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thesoftboiledegg · 2 years

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What makes JKR's shitshow even harder to process is that she didn't just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don't know if I'd call it "underground," but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss's career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there's the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep...Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that's not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there's a thriving culture of "Harry Potter adults" with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the "bookish" community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we've all seen what a disaster that's been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it's just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn't seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don't want to seem like you're condoning JKR's bigotry but can't divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don't expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it's still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don't support her, it's just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I'd have a mild identity crisis. I'd ask myself "Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?"

So ultimately, JKR didn't ruin "just" a book series or even "just" a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series's legacy even without JKR's personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn't just tarnish her legacy--she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

#anti harry potter #anti jkr #anti jk rowling #harry potter critical #anti hp #text #jk rowling

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sharkshavebeenknowntosneeze · 1 year

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The first half of deathly hallows in 2 images

#the buuk #I might be a little late to the part e #harry potter and the deathly hallows #luke skywalker #Star Wars #obi-wan kenobi #albus dumbledore

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iamnmbr3 · 5 days

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That bit of Deathly Hallows where Draco is missing and Voldemort immediately assumes he ran off to befriend Harry and when Lucius tries to insist Draco wouldn't do that Voldemort's just basically like "lol ok u tell yourself that buddy but I'm not buying it" just absolutely sends me.

Voldemort was really out there in canon like 'i don't believe in love except for whatever it is that harry potter and draco malfoy have going on because wow. even i can't deny that.'

Like look at this. this is wild. And the best part is HE'S RIGHT. Draco did in fact run off to find Harry Potter. And then becomes absolutely hysterical and completely loses his composure when faced with the fact that Harry might get hurt.

#drarry #Harry Potter #hpdm #humor #Draco Malfoy #my post

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hmione · 11 months

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Emma Watson as Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

#hermione granger #emma watson #harry potter and the deathly hallows #harry potter #hpedit #pottersource #userwizarding #dailywizardwheezes #moviegifs #filmgifs #filmedit #*

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forestdeath1 · 2 months

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Canon Sirius through quotes

Part 1. Appearance

In the canon, he's described as handsome 3 times from Harry's point of view - but never pretty. By the way, Harry has only described four people as handsome (+ Tom Riddle, Cedric Diggory and Gellert Grindelwald).

"Sirius was tall and handsome. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face."

"Beside him was Sirius, carelessly handsome, his slightly arrogant face so much younger and happier than Harry had ever seen it alive."

"Sirius stared around at the students milling over the grass, looking rather haughty and bored, but very handsomely so."

"Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking; his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James’s nor Harry’s could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn’t seem to have noticed."

"He's still handsome, isn't he, even after Azkaban?" (Tonks about Sirius, Pottermore)

So, Sirius was handsome, but definitely not pretty. The word handsome can be used for all genders, highlighting attributes like strength, elegance, or a more classic form of beauty.

His height is described as tall several times. James is described as the same height as Harry in the Deathly Hallows, meaning at the time of his death James was as tall as Harry in the 7th book: “James was exactly the same height as Harry”. He was described as tall in later books but not as tall as other characters like Dumbledore, Ron, Sirius, Draco, Tom Riddle, Bill.

In England, as in most Western countries, a man is usually considered tall if he is over 6 feet. Typically, very tall is considered to be 6 feet 3 inches and above. So, James could be somewhere from 6 to 6'3", and Sirius taller, say 6'3"-6'4", Remus possibly under 6', but not short, since Harry doesn't note his height at all.

"To Sirius’s right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter, plump and watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in this coolest of gangs, with the much admired rebels that James and Sirius had been."

The average head length of an adult, regardless of gender and age, usually about 8.7 to 9.8 inches. So, Peter was noticeably shorter.

6'3"-6'4" is indeed very tall. (When fanon gives Remus a height of 6.7, I wonder, have you often seen such giants in real life? My granddad is 6'8" – and he's huge to me, frighteningly so.)

After Azkaban and in the fifth book, he has long hair, but in the fourth book, when Sirius is doing well and is relaxing somewhere in the south, he has short hair.

"Sirius looked different – the hair was short and clean now, Sirius’ face was fuller, and he looked younger, much more like the only photograph Harry had of him, which had been taken at the Potters’ wedding."

"Sirius, when he still had short hair" (Moody about Sirius in the Order of the Phoenix photo)

Though in the story about Sirius and James for the auction, Sirius had long hair in 1977:

"The one who had been driving had long black hair; his insolent good looks reminded Fisher unpleasantly of his daughter’s guitar-playing, layabout boyfriend."

I prefer him with long hair, so that's usually what I go with.

Build isn't described. We know Regulus was definitely smaller than Sirius, but nothing specific about Sirius himself.

"Regulus was instantly recognisable as the boy sitting in the middle of the front row: he had the same dark hair and slightly haughty look of his brother, though he was smaller, slighter and rather less handsome than Sirius had been."

His animagus form is a bear-like dog of huge size, but that’s a weak argument.

"The enormous, bear-like dog bounded forwards."

Perhaps canonically Sirius was naturally inclined to muscle (i.e., tall and muscular rather than lanky, because lankiness usually suggests skinniness. Regulus, likely, was lanky), but since he probably didn't engage in activities like workouts, he wasn't exactly buff. Muscles don't just appear out of thin air, but some people are naturally more muscular. Basically, a normal build that doesn't need any special description (not bulky, not skinny, just normal, but tall).

He definitely doesn’t have any tattoos described, but it's unlikely Harry would have inspected every part of his body for tattoos... So, I don’t quite get it when someone says "Sirius didn’t have tattoos". It's a blank slate.

#sirius black #the marauders #sirius black meta #hp meta #the marauders meta #padfoot

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gildedmist · 2 years

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Deathly Hallows deleted scene (x)

Bonus book quote version:

#hp #harry james potter #ron weasley #deathly hallows part two #hpedit #I'd totally forgotten about this line #until I saw another post about it recently #harry's chaotic bi energy strikes again #myedits.

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sundrop-writes · 7 months

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My Bleeding Heart

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader

Summary:

When Draco finds out that you are pregnant, he can't bring himself to be happy about the news because he doesn't want to bring a child into this wartorn world just to be another pawn in the Dark Lord's games. So, then and there, he makes a very important decision to risk everything in order to protect you and his future child.

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader. Arranged Marriage. Angst (with a Fluffy Ending). Set during Deathly Hallows.

Word Count: 3,400

Harry Potter Masterlist | AO3 Link

Full list of warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: the reader is pregnant in this fic; this is set during Deathly Hallows and there are a lot of themes from that era - death, blood purity ideals, general violence, murder, mentions of Draco being tasked with killing Dumbledore; Draco and the reader live in an environment where they fear for their lives because they don't believe in Death Eater values completely and fear being killed for it; Draco and the reader are in an arranged marriage meant to carry on blood purity - but they have fallen in love in the marriage; the reader is a pureblood, but I have not mentioned her being related to any canon characters, so her appearance/race is not defined; general emotional angst - Draco fears for his own life, your life, and the fate of your unborn child if they are born into pureblood society; in the first half, there is some arguing/tension between Draco and the reader (but it's mostly due to the emotional tension of their situation); mentions of Dumbledore's death; non detailed mentions of sex (that's how we got the baby, duh) (sadly no smut); passing mention of abortion/pregnancy termination (they both want the child but fear for the child's safety in this environment); semi-graphic mentions of consensually inflicted injuries - Draco gets the reader to cut off the skin with his Dark Mark on it so that he can't be tracked or summoned with it; these warnings make it seem like a really dark fic but the ending is really fluffy I promise; toward the end, the reader and Draco have a toddler who refers to them as 'Mummy' and 'Daddy', and I think that is about it.

Author's Notes: The prompt of 'character finds out you are pregnant' was originally from the fluff prompts list, but because this is Draco, I couldn't help but to throw some angst in here. Because I imagine that if Draco was still living with his parents and surrounded by Death Eaters and the blood purity ideals, he would be very hesitant to want a child of his own because he wouldn't want a child to be tainted by all of it the way that he had been. Because at a certain point, the pride he felt turned sour. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy because this does get fluffy toward the end.

...

Terror.

That was the very first thing Draco could tangibly say that he was feeling.

The last two years of his life had been a sickening rollercoaster of utter chaos, and quite frankly, he had become numb to it all. He had to force himself to be numb, otherwise he wouldn’t have survived. And currently, survival was his only feasible goal. But this - this news touching his ears was one thing that woke up his senses from that numbness and sent him rocketing into the harshness of reality. This made him feel again, in the worst ways. Suddenly he was nauseous, shaking, blood rocketing against his ear drums, creating a harsh thumping in seconds.

He wished that he had heard you wrong.

“Are - are you sure?” He stuttered out, feeling his hands becoming exceptionally clammy as he clutched them around nothing, his feet unsteady on the ground.

You saw him becoming remarkably pale for someone who was already so papery toned on a normal day, and you worried that he was going to faint. You worried that his harsh reaction meant that he hated the idea of you being pregnant - that he was angry with you. Of course, you realised that the fault wasn’t all on you, that was just nature. But part of you thought that he put the onus on you to take care of birth control, using potions or spells, because he had been worried about so many other things since the start of your relationship.

Up until now, you weren’t sure if you wanted what they wanted. You weren’t naive enough to look beyond the reason you had married Draco in the first place. You were there to produce the next pureblood heir with him. Originally, you had thought it was romantic, in a sense. But when you had met Draco’s family, the people he was surrounded with, the people who called themselves Death Eaters - you realised that it most certainly wasn’t an ideal environment to bring a child into.

Killing at the drop of a hat, torturing, murdering the innocent - those weren’t ideals that you wanted your child to be brought up on.

“Draco, sit down, please,” You put a hand on his shoulder, trying to usher him toward one of the expensive chairs sitting in the corner of his room.

You had stolen him away for a rare moment of privacy between meetings and Death Eaters traipsing around the house. These days, his parents always demanded that the two of you make good on appearances because you were supposed to be the sweet young couple, the future of the pureblood line.

“Are you sure?” He whispered the question much more harshly, the words hissed through his lips like pure venom as he desperately waited for you to confirm it.

He let himself be guided by you and collapsed down into the chair, sitting with his head in his hands, ruffling up his usually neat, slicked-back hair with rough, stressful fingers through it.

Your stomach twisted with your own unique stress as you watched him. You hadn’t seen him so distraught since his first failed attempt on the mission he had been given last year.

“I’m sure.” You said. “I went to the apothecary and got one of the test potions-”

“A store bought test potion?” Draco hissed.

He gave you the harshest glare that you had ever seen from him, which was saying something considering the looks of pure disdain he had given you upon first meeting. His jaw was set so tightly that it looked as though his molars were going to crush in on themselves at any moment.

Your posture shrunk back, desperately trying to hide from his invasive stare. You wished that you could have burrowed under the floorboards at that point.

You knew that it was fear and panic about the situation at large, all the death you had been surrounded with compounding onto him. But you hated that he was inadvertently taking it out on you.

After a moment of you not speaking, Draco continued.

“I should have made it myself, if you had just told me-”

“Yes, and nobody would have become suspicious if you were mulling around, gathering the ingredients for a pregnancy test potion.” You snapped back.

Draco’s face grew even more sickly at this, and you knew that you were both silently on the same page - nobody else in the house could know that you were pregnant. If they even suspected it, then it was over.

He heaved a sigh, gathering all of his thoughts before he chose one to bring to open air.

“Were you seen?” He asked, still tearing into you indignantly, talking to you as though you were stupid.

“No.” You told him, entirely certain. “I wore a large cloak with a hood, it was dark. Nobody recognized me.”

He gave you a distinct frown that said he was unsure of the truth in your words, and you rushed to trample over his potential sarcastic remark with your own.

“I suppose they don’t recognize me when I’m not on your arm, anyway.”

You scoffed out the last part, talking about this fact with distaste even though in actuality it was something you loved. You felt safe when you were with Draco. You couldn’t imagine facing the scowling faces without his arm around you.

But you knew that’s all you were in this society - Draco’s wife. That’s all you had been labelled as since you had been shipped over from America by your godmother.

You were the last of your noble pureblood family’s line. Your parents had been killed by Aurors in the name of Voldemort’s cause during the first war. After their deaths, you had been sent to live with your godmother in America, never truly understanding how your parents were killed or why.

The whole reason you had met Draco in the first place - an arranged marriage. Something that would have honoured your parents, apparently.

The Malfoys had been looking for a pureblood match around Draco’s age, and they had once known your parents, and thought of you as a good prestigious pureblood girl to marry their son. It didn’t take them long to find you, even though you didn’t mingle in pureblood society like they did. (Something they found to be a big shame and a horror upon your parents’ memory.)

Your godmother sold you out for a ‘dowry’ of two thousand Galleons, and from there, your life became a living hell.

Strangely enough, Draco had been the one anchor keeping you alive in it.

Most would say that it was because he was kind by comparison, but truly - he was easy to fall in love with when he was compassionate, sweet, loving in the smallest ways that made you feel safe during some of the most hectic times of your life.

Draco had never intended to get attached to you.

But like anything in his life - pining for the crumbs of his father’s approval, digging under all the proprietary for a single genuine gesture of affection from his mother - Draco’s heart kept beating as much as he tried to turn it off. He convinced himself that he was solid stone, but apparently, you were the pickaxe that made him crumble to pieces. After meeting him, you burrowed through the layers of snide coldness and dark humour that he used in an effort to put you off and you found that still beating heart. That soft thing that he hated so much about himself.

You dug that heart out of his chest, and - despite his best efforts to fight you off, you nursed that heart back to health. And you gave him the closest thing he had experienced to ‘love’ in years.

On the day the two of you got married, when Dumbledore’s dead body was barely cold, Draco said his vows to you with nothing but honesty in his heart. And that night, he made love to you with intense passion, held you in his arms as though you might slip away if he didn’t grip onto you tight enough. And only after you had fallen asleep in his arms, was when he allowed himself to cry. Because he knew that they now had one more way to make him hurt if they wanted to. They could kill him, they could stop the breath in his lungs, but he would die a million deaths through you being hurt in the smallest of ways before that happened.

And now - with this utterly horrifying revelation, they had new ways to hurt him. He should have died a lone man. He should have let them kill him instead of agreeing to any of this in the first place. He shouldn’t have learned to love - he shouldn’t have grown these new limbs that they could cut off savagely and tear apart in front of him.

“I got another one.” You announced when the room had grown too quiet, silent tears streaming down Draco’s face as he sat in intense contemplation. “Another test potion. An extra. I figured you’d want to see it with your own eyes.”

Even though the two of you had only met two short years ago - you knew him too well. You knew that he would want visual confirmation before his own eyes.

“Get it. Please.” He said, trying his best not to let his throat drown in these tears. He wouldn’t be reduced to sobbing.

You went to your cloak, which was hung on a hook in an opposite corner of the room, and grabbed the potion vial out of your pocket. Your shoes clacking against the floor made a terribly hollow soundtrack to the whole thing as you ripped off the small tag that was tied to the neck of the potion bottle and handed it to Draco. He read the instructions on it while you uncorked the potion.

It was simple: you put some sample of your DNA in the bottle - a hair, a small bit of blood, something like that. And then if the potion changed colours to glow white, it meant that you were pregnant. If it made no change from its original, soupy grey colour - then you weren’t pregnant.

He watched, holding his breath as you plucked a single hair from your head and then dropped it into the now open top of the bottle. When the hair made contact with the liquid, it bubbled slightly as it dissolved. Then - after only a moment, the bottle began to shake roughly in your hand as it changed colour, and surely enough - it glowed brightly white.

You were definitely pregnant.

Draco’s nausea increased. And then - in a moment, he felt a fierce sense of protectiveness wash over him. It was as though he had been slapped sharply across the face, woken up from the blind numbness he had been feeling. He knew at that moment that he needed to take action. He couldn’t simply stand by and let things happen around him anymore. He could simply sit around hoping for safety, hoping for some miracle to save the two of you.

“Happy?” You scoffed.

You took Draco’s lack of words as a negative - a sign that he was certainly unhappy with the news.

Not that you were entirely thrilled under the present circumstances - you were scared, stressed, and hating it because you had always wanted children, but not like this.

You placed the potion down on the nearest table and stormed off to the bathroom attached to Draco’s bedroom. He chased you, catching the door before you could slam it closed and lock it.

You conceded to his movements quickly and simply turned to face the sink, unable to look at him right now. You turned it on, splashing cold water on your face, trying your best not to freak out because clearly he was already playing that role. He walked up behind you, gently pressing his body into yours. Even under these circumstances, you found his presence so comforting. You found his body behind you to be nothing but a wall of safety, and you couldn’t help but to lean back into him, your eyes still tightly closed.

Draco reached around you and gently pressed his hand into your stomach - you held back tears of your own now. Clearly, you were both thinking the same thing. Thinking of the unborn child that you both needed to protect. You placed your hand over his, seeking comfort in his touch as he flattened a palm across your stomach.

It was a world shattering revelation to know that his child was resting under his hand.

“No one can find out about this.” He muttered quietly into your neck.

It was something Draco dreaded - them finding out about your pregnancy.

This is what they had been waiting for. This was the reason for the marriage in the first place. This was the pureblood heir - this was their chess piece.

Draco wouldn’t let his child become another pawn in their games.

“It’s still early.” You choked out quietly. “There are other potions. We could-” You choked on your own words, unable to even speak it aloud.

Draco dug his fingers into the fabric of your shirt protectively, quite insulted at the insinuation.

“No.” He replied, his voice rough with anger. “Unless the idea of being pregnant with my child is so utterly horrible to you-”

“It’s not that!”

You screeched, forcefully turning in his arms, wanting to face him. He kept one hand on your hip, and moved the other up to gently grasp your cheek, thumbing away your tears as they gathered. It was that gentleness that always got you. His natural instinct to comfort you.You leaned into his touches as you continued.

“I want this baby more than anything. I - I’m just terrified they’ll see that as a weakness.”

You knew it was the truth. Especially when Draco’s sullen face confirmed it. In this circle, loving anything or anyone was a weakness that could be exploited.

Draco leaned in and kissed your forehead. You closed your eyes, letting the single, solitary moment of peace wash over you.

“I’ll protect you.” He declared, his voice whisper-quiet, but nearly broken with the intensity of his words. “Both of you.” He added this on as he brushed his palm over your stomach once again.

Again, you laid your hand over his, uttering quiet assurances of love toward your unborn child.

“Draco, how-?”

He didn’t let you finish the question.

“We’ll leave. We’re leaving. Tonight.” He declared firmly.

It was something you had suggested before - to protests from Draco, many scathing comments poking holes in your plans. His parents would be killed if he left. At this point, he had to surrender to the idea that they could take care of themselves - that they had made their bed and they had to lie in it. But now that he had the Dark Mark, they would be able to find him, wherever he went. But he would find some harsh way around that.

Now that he had so much more at stake, he couldn’t care if his parents died because of his actions. He had so much more that he had to protect.

“I’ll cut off my bloody arm if I have to.” Draco mumbled quietly, and then turned sharply from the bathroom, leaving to pack.

…

“Daddy, Mummy’s not being fair! She won’t let me play with the jellyfish!”

“Draco, can you please explain to your daughter that jellyfish are dangerous and she can’t play with them?” You replied, trying your best to haul your toddler away from the rough rocks at the water’s edge where the creature had washed up.

“Love, why don’t you come and play with your toys over here?” Draco posed, trying to draw her attention toward something else. She was much like himself as a child - determined, stubborn, and wouldn’t do anything unless she believed it was her own idea first. “Come and show Daddy how to build a sand castle, hmm?”

She seemed to perk up at this. She was clever, and over-eager to show off her skills. More than eager to show her father how to do something properly if she felt that he wasn’t doing it right. This happened with everything from the way he spread marmalade on his toast to the way he tied his shoes - something she had just learned how to do that she was eager to show off her expertise in.

As she tore out of your arms and trudged across the beach to scoop some sand into her bucket, Draco had to be thankful as he watched you follow slowly behind. Purely thankful of the fact that the biggest danger your daughter had to worry about was something like a stray jellyfish washed up on shore.

Three years after escaping a life of servitude toward the Dark Lord in England, you and Draco enjoyed a quiet life with your daughter Aster in France.

You sat down beside Draco with a huff, picking up the book you had previously been reading. You flashed him a grateful smile as he listened to Aster’s detailed instructions about how they should build their castle. He gave you a wide grin in return, and you felt your insides tingle. His smile used to be something as rare as a Basilisk, but now he wore it proudly and more often - he wore his happiness without restraint.

With the short-sleeved, light linen shirt that he had on for the beach, the scar on his forearm was fully visible. It reminded you of the brave choices he had made on that night three years ago.

You had convinced Draco not to cut off his arm completely, but the two of you knew that the Dark Mark needed to go. Otherwise, the two of you could never run far enough, you would have nowhere to hide. So now he sported a large scar where you had held him down and cut the skin off with a sharp knife. That night, his parents had found his room empty, save for the flap cut-off skin in the middle of his bloody bedroom floor. Luckily, you had a talent for healing spells and Draco had been able to knick a few good potions from his family’s cupboards before the two of you left.

On the outside, it was jagged and ugly. But when he looked at it, it reminded him of nothing but freedom - of the love you had committed to him that day, to your unborn daughter.

With a couple thousand Galleons in gold taken from his parents’ stash, the two of you started a new life. You were untraceable and happy. And though there was intense relief when you read in the papers that Potter had succeeded in defeating the Dark Lord and that meant the war was over - the two of you didn’t have any plans to go back to England anytime soon.

Not when your new life was this good.

“-and see, you need to dig down until you find the sand that’s wet, that makes a good castle-” Aster drawled on, piercing her toy shovel into the ground frantically as she spoke.

Draco nodded, giving her a smile as he followed her instructions. “Yes, yes. I see. Very smart girl.”

He had gotten the two of you away from that life, and not for a moment had your daughter ever known the kind of pain or fear that you had.

“Daddy’s learning a lot today, isn’t he?” You remarked, giving Draco a sly grin.

“Good thing I’ve got this smart girl here to teach me,” He said, leaning over and giving Aster a kiss on the forehead.

That was another thing that made you fall even deeper in love with him - the droves of affection he gave to his daughter. Now that he wasn’t being watched so closely, now that he wasn’t expected to be the picture perfect son, he could love her exactly how he wanted to. He didn’t have to worry about propriety or appearing weak.

Aster giggled at this, and Draco blew raspberries on her cheek before kissing her again. She then rallied Draco up to go to the shoreline for a bucket of water. As you watched them walk hand in hand, you felt your heart ache from how overwhelmingly full of love you were.

Somehow, you found yourself endlessly thankful for the rocky road of fate that had brought you here.

#sundrop writes #draco malfoy #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter fandom #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x you #draco malfoy fanfiction #draco malfoy x y/n

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saintsenara · 6 months

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What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicate the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.

#asks answered #asenora on canon

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