Really loved your headcanon about why Harry didn’t name any of his children after Remus. I’d never thought of it that way before! In that post, you said you have thoughts on why Harry decided to name his child after Dumbledore and Snape, and you’ve piqued my interest! Any possibility of you sharing that headcanon?
Hello anon!!! I’m glad you enjoyed the post (this one, for anyone interested. There's quite a few good additions in the notices as well)! I’ve got so many opinions and it’s really nice to see that people agree with them!
About the headcanon on Albus Severus: I was actually writing a draft for the HC as to why Harry and Ginny named kiddo no. 2 after Dumbles and Snape, so you’ve come in at a good time! It’s gotten long (2k kind of long), so I’ve divided it into parts within the post and added a ‘read more’. There's also a TL;DR at the very bottom. Feel free to add to it or disagree with me, if you want! It's only my headcanon :)
To start
When I was eleven years old I finished my first proper read-through of the Harry Potter series. At the time, I obviously didn’t have a very good understanding of things like nuance and subtext and trauma and—well, you know what I mean. And I found it a cute name, actually. Obviously not as cute as ‘James Sirius’ or ‘Lily Luna’, as I’ve always been a Marauders fan (massive crush on Sirius starting the moment Mass Murderer is mentioned in PoA, anyone?), but still cute—until it wasn’t, which is when I started to find it a tad absurd.
Listen, I really, really like the thought behind naming your children after people who’ve been significant in your or the other parent’s life. It’s part of the reason why I like ‘James Sirius’ and ‘Lily Luna’ so much: both kids are named after parental figures (and in LL’s case, also a good friend) and it’s really sweet that both Harry and Ginny (because you bet your arse Ginny was fully present in that decision-making process) decided to honour Lily, James, Sirius, and Luna that way. I myself am named after both my grandmothers and now that they’ve both passed, it’s a nice connection to them.
But the name ‘Albus Severus’ – and this is purely my interpretation, mind – has very different vibes compared to ‘James Sirius’ and ‘Lily Luna’. Albus is named after two professors; when I read the Epilogue™ for the first time, the name simply felt out of place in the family. Teachers, no matter how much you like them, ought to be distant supporters—especially compared to parents and friends. Additionally, the last scene with Dumbledore (in spirit) is him being… kind of frustrating; the last scene with Snape is him admitting posthumously that he protected Harry only out of obligation and guilt. Neither Dumbledore nor Snape died for Harry specifically, like James, Lily, and Sirius did: Dumbledore and Snape died so Harry could and would as well.
Some context
Albus Severus Potter is born eight years after the Battle of Hogwarts, when Harry is 25/26 and Ginny is 24/25. That means that, less than a decade before AS was born, Harry learnt from both Snape and Dumbledore that he had to die to get rid of the guy who tried to kill him for years—that he was raised and subtly manipulated into ‘voluntarily’ becoming a martyr ever since he was orphaned—
(I’m putting 'voluntarily' in quotation marks because Harry kind of had no other choice: either he runs and Voldemort is basically immortal for another century or so, or he sacrifices himself—and Harry is righteous and selfless and honestly rather suicidal so he’ll obviously choose the latter option. Harry couldn’t make any other choices, not with his saving-people-thing and his guilt complex the size of the African Continent)
—which… okay. Reading it now, as an adult who now is able to see fully that Harry was seventeen (a child!!) when he allowed himself to be killed, the entire thing pisses me off.
Dumbledore subtly talked Harry into becoming a martyr, because what’s one innocent life lost in the grand scheme of things? Harry needed to die in order to defeat Voldemort, so that hundreds, if not thousands, of others could be saved from that fate. I still tear up sometimes at the image that emerges after Snape’s memories have been viewed, when Harry’s lying on the floor in the Headmaster’s office and finally knows that there was never an expectation he’d come out of the war alive.
Dumbledore isn’t the kind, empathetic, caring grandfather of the story—he’s the general on the other side of the chessboard, looking at bigger things and forcefully ignoring that Harry’s worth extends beyond his prophesied fate. And Harry knows it, at that point the DH: even if Dumbledore did care for him, it wasn’t enough to try and find another way.
Then about Snape. Though he isn’t wholly complicit in the ‘Harry shall need and be willing to die’-plot (as shown by his anger at finding out about it, because like, same, Sev… sort of), he was the one who inadvertently set the prophecy into motion. Sure, Voldemort needed to take action for it to come true, but Snape’s the one who told him: he didn’t care that that a family would be eradicated until he realised it involved Lily, at which point he panicked and begged for her safety (but not the safety of James and Harry). Cue disgusted Dumbledore (same, Al) but an agreement, as long as Snape becomes a spy. Both Harry and the reader figure out that Snape antagonised Harry mainly because Harry looks nearly identical to James and Snape had difficulty seeing Harry as his own person—and when he realised Harry’s situation at home was much more similar to his own than to James’, he didn’t back down.
In the books, Snape is an adult man who irrationally despised a child, knows it’s irrational, and does very little to change it. He wouldn’t have cared if Harry and James died, as long as Lily didn’t; it’s only his desperation for Lily to live that initially causes him to join the Order, and later it’s his grief and guilt about her death that makes him protect Harry.
Getting into the nitty-gritty
Putting all that I’ve said above together makes the decision to name Harry and Ginny’s second kid after both Dumbledore and Snape seem completely illogical—especially because it’s information Harry’s been made aware of. They’ve done surprisingly little for Harry’s personal well-being as characters who are claimed to have done ‘everything to protect Harry’—not only physical, like the infamous ducking for frying pans at the Dursleys’, but also mental, as in Harry doesn’t truly believe that he deserves to live. I’d argue that McGonagall, who has also done very little for Harry, cared more about that.
Dumbledore kept Harry alive to die at the right moment, by Voldemort’s hand and curse; Snape protected Harry because he felt obliged to after becoming accidentally complicit in murder, developing a guilt-complex, and then following Dumbledore’s orders. Somehow, Harey, Ginny, and JKR decided that naming the second born after these two men was a good idea.
Potential outside reasoning
Despite me finding the theory that Harry and Ginny decided on ‘Albus Severus’ to lure an outraged Sirius out of the Veil absolutely hilarious, I don’t believe JKR would’ve even considered that as an option. No, purely from a classic literary analysis standpoint, it is far more likely JKR just wished to highlight that Dumbledore and Snape actually were Incredibly Great Men who Harry hero-worships slightly and admires greatly—despite Dumbles’ fall from grace and because of Snape’s redemption (He Loved Lily So Much You Guys).
Now, I shan’t share my entire opinion on how I think Snape’s redemption has been executed (it isn’t up to Zuko-standard, I assure you), but I will say that I don’t consider it ‘enough’ for Harry in particular. I like Snape as an explicitly morally-grey character, and I personally think that his redemption did a decent job at establishing him as one of the good guys instead of the meanie double spy/humanoid bat hybrid who enjoys snogging Voldie’s snakey toes.
Snape being on the ‘good’ side shouldn’t mean that Harry has to like him or even fully respect him. However, naming his kid after Snape implies that Harry has forgiven Snape for making Hogwarts a little bit more miserable than it should’ve been, for selling him and his parents out, for getting Lupin fired, for encouraging the continued manhunt of Sirius, for the absolutely absurd occlumency training during an already terrible time, for actively participating in the incredibly fucked up situation of “Harry witnessing the poisoned and exhausted Headmaster he just saved from a horde of magical water zombies get murdered and thrown of one of the highest towers of the castle, whilst he’s frozen and can’t do anything”… yeah.
Similarly, Dumbledore and his manipulations and machinations have to be such a fucking blow as soon as Harry’s out of that fight-or-flight adrenaline boost. Someone Harry trusted and could’ve seen as family used him as a pawn in his game against Voldemort, and though Harry does continue to have some kind of respect for Dumbledore’s genius, the nineteen year skip towards the epilogue makes it so that we don’t see the resulting anger and devastation that Harry must’ve experienced as soon as he had a one (1) decent night of sleep. From my perspective (as someone with a Literature degree), naming the second child after Dumbledore and Snape is nothing more than an attempt by JKR at making a point: there’s good and bad in everyone including wizard-Jesus and wizard-Judas, Slytherin isn’t as horrible as I made out to be dear money-makers I swear, and forgiveness is key.
Obviously this shoddy job means that a whole bunch of people ignore the epilogue (and the absolute disaster that is Cursed Child) with a vehemence, which is a shame from a Potterverse standpoint. Comfy DADA Professor Harry (I refuse to acknowledge his Head Auror position; that’s CC info, anyway) who is also a Fun Dad is one of my favourite tropes.
Potential in-universe logic
We continue on to Harry-and-Ginny logic—or I, at least, take a shot at it.
To get one of the bigger criticisms out of the way first – it being the names of all three children – I’ll state that I genuinely believe Ginny had an active role in choosing what to name the children she’s carrying. Harry, for all his faults, isn’t a selfish person; Ginny, for the faults she has as a slightly underdeveloped female character, is quite an understanding one. It makes sense to me that she agreed with naming their children after James, Sirius, and Lily: the only family member Ginny lost was Fred, and George will obviously have first dibs on that name. Harry, however, has no biological family left, and his parents and godfather were ripped from him far too soon. I daresay that Ginny suggested the names, actually, because Ginny is like that and because I don’t see a future where Harry demanded to name the children after his parents. Ginny wouldn’t allow Harry to bulldoze over her like that.
But Albus Severus: the conundrum. The reasons I’ll propose are that the Wizarding World is unbelievably terrible about mental health, and that both Harry and Ginny are rather traumatised.
Say what you will about Dumbledore (and I will say loads), but his was the hand Harry metaphorically held as he walked to his death. His assurance was what kept Harry going, for better or for worse. Harry owes Dumbledore his survival. And say what you will about Snape, but he gave his life to go against Voldemort and help Harry succeed; despite the suspicions, despite the hatred and distrust from nearly everybody around him, Snape didn’t stray from that path as far as we know.
They’re actually two of the few adults of authority who Harry was able to trust to do the right thing in the end: rare, considering Harry’s tendency to side-eye every authority automatically because they disappoint him so much. Harry is someone with zero self-esteem, someone who has difficulty accepting gifts, someone who stares at every crumb of kindness he’s offered in amazement. This is an effect of the upbringing forced upon him, to be sure, but in a world without therapy, experienced by a boy/man who usually suppresses every emotion he feels, because he thinks he doesn’t deserve to or simply shouldn’t feel them? They’re very, very admirable.
I think that Harry in canon refuses to acknowledge what was done to him. He doesn’t want to know nor even consider that he was no more than a pawn, because what use does he have then, as a person? And Ginny—it’s likely she, too, likes to live in ignorance, because she’s got her own demons to fight. As long as Harry’s happy, she is, too: all she believes is that Dumbledore and Snape kept Harry alive.
Harry and Ginny name their firstborn after Harry’s two dads, who died for him. They name their third after Harry’s mum, who died for him, and their mutual friend, who was willing to die for them both.
They name their second born after the men who died for Harry to finish the job he was groomed to do. I’m sure they like to pretend that that last bit was only a happy little coincidence.
TL;DR: Harry and Ginny named Albus Severus ‘Albus Severus’ because JKR wanted to ensure that people knew that Dumbledore and Snape were Really Good Guys and that Harry thought so; and, in-universe, because the Wizarding World has no therapy and Harry doesn’t want to acknowledge how fucked up his life was with Dumbledore’s help—only that Voldemort was at fault.
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yoohoo!!! @nabi004 and @mialuna4 and that one anon!!! sick angel request!!! many thanks for the love <3
14 Days With You is an 18+ Yandere Visual Novel. MINORS DNI
~A Sick Angel~
“Can you please—”
“No.”
The past few minutes had been like talking to a brick wall. [REDACTED] hadn't let you move an inch from the bed since you’d woken up in an agonizing daze.
Sure, you felt like complete shit, maybe a little on the side of a fever. And the moment you sat up you wanted to scream. But it was manageable. If you tried, you'd be able to make it through a day at the library.
Blue eyes quickly narrowed, as if they knew exactly what you were thinking. It was frustrating how stubborn they could be when he wanted to.
You attempted to frown at your companion. Nothing really changed about your haggard expression—thanks to your face and entire body feeling like dead weight—but your tone worked well enough. “I need to go to work today.”
“Not happening,” he insisted as he reached up to your forehead.
You closed your eyes for just a second. His cold palm against your brow was too heavenly to ignore. “I don't want to let Elanor down. Today's really important for her,” you croaked.
They didn't bother to hide the momentary disgust in their tone at the mention of your coworker. “She wouldn't want y’working either, Angel.” As if to prove his point, they tapped away on your phone. He'd been holding it hostage behind his back.
Only a minute later, it dinged with a response and he finally held it out to you. Elanor had sent a polite and elaborate text as always. You read through it while he continued to run both of their cold hands over your heated face like two makeshift ice packs.
Good morning, [REDACTED]. At least I assume so from how brief that message was? Thank you for letting me know Y/N is ill! I'm sure they must be worried about missing today's event but we can handle it just fine! And I’m happy to take some pictures for them! Please take good care of them and give my well wishes. Regards, Elanor.
You raised an eyebrow and scrolled back up to the paltry message he'd sent her.
sick no work
Somehow, it was probably the nicest thing they'd ever managed to send any of your friends. You looked back up at him with what was meant to be a pout. “Okay then.”
With instant trust in your word, he stood up to leave the room. He soon returned with his arms full. A cold compress, medicine, some drinks, and anything else they thought you might need. You lightly rolled your neck and resigned to your fate as a patient when he sat next to you. The medicine and drink he offered were swallowed without fuss on your part, then you laid down. The throbbing pain already seemed to calm as you did.
The compress stayed at his side instead of being placed on your forehead like you thought. You felt their hand on your cheek yet again, a more noticeable chill to his rough skin this time.
“Just in case it feels too cold f’you,” he explained before you even asked.
It felt perfect, so you didn't mind at all. You practically purred in relief at the gentle circles they rubbed. You tiredly looked up to him as you complained, if only to tease them, “I'm a little disappointed you didn't bring out the nurse outfit.”
“‘Course you are.” His eyes lit up with mischief, a knowing smile cut across his lips to match your playful one. “I'll make it up t’you when y'feel better, yeah?” Their thumb slowly traced back and forth from one corner of your mouth to the other.
“Germs, you weirdo,” you reminded him. Though you didn't bother to shake off his hand, weak as you were. “You’ll get sick.”
“Y’worried about me, love? Cute. But I promise ‘M not gonna catch whatever you have that easy.” They leaned down to kiss your flushed temple, eventually settling propped up on one arm to lay as close as possible beside you. Faintly warm breath tickled the top of your head until you drifted back to sleep under their watchful gaze.
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K but the fact that Kristen is just a regular human being. Just a standard, average person in a land filled with mystical beings and magic spilling from every crack, nook and cranny.
And here's Kristen Applebees, the first born child of typical suburban parents, born into a religious neighborhood where everyone goes to church every Sunday and prays every night and everyone has a white picket fence with a perfect manicured lawn and not-so-subtly shuns those who are in anyway different from them.
Was Kristen not chosen by her God, by Helio himself, because of her perfect average parents with their perfect average house in their perfect average neighborhood?
Kristen wasn't rich, she didn't have a powerful bloodline, her parents weren't important, there was no prophecy foretelling her birth. No, Kristen was an attainable goal. Kristen was a good example for the youth, an example of what could be achieved if you just played along and played your part.
Kristen was destined to be the perfect picture of a devoted follower of Helio. She was the poster child, born smack dab in the center of Helio's flock, surrounded on all sides by followers and moulded into the perfect unquestioning chosen one since birth.
But by choosing Kristen, by marking her as property of a God, Helio gave Kristen power. Power over him, power over good and evil, the divine and infernal. Because Kristen is promised to Helio, because she was chosen by him and prophesied to be his, Kristen wields the power to start the end of days and crumble nations with a snap of her fingers. Should she want to, Kristen could destroy the world by simply not doing that, by not ending up in Helio's afterlife to live for eternity by his side, by proving a God wrong.
And it's with this power, this leverage that Kristen holds over Helio's neck like the sword of Damocles, that Kristen is able to free herself from his grasp. It's slow, at first. Joining a 'risky' school, meeting people outside of the religion, questioning elders, researching history and religions. And she doesn't understand how much power she has, not at first, because the power she possesses isn't magic, but a divine promise and unspoken rules that govern a world that she was never supposed to know.
But despite not having magic, despite being chosen for her averageness, despite being trained to be naive and blinded to the realities of the world, Kristen is overpowered as, if you'll excuse the pun, hell.
Helio creates divine religious scholars to protect her when she doubts and strays from him. Helio creates an entire new deity and religion for Kristen, allowing her to think that YES! (and, later, YES?) is it's own separate power from his and he does all of this, not out of generosity or love, but because he needs to keep Kristen alive. Kristen cannot die before she rejoins Helio's flock or the divine promise will break and Helio would be fucked.
So Helio gave her power under the pretense of it being from elsewhere, solely so that he could keep Kristen alive until he changed her mind.
And then! And then Kristen dies! And is revived. And she's Saint Kristen Applebees now (but the Saint of who?) and Helio has fully given up on her and turned his back on her (but his prophecy cannot be unspoken and he cannot be proven wrong so does he really? Can he really?) and Kristen finds a new God, a broken God and Kristen chooses her.
Kristen names her, creates her, Cassandra the Goddess of Doubt and Night, and Kristen finally has her religion, a source of power that doesn't stem from Helio, she's finally escaped his grasp.
And yet.
And yet, Helio still spoke his prophecy, still chose Kristen and she will always have that power over him.
And yet, in his own foolish shortsighted attempt to keep Kristen within his grasp, Helio still created a deity for her, a separate divine entity that chose her as well.
And yet, Kristen is still the undying, the follower of Night and Doubt, Saint Applebees, Creator of Cassandra.
With no real magic to speak of, with nothing special in her bloodline, with no real talents or money to her name, the perfect picture of normalcy in every way, Kristen has managed to twist the divine sphere around her little pinky finger. She has so much power and she has so little awareness of it.
And also she's going to be President, bitch.
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i dont really infodump in general at all but im doing it cus i need some ideas off my chest. do you freak with angst? perhaps an unhappy ending?
// sdr2 chapter 5+ending spoilers ig. kuzuhina au baybee
ok im, pretty positive that if there's two people left then neither of them can get out together and just split the prize bc that'd be pretty bullshit (idek if they ever cleared it up, imo tho one man standing would be the most logical)
so what if nagito DID bomb the island, taking everyone out?
fyi ive written this nearly entirely so im sparing u with a little summary(this is not a summary)
so bombs are spread all around the islands forreal this time. after nagito's video, a chain of them went off right as they were running out of the plushie factory, barely on time. everything started crumbling around them, and all the others were downed one by one, either caught in the explosions or crushed underneath falling structures
but somehow haj and fuyu survived, the others killed right in front of their own eyes. but they ran away, retreating to the warehouse, to which they find nagitos body. and the realization hits– it’s just them now, they’re the only ones left, and neither of them know what to do
im sure u can imagine hajime was fucking RAGING at that point just breaking down and stressing out
they didnt know what to do, they couldnt do anything, but fuyuhiko was here, so the first thing they did was to get off the island since the fire was spreading. from there, they wander around, hoping maybe then something would happen, but there wasn't any sight of monokuma or monomi. all they could do was look onto the destroyed islands, before they inevitably wait in a safe spot at the military base, officially at a dead end
they just kinda sit there for a while, not knowing what to do. but they cant wait here forever, and fuyuhiko knows what he has to do
eventually, he hands hajime a pistol(acquired from the truck of firearms outside), and asks him to kill him so it could finally be over
obviously hajime refuses at first, but fuyuhiko begs him, because he isn’t a good person and he doesn’t have much else to live for, while hajime has singlehandedly saved everyones asses, he deserved to escape more than anyone else here. by now, hajime was crying, but they’ve been at this dead end for so long, he knew he had to do it or else they’d never be getting off this island. so hajime just holds em close and says his final goodbyes (maybe a kiss teehee) before making it quick for him
pulling that trigger hurts him more than anything, ANYWAY BOOM hajime is the winner, simulation ends
also postgame babey; when things end here, hajime would wake up from the simulation, and since he never got to choose his own future alongside everyone else, he wakes up as izuru kamukura. he's not entirely empty i think, izuru and hajime still would have "merged" afterwards, so it'd moreso just be hajime somewhere in there half of the time just mourning but its deeply suppressed, but thats a WHOOLE thing to get into. he just chills
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