers only with one year contracts.

6. I headcanon the Potter family had more estate than just the cottage in Godric's Hollow and Harry finds out about them at some point after the war. I mean, they are reasonably rich, have a Wizengamot seat, and had more family members until very recently. They have to have more houses.

7. I think Harry and Kreature actually become friends after the books. I think they could've during the books too, Harry finds Kreature's sense of humor funny even as back as OotP:

“. . . Smells like a drain and a criminal to boot, but she’s no better, nasty old blood traitor with her brats messing up my Mistress’s house, oh my poor Mistress, if she knew, if she knew the scum they’ve let in her house, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh the shame of it, Mudbloods and werewolves and traitors and thieves, poor old Kreacher, what can he do. . . .” “Hello, Kreacher,” said Fred very loudly, closing the door with a snap. The house-elf froze in his tracks, stopped muttering, and then gave a very pronounced and very unconvincing start of surprise. “Kreacher did not see Young Master,” he said, turning around and bowing to Fred. Still facing the carpet, he added, perfectly audibly, “Nasty little brat of a blood traitor it is.” “Sorry?” said George. “Didn’t catch that last bit.” “Kreacher said nothing,” said the elf, with a second bow to George, adding in a clear undertone, “and there’s its twin, unnatural little beasts they are.” Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

(OotP, 107-108)

I just see a lot of sassy potential in their dynamic.

8. Before he was hit with the killing curse, he and Lily had the same eye color, a deep, bright green. After Halloween 1981, Harry's eyes are always the shade of the killing curse, which is similar to before, just slightly lighter and brighter. It's barely noticeable unless in certain lighting, but Sirius was sure he was hallucinating from exhaustion on a few nights in Grimmauld Place where he looked at Harry, and his eyes shined just a little off, a little too brightly, the wrong color for just a moment.

9. He had at least 1 too sexy dream about Tom Riddle, and he never told and never will tell anyone if it's up to him. He tries to pretend it didn't happen tbh.

10. Same as number 9 about Sirius, honestly...

11. His animagus form would be a Raven. (Although I can see a few other forms as possible as well)

12. Sometimes, when I draw Harry, I add a little white streak of hair from his scar because I think it looks cool. Also, white hair and death connotation, so, yeah. I'd like to think that the white tuft became larger after he died and came back in the forest.

13. I usually imagine his scar going down through his eyebrow to around his right eye, basically I like it when Harry is very obviously and clearly marked by the killing curse. Unfortunately, canon contradicts this by him being able to cover the scar with his hair, and Snatchers in Deathly Hollows believed him to not be Harry Potter when he made shit up, so the scar probably isn't that noticeable. I'd like to think it is larger with very few lines going below his forehead, and just very very pale and almost invisible when Tom isn't angry over something.

14. He's short-sighted. Aka, his glasses are for looking at things far away, and if he wants to read, he can do so without the glasses, assuming he's holding the page close enough to his face. Actually, contrary to fanon opinion, I think Harry can see without his glasses, it's just really hazy, but if you stand close enough he would recognize you without his glasses. His sight isn't that bad.

15. I think throughout the series, his wardrobe slowly becomes more wizardy (and it could be really cool to implement something like that in the TV show). Basically, in year 1, he's always wearing his school robes over Dudley's muggle clothes, but through the years, he ends up buying random wizard clothing artifacts. So, in later years, he occasionally wore jeans under his robes, but sometimes he wore wizarding shirts. Sometimes, in books like 4 or 5, he could wear muggle sneakers with a casual wizarding robe on the weekend. Like, idk, I like the idea of this gradual change in his wardrobe and by book 7 when they are actively on the run from the ministry he's finally really looking the part of a wizard, but he isn't part of their society because of the war. Like, I just like this arc to his fashion that I made up in my head.

16. The one thing I might agree with the epilogue on in my headcanoned future, is that Harry declines going back for 8th year. Except in my head, he doesn't immediately go to Auror training, instead, he tries to take some time to figure his life out after everything, realizes he wants to go back to Hogwarts and that he doesn't know how to just sit down after 17 years of running on adrenalin and he ends up returning to the optional 8th year like 3 months late.

17. Harry's patronus is never going to change. He isn't going to allow that piece of his father to die, so I don't think it would change.

18. Like what I mentioned above about his eyes being just slightly off from Lily's eye color, I think his resemblance to James is like that too (and the books support me on this). In SWM Harry mentions how James has a longer nose than him and a different eye shape, and I think if you looked closely at James and Harry side by side, you'll see more and more of these differences. They look the same when you don't think about it, but once you look, they don't look like carbon copies of each other at all. I think Harry has James' eyebrows and jaw structure though.

19. For some reason, I headcanon Harry was born on the evening. Like, around 7 or 8. I really don't know why.

20. Harry doesn't know it, but he is attractive. I mean, I'm not sure I mentioned it, but girls in books 5 and 6 start looking at him, and sure, he is the Boy-Who-Lived, but if he wasn't attractive there wouldn't be that many attempts to dose him with love potion. Also, he is the son of James and Lily, so the potential there is high.

21. I'd like to think he keeps the ability to speak Parseltongue even after Voldemort dies and the Horcrux is gone. I like to think the Horcrux wasn't the only reason he could speak it. Like, in my headcanon, Lily is a descendant from a Gaunt family squib line and that's why Voldy's soul triggered the Parseltongue gene that was already there. So, in my version of the books in my head, Harry could still speak it even after book 7.

Like, these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

#harry potter #hp #asks #anon asks #anonymous #hollowedheadcanon #hp headcanon #harry james potter

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