#idk how 2 tag maeve honestly. hes complicated

[s1x-foot-deep]

day 17. roadrunner

featuring maeve foley who has not yet been introduced .

[setaripendragon]

Snily AU - Book 2?

So, here I go again, on a massive long ramble about this stupidly self-indulgent AU I’ve come up with. If you want a recap, I think I’m going to tag this AU under ‘role swap AU’, which is what it’s turned out to be, even if it started as just a simple ‘what if Snily instead of Jily?’ AU, so just search for the role-swap-AU tag on my blog.

And, as before, putting this monster beneath a read more, because, really, I’m writing an entire not!fic here. This is longer than some of the actual oneshots I’ve written, fml...

I’m just going to pick up where I left off; the summer holidays at the beginning of book two. Of course, a lot of what we see in the books is going to belong to Neville, now. I honestly can’t decide if Dobby would think to try stopping Neville’s mail, since he’s not quite as isolated as Harry was. Maybe he tries some other mischief. If he does end up showing himself, I can only imagine Augusta hitting the roof over this interference. (Maybe she even recognises Dobby as a Malfoy elf and gives Lucius what for about it?)

I like the idea that Neville is just as clumsy with the floo as Harry is, and the whole Borgin and Burke’s scene happens pretty much as per canon. Idk if Hagrid would find him or not, but either way he would, eventually get back to Diagon Alley safely (because he, unlike Harry, grew up in the Wizarding World and knew roughly where he was).

But I don’t know if he’d meet the Weasleys there. He certainly wouldn’t have needed rescuing, so what if instead of going there with a friend, it’s more of a coincidence. What if he just happens to bump into Harry there. Harry, who’s there with Sirius and Remus, of course, but also with the Snapes. Lily and Severus and Maeve, and her two younger brothers, Azrael and Gilgamesh. Because Maeve is starting Hogwarts this year and they’re making a big day of it, and Lily invited Remus & co because why not? So Neville bumps into them in Flourish and Blotts, right before he gets recognised by Lockhart.

And, of course, Lucius Malfoy still has his massive beef with the Weasleys for being blood-traitors and poor as dirt, as per canon, but in this AU, I think he’d have an even bigger beef with Severus. Severus, who Lucius was supposed to recruit, Severus whom he groomed for the role and made promises of everything the Dark Lord would give him if Severus fought for him, Severus who embarrassed him so massively in front of the Dark Lord when he picked a mudblood bitch over all that power and promise.

So it’s not Ginny Weasley who gets the Diary, it’s Maeve Snape. Lucius slips it in among her books while making snide comments about Severus sullying himself, how very like his muggle-loving mother, a legacy he must be so proud of- Lily shuts him up by punching him square in the jaw. And probably makes a comment about how does Lucius like being put on his ass by a mudblood, with muggle fighting techniques. Not so inferior now, huh? And Remus makes a quip about Lily being a healer, and wasn’t there something in her oaths about not doing harm? And Lily’s like ‘I swore to fight parasites and diseases, and that’s exactly what I did.’

And I want Draco to have a very complicated problem here, because on the one hand, he’s been conditioned to side with his father, and his father doesn’t like Severus Snape. But Draco, canonically, likes alchemy and potion-making, and Severus has, in this verse, had the opportunity to become a rather world-renowned name in the field. Draco, deep down and so secretly he barely admits it to himself (right next to where he hides his massive, debilitating crush on Harry), wants an apprenticeship with Severus when he’s older. So he’s bitter about it, and even more bitter because he’d entertained hopes of befriending Maeve, selling it to his father as luring her away from her family, but honestly mostly just in the hopes of getting an in with famous Potioneer and Alchemist Severus Snape. But no, she’s friends with Harry Potter, the bane of Draco’s entire existence. So he’s an even more pissy little shit than usual.

And that’s the summer, so now they’re off to Hogwarts. Except, of course, Dobby. And this is where things start getting complicated. Because I think Dobby would still stop Neville going through the barrier, since it’s one of the surest ways to stop or delay him, a point he has to pass through, and there’s no way around, and there’s a time limit. He probably has sneaky ways to make sure the Longbottoms are late, so there wouldn’t even be drama of there being a lot of people stuck, not just Neville. But would Ron be with him? Was any of the delay the Weasleys suffered Dobby’s fault? Do they get there earlier? So here’s the real important question:

9) Does Neville fly the car to Hogwarts? 9a) If the Weasleys are even there, does Ron even get stuck with Neville? Or is it someone else? The twins? Ginny?

I hadn’t thought of that before, but that could be interesting, actually. The two of them would be so shy around each other, Neville just naturally timid and self-effacing, and GInny over-come by her hero-worship crush. But Ginny is bold, when she’s not intimidated by trying to impress her crush, so if Neville did mention waiting by the car, I think she would be daredevil and stubborn enough to suggest flying it to school. I think the lure of all that time alone with her crush would be enough to make her push, even if Neville was hesitant and dubious.

Still, the question stands. Either way, he gets to Hogwarts eventually. And Ginny, Maeve, and Luna are devastated to realise they’re all in different houses, but Harry encourages them to not let house divisions come between them.

Which, speaking of house divisions, brings me to a plot point I really like. Of course, because they’re both in Slytherin, Harry and Draco can’t have their epic Quidditch rivalry. There can only be one Slytherin Seeker, after all. So, of course, they both try out, and it’s a furious competition, and they’re almost neck-and-neck. And eventually, Marcus Flint decides one of them is reserve Seeker, while the other gets the actual positions. So, of course, before every match, the reserve Seeker tries to sabotage the actual Seeker so that they get to play in the match. So of course, when the next year rolls around, and the reserve Seeker gets to be on the actual team, the new reserve Seeker sabotages them right back.

I think that, behaviour-wise, it makes more sense for Draco to be the reserve Seeker in their second year, to start off the whole sabotage-drama? I think Harry would be petty enough to try sabotaging Draco (remember, he is a Slytherin this go around), especially if he thought Marcus Flint had shown favouritism by picking Draco. (Maybe because of the broom-bribe?) But I haven’t even begun to think how it might play out in later years, so I’m not sure.

And following on from the quidditch-related questions; given that Neville doesn’t play quidditch, there can’t be any rogue bludger, so there really need to be other ways for Dobby to attempt to injure Neville enough to get sent home. I have no idea what they might be, though. I mean, Neville is already clumsy, so maybe he just seems to be having an Extra Clumsy Year or something, but that doesn’t seem like enough? I thought maybe, that if he didn’t fly the car to Hogwarts, this might be a good way for Neville to encounter the Whomping Willow? He is, after all, really interested in Herbology. Dobby might engineer an incident there?

I really ought to reread the second book (or listen to the audiobook, at least), because I’m a bit fuzzy on the order of events, but I think the only crucial plot point before the whole rogue bludger thing was the Deathday Party, right? I think that would all happen pretty much the same. No reason for it not to, really. And then, of course, because Dobby is trying to injure Neville, even without the bludger, he probably would end up in the hospital wing eventually, and Colin Creevey would try to visit him. But hey, would Ginny go with him? I kind of like the idea that they became sort of friends, bonding over their shared crushes on Neville. But if she goes with him, does she get petrified, too? That kind of ruins the whole only-muggle-borns streak right out of the gate, but it might be an interesting avenue to explore?

10) Who gets to be Slytherin Seeker first? Harry or Draco? 11) How does Dobby attempt to not-kill Neville? 12) Does Ginny go with Colin to visit Neville in the hospital wing? 12a) If she does, does she get petrified? Or does she avoid it? 12b) If she does avoid it; how?

And then we come to the duelling club. No Sev here, he’s free of that blasted classroom, so who does Lockhart rope in as his ‘assisstant’? My first thought was Flitwick, since he’s the renowned duelist on staff. But then I thought: McGonagall. Can you imagine McGonagall getting stuck having to deal with Lockhart in full on show-off mode? I think it might even be as entertaining as the actual canon dueling club.

Draco still summons a snake, and Neville still talks to it, and everyone still thinks he’s the Heir of Slytherin, as per canon. Only, in this verse, Neville actually has sort-of-friends in Slytherin. They’re not close, but they know and like each other, and Slytherin house is losing it’s collective mind at the notion of an actual real life parseltongue at Hogwarts. Jealousy and awe run rampant, and Harry and Tracey can tell Neville all about it. And most importantly, when Neville starts angsting over how it’s a Dark Art and maybe he is just a failure and an awful person deep down, Blaise, a well-educated pureblood from a Slytherin family can tell Neville all about the good parseltongues. (I really hate how inconsistent JKR was about that sort of thing. Dumbledore says “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” and yet JKR doesn’t have one example of a natural born parseltongue being good. Fuck you, madam. Fuck. You.)

When I was a kid, one of my favourite books was D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, and one of the stories in it that stuck with me was the story of Melampus, who nursed a nest of orphaned snakes, and in return they licked his ears so clean he could hear and understand the language of animals. If that isn’t a perfect ‘origin of parseltongue’ story (Blaise: The muggles got it a bit wrong, of course, it wasn’t all animals, even snakes aren’t that wise, but they did teach him their own language) I don’t know what is. And he used the knowledge he gained from talking to them to heal. That, in fact, Parseltongue was known as a language of healing until only very recently. (Snakes are literally part of the symbol of western medicine ffs.)

And that maybe in other countries, like India and China, parseltongue is practically revered. They have their own parseltongue lines, and they’re honoured and maybe even rulers. (Are Chinese/East Asian Dragons snake-like enough to speak parseltongue? Do they speak dragonese? Are they bilingual?)

And Merlin, okay. I headcanon that Merlin was a parseltongue. Because I don’t care what JKR may have said on the subject, Merlin existed sometime around 500AD, which is five hundred years before Hogwarts even existed. He could not have been a Slytherin. However, I do really like the idea of him being Slytherin’s ancestor. (Which would also help explain Slytherin’s reputation for being obsessed with lineage. If I had Merlin in my family tree, I’d fucking brag about it, too.) And modern witches and wizards who aren’t historians only know vaguely that he’s associated with Slytherin, which then gets mistaken for him being in Slytherin. And any sufficiently educated witch or wizard (Hermione) will get so frustrated with that misconception because the dates don’t even match up you uneducated nitwit.

And of course Slytherins have a different opinion on Slytherin himself. Maybe when Hermione hears Tracey, a muggleborn like herself, defending the most famous hater of muggleborns in history (besides Voldemort), she gets all geared up for a Research Project, and she and Tracey disappear into the library together for hours on hours looking for unbiased sources and historical accounts of what Slytherin was actually like.

Sorry about that tangent, I just have a lot of feelings about parseltongues and Slytherin and Merlin and Greek Myths. Anyway, back to the plot; I think the whole Christmas drama with the polyjuice potion should just be scrapped. It just doesn’t work when the Boy Who Lived has friends in Slytherin and can just ask. I think Harry would definitely be of the opinion that Draco really probably isn’t the Heir (Harry: If Malfoy were descended from Slytherin himself, I think we would have heard about it by now. At great length. In detail. Every day.)

But maybe there was still a bit of an incident over Christmas, because Draco was mouthing off about how he hopes the next attack kills someone, and Harry argues with him, and it turns into a massive thing, with students from all years weighing in on this side or that. And Maeve is just sitting in the corner shrinking in her seat because she’s really starting to think ‘what if it’s me?’

So she tries to get rid of the diary. Maybe she confides in Ginny and Luna. (Or, just Luna, if Ginny is petrified...) I think she probably actually showed them the diary in the first place, and Luna made some vaguely disturbing comments about it, and Ginny thought it was neat, but they didn’t get sucked in like Maeve did, and they’ve been really kind of worried about her, so when she goes to them and explains - not all of it, she’s too frightened to admit to all of it, but she does tell them she thinks there’s something wrong with the diary, that maybe it’s hurting her - they’re (Luna’s) really relieved to help her get rid of it.

But does Neville find it? I mean, the whole thing is such a damn coincidence, but... hmm, Harry did find his way right to the diadem in the Room of Requirement, so if we work on the basis that Horcruxes are at least somewhat aware of each other and possibly even drawn to each other, then I think Neville would have to find it. (Whew, at least that’s one plot-bending point avoided.)

Next is Valentine’s Day. Ugh. This all depends on whether Ginny is petrified or not, doesn’t it? That’s probably an arguement for her not being petrified, because I can’t think of anyone else who has the right connections here. Of course, what the hell would happen if Neville kept the diary? Or would Maeve just steal it out of his bag at some point? I think she would have to. But if Ginny’s awake, then it goes basically like it did in canon, only Maeve is with Ginny when Neville’s bag splits, and she’s the one who panics over Neville having it, and she’s the one who convinces Ginny to help her steal it back. (Because if Tom was hurting Maeve, he might end up hurting Neville, and Ginny would love the idea of getting to be the hero that saves her idol from some soul-sucking diary. You can imagine the pre-adolescent daydreams the entire escapade fueled.)

Speaking of daydreams and romance, I love the idea of the entirety of the male-attracted population of Slytherin getting into a vicious fued over whether Lockhart is crush-worthy or not. Because, like him or not, the man is devious, and successful, and that’s got to be attractive to a lot of Slytherins. On the other hand, he wouldn’t know subtle if it jumped up and whacked him over the head with a brick. (I’m really torn as to what side of the equation Draco would fall on. On the one hand, he isn’t exactly subtle either, so there’s really good grounds for thinking he might be just as bad as Hermione about it all. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel that he’s much more likely to have a teacher-crush on Lupin, and obviously massively resent it and be a little brat about it just like he is about his crush on Harry. ...Although I suppose ‘why not both?’ does sort of apply here XD) Blaise is obviously very anti-Lockhart, and so is Daphne, Pansy is very pro-Lockhart, and so is Millicent. Harry, Tracey, and Theo just do not get what the fuss is all about, leave them out of it, please. That’s how Harry makes friends with Theo.

And then Hermione gets petrified. Only it’s not Penelope with her, it’s Tracey. Because they’ve been spending so much time together in the library researching Slytherin. (And also because Dean’s ‘just chuck out all the Slytherins’ speech pissed me right off, and I really wish JKR had actually put effort into debunking all the forms of prejudice in the books, not just the ones she set up to be distasteful. Not all Muggles are magic-hates, and not all Slytherins are Death Eaters.) And Tracey getting petrified would change a lot of the school’s attitude, because suddenly, no one is safe. The Slytherins aren’t All In On It, they’re just as much at risk as anybody else. No one knows where to look or where to point the finger.

And then there’s the whole thing with the spiders that I don’t even know where to start with. Obviously, Neville is going to get told by the Diary that Hagrid was the one to unleash the monster, so he would go talk to Hagrid, but... Not only is there the question of whether he would have stayed long enough to hear Hagrid’s warning without the Invisibility Cloak (which I still dunno if he has or not?), but... Would he really actually go looking for ‘answers’ in the Forbidden Forest? Which is where he was almost mauled by Voldemort once already. Ron certainly isn’t going to encourage him. If he does somehow go, how does he escape, given that maybe the car isn’t there? Argh. This whole thing becomes a complete mess with the possible changes of earlier and I have no idea what to do with it all. I just know that he does, somehow, need to be inspired to realise that Myrtle is the one the basilisk killed.

Or maybe he doesn’t? Is there some other way Neville could find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets? Maybe Neville just... asks a snake? He could do that. There have to be some snakes at Hogwarts, and they must have heard the basilisk roaming about. Or, hey, maybe Luna helps? If Ginny was petrified, it might inspire her to investigate, in her own way, and she might find things others would miss. (Maybe she would just... go around asking all the ghosts if they know what happened fifty years ago.)

And that’s not getting into the whole issue of the adventure in the Chamber. Obviously, it’s Maeve that gets taken this time, so maybe it should be Harry that goes with Neville to the Chamber? Or maybe (if she’s not petrified) it should be Ginny? ...I feel I should mention that I don’t ship Ginny/Neville, and that’s not going to be end-game. She’s going to get over her crush and stay over it. And maybe actually getting to go on an adventure with the Boy Who Lived, getting to know how awful it is, how not-heroic it all it, how it’s just desperation and fear and muddling through as best you can, would help take the shine off her hero-worship and let her really start seeing Neville as a person, not a hero.

And then there’s also the problem of Lockhart. Do they take him along? Does Neville even think to go to him or does he just go on his own (or with Ron or Harry or Ginny or Luna or someone) because Someone Has To? I have no idea what to do with Lockhart, but given the curse something bad has to happen to him, right? And if the Flying Car thing didn’t happen, Ron’s wand isn’t broken, which means an obliviate wouldn’t backfire.

13) How does Neville find the Chamber of Secrets? 13a) If he goes to ask Hagrid about it, how would not having the Invisibility Cloak change things? 13b) If he does go into the Forbidden Forest following spiders, how the hell would they get out of it if they didn’t fly the car to Hogwarts? 13c) How involved in the process is Harry and/or Blaise, given Tracey got petrified? How involved is Luna, if Ginny got petrified? 14) Who goes with Neville to the Chamber of Secrets, if anyone? 14a) Does Lockhart go with them? 15) How does the curse get rid of Lockhart? Is it the same backfiring memory charm as canon? 15a) Does the basilisk kill and/or eat him? If so, how would that change the later story given he wouldn’t be able to reappear in book 5? (I don’t think it would change it very much? But my memory of book 5 is the fuzziest, and I can’t remember ^^”) 16) Does the basilisk have to die? Or can Neville somehow steal ‘control’ from Diary!Riddle and/or free the basilisk from his control? 16a) If the basilisk does die, should Neville and/or Maeve find baby basilisks and decide to raise them to replace the dead one?

No matter what happens, in the end, Neville kills the Diary, Maeve wakes up, and they meet her parents in Slughorn’s office. Lily and Sev are both relieved and furious, and when Lily finds out that her daughter was possibly possessed by Voldemort’s memory, she threatens to just go back to Italy. Lucius shows up, Neville realises what happened, frees Dobby, etc. The petrified students all wake up, Hagrid gets back from Azkaban, and probably Gryffindor wins the House Cup, regardless of who actually went down to the Chamber with Neville? Idk. If anyone can remember more details about exactly how the points stood in second year lemme know. So, a couple of bonus questions, because I’m a forgetful dumbass:

17) How would Slughorn being Potions Master affect all of this? Would he make much of a difference? Or would he just be bumbling about in the background, and have as much effect on the plot as Flitwick, or Sinistra? 17a) Who’s in the Slug Club? Who got recruited right away (like Neville, obviously), and who gets picked up in later years as they grow and mature and their skills come to light? 18) Who wins the House Cup?

Aaand on to book 3. Good god, what the hell am I even going to do with that, given, like, all of the major players just... aren’t, in this AU? I’ll think about that, and try to get a semi-coherent ramble full of yet more obnoxious questions written soon. ...Ish.

...Why do I do this to myself? XD