harry potter slow jams

23 25 24 June 993

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. It’s taken me… there’s a word for it I KNOW THERE’S A WORD FOR IT… DAYS. That’s it. It’s been days since I… Professor Elfreda of Wulfhall said it’s called manifesting. She taught me to write, she said that’s so I couldn’t be purely chaos. I like the sound of that though. Purely chaos.

——

8 September 993

Hankerton’s an idiot. That was SCOURING POTION I’d spilled on the stairs. Yes students are going to slip but saves him cleaning time and effort right?

Right?

——

12 October 994

The Four are arguing again. They say Salazar has been allowing his students to torture the… Muggle-borns? Mag-bobs? Mudbloods? I don’t know, there’s so many terms and I still don’t understand it all. I may be purely chaos, but words fit certain constraints and that is distinctly not chaos and so it takes effort to understand. 

This is the third time this month, and we’re only a week in. 

——

20 October 994

Salazar left. I saw him go, he snuck out of the dungeons, out of the great hall. I asked where he was going but he wouldn’t answer, he used some spell to push me back when he went into a room and then the room was silent for hours and when he came out he looked… tired. I think that’s the word. In the morning the remaining Four seemed worried. They asked the ghosts - Wilda and Edric - but neither of them had seen him go. I did. But they didn’t ask me.

——

16 August 1060

Elfreda died today. I didn’t think humans did that. I knew ghosts were dead but I didn’t think people died. Elfreda said I couldn’t die, because I was never really alive. She was alive before me, though, so I suppose I thought she’d always be there. 

The founders buried her in a grave in a catacomb off the Kitchen Cellars. She’d always got along best with the house elves.

——

20 August 1060

The house elves chased me off from sitting by Elfreda’s tomb. They thought I was getting in the way, or going throw potions. I wouldn’t do that. Maybe at students but they’re loud and irritating and make amusing squeals when I do. Elfreda just sat there patiently until I settled down.

I think I miss her.

——

20 August 1061

I’m not visiting her grave again.

——

13 May 1310

Wilda passed over today. She just… faded, in the middle of the corridor. Edric was watching, but I’m not sure he really understood. They’ve been here centuries now.

I hope he doesn’t pass soon. They were the ones who first taught me to go intangible.

——

29 April 1560

There’s some tricksters here. Not as good as me of course, but pretty good. They call themselves Frog and Rabbit, I don’t know why, but they are amusing. I offered to help them with a prank and they seemed so pleased at the idea. 

I may do this again.

——

7 January 1876

THEY TRIED TO CATCH ME. THEY TRIED TO CATCH ME AND TRAP ME AND EXORCISE ME.

Elfreda warned me they could do this, if I was too dangerous, but I was NEVER dangerous, I WASN’T. She said they wouldn’t and they DID.

——

9 January 1876

Managed to get them to agree to never do it again. Upsides of having a blunderbuss and cutlasses, and having driven them all out of the castle.

"Students need to learn"

"We need the castle back"

I even got a fancy hat to boot.

——

20 January 1876

Wait did the old fish retire? Who’s the new guy?

——

12 January 1940

Students leaving, students arriving, it’s so hard to KEEP TRACK. Elfreda said that everyone was worth remembering for something, but they’re only here so briefly so I don’t know what to remember of them. And there’s just SO. MANY. the four,-then-three, the first teachers, Edric and Wilda, Binky the house elf numbers 1-67, Twila the house elf numbers 2-56, Marchibald the house elf numbers 1-90. The students which leave for the holidays, the first years which don’t come back.

There’s just so MANY.

——

16 January 1940

I can’t remember them all. 

I’m going to stop trying.

——

—  Excerpts from the Diary of the Poltergeist Peeves.

(Image Source)

(A piece from Peeves’ perspective at the request/suggestion of the lovely petrichorlore. Info on Peeves largely from details offered on Pottermore, which can be found on the Wikia.)

Coming home shouldn’t have felt like this, she thought. Home was warmth and safety and a gentle sigh of happiness after returning from a long day of hard work and laughter and life. Not silence. Not still cold silence and the squeaking of a rat in a corner and the crunch of broken glass and dust under foot.

Seventeen year old Hannah, on the brink of turning eighteen, stood there on the doorstep of the world that had been her home and wondered if all homecomings felt like this; a sinking, sick feeling in the pit of one’s stomach followed by bone-deep exhaustion.

And then the little spark awoke. The one all Hufflepuffs learn to nurse, to carry them through their lives; gave them strength to be loyal in the face of fear, and then when pushed down, to stand back up and carry on and rebuild the safe warmth of home.

No, it wasn’t homecoming, not how she had imagined it to be, but she could change that. She could make sure that when the rest of them came home; when the wizarding world slowly came home, came flocking back to Diagon Alley, they’d come home, to the warmth and safety of magic and not the cold, cruel reminders of the war.

She was a Hufflepuff and second chances and hard work and hope was their heart.

So she bought The Leaky Cauldron and began rebuilding.

____________

One by one they come straggling in. Neville Longbottom and his grandmum visiting Diagon Alley stop by and Neville ends up staying behind to help her paint the walls.

They don’t talk, because there is nothing left to be said at the end of a war. Because they have nothing left to say to each other, save to bare their scars for each other to peruse and it is far too early on to do that.

They’re all as broken, Hannah thinks, as The Leaky Cauldron was when she first bought it.

Neville comes by to help her nearly every other day.

____________

Susan Bones is the first of her housemates to come through the door. There are dark circles underneath her eyes and her shoulders sag from the burden of running to and from award ceremonies, making heartfelt speeches about her aunt.

I just want time to put my feet up and breathe and silence, Susan moans, and Hannah understands that this is not the echoey silence of small spaces.

The next time Susan visits, there’s a gramophone behind the bar quietly playing waltzes and Hannah rather suspects that that might be a smile on Susan’s lips.

_________

Ernie visits one day, out of the blue, armed with a crate of the wizarding world’s finest Scotch and Whiskey.

Dear old Ernie, the only one of them who’d somehow managed to sail through this war without really changing.

But no, if she looks closely, it’s marks are there, in the little lines at the corner of his eyes which shouldn’t be there because he’s only eighteen.

Then again, neither should the smell of death still linger about this place.

They crack open a bottle together nevertheless and she thinks, but isn’t sure, that at least some of those lines have eased when he leaves.

_________

Harry, Hermione, Ron, Luna and Ginny all come to The Cauldron the day it reopens. So do Susan and Ernie and Neville – and so does the rest of the wizarding world it seems. The pub is packed from day to night and although Hannah is kept on her feet the whole day, she finds she does not mind.

Everyone is laughing and yes, yes there is silence sometimes, but there it is in their eyes; Harry and Ron and Hermione and Luna and Ginny and Neville and Ernie and Susan – the kind of joy that comes only at the end of a long journey through death and peril.

Not just them; everyone.

Almost there. Only a few left to come home.

_________

Justin Finch-Fletchley turns up quite without warning, unslings a gun and lays it down on the bar and then buries his head in his hands.

Hannah pours him a stiff one and the way he looks at her wonderingly before he downs it in one go, makes her wonder what kind of horrors he saw – saw or took part in? – during the war while they had been, for the most part, holed up in the relative safety of Hogwarts.

He leaves, without ever having said a word, but there is less tightness about his shoulders.

(He comes again every day. A week later, he laughs, like he used to. Hannah rejoices silently.)

________

Megan, Wayne, Oliver, Roger; they all come and go and she watches them swing their arms more easily, laugh a little bit more each time they pass through.

The Leaky Cauldron is noisy from opening hours to closing hours. It’s not quite a year yet and the wallpaper is already starting to peel.

Somehow it makes it feel all the more like home.

________

The last one to venture in is Smith.

Well. Slinks, would be a more appropriate word.  Everything about his demeanour suggests he doesn’t want to be recognized.

Hannah is surprised at the pity she feels. Even cowards, her heart tells her, deserve second chances.

So she goes up to him and greets him as though he’d never run from the Siege and he’s surprised and scared – why wouldn’t he be, when his uncle was a Death Eater and he’d run from the Siege to go home?

She makes him sit down next to Justin and then wonders, for the next hour or so, if she’s made a mistake because the silence is awkward and painful and maybe, maybe her heart was wrong. Maybe some people can’t have second chances, not even after a year.

A week later, Justin and Zacharias turn up together and they’re both laughing when they enter.

_________

Two years later, the last of the graffiti is gone and even the most stubborn bloodstain is gone.

The traces still remain. The way the door swings a little too much when it shuts. The pigeons which seem to think that the rafters are their home. The lines and scars and sometimes, bitter laughter.

But they’ve pulled through. They’ve made it through the worst. They can do this.

Not just Hogwarts, but a whole world to welcome them home.  

(Pics: 1, 2, 3, 4. For the anon who wanted to hear about Hannah Abbott running the Leaky Cauldron possibly also with other Hufflepuffs dropping in.)

Of course everyone knew of that Malfoy ancestor, Lucius Malfoy the first, second only in influence to William Cecil, chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth the First of England. They had never been allowed to forget it. Or for that matter, to forget that if not for an unfortunate series of circumstances – set about by that curmudgeonly Cecil (and the Flints no doubt, but Cecil had always been blind to the untrustworthiness of those northeners) – it might have been a Malfoy on the throne of England, not some obscure foreigner from a line of half-wits.

That was, of course, the story the Malfoys were most fond of telling at dinner, to the annoyance of everyone else present. Its charm tended to wear thin after the millionth retelling and one could listen politely only so many times when faced with that particularly annoying expression of smug self-satisfaction each Malfoy wore while telling that story. Alas, polite society dictated that they wore smiles on their faces – even if those smiles were frozen and unnatural – and nodded in all the right places. One did not, after all, sever ties with one’s rivals.

Naturally, when their backs were turned, they told a very different tale about Lucius Malfoy, the first of his name. Of course he left out the best part of the story – he might have been second to William Cecil, but we all know how that ended.

(Smirks usually followed that statement. Sometimes accompanied by sly glances aimed in the direction of the Malfoy peacocks.)

Oh there were lots of ways to put those Malfoys in their place. It was always amusing to see them scowl, or at least see the smugness fade into frozen politeness. More so when one was in one cups and unable to judge the consequences of offending this family, as Cygnus Black did the time when he had suffered his future son-in-law’s boasting for far too long and called him “an insufferable vain  peacock, just like your namesake.”

Narcissa counted herself fortunate that that match did not fall through then and there. It was dreadfully bad-mannered, after all, of her Papa to have mentioned that Embarassing Incident, when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the First, tired of the first Lucius Malfoy’s pretensions, turned him into an albino peacock for her amusement and to punish him for being a generally annoying pest. Everyone laughed at the story – heavens, so did she – but one did not ever bring it up in polite conversation. Not if one was a Black and therefore, above the petty rivalries of their inferiors.

(That was what her Papa had told her and it was shameful that he did not follow his own advice to her.)

(Though indeed, there were some days where she did see some merit in the Virgin Queen’s approach to the Malfoy family. There was nothing half as entertaining as laughing at a Malfoy and seeing him get his feathers ruffled. And Lucius could be oh so insufferable with his pompous tales of family glory; as though other families had not such great achievements to their names.)

Perhaps it was all to the best, then, that the wizarding world evolved this as a means to keep the Malfoys in their place whenever they nursed pretensions to nobility - and grew far too big for their own boots.

(As though anyone could forget that they were once hangsmen for King William. Or that at least one of their peacocks was not a peacock at all.)

(For the anon who wanted to hear about the Malfoy ancestor who once nearly made an offer for the hand of Queen Elizabeth the First. Or possibly did and failed. History is unclear on this point, by which we mean Malfoys almost certainly paid someone to make themselves look good.)

"Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?"

the relationship ginny has with fred and george is so underrated

The first strains of the council-song reached the gathered merpeople in the lake, deep, echoing: do you hear us, sisters?

They opened their mouths, and sang back.

Out in the depths of the ocean, the sound of the song came trickling down, from epipelagic, to bathypelagic: do you hear us, sisters?

We hear you, whisper-sung deep-mer after deep-mer, their song connecting over miles, down chasms, through caves and chimneys and rockfalls.

In the open ocean the song rose and plunged like the waves above, arcing and changing, deep as whalesong, but a choir, an orchestra, rather than one alone. Do you hear us, sisters?

We hear you, snarl-sung the shark-mer, we hear you, sisters.

Among the coral reefs clown-mer after clown-mer raised their heads. We hear you, sisters, they sang.

Under the ice seal-mer barked to one another, pausing their aims to escape the larger Orca-mer and sang together.

We hear you, sisters.

Even those so tiny, the jelly-mer and seahorse-mer sang, their strange voices going from whisper-high, to deep and echoing. Even the silent Ningyo raised their flutes and played. The Encantado of South America, the Rusalka of Eastern Europe, the Amabie, the Merrows, the Caribbean mer, the Sirens.

All enmities placed aside.

We hear you, sisters.

Throughout centuries sailors, mundane and magical, had been puzzled when whalesong sang out, not alone and clear but resounding, echoing, layering thousands of times over, wrapping through ocean currents, down the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, echoing off ice-floes, cliffs, deep sea and above the ocean, resounding through aquifers deep underground so those of lakes could join their song to those of oceans.

As one the merpeople sang.

We hear you sisters.

Merpeople have councils. This is known. Merpeople can sing over great distances. This too is known. Merpeople can echo their songs through storms, stealing power and magic from the weather. This too is known.

What isn’t known is what they speak of. 

We can hear you, sisters.

Each time human councils demand of merpeople, each time all merpeople must make a decision as one they sing. Deep-mer risk their safety to join the song, Sirens change their song from luring to dispersing, Orca-mer and Shark-mer cease their hunt to sing alongside those they call prey.

We hear you sisters.

(Image Source)

(Merpeople councils being done by a whalesong-like mersong around the world from discussion with tobermoriansass. There is a complementary post on thelethifoldwitch​ tonight which may be found Here))

WIZARDING SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD: CHINA

nearlybecamehistoric:

#they would not have had four houses; four is such an unlucky number in chinese numerology that there would never be four of anything.

#They also wouldn’t have used a tortoise wtf tortoises are shit in chinese mythology

#There would probably be like 8 houses because hello chinese population is enormous there would probably be tons more witches and wizards just by dint of percentages.

#Also I refuse to believe that chinese witches and wizards are like as massively in hiding as everybody else; I mean just look at traditional chinese medicine. You wanna talk eye of newt let’s talk about the various medicinal uses of fucking freeze dried sea cucumbers wtf why is that always the biggest jar at your grandma’s apothecary.

#…Because that’s goddamn right chinese fucking muggles go to the goddamn apothecary wtf you think you’re special, white leghorn wizards

#also fuck quidditch and broomsticks i bet they play games on motherfucking dragons

#can you imagine HOW MUCH BETTER DUELING WOULD BE WITH MARTIAL ARTS

#Defense against the dark martial arts tho

#I bet the sorting ceremony is much more involved and includes astrology charts and chi and shit like that it’s like matchmaking only way more crucial

#I bet muggles fucking love magic

#I bet they gotta be careful and shit at orphanages making sure no accidental Tom Riddle shit happens and like the next dark lord gets adopted by a pair of white gay guys from Santa Monica because that would be hella awkward whoopsies 

This is a horror story.

A family hides, for centuries, a monster that will purge the impure from the world. They do not hide it in their home. They hide it in a school and hope that one day, it will purge that school of all those filthy little mudblood paws.

A wizard dies and leaves his home behind. The Ministry investigates and those who return refuse to speak of what they have seen – those they do tell, they tell that the most horrorsome thing about that home is not the Dementors that feed off the walls, but something else, and then they fall silent.

A man comes along a few years later and turns this into a prison and this becomes the dumping ground for all this nation’s most dangerous criminals. No one remembers the plans for a prison in the Hebrides. This is more convenient.

An innocent man is sentenced to a lifetime in this prison without even the pretense of a trial. The loneliness of his cell alone would drive most men mad, but it is not enough. They have Dementors to suck what little light remains in their minds out of them. He holds on to two thoughts and they become his obsession.

A man and a woman are killed for their son. The nation celebrates their heroism, then forgets them the next day as they go about their business.

A man continues a cycle of violence and punishes a child for the sins of his father. This child grows into a man and finds himself set adrift in a world that hates him. He is the symbol of a generation raised on nightmares and fattened on war. Unable to sleep he joins his muggle brothers, set adrift by a different kind of violence and they become the lost generation. A generation lost on their deadened dreams, out for another hit.

A boy is made warrior and saviour for a nation. No one asks him about it. No one wonders where their warrior has gone, but this child is left in the hands of those who seek only harm for him. He finds safety and finds himself shunned – because he is a hero against his wishes.

A girl is violated intimately in every sense of the term; possessed by the greatest dark wizard of the age and made to commit all kinds of crimes in his name. No one talks about it. She heals herself.

The prisoner escapes, but cannot prove himself innocent. He suffers. He mopes. He is a bundle of nerves. No one talks about it. He finds healing where he can. It is not enough.

An elf finds pride in the thought of being beheaded.

A boy is killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His girlfriend tries to talk about it. They tell her it’s time to move on.

A woman carves words upon their boy-saviour’s hands. The only other scar he will wear forever is the one given to him by the darkest wizard of their time.

A boy is forced to kill a man as punishment for his father’s misdoings.

The werewolf-turned-addict turns spy because he has nothing left to lose, though he might lose his life. The greater good, he tells himself. The greater good is all they have to console themselves.

A battle is fought and the warriors that save the wizarding world are not trained aurors, but children. Those who die are children. Most of them will never be awarded Orders of Merlin.

A new Minister for Magic comes to power and promises he will cleanse the wizarding world  of corruption. He manages, for the most part. He removes the Dementors from Azkaban and the wizarding world praises him for his compassion. The prisoners tell a different story – but they’re all mad anyway, so no one bothers to listen. Why care for them, or the fact that the walls will whisper things to them and that all men who enter here, despite the absence of the Dementors, find themselves slowly driven over the brink into madness?  Out of sight, out of mind – that is all that matters.

The truth is stranger than fiction.

It is what makes it a horror story.

(Pics: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

alwaysyourbaby:

BLESS THIS POST

!!!!

thank

I was always bothered by the scene at the end of book 7, when the students are asked whether they want to fight the incoming Death Eater army. The Slytherin students are all like, “Uh. No?” And they’re treated like terrorists for it. In the movie, they’re even locked in the school dungeons while everyone cheers.

Did nobody stop to think and realize that if the Sytherin students had stood and fought, they would have been facing their own parents on a battlefield? Even if some of them weren’t really on board with the whole Death Eater thing, expecting them to fight was just cruel. They were children. The oldest of them were seventeen. Babies. And their own professors were asking them to shoot illegal killing spells at Mum and Dad.

Imagine you are a Slytherin and you are staying behind to defend your school and maybe restore some honor to your House. The other students are all giving you mistrustful glares. You know they’re waiting for you to start hitting them in the back with stunning spells. You consider doing it, too, because you’re already starting to regret the choice you made.

Then the battle begins, and you are up against a crowd of strangers who aren’t strangers at all. You recognize voices, muffled behind masks but still piercingly familiar. Your uncle. Your cousin. Your best friend’s big sister.

And then you see a tall man in expensive grey robes. A moment later you notice the small, curvy woman next to him, wand ready. They are guarding each others backs.

You recognize their shoes.

Nobby Leach was a good man.

He was also a mudblood.

That was the sort of thing they never let you live down, never mind that they’d spent ten years fighting a war against a wizard who’d nearly destroyed Europe, determined to eradicate all of his kind. In their world, the muggle world, at least, they’d put away their toys and ideas of the past and nobody talked about eugenics anymore. But, at least they learned from their mistakes and attempted to change.

Nobby Leach had fought in the war. Not that war, the other one. The muggle one. That was something else one did not mention in the Wizengamot. Staying ahead of them, as it were, was enough trouble, without having them call for investigations into his private affairs – yes, dammit, fighting a war for your country was a private affair – or worse, accuse him of breaking the law. Anything to get him out of office.

But damned if he was going to leave without protecting his own against these wolves in tweed.

The thing about The War, Nobby Leach had learnt, was that it was more than just blood and guts and gore. It was technology and machinery. Bombs and radar and computers and encryption machines. Things to tell you what your enemy was doing, where, when and how. Systems that had somehow, no one quite knew how, allowed millions and millions of people to be plucked from their homes with astonishing accuracy, processed and killed within a matter of a few days.

That was the sort of thing that kept Nobby Leach up late at night. Not Abraxas Malfoy and his petty politicking, not the muttered mudbloods, but fear and his imagination running wild. What if, what if. What if they, them, the men who called him mudblood, found out what muggles and their technology could do? What if they learnt? What if, what if in some horrible twist of fate, someone made the mistake of mixing magic – unlimited power – with these things?

What if they came for him and his kind with more than just words, but with the cold, cruel precision of a computer chasing down algorithms and creating a list?

There was a decision to be made, very soon.  Charles William Nott,  or Caius Rookwood?

They were both good men. Except one called him mudblood when he wasn’t watching and the other, the other was far too caught up in a world of infinite possibilities to bother with trampling on his fellow human beings. In a perfect world, he would have made Caius Rookwood head of the Department of Mysteries without thinking twice about it. Caius Rookwood had vision, but Caius, Caius was a dangerous man in the same way that all clever men, preoccupied with their own clever ideas, are dangerous men.

Instead, Nobby Leach found himself, to his regret, discreetly leaving a memo sent to him from the Department of Mysteries where he knew his advisor , that Flint boy, would find it. The best way to let Malfoy and Avery and their ilk know what was what – though they seemed to think they were very discreet about it all.

Nobby Leach was a good man.

Silence, silence and giving the right man the right job would have costed them all. Caius Rookwood would have opened their eyes, and with their eyes opened, they would have taken the weapons of the muggles and turned it upon them, the mudbloods.

Nobby Leach was a good man, but one war that had slaughtered millions was enough for him. If there was to be another war – and oh how it looked like there would be, with all this talk of the Knights of Walpurgis – he would much rather it be a war that kept real power out of the hands of these wizards. They could keep their prejudices, if it meant that this Lord that people were whispering about knew nothing of muggle technology; if they kept their magic to themselves and did not seek to create something that was both magical and muggle, a monstrous weapon of war to take the lives of all the muggleborns of magical Britain.

Nobby Leach resigned on the twenty-ninth of December, 1968. Abraxas Malfoy and Joseph Avery and the Flint boy all had a glass of champagne in celebration. Caius Rookwood’s funeral was held on the last day of December and Charles William Nott became head of the Department of Mysteries. In a few weeks, rumours about Leach’s resignation would start to circulate. A plot of Abraxas Malfoy’s. For being a you-know-what.

But the truth, very simply, was that Nobby Leach was a good man.

“Whatever the Purist amongst us say, there must always be Muggles who know of our existence. Philosophically, it is an inevitable truth that a secret cannot truly be said to be kept if there is not one in the knowing who, perhaps, should not be. But more practically, our kind could not hope to split so fully from the pages of Muggle history without a few hands on the other side of the page to help with the editing: be they the kin of those born with magic in their souls (for you will never convince me it is in the blood, whatever those men in the MRD say), or our own sons and daughters whose spark never bloomed. Sometimes they are simply those rare people whom we can trust…or whom we must.

Such a man led this nation once. Magical society was only ever partially obfuscated in the Americas before the AWC formalized its borders, but only a few of the Muggle nation’s early leaders knew that a number of wizards and witches had thrown their wands and talents in on the side of Independence. To these select few, the whole of the magical world was revealed, and side-by-side our nations walked forward into a new world, separate but united, much like the states and regions themselves.

On September 18th, 1793, the many vows and promises exchanged by our people were set firmly in stone. General George Washington, President Elect of the Muggles of the United States of America, set down the cornerstone of the building that would become the heart of his fledging country. He bore with him occult instruments, setting the corner-stone in solemn ceremony that, to his own people, bore the proper significance for such a historic moment.

On its own, of course, such a ritual would have no power…but Washington knew that a scant few miles away, in the already obfuscated town that would one day be known as Circle’s Corner, 7 of the nation’s strongest mages were performing their own spells, weaving magic into the stone and forging, through the strongest of compacts, ties that could not be broken. As the stone came down, so did its shadow, and from that shadow, and all the stones that follow, the Congress of Wizardry was built: the child of Muggle Artisanry and Wizarding Power.

The building, which seems to be constructed of stones as dark as the Muggle Capitol’s are white, perfectly mirrors that mundane construction, at least on the exterior. The frescoes and statues within, of course, reflect the proud history and traditions of American wizarding (or at least how some would like it to be remembered). Is is a masterpiece of warped space, occupying the exact same area as the Muggle Capitol while at the same time never touching it…well almost never. In 1814, when the British set the American capitol building aflame, its magical brother, apparently of its own accord and out of sympathy for its twin, summoned down a rainstorm that saved it from complete destruction.  

[1] It is, of course, traditional that the first time the elected leader of our muggle compatriots is alone in their oval office he will find himself spun out of time and into the presence of the President, wherein they will have a little chat about how things operate. Depending on the pair such meetings may happen many times, either in animosity (as with Jackson and Reed) or amiable partnership (as with Roosevelt and Goode), or just once (as with Barshwold and Bush). Our president’s office is, of course, a Heptagram, which is the proper shape for a room where so much power is centered.”

-Willard Stockhausen, Introduction to the History of the American Wizarding Confederation, “Chapter 2: Wands and Revolution.” (Required Reading for the Salem Institute 1st Years)

[Today, 221 years ago, President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the building that would become the iconic U.S. Capitol Building…which this moderator is currently looking out at from his office window. You can read more about the Capitol here] 

HP Goblet of Fire Headcanon: Beauxbatons was primarily a Muslim wizarding school.

(photo from livesandliesofwizards, which was the first thing I thought of when I ran into this passage while rereading the Harry Potter books)

(and yes I know the horses drink whisky, which is not exactly halal, sshhh)

Its was french. It s Was so clearly french.

Literally French. …….

…. .

Because French Muslims do not exist and no Muslims ever speak French and Muslim schools don’t exist in France and if they do they must be really shitty and there are no key Muslim educators in France at all and there’s never been any history of Islamic culture and politics in the Pottermore-confirmed Pyreenes, nooooooo, it is très impossible! Astagfirrulah!

except…NO.

learn some fuckin’ social studies and history and current affairs, people.

what if the reason nobody can tell fred and george apart is because they really are interchangeable

not in a ~it doesn’t matter~ way but like. molly and arthur used to worry that fred and george might turn out to be squibs because they weren’t doing any accidental magic as children, but they were, THEY TOTALLY WERE, it just wasn’t anything flashy, instead they were just like idly switching bodies all the time

and like sometimes it doesn’t make much of a difference, whatever, wake up in the opposite bed you went to sleep in, but it gets like dangerous and weird if you’re on a broom or in the pond or letting your mum teach you to cook or trying to be mad stealth, so for a long long time everybody presumes they’re clumsy maybe-squibs and that they’re doing their twin lying thing when they try to explain what’s going on, so they learn to handle the issue their ownselves

they just. don’t go anywhere without the other. they start each day deciding which body is going to be which (because at this point they really don’t know which body is technically fred and which is technically george), and they learn to reorient FAST when they switch, and what things set them off, and eventually they learn how to act like nothing’s up even when one of them’s in the air and one’s on the ground or whatever, and then they burn past that til they can finish each other’s sentences — til they can switch midsentence — til they can play beater together — til they can switch in a split second in the middle of a game — til there’s room for other kinds of accidental magic to start showing up

at hogwarts they keep each other awake in history of magic by switching back and forth. in potions they take turns brewing and keeping lookout for the slytherins. in transfiguration and charms they keep their grades up because one of them will always get a spell right on the first try so they switch and make it look like both of them do and then they practice on their own later in private. it keeps the mystery alive.

at first they thought lee was just a lucky guesser but no, lee can always tell one twin from another twin — it’s not exactly telling fred from george, because while they are definitely two distinct personalities neither one of them feels like fred all the time or george all the time — but lee knows who he argued with yesterday or who he lent his notes to or who’s best to ask for help in astronomy and who’s best at runes. 

the weasleys are pretty bad at it for the longest time, but then bill comes home from his first year cursebreaking and he can tell, and over a holiday he teaches his trick to charlie so charlie can tell. alicia and katie and angelina can tell. the twins honestly don’t know if oliver can tell or not; so long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to on the quidditch pitch he doesn’t really care about much else. harry can tell. luna can tell. tonks can tell.

the problem is there’s no way for this to end happily

YES THERE IS

THERE IS INDEED A WAY FOR THIS TO END HAPPILY LISTEN UP

so after fred dies, george hates being trapped in one body, feels claustrophobic, misses fred so much he thinks it might drive him insane

but then one day

george blinks and he’s somewhere he wasn’t a second ago, he’s in a place full of white light and he can’t orient himself, can’t ground himself, feels dizzy and sick and overwhelmed but it only lasts for about thirty seconds.

then he’s back in his own body. 

and he looks down at his chest, his legs, his arms, there’s an ear missing so it’s definitely still his living body, but there’s something written on his arm, scrawled in messy quill ink. 

"i love you. i miss you."

george flips out, washes off the ink and immediately writes a message in reply— “how’s death going?”

he walks around with that message written on his arm for weeks, always keeping a quill pen somewhere nearby, waiting, waiting, before it finally happens again. the switch. george is alive, so he can’t handle being in the afterlife, he feels dizzy and sick and it’s the worst feeling in the world, but it doesn’t last long, and when he gets back to his living body, there’s a long message from fred waiting on his right thigh, the ink still drying.

this goes on for years, never as often as either twin would like, but it’s enough. fred helps george figure out how to propose to angelina, fred helps plan the wedding. sometimes it’s fred in george’s body when angelina kisses her husband. sometimes she suspects, but she doesn’t mind in the slightest.

it gets easier as george gets older. the times when he switches into fred’s afterlife don’t hurt as much. he almost feels comfortable there, almost feels oriented. he knows he’s getting closer to dying.

then when george is past ninety, lying on his deathbed, he writes a careful message on his palm. “i’m coming soon. where are you?”

they switch, it lasts for almost five minutes this time, and when george gets back into his own body, he sees the instructions fred wrote over his heart.

"you’ll wake up in king’s cross station. take the second train and get off at the third stop. i’ll be waiting."

I think one of the reasons the Harry Potter Epilogue was so poorly received was because the audience was primarily made up of the Millennial generation.

We’ve walked with Harry, Ron and Hermione, through a world that we thought was great but slowly revealed itself to be the opposite. We unpeeled the layers of corruption within the government, we saw cruelty against minorities grow in the past decades, and had media attack us and had teachers tell us that we ‘must not tell lies’. We got angry and frustrated and, like Harry, Ron and Hermione, had to think of a way to fight back. And them winning? That would have been enough to give us hope and leave us satisfied.

But instead. There was skip scene. And suddenly they were all over 30 and happy with their 2.5 children.

And the Millennials were left flailing in the dust.

Because while we recognised and empathised with everything up to that point. But seeing the Golden Trio financially stable and content and married? That was not something our generation could recognise. Because we have no idea if we’re ever going to be able to reach that stage. Not with the world we’re living in right now.

Having Harry, Ron and Hermione stare off into the distance after the battle and wonder about what the future might be would have stuck with us. Hell, have them move into a shitty flat together and try and sort out their lives would have. Have them with screaming nightmares and failed relationships and trying to get jobs in a society that’s falling apart would have. Have them still trying to fix things in that society would have. Because we known Voldemort was just a symptom of the disease of prejudice the Wizarding World.

But don’t push us off with an ‘all was well’. In a world about magic, JK Rowling finally broke our suspension of disbelief by having them all hit middle-class and middle-age contentment and expecting a fanbase of teenagers to accept it.

Also. Since when was ‘don’t worry kids, you’re going to turn out just like your parents’ ever a happy ending? Does our generation even recognise marriage and money and jobs as the fulfillment of life anymore? Does our generation even recognise the Epilogue’s Golden Trio anymore?

#i think this one of the reasons why the james/lily/albus naming theme bothered me #because there’s a sense of going in a circle rather than pressing forward #the only way the wizarding world will survive if it changes dramatically from this point #having the station seem exactly the same #right down to the names being thrown around #makes it seem stagnant #so i’m guessing another dark lord should turn up in a couple of decades (x)

I think also, it meant the story was *over*. Even if the Trio were still living these dashing lives in their every-day, that’s not the image we got. We got staid, boring, finished people. Maybe all Harry wanted was a normal life at that point, but because we didn’t take that journey with him, it just left us all feeling like a book (literally) was closed. Any sense of excitement about the near-endless potential of what their lives could hold at the end of the battle is shut down for us. What if Harry became the first Dragon rider? Nope. What if Hermione went on to be the President of the United States? No. What if Ron pulled his socks up and became the next Headmaster? NO. It took away all the potential that each of us in this generation are so hoping that we all will have.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TERESA! ♥ queen of my heart and tlat enthusiast, i hope you have the most wonderful day. here’s to many more years of sharing our love of alina kovalenko, darling!!!