#main issue with lily making up muggle inventions that don't exist:

[birlwrites]

what's your opinion on regulus/lily? i love them, but i honestly don't like the fics because they often make snape not a bad person, but i digress. i tend to read the fanfic because if you don't get pro-snape things, you don't get anything at all with that ship.

(or, what about, for fun, regulus/lily/evan)

i think regulus/lily can be very cool, AS LONG AS it doesn't turn into 'dramione but make it marauders.' (this is actually a caveat i have with a lot of marauders' era ships - that the potential is there, but the dynamic is often just like it is in a popular golden trio era ship. i'm down for a LOT of ships as long as the characters and dynamics don't feel recycled)

i think if i were to write a regulus/lily fic, it would probably be grounded in the war, because i feel like they need very high stakes to really push them together (see ttdl LMAO) - unless they're in the same house or year or something like that where they naturally run across each other a lot

like (and this is just off the top of my head - if someone wants to take this premise and run with it, go ahead! i already have far too many wips afjlshgskdf), this would be my go-to:

due to various scheduling issues, regulus and lily are assigned to do prefect rounds together (a combination that would normally NEVER fly because they try not to put muggleborns and People With Close Personal Ties To Death Eaters on patrol together)

lily goes into it hackles up, in the direct wake of sirius's disownment, expecting the worst from regulus black

regulus goes into it mildly curious about this lily evans who he has only ever heard about in the context of a) snape or b) potter, but honestly he's preoccupied with Sirius Angst and Family Pressure Angst and lots of things like that

slow burn the fuck out of it. regulus will probably be the one who has to actually break the ice because just b/c lily is no longer expecting him to blow up at her for blood purity reasons it doesn't mean she expects him to be worth befriending

bond over being younger siblings with very complicated relationships with their older siblings

become close friends (and here you get the joys of the secret relationship trope before a romantic relationship even develops, because War and also Sirius)

(side note - much character work for sirius would be necessary to make sure he's not just Regulus's Shouty Dramatic Brother)

and then i don't know where it would go from there but i do really like the idea of them working together in the war. either as an 'they're on their own side' thing or as a 'infiltrated both sides, using them for their own agenda' thing. like let them have a safehouse that lily has stocked with hand grenades, that's my vision

regulus/lily/evan would be A HOT MESS (in a fun way afjslghskdjf i just mean i'm laughing thinking about it) - triple the complicated relationships with older siblings. evan 'flirting is my middle name' rosier vs regulus 'pine until i either have to confess my undying love or fake my death' black vs lily 'historically people have just fallen all over themselves to ask me out and i don't actually know how to demonstrate interest in someone' evans. lots of lighthearted bickering. lily introducing regulus and evan to modern muggle technological marvels (disco ball). they have 'study dates' which are actually just lily and regulus studying and evan being distracting. they have a black and white cat named oreo (evan thinks this is the most original cat name ever). regulus is tormented constantly by lily and evan attempting to invent new household charms whenever the mood strikes. he and oreo often retreat to the library (spare bedroom full of books and one (1) disco ball) for safety. lily has a secret diary in which she keeps track of Definitely Totally Very Real Muggle Inventions that regulus and evan don't know she lied about yet. they have GREAT photo albums

[nextgensquad]

Which kids from the next gen don't get along that well (if there are any)?

Thank you so much for this question, anon! Sorry it took us so long to answer. This got a little bit long since four of us had answers, so we’re putting it under a cut to save everybody’s dashboards. This was really fun to think about, so thank you! 

Ellie:

I tend to write my kids as being a fairly disparate bunch these days, so while a few pockets here and there do count each other as actual friends (Dominique and Molly, for example) most of them have the majority of their friends outside the family. Not to say they dislike each other, they just aren’t especially close. That being said, there are a couple who just don’t get along at all:

Lily and Victoire tend to butt heads a lot. Lily thinks Victoire is patronising and judgey, and Victoire thinks Lily is attention-seeking and fake.

Rose and Lily also do not get on so well. Lily thinks Rose is weird and finds her quietness creepy. Rose thinks Lily is deliberately flakey and also attention-seeking and it pisses her off too.

None of them really have a clue what’s up with Hugo, and he tends to avoid them all when he can.

Albus hates Fred because he thinks Fred is preachy, a suck-up and boring. Fred loves Albus all the same.

Becca:

I always have trouble answering these questions because I have more than one version of my next gen, and the one that I’ve written most isn’t necessarily the most interesting on paper (I love them very much all the same, but I invented them a long time ago). However, they’re a lot more fleshed out than the other version, so I’m going to answer for them.

In my primary universe, the Weasley-Potter clan is a close-knit family, who nevertheless bicker and argue constantly. They grew up in each other’s pockets so they know each other extremely well, especially the ones close in age, which is sometimes an advantage and sometimes distinctly not.

James and Rose argue all the time, to the point that the rest of the family get sick of it. In some ways they’re too similar; in others, very different. They’re both much too competitive, like to be in charge, and enjoy scoring points off other people, and they know exactly how to wind each other up. 

In fact James is probably the one who argues most with other people in his family, mostly because he’s just kind of a dick. 

Molly and Lucy don’t get on too well a lot of the time, not because they don’t love each other (they do) but because they each find the other very frustrating. Molly can’t understand Lucy’s weird obsessions and enthusiasms, and Lucy just wishes Molly would get passionate about something for once. 

Are we including the non-Weasley next gen here? Because if so, James and Scorpius have a deep-seated dislike of each other. Nobody can quite understand where it comes from or how it started (beyond the obvious family divide, and the fact that, again, James is kind of a dick), but it seems to have been an instant, automatic and mutual thing. It lasts the whole way through their school years, and although it improves a bit later,  they’re never going to like each other. 

Pearl:

I love this question, thank you so much, anon! I do tend to have most of my kids getting along decently because that’s one value I think all of the Weasleys would have imprinted on their kids no matter what, but of course, there’s no fun without drama.

After Teddy and Victoire break up, there’s a bit of a divide between who will speak to Teddy and who won’t. Dominique and Louis take their sister’s side and Louis never liked Teddy that much anyway. James and Lily lean towards Teddy’s side and Al is kinda caught in the middle entirely.

James and Fred and Louis were close when they were kids and shoved together because of being the same age but they drifted apart once they were sorted into different Houses and Fred and James in particular have never been able to recover their friendship–Fred thinks James is feckless and destructive to those around him and James thinks Fred is overly-sensitive and nerdy.

The Potter kids love each other a lot but James and Lily have never fully accepted Scorpius as Al’s best friend and likely won’t for a long while because they think he’s bad for Al.

Al and Rose’s relationship gets damaged around their early teens due entirely to both of them having feelings for Scorpius and not confiding in each other and they both think the other is a coward for the way they handle things.

Hugo and Lily never really get along; Lily thinks he’s a stuck-up dick and Hugo thinks she’s an annoying attention-seeker. Dominique tries to help but never succeeds.

Jane:

Oh, this is fun! As the others tease me for, I have about four established verses and then a handful of dynamics which exist for one-offs and oneshots, but I’ve decided to go with my third universe because it’s the one I was using to do the nextgenmeme with. It’s not the most interesting for this question, unfortunately (e-2 has a lot more in-fighting and inter-family feuds, and e-4 has more creative conflicts because of all the spies, crime, lies and running away to live in a forest), but it’s the one with the dynamics I’ve explored the most.

There’s a big blow-up between all the school aged lot (James, Molly, Al, Rose, Scor, Lucy, Roxanne, Lorcan, Lysander, Lily, Hugo + their own overly opinionated friends) when Al’s in Sixth Year and James is in Seventh. The Weasleys themselves are actually pretty well-behaved—a lot of the conflict comes from the opinions of their friends who get involved—but Al catches feelings for James’ girlfriend/Rose’s best friend, and it’s a fiasco. Albus has no intention of doing anything about it (his best friend is Team Homewreck, though, despite being in love with Albus himself, because he thinks Albus deserves what makes him happy—Lucy almost breaks his nose when he expresses this opinion, because she is firmly Anti Homewreck), but James ends up breaking up with his girlfriend because he doesn’t want to hurt his brother (and Albus never had any intention of telling him, because he didn’t want to hurt his brother), and the Hogwarts lot all have their opinions on what the right course of action was.

Rose and Albus never stopped being friends, but they had their own distinct friend groups, and the incident sort of brought them back closer together than ever, although there was some initial sharpness on Rose’s part towards both Potter boys because her best friend ended up getting her heart broken from the whole mess. Lucy, on the other hand, thought they were all being absolute dicks about the issue and basically argued with literally every cousin who’d had any part to play, either as a main player or just adding opinions which contributed to the mess, until they apologised to said ex-girlfriend.

Hugo and Lucy are both extremely opinionated and fight all the time. Lucy’s always stuck to her guns about doing the right thing, even to the point of going up against her entire family, whereas Hugo’s Slytherin to his core and whilst he inherited his mother’s values, he also inherited her ruthlessness and is very much an ‘ends justify the means’ type. They love each other, but family dinners tend to feature equal parts them arguing and Lucy mocking his monogrammed cufflinks being pretentious, which all only get worse as they get older and he decides to run for Minister with the aid of Alexandria Greengrass’ campaign team. It’ll get better around about when they’re in their mid-to-late twenties, but there’s a lot of arguing to sit through.

James and Lucy used to argue in Hogwarts, but that was pretty minor stuff. Mostly James knows Lucy has excellent reflexes and thinks she’d be an astounding Quidditch player, and she always point-blank refused to have anything to do with the sport. Gryffindor common room saw a lot of him cajoling her.

Hugo and Roxanne don’t understand each other at all, which leads to some tense moments at times (like when Roxanne wants to be a muggle mechanic and he just can’t fathom why), but generally they just take half an hour and calm down again.

Louis and Scorpius fall out for a bit in their twenties, but generally get along pretty well. Hugo and Lorcan don’t get on at all, though. Hugo, Lucy, Lysander and Albus are probably the more difficult personalities of my lot, although Rose has her moments when she gets irritated.