#anyway I love canon snape I really do

[padfootswhiskers]

With all respect, I think u guys give jkr's writing skill too much credit . Ik she said she planned everything abt hp books from the beginning( I don't believeit tbh), but she wrote some of the weirdest dumb stuff ever for the sake of the plot that don't make any sense ... Remus's life and even his name, for example.The fact that Remus hasn't visited Harry for almost 12yrs is ridiculous . "He thought Harry was safe - he felt worthless. He was a coward. " wtf?! No he didn't do it bc Harry shouldn't know abt his parents and wizarding world the End. srslyWheree were lily's friends? Oh they all passed away...Harry's grandparents THEY ALL PASSED AWAY ...problem solved (jkr is so good at this) and plus imo that also happened simply bc if Remus checked on Harry, he would be a father figure to him 100% (the role given to Sirius), and jkr didn't want Harry to have the same close connection with Remus as he did with Sirius. It would make harry -Sirius's relationship unimportant... Take Sirius's other relationships, for example. When he escaped Azkaban, he had no family, no lover, no one. Initially, I was like, "Yeah, okay," and that seemed fine. But later, it occurred to me that maybe he was written that way because he had to be solely for Harry. Like, he shouldn't care about anyone but Harry. Sirius isn't allowed to prioritize anyone over his godson.

to be fair, anon, i think two things can be true at the same time. a lot of stuff does happen in the hp universe for plot reasons---this doesn't necessarily mean it's always bad writing.

the plot required harry to be unaware of the wizarding world, alright. i don't see how this means remus would've taken, like, custody of harry or something if it hadn't! remus IS a coward. he IS extremely self flagellating. it IS completely plausible that he knew petunia wasn't a great person and left harry there anyway!

(take DH for example. he says tonks will be safe with her parents right after he tells them that her parents have been tortured for information. he isn't a stupid man, he's being deliberately cowardly.)

i understand that you probably really like remus, or at least the good bits of him, but character traits you dislike do not equal bad writing. remus consistently shows himself to be extremely passive-aggressive, conflict avoidant and unable to actually follow through on his conscience. i don't know about you, anon, but i can definitely see a man who convinced himself that withholding information about a wanted murderer was OK, convincing himself that harry is safe and better off without him.

jkr didn't have to use plot reasons to thwart remus and harry's budding relationship so that sirius could step in because...there isn't a scenario that exists wherein canon remus would step in to be an orphaned harry's father figure. i'm genuinely curious as to why you think he might. THAT, if anything, is what seems ooc to me.

as for lily, that seems to be pattern with jkr's 'popular girls'. i can't name five of ginny's friends if my life depended on it. it was also obviously done so that the snape reveal would have a greater effect. but lily isn't an established character the same way remus is.

as for sirius? i don't think it's unrealistic that he didn't have a lover/anyone waiting for him. i think people tend to forget he was only barely 22 when he got locked up; plenty of people haven't begun sorting out their lives at that age. lest we forget, he was also fighting a war pretty much the second he left hogwarts. not great for the dating scene, that. i don't think it's unrealistic at all that he hadn't thought about girls (or boys) or settling down at that time in his life.

but even if he had, i can't fathom a world in which he wouldn't transfer the love and devotion he had for james to james' son.

#answered #anonymous #remus lupin #sirius black #sirius and remus are FUNDAMENTALLY different so i genuinely cannot imagine a plot #that would have remus being the father figure to harry #whilst sirius was discarded on the side #like that's just...not them!

[peace-love-and-french-toast]

Severus Snape rant

Disclaimer: I don't support JK Rowling's views and I'm not a TERF. TERFs, DNI for you.

Sorry for ranting, y'all. I'll try to keep things quick (note from the future: be warned. I failed). Spoilers and mentions of friendship toxicity and bullying under the cut.

By the way, for this I am generally talking about regular canon. When I discuss things people think about this, the headcanons are generally assumed to go alongside regular canon to complement it. I understand that there are fix-it fics out there where everyone is happy, and while I love that, I'm talking about how JK Rowling let it play out.

UPDATE:

Don’t interact with this post if you only want to insult me/my writing style. I am not accusing anyone of doing this, but I can see that there is a very definitive downward spiral, and I don’t want to see the bottom of it. However, I am willing to listen to arguments until things turn into personal attacks.

I don’t care that much about Snape: just a few lines on a page. I understand people have strong opinions on him (me too!). That’s fine. But I’m a real person, just like all the people on this platform (well, except bots). Let’s embrace that, and focus on the fact that we are all, in the end, Harry Potter fans.

Kat out.

Let me start with this: Severus Snape shouldn't be with Lily.

To keep to the simple stuff and the things most people can agree on first, no one "deserves" Lily. In this post, I was nearly guilty myself of talking like this, but please keep in mind: Lily Evans is not some kind of consolation prize, something given out to whoever is deemed the most worthy, the most angsty, whatever. Regardless of Snape's virtues (or lack of them: but give me a sec) he won't somehow earn the right to be in a romantic pairing with Lily. In all the stuff on the table in terms of how Lily viewed Snape, she wanted a platonic relationship. So that's part of what I have an issue with: talking about canon as if there was any part of romantic thing on the table. Lily never had a crush on Snape. It was a one-sided thing.

Now, to controversy. Let's address some common reasons for why people say Lily shouldn't have ditched Snape and why these shouldn't excuse his behavior. Keep in mind I'm talking about things that happened before Lily's death, because after death doesn't really matter to her. She's dead by then.

Snape had a bad home/school life.

That's true. But he then chose to continue the cycle of pain by joining a pureblood supremacist group and calling fellow students slurs?

2. The Marauders did some terrible stuff to him.

I really need a disclaimer here. THIS WAS TERRIBLE, AND I HATED IT, AND THE MARAUDERS WERE COMPLETELY IN THE WRONG HERE.

But this post isn't defending the Marauders, it's arguing that Lily was justified in choosing to let go of their friendship.

Anyway, this is an irrelevant excuse for why Lily should remain friends with him, because she thought this was terrible too... and then Severus screamed a slur at her when she was trying to help him. Way to go, Snape.

3. He loved Lily.

Hold up. Stop the clock.

Wut.

Wut.

Okay, this needs to be a new section. Let's call it:

Being In Love With Someone Doesn't Excuse Your Actions Towards Them

Quick story time, cause this section uses an extensive metaphor. IRL, I used to be best friends with this girl. She was toxic and refused to change.

Her excuses for why I should keep hanging out with her?

Current mental health situation.

Things just "slipped out". (Yeah, Snape LITERALLY USED THIS EXACT EXCUSE)

I was really important to her (So was Lily to Snape)

I stopped being friends with this girl regardless, because her actions harmed my mental health, isolated me, etc.

(And before someone says friendship is different etc. she had a crush on me two Valentine's days in a row and I'm unsure if she still does)

These are all excuses. Let's define that word for a second.

"attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify." -Oxford Languages from Google.

Contrast with an apology, where someone actually tries to make things better. Snape constantly gives excuses. His apology comes much, much too late in the form of begging Lily. Now, with my own toxic friend, she also claimed to want to make things better.

In the case of both Snape and Toxic Friend, they'd continually insisted it wasn't their fault, ignoring the problems in the relationship and not making an effort to fix them. By the time Lily and I broke things off, we'd made up our minds. We turned away and felt good about it, because they negatively impacted our lives.

Maybe Snape was in love. Maybe my friend really wanted to be friends with me. Both are probable.

Still, neither followed through on the steps necessary for a good friendship.

Depersonification, aka Lily is a Person Not A Shiny Toy, Severus

Crack open your books, hit play on the movie, or simply recall as we all remember how Snape looked at Lily.

In the books (won't mention the movies because I didn't watch them) he looks at Lily and Harry sees "undisguised greed" in his eyes. Um...

Snape's fine with hurting Petunia, figuratively and literally.

He ignores what Lily is actually trying to say to him once she tells him what he wants to hear.

And calling her Mudblood. (Can't help myself interrupting here: I myself never 'just accidentally' call someone a racial slur. That's because I don't use them, so they aren't exactly waiting on the tip of my tongue).

All of the things he does are in there for a reason. JK Rowling is trying to unsettle us, and she succeeded. Snape seems to view Lily as an accomplishment, an achievement, a plaything to be admired.

Why?

He never takes Lily's feelings into consideration. Not once until it negatively impacts him. Look at where he comforts Lily: when it looks like they've made a mistake and hurt Petunia.

When Lily gives up on him.

And I know: there was more, there was more, there was more.

Potions homework done together.

Eager chatter between classes.

It's not black and white.

But these are the scenes JK Rowling has decided will give you the best impression of their friendship. She didn't pick tender scenes with cocoa and cookies because that isn't a theme in this friendship.

And onwards to:

They Used To Be Friends, Why Did Lily Stop Talking To Him Like This

It's hard to know what a person is truly like. You only know what people show you, and they hold back the worst of themselves at first. In Lily's first scenes, she doesn't know everything. She doesn't see the greedy looks he gives her. He is a new boy about her age who understands her like nobody else in town could.

Years go by. He calls people like her "Mudblood", he makes friends with awful classmates who do illegal and immoral things and are rumored to be training for war. The other side of the war, the one that kills people.

He shows her the worse sides.

By the time he calls her Mudblood, she has already tried to stop him from going down the wrong path. He's ignored her and ignored her and she finally snaps.

Can you blame her?

This apology seems like yet another excuse, a means to an end of keeping her by his side.

She's had enough.

Conclusion

So concludes the saga of Lily and Severus.

As he makes his decisions and she hers, Lily perishes saving a son whom Snape will later torment in her classes.

Harry grows up.

Snape oversees the creation of a school designed for indoctrination, watching passively as cruciatus curses are dished out. Her son meets him on the battlefield.

Voldemort gets to Snape first.

And thus, Snape meets his end.

And that's it, because things work out like that sometimes. Snape chose his path in life. Lily responded accordingly. And years later, he continued to stay stagnant in character growth, even becoming a child's worst fear from his unequally distributed cruelty.

A note:

If you disagree, feel free to debate me! I enjoy calm discussions. HOWEVER, please remember that we are all, in the end, people with lives and feelings, so don’t scream at me if you don’t agree with what I’ve said here.

#severus snape #harry potter #anti severus snape #snape #lily evans #lily potter #lily evans potter #long post #rant post #toxic relationship #don’t hate me #snape and lily #snily #severus and lily

[saintsenara]

Do you think there’s any situation in which Sirius/Snape could work as a ship if James Potter was alive/around?

I love both Sirius/Snape and Sirius/James (platonic, romantic and everything in between) as ships so I’d love to see a universe in which the 3 of them have a lovely time together but I dunno if I can picture it. I can mainly see Sirius/Snape working with James and Lily dead and Sirius post Azkaban because it really brings him off his pedestal and leaves that shared grief and longing for that intensity of companionship.

I guess part of the problem is trying to imagine Sirius being able to even remotely care about or prioritise someone else with James in the picture, even if James is only giving platonic on his end. But then doubly so if that person was someone James had a massive rivalry with and doesn’t want near his wife. (Although if he knew Snape wasn’t interested in Lily like that maybe he’d chill out about it? Or would only child syndrome kick in and he’d hate him even more for trying to “steal” Sirius from him because it would be really shocking and maybe low key traumatic for James to have any less than 110% of Sirius’ attention…again even if they were only platonic… 🤔)

If it was going to work I could see it maybe more after Hogwarts when they’ve all grown up a bit and James and Lily are wrapped up in their family and Sirius is a bit adrift at adjusting to not being able to have all of James all of the time.

The closest I’ve seen to making something like it work was a fic where Snape was horribly tortured for killing Peter in front of Voldemort to stop him telling the secret and it left him vegetative for years and the Potters cared for him and eventually Sirius took over so they could go live their married lives. I was really interested in where they were going with it and pretty sold on that being a situation in which it could end up all happy families but unfortunately the fic was kinda preslash and stopped before it explored how things would go romantically for Sirius/Snape after Snape regained his consciousness.

Would love to hear your thoughts on any scenarios in which you think the 3 of them could get along swimmingly!

My other thought was maybe if Sirius had been put in Slytherin and James decided to talk his way into Slytherin to be together, they might eventually adopt Snape into their wider friendship group for his dry wit the way they did Remus. I feel like James was waiting his whole life to have both a best friend and his own gang and would make one wherever he was with the best of what he had available (lbr Peter is hardly a stellar pick), and without the “he’s evil because he’s Slytherin” divide they could potentially find the Dark curses Sev knows fun/useful against whoever else they decide to bully instead, might notice in the shared dorm how poor he is and get a pity thing going like they did for Remus’ werewolf issue (which Snape’s pride would hate but he’d probably milk knowing how he was with Lucius?), and if Snape was gay and as devoted to a crush on Sirius as he was to the canon one on Lily and therefore willing to do some wing maning for James with Lily to keep in James and Sirius good graces, it could really cement his value as a pal….and if Snape had other options for well connected friends who could get him out of Cokeworth (picturing Fleamont setting up summer internships for James’ unfortunate looking poor but impeccably mannered pal at Sleekeasys R and D department 🥹) I’m sure Snape would be happy to not bother with the blood supremacist half of his year who want his childhood best friend dead (unless we think he joined to be in with them as a way to keep Lily safe, but I think that would be more a rationale he’d give himself or her later to justify his behaviour) ……..but anyway even if all of this elaborate scenario could happen so that the 3 of them would be pally, I still can’t picture Sirius being able to love/fancy someone more than James if James is right there, even if it’s only platonic on James’ end.

Unless I guess we take a reading of canon that Sirius was so mean to Snape because he fancied him madly and was furious about it, or because he could sense the queerness in him he hated/was being told by family to squash out in himself. Then maybe they’d have a special type of connection that could be powerful in a way Sirius wouldn’t be able to share with a straight James? Would that be enough though for Sirius never see one without the other Black? 🤔

I do think if that was the friendship group and they made Snape the secret secret keeper instead of Peter James and Lily might have lived! (And Snape might have let himself get killed keeping the secret 🥲) …although that said if Peter had an inkling James Potter might go to Slytherin he probably wouldn’t have fought the hat so hard and would have still been in the gang too!

I’ve really gone on a tangent here but yeah so interested in any scenarios you could see it working, I think about this a lot and I love the way you think about HP things! 👏

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

this is a question which i've wondered about for a while, which i'm going to answer with a tentative... yes.

because i do agree with you that one of the things which makes snack-in-the-90s really work is their shared grief over the loss of james and lily [and their shared guilt and desire to punish themselves for the role they each played in their deaths] and how it contributes to them being one of the series' most interesting narrative mirror pairings.

but it's equally true that they're narrative mirrors even without the grief aspect simply because of their mirrored love - whether you wish to interpret this as platonic or not - for one half of james and lily, and the quiet devastation [even though sirius expresses this very differently to snape] they feel when the two pair off.

and so i do think - in a world in which both james and lily survive [i don't think it can be either/or] - there is the potential for snape and sirius to find themselves drawn together by a grief which is less profound than that caused by james and lily's deaths, but is still transformational in a way that i think is often overlooked in fandom: the grief of realising that the person you love doesn't feel the same way.

because i love platonic prongsfoot and platonic snily as much as the next girl, and i think that the grief i'm describing can apply just as much to platonic love as to romantic love.

but i prefer - and, indeed, i'm on the record as being convinced this is the text's actual intention - to read both snape's love for lily and sirius' love for james as romantic.

and - obviously - the intensity of this feeling prevents either snape or sirius getting a grip while they're in their teens [especially if they're both also grappling with the idea that they're not straight - i'm afraid i've never bought the fanon that the wizarding world is more enlightened when it comes to sexuality]. it makes perfect sense that - as you say - it's impossible for the nineteen-year-old sirius to imagine caring about someone the way he care about james, and to convince himself that the only way he can live his life is to spend decades pining nobly from afar, never letting on how much his heart aches.

but one of the great tragedies of the canonical snape and sirius is that they get stuck in a state of arrested development from their lives - essentially - stopping when they're both twenty-one. there's an inherent pettiness to their interactions in canon - the obsessing over schoolboy experiences, the fact that snape finds himself stuck at school and sirius finds himself stuck in his childhood home - which other characters clearly don't quite understand [dumbledore saying to harry at the end of order of the phoenix that sirius was too sensible to be goaded by snape seems dismissive in the context of what we - the readers - have seen, but it makes perfect sense that - from dumbledore's perspective - a thirty-six-year-old man wouldn't still care about playground beef from twenty years ago.]

in a world where james and lily live, snape and sirius get a chance to act their actual ages - and with that, sirius gets to learn how to accept that his role in james' life will change as his best friend settles into being a husband and father and snape either gets to learn how to stop pining for lily from afar or how to start trying to make amends for his treatment of her.

and james and lily also get to grow up too - to recognise how their priorities towards their friends will change as they form a family of their own and to see their school days [and their behaviour during them] more objectively the further removed from them they become. james at eighteen would rather die than have anything less than 110% of sirius' attention. james at thirty has other things to worry about.

i think that it would only work in a scenario where snape and sirius encountered each other again after having left hogwarts [i like the slytherin!james suggestion - and i'd be interested to see how you'd write it - but i personally think that there's no way on earth james is having snape anywhere near him until he's - for want of a better term "won" their rivalry over lily]. but i also think it would only work if that scenario was decades after they graduated, rather than years, and that the two don't meet again until they're - at least - in their early forties.

i think you could do something really quite interesting with james in that setting - as he realises, as his children reach adulthood and start to fly the nest, that sirius is chronically single and decides the project he wants for his middle age is to find his friend true love.

never expecting that his friend will bail from a date he arranges with a lovely woman and end up hiding in the leaky cauldron talking to snape - but then being mature enough [after some running around screaming "snape? snape?" at lily] to think that if sirius is happy, then he is.

and on this point, both sirius and snape canonically struggle to be realistic about how they see themselves and their worth - for example, in how they both refuse to believe that they could successfully atone for their roles in causing james and lily's deaths. when this is combined with the fact that sirius grew up in a community which is obsessed with blood and lineage - and how that blood and lineage is continued - and snape grew up with his primary masculine role-model being a violent man who was presumably also a homophobe, i do think that both of them would find it difficult to be open about their sexuality, especially since - in a world where they get to live normally after 1981 - they would be starting to understand themselves as queer during the aids crisis [which i refuse to believe doesn't impact the wizarding world, because i loathe the implication of canon that wizards are resistant to muggle diseases].

i think you can plausibly write them as both still in the closet in the 90s/00s - and for sirius especially to be worried about james' reaction if he found out he was interested in men. [which is a dimension often left out of things which examine sirius as queer and james as straight. lots of queer men worry - sometimes unnecessarily, sometimes, sadly, justifiably - that being open about their sexuality with straight male friends will cause those friends to back off from their platonic relationships due to a homophobic fear that queer men will automatically interpret platonic physical and emotional intimacy as romantic.]

but - whatever else he is - james clearly isn't a bigot. and i think he could once again get over the fact that sirius has shacked up with snape [snape?] in order to be proud that sirius was finally comfortable with who he is.

[and yes, i do genuinely think that sirius and snape's canonical vibe can be read as having some level of sexual attraction in it - they are both just so obsessed with each other that it's giving "why do i have this hyper-intense need to get in this other boy's face oh wait that's why"...]

#asks answered #asenora meta #asenora's opinions on ships #starprince #snirius #sirius black #severus snape

[izzythehutt]

Do you believe the theory that JKR wrote the Lupin/Tonks storyline to shut down the popularity of wolfstar? I can sort of see it but I also think authors understand their audience enough to know that giving a character a new canon relationship isn't going to immediately kill the ship. I also find it interesting that she tries to surprise the readers by hinting at Tonks being in love with Sirius - maybe she expected them to be a ship but I've never seen it explored in fandom.

I feel like I remember that being a theory about Remadora when HBP came out—I do remember people being pretty surprised by it and thinking it "came out of left field", but I also remember JKR on her old site talking about trolling some message boards and seeing posts after OOTP came out with people shipping them (multi-colored werewolf cubs!) and thinking they were clever for predicting it.

Here's a spice take: I don't buy that theory, because I think Tonks was created primarily to be Lupin's love interest. That is her major (really—only) narrative function. Lupin has always been one of Rowling's favorite characters, and even though she killed him off, she gave him something nobody else from Harry's parents' generation got—moving on from high school bullshit/first war Potter guilt (Sirius and Snape were not so lucky.) I honestly think she wanted Lupin to get a sliver of happiness in his short life and so she chose him to be the father of the "next gen" version of Harry.

I don't think JKR's the type to be terribly affected by the fandom's attitudes/preferences. She's always had a pretty healthy detachment from shipping/fanfic/etc., as far as I can tell. I really do take it at face value that she wrote Sirius and Lupin as straight characters in her mind (never mind that the majority of fanon w*lfst*r ignores their actual canon dynamic anyway) so she never even considered "shutting it down"—it just didn't occur to her that it would be a "thing."

#jkr #harry potter #remadora #anti wolfstar

[sneepseverus]

after i read your post about long distancing with snape it opened my eyes that one of my headcanons aren't as accepted as canon as it is in my head

so basically i always thought that his mark and/or ministry keeps him in england and he physically/by law can't go out of it

maybe it doesn't really have sence considering albus asked him if he wants to run away as karkaroff did BUT i love to use it to add some angst in his relationships. like imagine him having a partner who loves to travel buying them tickets somewhere or who offers him to run away just to be turned down

or for fluff — buying him ingredients he can't get himself, first time taking him somewhere after war, moving out of environment in which he received only negativity and starting new life

anyway 👹 im going insane for this man

I agree that, even if he’s not explicitly forbidden from leaving the country, he can’t because he has to be available almost 24/7, either as a professor or death eater.

BUT the idea of fleeing is so tempting. He has to beg his partner to stop asking him to leave because he might just say yes one day even though he can’t. He doesn’t even have a proper home; his house and Hogwarts are reminders of his trauma. If he has a partner, his home is them.

After the war is a completely different story; he doesn’t even need to be asked because the answer is unequivocally yes. He’ll go anywhere his partner wants to go, and hopefully he’ll be able to dedicate his life to doing what he actually enjoys, whether that’s brewing potions with rare ingredients or simply relaxing for once.

#snape #snape headcanon #snape headcanons #snape love #severus snape #severus snape headcanon #severus snape headcanons #severus snape love

[greenerteacups]

GTC how could you, this broke my heart 😭

“I had no choice! Are you joking? You’re Lord Malfoy! A real boy, with real parents, a real life! Saint Draco of Gryffindor Tower, always sneering, always lording over the high ground! First man in history to get Snape and McGonagall wrapped around his fucking pinky, with your perfect marks and your prefect's badge and your do-gooder pals — you’ve had a good life all but shoved down your throat, and you still think you have the right to talk about hard choices? Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I’m Theodore fucking Nott, and I broke the world. And you’re free. So don’t talk to me about death sentences.”

also i LOVE that draco has both severus snape and minerva mcgonagall wrapped around his pinky, making this little piece of GTC-canon my whole personality now 🥹

Thank you, beloved. Loved writing that scene, so glad you enjoyed/despaired entirely at it.

While I also am tickled by the concept, you reminded me of what I liked about that tiny little Snape/McGonagall comparison. (This isn't to say it's wrong, there's just Layers to it that I wanted to ramble about.) Contextually, it comes packaged inside a broader declaration about how Theo sees Draco — that is, an idealized lightning-rod for Theo's envy and pent-up frustrations about his own life — which is at a stark contrast with Draco's perspective. While Snape's favoritism is pretty easy to infer from the godfather-relationship and the fact that Snape just... generally is not slick with it (#Slytherin) I think the McGonagall part is way more informative about how transactionally Theo sees student-professor relationships! We don't know exactly what he's thinking about here — is he just assuming that Draco gets McGonagall's favor because he's a Gryffindor, leading off that remark about "Gryffindor Tower"? Or is he talking about McGonagall and Draco's relationship personally, in which case: why? McGonagall doesn't interact personally with Draco (or any particular student) often outside of class environments, and even though McGonagall clearly likes some people more than others, she's not unfair, and she doesn't abuse her power to favor them. Even when she bends the rules to give Harry a broomstick, she makes a point of trying to avoid outright breaking them (though not unrelatedly, Draco strongly believes that Harry is McGonagall's favorite, cf. "Summer's End.") And Theo doesn't even know about that incident!

So if Theo is actually making a remark about McGonagall personally, he's likely basing it on on the fact that (1) Draco is a prefect, (2) plays on the quidditch team (McGonagall's somewhat obvious soft spot), (3) is generally competent in class, or, (4) he's seeing a fondness in McGonagall's interactions with Draco that Draco doesn't. (4) is both possible and likely, considering how often Draco is surprised by the fact that people like him. (He's not good at reading affection if it isn't effusive fawning or communicated by insult.) But it's a far, far jump from that to "wrapped around your finger" by any stretch of the imagination, because: Minerva McGonagall? In what universe?

But to the point, the comment isn't really about McGonagall, anyway. Theo's flattening Draco's relationship with her down to a system of patronage, like the ones he's used to; it's not a mentoring bond between two people, it's just another shiny thing Draco has that he doesn't, and he shows that by describing it in terms of what Draco might be able to get out of it. It's not "she likes you," it's "wrapped around your finger," implying the possibility for manipulation and use. He's envious of Draco because Draco has options, and his access to authority figures who care about him broadens those options even more. Theo, meanwhile, is functionally orphaned, and the only person in the castle he can count on for political support is Umbridge. So there's a sort of emotional underbelly beneath that particular jab.

#greenteacup asks #lionheart spoilers

[chdarling]

I love you for giving us that flashback to the moment Snape stole Lily's diary. You have such a talent, because stealing the diary was a truly rotten, odious thing for Snape to do, but you manage to articulate Snape's bitterness and jealousy and hurt so well that it makes sense that for a moment he would be spiteful enough to swish his wand, while still imagining he's a good friend. I particularly love that this was part of the plot, because it illustrates that the dissolution of Lily and Snape's friendship was so much deeper than that one "worst memory." His possessiveness and jealousy and need to prove James is horrible (at Lily's expense) was always going to corrode, whether or not Snape called her a slur in front of everyone.

Also A+ 13yo girl diary entries.

That hazing/initiation ritual was WILD. I'm enthralled. And terrified for what is going to go down at Hogsmeade.

In sum : it's your world, we're all just living in (and for) it.

Ahhhh, thank you ❤️

I’ve been looking forward to getting to that flashback scene ever since I first shared the Christmas chapters with the reveal of what Severus did. I thought it was important to show that memory not just from Snape’s POV but from the POV of the child who experienced it, because while of course what he did was a horrible, potentially-friendship-ending thing, it was driven by a very real and powerful hurt — a hurt that I don’t think adult Snape ever really healed from. Snape does a lot of awful things, both in canon and in this story, but I want to whenever I can extend some empathy to the child he once was, because that is a child who was failed by every adult and every institution he encountered. (Seriously, where is wizarding child protection services my god)

But at the same time, at every opportunity he was given a choice, he made the one informed by his bitterness and jealousy and hurt…and ruined the few good things he had in his life as a result (his friendship with Lily being the obvious one). He’s just a delicious muddle of contradictions and compassion and contempt and I’m obsessed with it lmao.

Anyway, all this self-indulgent rambling to say: thank you!! This chapter was hellish for me to write but after a few days’ distance from it, I’m actually quite pleased with it and it means a lot to me that you liked it too ❤️

(Also those diary entries were so much fun for me to write ahahaha. Coming soon: TLE 0.5: Lily’s Diary.)

((THAT WAS A JOKE NO ONE EXPECT THAT OF ME PLEASE 😂))

#ch answers #tle2 #tle2 spoilers

[controversialhpmemes]

Obviously hate is never okay and that message is was super shitty, I’m sorry!

But it’s also very obvious that you think canon is superior. Even with the small things— like chocolate chip versus oatmeal raisin in your response. (i know i know it’s silly but…) Based on my experience with your page, you do shit on non-canon ships in your memes and you complain about people who like those ships.

(And before you say that you’re critiquing the ships— it doesn’t feel like you’re doing it in good faith. Good faith critiques come from a place wanting something to improve because you like it and want to be part of it. You’ve made it clear you don’t like these ships and it feels like you don’t want to actually engage in productive discourse)

So It feels like the “if people just tagged correctly” argument is disingenuous. Like how do you tag a character as OOC when they don’t really have a characterization to begin with? Not to mention— I feel like sO many marauders fics are tagged as AUs anyway because they don’t take place in the magical world.

There are also so many other tags you could filter out, such as any of the ships you don’t like. If you don’t like how Jegulus treats Lily and Harry, filter out fics that having Jegulus raising Harry.

To a casual (but deeply invested observer) it feels more like you miss the focus on the older parts of the fandom and are taking it out on the newer members. If you’re annoyed with the lack of content/focus/popularity, you’re not going to change that with anti posts. You just need to find your people (which you’re doing here!) based on what you all like.

To your jokes about marauders fans not understanding or knowing the canon… many marauders fans grew up reading Harry Potter and have since become uncomfortable with how JKRs views come through in the text. Many of us have since distanced ourselves from the original canon on purpose because of the transphobia, racism, and pro-cop content. (This isn’t me trying to say that canon lovers are endorsing this, but it also doesn’t feel right when canon lovers act like they have more of a claim to fandom spaces… so many people would have loved to continue being in those spaces, but feel like Marauders is a safer space)

I don’t get the impression that people are trying to pretend they invented Harry Potter, but to some degree they largely invented the marauders characters. Obviously some characters have large roles in the canon (you post a lot abt Remadora, which makes sense) but others are barely mentioned or are only shown through specific lenses.

Like I mentioned earlier, how do you tag something OOC when there’s no original characterization? But it’s not an OC, because you’re pulling bits of the character from the world and thousands of other people have the same character (or a similar character) in their heads.

This isn’t supposed to be a gotcha moment. I’m genuinely asking bc it doesn’t really feel like tagging is the root of the issue.

One last big point: Your blog talks a ton about misogyny and fetishization of gay men. These are topics that are much-discussed in so many spaces and not even the most fanon-focused marauders fans can agree on them, but I’d like to give my two cents.

There is misogyny. Of course there is. Even as people try their best, Marauders revolves around a group of boys (it’s in the name) and men will continue to be at the center of it. That will inherently attract and breed misogyny.

However, the canon treatment and characterization of women is also misogynistic. Lily, for example, is very flat in the books. She has a few scenes (in Snapes memories, mostly) and is otherwise talked *about*. She is held up as an idyllic mother and student and person, true, but that is not a well-written character. She isn’t really a person in the books as much as she is a motivation/plot device for men around her. And this is entirely a product of JKR’s inability to write women.

Again, all of this is par for the course, and most people would agree that canon marauders-era characters are often single-note.

What feels unfair about your arguments is that fanon has added so much depth to these characters and flushed them out as real fallible humans. It’s fair to point out that fanon does this more for the men, but it feels reductive to oNLY talk about the misogyny in fandom, when canon is just as guilty by nature of the author.

On the topic of fetishizing: there’s this idea that a bunch of creepy white women are sitting at their computers writing porn about gay teenagers… when that is really a straw man argument. Maybe those people exist, and I would be more likely to believe that that’s true in the broader HP fandom… but a majority of the marauders fic authors I know (including the ones who write filthy smut) are genderqueer (transmasc esp) and are actively experimenting with their sexuality and gender. Marauders fics played a large role in my coming out as transmasc.

It’s not fetishizing if the people writing these things are closeted gay men/nonbinary people. That’s just people writing the experiences they wish they could have had.

And that’s also part of why we—I, at least— distance from canon. JKR looms over a lot. Maybe you don’t feel it, which is great! I’m very glad. But please don’t shit on people who do.

Anyway, I know this is super long and idk if you’ll even read/respond to it, but thank you if you do. If you want to engage in more discussion, I will continue to check back and DM you if you want.

Canon is superior to fanon. I do complain about people who enjoy the ships. Not only because of mistagging. Mistagging is a band-aid for the problem. It solves the immediate issue of having a fanon fandom and a canon fandom under one umbrella. That is the tip of the iceberg.

I do not want to engage in productive discourse as you put it. Not on this page. This page serves a specific purpose for me. Venting. I do not start any post with "let us discuss" or "we need to talk about". Any engagement I get is from asks like this one. People come to me to vent. It is ok.

Because it is not productive to argue about canon versus fanon. I have tried. I have failed. In this fandom it is impossible to have a good faith critique of fanon ships. Too many people treat their fanon ships as markers of their morality or personality. A good faith critique of fanon ship becomes an attack on the shipper. It goes like this:

Them: "Jegulus could be canon IF. Or Jegulus could be canon, BUT"

It is the IF/BUT that makes the discussion impossible. I do not want to talk about IF/BUT. I want to talk about what is.

OOC and canon characterisation. There are some characters that have almost nothing. Like Evan Rosier. But what we do know is he was killed by Moody. He was resisting arrest. He blew off a chunk of Moody's nose. That does not sound like a spring flower who loves justice and Muggleborns.

I am angry with newer Marauder fans because they have taken these AUs as canon. Some have not read the books by their own admission and seem to be proud of it. How do you talk about canon James Potter if you only have fanfiction? We know enough to piece together a character. We know enough that he hated dark magic, loved Lily, loved his friends. There is never ever mention of Regulus by James.

To say it again. Mistagging is the tip of the iceberg. It can solve an immediate problem. It does not solve the problem of the whole fandom. I cannot solve that. I do not pretend to try to solve that. I am incapable of solving that. I can make memes that make me laugh, make others laugh, occasionally break containment. I have been blocked by loads of accounts. I expected this and am ok with it. I have also said before I will not do this forever. I am angry and taking it out with memes. Instead of going to individual ask boxes or fics or TikTok accounts or Twitter accounts or Discord servers and harassing individuals.

I do filter. The filtering makes certain tags walls of filtered posts. If you filter wolfstar and go to the Sirius Black tag page it is mostly filtered posts. That means the tag is unusable to me.

Filtering fics. This is easy enough in theory. But fanon characterisation has become ingrained. When I filter out all the ships I do not want, I still find OOC characterisation in fics. Overly-dramatic Sirius. Alpha male Lupin. Do-no-wrong Hermione. Stupid Ron. Those are not tagged. I do the sensible thing. I click out of the fic, do not leave a hate comment, do not engage with the author or fic.

Yet I can still be frustrated and make a general meme that is not specific to an author or fic to the best of my ability. Almost everything is tagged anti marauders fandom, anti marauders fanon, or anti ship, or anti X bashing. I make it easier to filter my controversial takes. This page, one more time, is not for discussion. I open discussion with asks but it is up to the asker to discuss with me.

I will push back on your interpretation of Lily. We know more about Lily than James. You pointed out the problem. By focusing on the Marauders (men) it does breed misogyny. But we know more about the Marauders than characters like Mary Macdonald, Dorcas Meadowes, Marlene McKinnon, Hestia Jones, Emmeline Vance. If we have almost nothing for Marauders and even less for the female characters, why is fanon incapable of doing as much for them?

We cannot do anything about the internalised misogyny and transmisogyny by JKR. We can and should criticise her and her dehumanising views. It seems hypocritical to me to say "well, the author is guilty of misogyny so we should be as critical of her."

We are. The reason I push harder on fandom than on JKR is that many parts of fandom are declaring themselves morally superior, morally better, more socially progressive than JKR. Which is true in many ways. But if this is the claim, I expect more from fandom than JKR. If you know better, you do better. The Marauders fandom claims to know better. So I push harder on fandom.

It is good that the Marauders fandom encouraged you to be who you are. It is good that you felt comfortable and supported to come out as transmasc.

However we all have our echo chambers. I am guilty of it. This blog is an echo chamber often. I respond to asks like this one that are in good faith and disagree with me.

Fetishisation to me is not about writing genuine experiences or wishful thinking or wish fulfillment. It is about using an identity as an object for pleasure. Only you can decide which one is which. I have been in fandom for a long while. It is not only middle aged white women who do this. White people fetishise POC. Het people fetishise queer people. Young people fetishise. Old people fetishise. Everyone is susceptible to using another person or identity as an object for pleasure. I have seen it all over many years.

You are welcome to DM me. You are welcome to send more asks. I expect you will find my response to be insufficient or lacking. You may even block me. That is ok.

#asked #answered #anti marauders fanon #anti marauders fandom #fandom wank #fandom discourse #fandom etiquette #fandom misogyny #harry potter #fandom critical #fandom criticism #fandom culture #fandom problems

[starrylayle]

"Don't get me started on jegulus" actually please get started I'd like to hear your thoughts on it because your take on wolfstar and the oc-ification of some characters is so refreshing to see (tbh my first reaction to jegulus was just confusion on how it started and how quickly it got popular lmao)

ahh this makes so happy to hear that my post resonated with some people!! Was worried i was in the minority lol.

Anyways, abt jegulus -- i acc had a reaaally long post about how much i hated the dynamic (in canon compliant ish works -- Jegulus in aus is fine ig) but i deleted it lol.

I think the core reason why i dislike the pairing so much is that I feel like it the ship goes against everything James stands for. We don't know a lot about James' character in canon, but what we do know is that he had a strong sense of justice, and fierce loyalty to his friends and his cause, which ultimately led to his doom. I just can't imagine that James would associate with someone even a little bit bigoted. This is not to say i think James is a saint, i think he could be an ass sometimes (snapes worst memory lol) but i think he'd draw the line at someone who was associated with 'evil'. James had a very black and white view of good and bad and i just don't think it would make sense for James to date reg, esp as he is becoming a death eater. James may be a dick but he is also the biggest ally to ever ally !!

The only jegulus fics I have read are 'Just Lovers' and 'Choices'. Just lovers is a non-voldy au so i don't really have a problem with their dynamic there but choices on the other hand,, oh boy.

Spoilers for 'Choices' by MesserMoon btw (TW for talk of SA):

Regulus' friends rape Mary. And instead of feeling disgusted on the victim’s behalf, (who has been his friend for 5 years) James instead feels upset because it tarnishes the ‘good’ image he has of reg in his head. Thing is when a similar situation happened (The Prank ™), James was upset that Sirius would do such a thing but he also felt disgusted on behalf of Remus. Where was that energy here, huh?? I’ve even seen comments villianising Mary (the rape victim).

The thing I also hate about their dynamic is that it is basically an ally of the oppressor and ally of the oppressed. The problem with that is that when you are allied with the oppressor, you become an oppressor yourself (and reg does; he does terrible things) and that subsequently makes the so-called ally of the oppressed in cahoots with the oppressor as well. This brings so many parallels to real life where people say that they are an “ally” but become friends with/date a racist/rapist. “Oh but they’re nice to me”. its just a little ew.

And in other jegulus canon-compliant-ish fics, sometimes instead of James' character being watered down its Regulus' character. Like, he's not as morally grey, not as complex etc so it makes sense that James would agree to date him. I feel like jegulus as a ship ruins the core of what made their characters so interesting in the first place.

That being said,,, i do love me some canon-compliant unrequited jegulus. Regulus goes to hogwarts, gets so mad at Sirius for ditching him or whatever, but falls in love with the very guy that stole sirius away. He also has internalised homophobia because he's a Black brother so imagine the angst. James potter goes against everything he stands for,, sirius betrayed him,, but perhaps they're right abt smth?? Perhaps he needs to do smth. alone.

sorry for rambling but these are my thoughts on jegulus !! Anyways I feel like I should reiterate that this is a personal preference!! I think it ruins core of these characters, i prefer jily and i love me some unrequited gay pining for the boy who you're brother replaced u with. But this is just a personal preference !

oh and just a side note if it ever led to a decision where james had to choose between sirius and regulus -- no matter how much he 'allegedly' loved regulus, he would choose sirius, no questions asked.

#thoughts on jegulus #jily #james potter #regulus black #choices messermoon #anti jegulus #idk how to tag this #I don’t want to upset ppl

[darkness-holds-eternal-light]

I've been thinking about it and I'm not quite sure if that's canonically possible but I think there was another option for Snape in regards to the prophecy and trying to save Lily's life.

I don't know if he hadn't thought about it or if he really didn't feel like he could do more about it but if he couldn't get you-know-who to spare her and couldn't get Dumbledore to protect her with certainty then the only logical option would be to go to Godric's Hollow on that night and give his own life. At least stand between Lily and Voldemort and try everything he personally could to protect her at this point. I don't know if it would've saved her life or Harry's but I have no doubt that he wouldn't have hesitated to give his life that night, so I don't know why he didn't. It is basically what he eventually did for Harry through the years anyways.

I don't know if you other Snape/ Harry Potter-fans out there think this would be a real possibility but I couldn't help but think about it. I'd love to hear other opinions on this though. 😊

#thoughts #Harry Potter #Severus snape #Lily Evans #Lily potter #Hogwarts #Godric's hollow #Fandom

[yogorlhilanne]

BREAKING MY SILENCE

I'll probably make this on Twitter also, though I doubt it'll really attract (on both Tumblr and Twitter) many people but OH MY FUCKING GOD. THIS NEEDS TO BE SAID.

I know OTHER people have probably talked about this (or maybe not)— plus the Harry Potter fandom is probably dead at this point or maybe still thriving somehow in ways I don't really know but LILY FUCKING EVANS MADE THE WORST DECISION POSSIBLE AFTER ENDING HER AND SEVERUS' FRIENDSHIP.

Look, she was like practically a minor character yet was kinda important to the plot but honestly she deserved to be with someone better than James Potter. No hate or dumb reasons are gonna be thrown at Lily but girlie was dumb as fuck entirely for having a kid with her friends bully who made his school life HELL.

It's been on my mind the more I think about Severus' past and James and Sirius bullying.

I genuinely like Sirius as a character but bro cannot be bullying Snape, like sweetheart we know your an inbred rich child but that doesn't mean you should bully someone who's the LITERAL opposite of you. (expect for neglect and abuse)

James was a fucking jock.

LISTEN & IMAGINE. A friend of yours who you've know for maybe about 6 years calls you the worst insult ever, in a fit of rage, you break the friendship and ofc, leave. That's genuinely completely understandable to one who has common sense.

BUT THEN, after that, you go on to marry your ex friends bully that HAS MADE YOUR EX FRIENDS SCHOOL LIFE MISERABLE AND SHITTY.

Sure it's COMPLETELY understandable how Lily can be mad at Severus for calling her a "Mudblood" because that's a canonical slur against muggle-borns, really, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN SHE HAD TO MARRY SEVERUS' BULLY WHO BULLIED HIM RELENTLESSLY, and that's so fucked up in many ways. And YES. As far as I'm concerned, Lily seemed to only like James because:

He wasn't strongly associated with the dark arts

Wasn't associated with future death eaters/followers of Voldemort

I don't think it's confirmed how long James and Sirius had been bullying Snape but it makes me SOOOO fucking livid that like... HOW THE FUCK DO YOU ACTUALLY LIKE A CHARACTER IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THEIR FLAWS AND HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS? (*Cough Cough* James and Sirius "fans" *COUGH*)

If I'm being 100% honest, I've never seen anyone say "James/Sirius is better than Snape" ever and not even ONCE in my lifetime being in the Harry Potter fandom.

There's really not much on Snape's past during his school years but in all honesty, Lily Evans was dumb as fuck for dating her friends bully like okay, MAYBE James and Sirius did take accountability at one point and confessed to Lily. JUST MAYBE. But I don't remember nor heard anyone saying that was true nor JK Rowling saying anything about them taking accountability.

AND I DON'T THINK THEY EVEN APOLOGIZED TO SNAPE EITHER. (Maybe regretted it but that's not taking accountability for one's actions, perhaps Remus did but never heard anyone saying that was true either because it's probably just a headcannon and Remus probably didn't even bully Snape at all)

Lily Evans... I love you and all and I don't hate you... You just disappointed me.

LIKE IF I WERE IN LILY'S SHOES I WOULDN'T GET TOGETHER WITH JAMES BECAUSE MY FRIEND HAS ALREADY LIVED A HARD LIFE AT HOME, (she probably didn't know but I would've ask Snape what his home life was and would've saved him unlike Lily) AND JUST BECAUSE SNAPE WASN'T RICH NOR GOOD LOOKING DOESN'T MEAN YOU GET A FUCKING PRIVILEGE TO BULL HIM. OR JUST BECAUSE HE FUCKING EXISTED.

Also I get that Lily was mainly mad at Severus because of his Slytherin friends and that he called her a "Mudblood" BUT IGNORING THE FACT HE GOT BULLIED RELENTLESSLY, NEARLY DIED TO A "prank", LIVED IN AN ABUSIVE HOUSEHOLD (she didn't knew that but imma just put it there anyways) AND THAT HE HAD HOPED THAT HOGWARTS WOULD HAVE MADE HIS LIFE BETTER BUT IT GOT DESTROYED, IS UTTERLY DISAPPOINTING AND FLABBERGASTING TO ME.

No hate to people who genuinely ship James and Lily (love the fanarts) but Lily deserved better than that. Perhaps she also knew about the werewolf incident but if I were her I would've BITCH SLAPPED Sirius to remind him of being inbred and stupid as fuck BECAUSE WHAT????

A prank—as far as I acknowledge, shouldn't put someone's life in DANGER and in a LIFE OR DEATH situation SIRIUS 'INBRED' BLACK.

I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE YET TALKING ABOUT THIS AND SHITTING ON LILY (for being flawed ofc yet dumb as shit). Lily in general is a good person but she had flaws that needed to be talked about and HERE I AM.

James & Sirius bullying was ignorant and really unjustifiable, Peter and Remus should've known better but I don't ENTIRELY blame them but they should've known fucking better. Lily WAS understandable up until she got together with James and I kinda wanna bitch slap her right now.

Honestly if I were Lily, I genuinely would've gotten together with Snape and ACTUALLY helped him like any person with COMMON SENSE would do.

And to end it off with a cherry on top. James and Sirius bullying Snape should be talked about more and we should shit on them for their flaws yet ignorance actions that they didn't even try to take any single OUNCE of accountability for. Just because you learned from your bullying mistakes and "becoming a more mature and better person" isn't justifiable and shows your blind fucking ignorance to your affects of bullying to other people you dumb dipshit fucker.

(Will possibly edit this again but I'll post this now bc it's been in my drafts for some time and it NEEDS to be sent out rn)

#breaking my silence #harry potter #hp fandom #james potter #sirius black #severus snape #lily evans #essay #rant post #ranting

[sneverussape]

For the asks :33 some fun ones and a lot of angsty ones. As always, feel free to skip if this is too many!

8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 33, 36, 41, 50

u know for whom :3

ah my friend you do me a great favor by asking for angst specifically XD i shall do my best to deliver!

8. Unpopular opinion about them

in the same way that people love to argue that lily was such a 'bad friend' to severus, severus also could have been equally toxic for lily. she was right to break off the friendship if she had felt unsafe. she was right to have set up boundaries to protect herself. she was not responsible for severus or for his happiness and ending their friendship could have been the healthiest way to move forward.

i'm also on team average!height snape (6ft is the tallest i will accept as his height but he's so willowy it doesn't really make him look formidable). compared to his da, he's pretty much a runt.

9. Scene that first made me love (or hate) the character

already answered here!

10. Best moment on screen (or in the book)

ooooh i have several favorites in the books, but one is this scene:

“That is just as well, Potter,” said Snape coldly, “because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters.” “No — that’s your job, isn’t it?” Harry shot at him. He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper. For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far. But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered. “Yes, Potter,” he said, his eyes glinting. “That is my job.”

i like it because it cements him as one who truly understands and accepts his responsibility that he is the adult in the situation and they're supposed to be doing the hard work, not the children. there's also a sliver of trust between him and harry in this scene that rarely shows itself: harry has just practically outed him as a spy, but he stays calm about it and merely acknowledges it. a begrudging sort of respect has started to form between the two shown by how, even though severus insults harry at the onset, he also allows harry to acknowledge the reality of their situation by letting him freely say what he did with none of the usual repercussions. the 'almost satisfied' expression was my undoing. you can say severus was almost proud.

it's rare that an adult actually treated the kids the same way snape did in this instance. they (dumbledore, the weasleys, mcgonagall, etc) always vacillated between treating them like babies by not allowing them to know of any sort of information, or cutting them loose to let them fend for themselves. you can tell snape didn't want them to fend for themselves. he wanted to help, and proved it by doing everything in his power to lead the kids to the next step of their mission.

13. Dumbest thing they’ve ever done

i know i wrote about the hippogriff scene based on canon events but as an hc...i'd say the dumbest thing he's ever done was provoking local cokeworth hooligans to a brawl when he was younger, on one of those days that he desperately needed to feel something after the falling out with lily. it's not that he didn't know how to fight back with his fists; he did, but he had also deliberately picked a gang of 4 (and wasn't that familiar) probably just to prove to himself that he could take them on. he was sorely mistaken in that regard. his parents had been apoplectic with rage and mam spent a good bit of that week's earnings on potions ingredients so she could brew him bruise balm and blood replenishers. taking him to st. mungo's would have raised ministry alarms for wizard endangerment and none of them wanted that. da kept trying to get him to tell him the boys' names but severus kept his silence. it didn't matter anyway.

16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves

hmm. maybe that there were times when he did enjoy the surge of power that came with being a death eater. he didn't like acknowledging it because he was deeply uncomfortable with the notion that he truly was the sadist many of the children saw him as.

also that petunia was a pretty bird, especially when she was a teenager while he and lily had still been children, but that's something he had buried deep in his unconscious mind, way before it was even a coherent thought.

33. Something guaranteed to make them cry

old muggles who were homeless or begging on the streets.

mr. khatry's red curry.

his students' atrocious spelling and writing. (dumbledore really should overhaul the curriculum to include english reading and writing classes for these miscreants; he spends far too much time teaching the little fools basic syntax and grammar when he could be focusing on the actual subject matter).

36. Their favorite season

summer! not only are there no classes but he deeply enjoys how long and languid days the days are. it's also the time of the year when he spends the most time out in the sun since he has to help with the upkeep of his neighbors' homes. this always results in him getting a bit of a tan that's made all the more evident when he troops back to the castle. minerva teases him mercilessly for it and he always lies and says he got it vacationing in pompeii or alexandria or some other exotic location. minerva doesn't believe a word of it but enjoys their little game and always asks him for stories about his travels which he embellishes with ridiculous details.

there's also a single week in the summer when time seems to stand still and the air seems breathless and the ghosts of his childhood seem to hold out their phantom hands out to him. he disappears for hours on end on those days, and no one dares to ask where he's going or where he's been. he always comes back at the end of the day, rumpled and slightly disheveled, with his head hung low. the neighbors know well enough to keep their distance on those days, and collectively breathe a sigh of relief when the winds turn once the week is done and severus is back to his acerbic self.

41. If they could have lunch with anyone in the world (living or dead, from any fictional universe or the real world), who would it be?

this is a good question! knowing severus and his incessant thirst for knowledge, he'd probably choose someone he could learn from, like merlin. lunch would be spent not eating but for learning and experimentation. other viable choices would probably be alan turing, charles darwin, and salazar slytherin.

50. A memory they’ve blocked out

i've written a piece about this before that i never published. instead of one, i'll give you four memories straight from that piece :)) they revolve around the breaking down of his and tobias' relationship.

--

cw corporal punishment by parent (switching)

excerpt from In the House of My Father (unpublished):

—

“Da!”

The first memory: he was six years old and clattering down the stairs just as his father opened the door. Tobias was large and took up the entire frame of the entryway. He easily picked Severus up as he came running, then swiftly moved him onto his shoulders, securing the boy’s balance by placing his hands behind his back for support.

“’Ere’s me lad!” his father shouted, his voice booming in the tiny hallway. “The tallest boy in the world!”

“Aye!”

“Wipe your shoes before you come in, Tobias, I won’t have you messing up the floor I just cleaned, you hear me now?” Eileen’s voice could be heard from the kitchen, strained with tight annoyance. “And wash your hands before you come for supper. Bring your son with you.”

Your son. Severus felt a burst of pride at that label. Of course he was his father’s son. Who else would he be?

“Ye hungry, lad?” His father asked, peering up at him.

“Starvin’, Da.”

“Ye’r sayin’ grace tonight, ye hear? Can yer remember them all? Them’s big words.”

“’Course!” He had spent most of the day committing to memory the short prayer Da usually had them utter before meals, no matter how meager. Tobias agreeing for him to say them that night was the proudest moment of his young life. He was not going to let his Da down.

“Tha’s a good lad.”

--

The second memory: him at eight in front of the mirror as Eileen brushed out the tangles in his hair. He was wearing his best shirt, the white one with the crisp collar, and trousers his Mam had freshly ironed, the one that had nearly no patches. These were his Sunday clothes, and he secretly looked forward to wearing them after a whole week of wearing the ill-fitting outfits he had to endure on other days.

Eileen stood behind him, gentle in her ministrations as her long smooth fingers ran down his scalp.

“Won’t you come, Mam?” Severus asked, although this was an argument they always had and the answer was always the same. It never deterred his determination, however.

“No, Severus,” came the predictable reply.  

“But why?” He couldn’t help his statement from curling into a whine. “Yer already missed my Holy Communion!”

“We’ve discussed this before. I never perceived you a dense child.” Eileen raised an eyebrow at him in challenge and Severus huffed. “Do stop.”

“It’s just Mass, Mam. Fr. Delaney says—”

“This is something between you and your father and I cannot join, Severus.”

“But you’re married!”

“It is allowed for us to be so. That’s hardly the point.”

Severus crossed his arms. “All yer havta do is sit there and copy what Da and I are doin’…”

“Severus.” Eileen sighed. “It’s not the same. I do not belong to that group. I do not share the same beliefs.”

“Oh? Is it the same as Da not bein’ able to do mag—ow!”

To his surprise, Eileen’s grip on him tightened and he was wrenched sideways to look up at his mother. Her eyes, which were usually dark and emotionless, were suddenly clouded. The breath she released was a tremble. Severus stared back at her, confused.

“Mam? Are you…”

“Severus, you must never mention magic in front of your father.” Her voice had dropped to a harsh whisper, and her nails were digging into his shoulder. He winced. “We’ve discussed this before! Do you want all your magic to be taken away? Do you want us to be taken away?”

Severus shook his head, suddenly unnerved by the change in his mother. “N-no. Never, Mam,” he whispered.

“Good.” Her grip on him loosened, but only by a fraction. “I do not want to discuss this again, do you understand? Or I will leave you here alone, Severus. I swear it. No more of this talk.”

“Y-yes, Mam.”

--

The third memory: The first time he had done accidental magic that he could remember was as he watched his father make his way down the icy steps of their home on the way to work. He didn’t know how old he was. But Tobias had slipped, his boots suddenly unable to keep his balance, and all of a sudden, he was tumbling headfirst onto the street, seconds away from cracking his head on the frozen pavement—

Severus raised his hands instinctively and his father’s form hung suspended in the air as though he was held back by an invisible force. Moments later, he crashed down, face first, but this time he had had enough time to shield himself with his arms. The commotion was loud enough to alert his mother, who rushed out of the kitchen and into the cold to see what had happened.

“Tobias!”

“It was angels, ‘Leen! I swear to Christ, the hand of God jus’ saved me!”

--

The fourth memory: Spare the rod, spoil the child.

“Bend over.”

Severus was ten. There was a scorch mark near the wall where the fire in the grate had flared up with his accidental magic. His father had not seen, but he had heard the argument that had taken place between Severus and Eileen. He had heard his son’s raised voice and had immediately appeared, switch in hand.

“Bend over now, Severus!” Severus bent over. Five strikes against his bare bottom made him howl in pain, and he had not hated his father any more than that moment.

--

and that's it! i never finished this piece hehehe. but i thought it was appropriate because he starts remembering these as he lay dying in the shrieking shack. :3

#ask game #snape #hp #surprise ficlet #my fic

[goodfornothingstar]

Some asked me why I hate the character Remus Lupin so much.

And people who have read my posts will think that probably it is related to my even more strong dislike for wolfstar. But surprisingly it is not at all related to that.

So, long story short is that I read a fic which was done so nicely that from there on me and remus were always on odds.

For those who want long story-

I was actually into time traveling fics a few years back. You know where hermione goes back in time and makes all things right.

This was one such fic. Where she is reborn as the twin sister of james Potter.

Now, one thing people should know about these fic is that here she is paired with prominent people we know from first war time.

More often it is not james, because of his epic love story with lily or the fact that her best friend will not be born if she is paired such. Others who are often paired with her are sirius, remus, Regulus and snape.

I was into sirius-hermione pairing and read all of them like drugs.

Now my expectations when reading such fics is that the romance take a little back seat and the drama related to war should provide more entertainment.

So mostly avoided fics where she travelled through 2-3 boyfriends to reach to her final guy. Sirius. But this story was exception.

I was reading one such fic in which this pairing was taged. Sirius and Hermione

In it sirius and remus both have feelings for hermione. And neither made a move because they knew about how the other felt and didn't want to come in the way of rthe other out of brotherhood.

We as reader are not told which one of them she has feelings for. Maybe both??????????????????The player witch😎.

Anyways. But this change when after the incident with snape in the shack, remus lets go of all his concern for his friend's feelings and makes a move to the girl.

All is well and good. And they slowly and steadily ease into the relationship. And things are in early stage.

This carries on for a few months where sirius is shown to be feeling remorseful for what he did to his friend. And is also a little heartbroken seeing the two together but he takes it like a champ and does not feel any ill will towards the new couple.

One day the marauders are planning some prank. During which remus starts taunting sirius because he still feeling bitter. Peter and james try to handle the situation but it keep on accelerating to no avail.

In the heat of the moment, remus decides to taunt sirius that he has got the girl they both wanted and tells in detail about what the two got up two just the last night. ( about their bedroom activities).

James first of all punches remus and breaks his nose for speaking like this about his sister. As if she were an object.

Turns out hermione was also nearby and listened to all this and confronts remus about using her and their relationship to make sirius suffer. She asks him if he would have asked her out if it weren't for his desire to punish sirius by asking her out.

This scene was done so fantastically that after that day lupin's character was gone for me. As soon as he comes as a prominent character in any fic, I take my leave or skip those parts.

Now obviously, the Hermione, sirius and james in that particular fic forgave poor lupin. But I never could find it in me to be able to do so. I simply was hoping till the end of the fic that they will just kick him out of their life.

This is my problem as a reader. I get too emotionally attached when the story is really well done. yeah I am malleable like that. 🥺🥺

I am once again reading a fic with sirius/ harry pairing, this too has a problematic remus but the author says that they are trying to aim for his redemption. It is called "RETURN FROM THE VEIL BY @jmagnabo92

This fic too is such where in the end the protagonist will forgive the bad guy but I will be left with even more bad feelings about this particular character than before.

So, this is the reason of me hating remus, not because of canon or wolfstar or any toxic story I read, simply a well done fic where he tried to take away the female protagonist from her destined male protagonist.

#remus lupin #remus lupin critical #anti remus lupin #sirius black #anti wolfstar #sirimione #time travel

[ashesandhackles]

Fic Author Self Rec

Thanks for the tag, @turanga4 ❤️

When you get this, reply with your 5 favourite fics that you've written. Then pass it on to five other writers. Spread some self love.

My favourite fics are some of my popular ones and I talk about them all the time, so I am going to showcase the little known ones I have soft spots for.

Ariadne - Cho/Harry, canon compliant. Set in OOTP.

When I was rereading OOTP, I was utterly fascinated by the mess that is Cho/Harry. (The messier a relationship, the more I am interested in it). Grief propels this teenage relationship, and there is a certain morbid quality to Cho's attraction to Harry in OOTP. It's her need to be as close to, or have closure to her feelings about Cedric that she processes via her attraction to Harry. And that eroticisation of grief is incredibly - true to life and deserves exploration. This was my attempt to explore that using the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur to add a surreal quality to Cho's inner life.

Purple Haze - Ron/Hermione, canon compliant.

This bi4bi Romione was written for @thethreebroomsticksficfest Pride fest! The envy/attraction paradigm is a pretty common experience for queer kids - do I want to be them or do I want them? and I wanted to take some really pivotal Romione moments in canon and offer a different interpretation for the potent jealousy both characters display at different points in the series. I actually remember struggling with the Fleur/Hermione scene in the beginning, and I remember hashing it out with @artemisia-black who was such a lovely sounding board for it!

Also, I was pretty daunted at writing Ron - a character I think I understand well, but cannot, for the life of me, write his voice. I still feel the choices I made for his POV is a style I am comfortable writing rather than something that actually suits him, but I'll get better I suppose.

Breathe the Air of Elsewhere Places - Asexual Charlie.

Also written for the @thethreebroomsticksficfest ❤️ As a 31-year-old queer woman who keeps getting asked when I plan to marry etc, I wanted to push back against privately, in my fanfiction world, to heteronormative ideas of happiness. Charlie of this fic is very comfortable with who he is, but is also looking for a home - however that might look like. I have also had a queerplatonic dynamic in the past, and wanted to pay a little tribute to thr relationship which has profoundly changed me (as it would change Charlie). I directly lifted - "I believe in serendipity when I'm with you" from there. Anyway, found family tropes for life.

October - Gen.

Three drabbles written for the Halloween celebrations at TTB. One focuses on Barty Crouch Jnr, one focuses on Ginny and one on Snape. I am particularly proud of "Disappointing Fathers" which was my attempt to get into BCJ's head.

Death, a Thief, an Old Friend - Harry & Hermione.

Using oppositional sides of thematic narrative which Harry and Hermione occupy with regard to faith/death to explore their friendship. Inspired by @bluethepineapple who said this: "Hermione serves as Harry's antithesis on the Death theme dripping through the books. When it comes to symbols of Death, it is Harry and Hermione who are in conversation with each other, and this conversation is series wide. The Grim (Harry responds to this with humour, avoidance) while Hermione fights the idea that it is an omen. She represents the fight for life, and fear of unknown that comes with Death. The story repeats this symbol with the Veil in OOTP, and then again, the grave and Resurrection Stone in DH."

Tagging @thecat-isblogging-blog @artemisia-black @yletylyf @saintsenara @hinnyfied @lanaturnergetup @somesunlitdays @broomsticks

#tag games #fic author self rec

[polaroidcats]

cat! please pair the following characters:

quirrell, lockhart, remus, moody, umbridge, snape, mcgonagall, hagrid <3

hi lynx!!! i would love to!!

Okay so first is OBVIOUSLY my truest of all otps!!! MCBRIDGE 🩷🩷🩷 they hate each other, they love each other, the only thing they have in common is their love for women and cats and honestly, there are worse things to base a relationship on!

Next is Remus/Hagrid. I really think Remus would enjoy getting taken care of by Hagrid, he would probably resist at first and feel like he's not worthy of Hagrid's love, but they would get there and live the cottagecore life of their dreams surrounded by magical creatures, and they'd be every hogwarts student's favorite weird gay uncles!!! Also, Hagrid would be so enamoured by Moony on wolfsbane, he would take such good care of his little werewolf boyfriend and Remus would struggle with but eventually learn to really love the fact that Hagrid loves all of him, Moony and Remus, and not just Remus in spite of Moony.

Lockhardt/Snape happens one night when Severus goes to a gay wizards bar and gets a bit too drunk, then he meets this beautiful wizard with golden hair and a charming smile who keeps talking about how he invented several powerful potions. Snape is so, so jealous of Gilderoy's hair... He also vaguely remembers reading about those potions before but he doesn't remember the name of the creator so he believes Gilderoy. They have a passionate (and surprisingly for both of them also very satisfying) one night stand, the next morning Snape wakes up to find Gilderoy pointing his wand at him, about to steal all his memories and obliviate him but he can defend himself just in time. It gets really awkward for both of them when only a few months later, Gilderoy starts his new job at hogwarts... but Snape is too embarrassed to admit that he cheated on Dumbledore with Gilderoy so he can't tell him what he knows about Lockhardt...

And Quirrell/Moody... listen, they're both freaks in different ways and I think it was just a matter of time until they found a way into each other's arms/pants. Quirrell is the unhinged twink Moody needed to feel alive again, their sex is freaky and weird in the best kind of way. Idk how their ages are in canon but I'm just gonna say they probably knew each other as teenagers and then randomly met in some remote place, both not telling the other exactly what they were doing there but going for a pint anyways for old times sake, and one thing leads to another... They keep "accidentally" running into each other and having to stay at inns that only have one bed available and neither of them ever questions how or why that is such a frequent occurrance. And if Moody notices something weird on the back of Quirrell's head at some point with his magical eye, well he's not going to address it, bc the sex is still freaky and fun and the cuddling after the sex has gotten even more affectionate and loving since Quirrell started wearing a turban to bed and who is he to complain about that?

#lynx tag #ask game #cursed ships #tho tbf none of these are that cursed to me!!!

[padawansuggest]

I want to talk to people about my Harry Potter series (where Harry gets adopted by Bill and nothing bad happens -for at least a few years- and Bill is bi and Harry is too but Harry is also transfluid and everyone is an Actual Threat to JKRs existence) but I don’t wanna repopulate my HP blog cause I feel like y’all are so mean to the HP writers now like bitch she HATES ff and especially gay and trans ff and that’s all I’m doing and NONE of them are straight and Snape went to fucking therapy and Draco isn’t cocky in this AU because he has a specific magic ability that I haven’t revealed yet but it makes him sorta quiet and thoughtful around others cause he can’t stop dissecting their actions and also Neville is gonna be taken better care of too and Harry is half Indian so he’s also not white because I think that’s way better in all ways and everyone is gay and trans so like???? Obviously it’s superior to all canon ever, and I ain’t supporting the actual HP franchise cause ewwwwwwww, but like??? I just wanna talk to you guys about a chat Snape is gonna have with Blaise about using his extremely rare Veela magic to get Potter to think twice before he touches the next cursed object in sight and Snape can keep one more nerve maybe but it sorta just tumbles into puppy love because Harry is all ‘oh; prettiest person I have ever met wow’ and Blaise is like ‘huh… he’s kinda cute…’ and now they’re in love and instead Snape has to watch them mooning over each other and it’s cute to the readers but not him.

Anyways. I like this rarepair with a burning passion, I am falling back into the cringe to enact the Dark Veela trope and hand it to Blaise as a super mega rare male Veela (it’s already rare as a whole but him being a child of a full blood Veela but a boy is just wild it’s the highest Veela concentration a boy can have) and I’m legit considering making Draco get slightly obsessed with cousin Tonks and she’s all ‘you obviously aren’t a metamorph because you would have had uncontrollable powers before now’ and he’s all ‘BUT TRANSFIGURATION EXISTS IMMA LEARN IT’ and now he’s less of a brat because he keeps following Tonks around everywhere and it’s kinda funny. Neville is his new BFF and they’re so weird.

Idk man I’m like. I’m trying to make this as threatening to JKR as possible (WolfStar is real and they’re married and gonna survive the whole series don’t TEST me) but I still don’t really… wanna restart the HP blog… idk.