#do the junior death eaters have a mascot? i think NOT

[birlwrites]

Okay so more questions fjsbsjsjsj: Who is your favorite OC in ttdl and why? Ramble to us about themmmmm

HMMMMMMMMMM

alright i have to say i've been obsessed with priam lately - i think my favorite OC is likely to change a lot depending on who i'm thinking about at any given time, because there was also a period in which i was obsessed with heather. geoff always deserves better and megan is always fun. but i haven't talked about priam much so i'm gonna do that here!

priam is one of the people who would have been contenders to take over the dark arts study group after horatio nott if regulus hadn't jumped in and seized it. he's not bothered by this because he is pretty chill for a slytherin - if regulus wants to run the study group and be liable for everything that happens there, so be it, priam is fine with that

BUT. he was not always so chill. actually he was always pretty chill with regard to dark arts. but he was a huge neurotic mess for uh. let's call it a year or so. because of his embarrassingly massive crush on heather. it was disastrous. she knew about it for months he's lucky she found it endearing

but by the time that ttdl starts they've been dating for a while (a couple of years which is ETERNAL for teenagers) so he's considerably more relaxed around her

okay now on to my favorite thing about priam which is his absolutely shit eyesight!!! i'm joking but also i'm not. i can feel my vision getting worse so i really relate to him afjslghskfjslskjf

my actual favorite thing about priam is actually more about his family magic. he's a parkinson, which means he deals with enchanted/cursed objects. he has this super cool workshop at home that definitely has all sorts of magical gizmos and cool shit - also the wood for his wand came from a grove of trees on the grounds of the parkinson estate

ON TO HIS GLASSES WHICH ARE THE ACTUAL POINT OF THIS

so priam actually has 3 pairs of glasses, but to anyone who isn't a parkinson, he appears to only have 1. they are completely identical... unless you can see the enchantments on them. which most parkinsons can!

the reason priam needs enchanted glasses is specifically *because* he can see magic. (he also needs glasses in general but like, this is why they're enchanted.) it's not like the blacks, who can feel the presence/absence of magic (more on that in a few chapters) - parkinsons can see *acts* of magic. so, spells, enchantments, runes, wandwork, potions (yes potions tend to be visible to all, but parkinsons can tell what they do)

different parkinsons have different strengths when it comes to this - some find certain types of magic easier than others to identify. they can train their eyesight - to develop a particular skill, switch around between types of magic more easily, or just get more dextrous with it in general. they are working on figuring out a way to train their eyesight to be Less Fucking Nearsighted (the eye strain struggles are REAL, and also it's a side effect of the parkinsons choosing, magically speaking, to focus on the fine details)

so, priam's glasses. as i said, he needs them because he is nearsighted. the reason he has 3 pairs with varying levels of enchantment is so he can have varying levels of blocking out magic, because he lives at magic school surrounded by magic students who constantly do magic when they're not supposed to and that's not even taking into consideration the enchanted portraits and all the spellwork they do in class and--anyway priam needs enchanted glasses so he's not super overstimulated all the time

(like - enchanted portrait? priam sees the magic. moving photos in the newspaper? he sees the magic. schoolwork? cosmetic charms? basically every single book? enchanted quills and candy? how is he not constantly in the middle of a meltdown? special glasses.)

so he has his Work Glasses (just plain regular unenchanted ones, for when he needs to see everything), his Everyday Glasses (dim the magic halfway - he can see it, but it's subtle), and his I'm So Tired Of This Shit Please Make It Stop Glasses (block the magic out entirely, which feels weird to priam because he's used to just. *seeing* way more, so that's why he uses the halfway ones as his day-to-day glasses - some of his family members block out the magic entirely by default because they don't want to deal with that shit).

priam pretty much always wears the third pair in classes where there's a lot of magic flying around, but it's not dangerous enough for him to want to keep an eye on it - charms is a good example

the glasses are identical to non-parkinson eyes/without a magical examination, but priam can tell them apart super easily just by looking at the vibes (when he's not wearing his complete-blocker ones). he only has one glasses case, but it uses an undetectable expansion charm and some other magic and stuff so it can store all his glasses while making it look like he only has one pair - like, you know how on a ferris wheel, there are multiple cars/carriages/whatever, but only one of them is on the bottom at a time and they rotate? that's what the glasses case is like, except you can't see the glasses that aren't in the front position, and the glasses in the front position look like they're the only ones in the case. SO priam can carry around all his glasses at once in case he needs to switch, which he usually does under the guise of needing to clean them, as he has 3 actually identical cleaning cloths in his glasses case

AND at home in his funky workshop he also has... you guessed it.... EVEN MORE GLASSES!!!!! and just more eyewear in general, like there are goggles and such. they all do different things - emphasize certain types of magic and deemphasize others, magnify vision and such. and they also have corrective lenses because, again, he's nearsighted as shit

ADDITIONALLY another fun thing priam and his family can do is 'zoom in' on their vision and do things on that scale. this is either a skill they can practice or a handy-dandy set of goggles they can use to help, made by them. you know how when you zoom in on a digital drawing, you can make changes on a much smaller scale than when you're at 100%? that's how it works. for a parkinson, magnifying their vision allows them to navigate the world on that level. like suddenly, priam can draw polka dots on an ant

it doesn't really work the other way around - like, if you 'zoom out' your vision, suddenly everything looks super distorted as your eyes and brain try to fill in new stuff, and it's just super disorienting, so not a skill they try to cultivate

also, you remember miles mckinnon, marlene's cousin in third year who is now in regulus's study group? he's decided priam is now his role model for all things magic, and where miles goes, his pack of slightly hazardous loud friends follows. priam is trying to prevent this from becoming a problem because he takes lab safety responsible magical experimentation very seriously

final priam thoughts: the greatest tragedy about him as a character is that due to his milieu he has no idea what a rube goldberg machine and thus does not realize he could make the most LEGENDARY ones ever. i am saddened

#this one is for the test studying i did #i have more to do on that sjflskhgafh so keep sending stuff in #should i make an inbox tag #dark lord wip #priam: *is in the dark arts group* #miles: *grabby hands* MENTOR #priam: UH #but he's rolling with it #and suspects miles partially wanted to befriend him in the hopes of befriending priscilla #which. good luck on that afjskghjskfj #honestly priscilla should attend the dark arts study group meetings #now that heather and priam are both there she'll probably find her way in at some point #she would definitely have a lot to say about the shenanigans that go on in there #mostly along the lines of 'mrow' #do the junior death eaters have a mascot? i think NOT #they don't even have a SNAKE. PATHETIC