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juodojimirtis · 11 months

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Adriel from Warrior Nun is such a great example of the traditional Antichrist image in media.

Adriel has similarities to both the Antichrist and Satan, really. For example, he was imprisoned for a thousand years. If I remember correctly, in the traditional Christian timeline, Satan is imprisoned for a thousand years, then released, the Earth experiences a period of Tribulation, after which comes the whole Eschaton. Adriel was imprisoned for a thousand years. Tribulation is supposed to last for seven years I think, but the Antichrist apparently rules for three and a half (according to Revelation). In Warrior Nun, Adriel "reigns" for two months, but who knows, William Miller was so active in the efforts to save the show, maybe he'll return for season 3 (#warriornunsaved). We can only hope. Besides, Adriel's girlfriend's name is Lilith...

Now, let's start from the obvious. The Mark of the Beast. The ironic part - the Mark is a cross (eh, still, "Six six six, Number of the Beast" sounds better than "Spiked Cross, Symbol of the Beast", or something like that). Adriel's followers have it tattooed (be it not necessarily on the forehead, or the right hand). The show didn't portray it as needed for things like buying and selling (Rev. 13:18), it's more symbolic. But, Adriel is merciless to opposition, he tortures them, intimidates them, kills them, and, his weird burning light scorches them. Very on-point for the Antichrist.

"The Beast" in Rev. has seven heads and ten horns. I haven't noticed a nod to it (let me know if anyone else did), nor to leopards, but one of the heads is supposed to have a healed mortal wound, which makes people hail the Beast. Adriel literally receives a head wound that heals in Season 1 finale. And, he gets stabbed in the neck in S2. On live TV. And heals. Then laughs like a crazy person. The whole "who could compare to the Beast" is true in the show - people literally have posters saying "Only Adriel can save you". Like Kristian said, he's here. He's not an idea, he's not distant. He's living and breathing, and among people.

The Second Beast, or the False Prophet, I think is Kristian. The False Prophet is essentially The Antichrist's PR angent, which is a good way to describe Kristian. He helps Adriel perform his false miracles, he does his best to convert people (most notably Jillian and Duretti). Also, Kristian is a former clergyman who lost his faith in pursuit of "truth". Very fitting.

Rev. makes it clear that the Beast comes before the Great Battle. Lilith mentions there's a "Holy War" coming. Adriel was doing his best to stop it. That's all I need to say.

The Antichrist is supposed to blaspheme against God. If Reya is "God", Adriel certainly does that. But... Is she? I have my suspicions about her. I wouldn't be surprised if she were the Dragon instead, Adriel being her "Beast with Wrath", who maybe rebelled against her. She is a being of Light (Lucifer...), her servants are suspiciously demonic. Still... Would Adriel identify with Satan, then? The "Devourer of Worlds" he spoke of coud be someone else entirely.

V. Soloviov describes the Antichrist as someone with plans to bring great things to mankind, someone who would inspire peace, not war. That's literally Adriel. Adriel also doesn't "deny God" - he either seeks to be superior, or portrays himself as the Messiah for his own gains. Adriel is extremely intelligent, charming, powerful, and extremely prideful (not to mention attractive). He doesn't exactly become the President of Europe, neither the Emperor of Rome, but people for sure do give him the highest of honours (it's a shame the show didn't pay too much attention to his political influence; he's a born politician, he's so Machiavellian). Adriel seeks to take over the Church. He offers great gifts to Religions (I assume not only Catholicism, but others too; he focuses so much of Catholicism because of it's power, as well as a personal vendetta) if they cooperate with him. He demands to be recognized as the true Lord and Savior, and he wants to erase Christ. Duretti refuses, so he's killed with the whole World as the witness. I'm sure if the season were longer, Kristian would have become the Pope (he reminds me so much of Apollonius, even though Apollonius is obviously meant to be Rasputin; when you compare Soloviov's work to historical context (Russian Empire), the allegories are clear - people often write what they know after all, and philosophers criticise their own society). Adriel scorns the notion of "higher life", wants to create "Heaven on Earth". He literally asks " What about this World?" The Opposition isn't banished to the desert in a literal sense, but is small, and has to go into hiding, however briefly.

That being said, shame on Duretti. How hard was it to shout "Children, Antichrist!" while pointing at Adriel?.. Would have been more impactful than a dusty Bible verse.

According to Soloviov, the Antichrist builds a cathedral to unite all cults. That, I need not comment on. Like the Antichrist, Adriel writes his own Bible. Shame we never learn more about it.

Soloviov describes the Antichrist's followers as a "nameless crowd". The FBC, and Adriel's followers, match such a description. That being said, they have a great taste for uniforms. He also mentions how the Antichrist's miracles only appear supernatural to people. Use of ArqTech, anyone?.. Besides, it can also be true because Adriel isn't a biblical entity, he only pretends to be one.

Lithuanian author A. D. Jakštas described the Antichrist as becoming incredibly cruel to opposition once masses follow him. It isn't portrayed too widely in the show, but implied pretty heavily, and in more ways than a burning light from the sky. I had to mention one of my own at least once, and without a comparison of the Antichrist to Soviet Russia or bolsheviks. I know why people did so (especially when Christianity functioned as an important part of cultural resistance), but still, it's incredibly hurtful to me personally, to see a concept I admire (the Antichrist) compared to something I despise.

I guess one could wonder if the show's creators knew about such views, given Adriel said something about power being shared by everyone, not hoarded by gods, but at the same time, his actions reflected the hypocrisy of... certain regimes and so-called philosophies. I wouldn't be surprised. They clearly knew what they were doing. Was I upset about it, being a fan of Adriel? Of course. But artists do what they want. I always say that, I must stand by that. Oh, and I'd rather not have arguments about politics with anyone. We're here for Warrior Nun, not that.

R. H. Benson describes a leader who rises above all nations of the world, and who has an incredible ability to manipulate people's minds and lives. That's Adriel. The world flourishss in regards to science and culture. That can be said about the Warrior Nun Universe. The author identifies the Antichrist with the Freemasons. That isn't reflected in the show. But, the show does portray a conflict of Christianity and other movements - both with Adriel, and with ArqTech.

Like R. H. Benson describes, Adriel is talked about by everyone (social media...), many have a good opinion of him even before meeting him. He's charismatic, knows a lot of languages, can be described as an erudite (why does he have a bunch of books in piles on his porch, I'm not sure, but he deserves a Supernanny finger wag for it... At least.) There isn't an episode of like... All countries signing a peace treaty, but it's something I think Adriel would have them do. Again, I think he deserved more screen time. The effect he, and his cult, had on society, deserved more screentime. We only see his followers chanting his name. What other forms of worship does FBC practice? What are their main philosophical and theological dogmas? How to they reflect in daily life? What is written in Adriel's Bible? And so much more.

Adriel obviously idolizes peace, as I've mentioned already. A direct quote from him: "Hasn't humanity suffered enough?" I think that could be from Benson. He creates a new religion. I'm sure Adrielism has it's own ceremonies, feast days... So much potential. Of course, it's new, and it needs better liturgy. A proper hymn or two. Adriel, honey, come on... You had a thousand years. "Ave Adriel, Salvatore Mundi..."? Or something?

Adriel calls himself the Savior. I think the only reason why the show's creatos may not have had him call himself the Alpha and the Omega (the Beginning and the End), is because they are in touch with fandom culture... We all know how these beautiful Greek words have been desecrated in our demented world. We all know... If you don't, I beg you, stat innocent. Stay sane.

Adriel does not desecrate religious sites. But maybe his followers do. I wouldn't put it past FBC, running around the streets with bats. Cultists will be cultists.

I think WN takes place in current times (2000 20's). So, first half of the 21st century. According to many, that's when the Antichrist is supposed to show up. I'm not Ava. I will not make any jokes about the current state of the world.

Adriel certainly imitates Christ enough. His Messiah Classic fashion (which he looks rather attractive in), walking on water... Don't you, Mr. Walks Barefoot In Dead Insect Fountain Water Soup?.. And, not only imitates. He inverts. He builds an inverted temple.

Like the Antichrist according to Spirago, Adriel lets people live how they wish, do what they want (the scene in S2E1 illustrates it well - the one where Vincent "brings a lady home"). Spirago says that the Antichrist will have an easy time fighting Christianity because of godlessness in the world. I think, Adriel has an easy time for other reasons - Christianity has been used in many horrible crimes, and he has many good arguments, even though his "I ask for nothing" isn't exactly true.

The Pope defends the faithful (according to many authors). Which Duretti does, despite all his machinations. I saw some say he cared only for his own power, but I doubt it. Did he care for his own power? Yes. But did he also sincerely saw a threat to everyone in Adriel, and wanted to help others by exposing him? Also yes.

Can the OCS be seen as the religious order opposing the Antichrist spoken of by some?.. I's say so. They are his main adversaries. His main capable adversaries. Despite the irony of him helping create the Order. Now as I mention it, was Areala supposed to be the original Second Beast? Maybe. The only theory I really entertain about the early OCS, is that Adriel was really in love with Areala, and she with him, but she saw him for the... Beast he was, so she sacrificed herself, and her heart, for everyone else. Parallels with The Omen III, huh?..

Adriel has a whole army (FBC), even though his Capital is Madrid, not Babylon. Adriel talks about the tendency of people to worship money, in spite of avoiding the strategy in favor of terror. He doesn't raise the dead (Ava does...), or heal the sick, but he talks about it. His followers being possessed also reminds me of something. I don't remember who said it, yet apparently, the people the Antichrist resurrects are supposed to be devils in disguise.

The moments ifn the show of various screens showing Adriel's broadcast... That screamed Antichrist. And him killing the Pope. Everyone talks about the shot of Vincent putting the Crown on Ava. For me, it's Adriel striking Duretti. That scene makes my heart skip a beat, it's so beautiful. So meaningful.

I didn't go as in-depth as I thought I would, directly mentioned only a few authors... I'm afraid I could talk about this for days. I love to talk about this. Warrior Nun, and the Antichrist. Write me if you noticed something I missed! I apologize for any mistakes I left, and the... Personal bit. But hey... Everything is personal interpretation. Oh, and I apologize if the style I wrote this in is rather horrid. It's supposed to be the "crazy person ranting" style.

If I didn't make it clear enought, I love Adriel.

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the-al-chemist · 2 years

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Artemis Hexley and the Circle of Khanna

Chapter 4: The Lost Boys

A/N: While Charlie struggles to tell Artemis his secret, Fred and George are keeping one of their own. The Daily Prophet has an update on Rakepick, and Artemis comes up with a plan which backfires… Warnings: A whole lot of angst. Not my usual thing, but there’ll be more before the year is out. Get used to it.

As for what Charlie had wanted to discuss with Artemis, she was still none the wiser for another two days after their walk back from Hogsmeade village, both of them having been kept busy with homework and Quidditch practice. On Monday afternoon, however, Artemis had Charms for her last lesson, one of the three classes she shared with Charlie. Charms was generally a good lesson in which to hold a private conversation, due to the fact that it was usually rather loud and lively, so as the students filed into the classroom, Artemis made a point of stopping to talk to him.

“I was thinking,” she told him, without saying hello first, “if I swap seats with Levi or Gloria today, then we can chat.”

Charlie frowned, as if considering the idea, before shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think that either of them will be too keen on moving seats.”

“Well, Rowan probably wouldn’t mind switching places with you for one lesson.”

“I don’t want to put Rowan out.”

“Charlie,” Artemis looked at him pointedly. “When I say chat, I meant that you can tell me about this secret thing you mentioned on Saturday.”

At Artemis’ words, Charlie looked at the ground and almost smirked.

“I know that’s what you meant,” he half-laughed.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I just don’t want to talk about it here. Look, can we hang out before dinner instead?”

“Sure,” Artemis nodded, and went across the classroom to sit with Rowan, who looked up from her textbook quizzically. Artemis shook her head by way of response. “He didn’t want to say anything here.”

“I wonder why not,” Rowan muttered, her eyebrows raised.

“I dunno. Last time he was so secretive about something he was trying to get hold of a dragon egg and release it into the wild. Hopefully it’s something that cool this time, too. What?”

Rowan said nothing, just tutted and sighed again.

By the time the lesson finished, Artemis had thought of several ways in which she and Charlie might improve their dragon-rescuing skills following their botched attempt at doing so the previous year. The two of them walked down past the Great Hall to the shore of the Black Lake. The lake was completely still, other than a very slight stirring near the water’s edge.

“Maybe we should stay clear of the water itself,” Charlie suggested. “Hagrid said that the Grindylows are still being really aggressive. Neither him nor Kettleburn can figure out why.”

“Strange. I guess we’d better avoid them, then,” said Artemis. She turned away from the water to look expectantly at Charlie. “So…”

Charle cleared his throat awkwardly, a look of apprehension on his freckled face.

“So. Alright. Well, we’re friends, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good, so you know I wouldn’t want to do anything that would hurt you on purpose.”

“Charlie, what’s going on?”

“Alright. So, the thing is-”

The sound of thundering footsteps and their names being called out interrupted Charlie and Artemis for the second time in two days. Turning around, they saw Jae Kim running towards them, his cheeks flushed and expression worried.

“Jae! What’s wrong?”

“It’s your brothers, Charlie,” Jae panted. “I was going to meet them to sell them some… Well, it doesn’t matter what, but they didn’t meet me to make the transaction. I went to find them, and that little Hufflepuff boy from their year, Digby or Digley-”

“Diggory?”

“Might be, yeah. Anyway, he said he saw them head out to the grounds at the end of their lessons. From the looks of things, they headed into the Forbidden Forest.”

“What?” Charlie’s face turned a pale greenish colour, and his eyes widened in horror. “No. They wouldn’t be that stupid.”

Artemis and Jae shared glances. Charlie himself had snuck out to Forbidden Forest more times than Artemis could count, and he was usually less of a troublemaker than either of the twins. She would not have put it past Fred and George to attempt venturing into the Forest.

“Visibility isn’t great, Charlie,” said Artemis, thinking quickly. “If we fly low, near the treetops, we wouldn’t get seen. It might be worth taking a look, just in case.”

Charlie swallowed and nodded, but the colour didn’t return to his cheeks.

“Charlie, mate, I’m sure they’ll be-”

“Jae,” Charlie interrupted his friend mid-sentence. “If Artie and I fly out to the forest to look for the twins, do you mind keeping Percy out of all of this somehow?”

“Of course not.”

“Thanks. Artemis, I’m guessing you do want to help-”

“Yeah.”

“- look. It’s alright if you don’t.”

“I do want to,” Artemis smiled at him. “You know, I’m very good at looking for brothers.”

Charlie didn’t return her smile, but he exhaled and looked a little less tense. The three of them ran back to the castle, where Jae set off in search of Percy Weasley, and Artemis and Charlie retrieved their broomsticks from their respective common rooms.

They set off into the sky from near the Quidditch pitch, staying as low as possible as they flew over the treetops. It was already starting to get dark.

“It’s not a full moon, at least,” said Artemis, in a voice that she hoped sounded reassuring.

“It’s not just werewolves though, is it? There’s all sorts in the forest, like that Red Cap and the centaurs. And what about Hagrid’s Acromantula colony?”

“They can’t have gotten in as far as the Acromantula colony, they’ve not been gone long enough.”

“Still,” Charlie shrugged. “Even the Thestrals might be dangerous if they’re frightened. It’s not like Fred and George would be able to see them coming. And there’s regular wolves, too, and-”

“That’s it, Charlie! Sonorus,” Artemis swooped lower down into the trees, and hovered a few metres above the forest floor. She placed her hands on either side of her mouth and howled loudly, mimicking a wolf.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting us some help, hopefully. Join in, will you?”

Charlie looked at Artemis as if she was mad, but he used his wand to amplify his own voice and began to howl too.

Artemis called out, “Borf? Borf, if you’re there, we could really do with your help!”

Moments later, a large grey shape stepped out from among the trees. Artemis lit her wand, casting light on the newcomer. Looking up at her from the leaves, was a young adult wolf.

“Is that you, Borf? Do you remember me?”

“Borf!” the wolf nodded.

“He understands you?” Charlie asked, leaning in towards Artemis and lowering his voice, as if he didn’t want to offend the wolf.

“He’s a second generation werewolf, he understands everything,” Artemis whispered back, before speaking to Borf once more. “You’ve gotten a lot bigger since I last saw you. Does Chiara still bring you scraps of roast beef on Sundays?”

Borf nodded his head and wagged his tail excitedly, before tilting his head and letting out a low, concerned whine.

“Yeah, we do have a problem. I thought you might be able to help us, actually. My friend Charlie - oh, this is Charlie, by the way.”

“Hi,” said Charlie.

“Borf,” said Borf.

“Well, Charlie’s brothers, they came wandering into the forest. I thought you might have seen them. They have red hair and they look identical to each other.”

Borf’s feet padded quickly on the ground, he sniffed the air, and pointed his snout towards the trees.

“They went that way?”

The wolf nodded and walked away in the same direction he had been pointing to. He walked a few steps deeper into the trees before looking back at Artemis and Charlie, his head tilted slightly.

“Borf!’ he told them.

“Of course, we’ll follow you. Thanks, Borf.”

Artemis and Charlie flew after Borf he led them through the trees to a small grove, much smaller than either of the ones Artemis and Charlie had flown to before. Standing in the middle of the grove, their backs to them and their wands alight, were Fred and George Weasley.

At the sight of the twins, Borf barked once, before returning into the depths of the forest. The noise made the twins jump, and they looked over their shoulders at Charlie and Artemis.

“Drat,” said Fred, turning to face them with both hands behind his back. “What are you two doing here?”

“Looking for you, of course,” Charlie said, his eyes filled with a mixture of frustration and relief. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

Artemis watched as George pointed his wand at Fred’s hands and whispered something. Fred caught Artemis’ eye and immediately shoved both his hand into his pockets.

“You’re one to talk,” said George, crossing his arms across his chest. “We know that you two both got caught sneaking out to the forest before.”

“Yeah, we just wanted to see what the fuss was about,” Fred nodded. Artemis narrowed her eyes at him.

“You’re lying.”

“We’re not!

“Yes, you are,” Artemis turned to Charlie. “They’re lying, I know it.”

“Alright, why are you really here?”

“Because…” Fred faltered under the hard stares of his older brother and his friend. He looked at George, and both twins sighed heavily.

“We saw your brother coming in here,” said George, tuning to talk to Artemis.

“Jacob?”

“Yeah. We would’ve come and got you, but he was moving pretty quickly and you were all the way down by the lake, so…”

“So we decided to follow him.”

“Which way did he go?” Artemis asked, her eyes scanning the trees in case Jacob was standing amongst them. “We could still find him maybe, if we-”

“Artemis,” Charlie interrupted her. “We can’t go wandering around the forest at night looking for your brother.”

“Why not? We’ve done it before.”

“That was different.”

“What do you mean? Why is it different now?”

“Because now my brothers are with us, and they shouldn’t be here,” explained Charlie, his eyes filled with worry again. “They’re eleven, Artemis, they need to go back to the castle where it’s safe.”

“Fine,” Artemis said, frowning. “You take Fred and George back and I’ll-”

“I’m not leaving you to go off by yourself in the forest.”

“It doesn’t look like you have a choice!”

“I…” Charlie sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, we need to get Fred and George back quickly, and we only have two broomsticks. If you stay here either I won’t be able to get them both back or you’ll be left without a broomstick or a map in the forest in the dark. Alone.”

“I’ll have Borf.”

“And I don’t know if either of these two can fly your broomstick back without you,” Charlie continued. “I know you want to go looking for your brother, but this really isn’t the time.”

Artemis gnawed on her lower lip, and looked desperately out at the trees.

“Please, Artemis. Come back with us.”

There was no sign of Jacob in the branches nearby. If Artemis was going to find him, she would have to go looking. But if she didn’t have her broomstick, how would she find her way back? And if she took her broom with her, how would the Weasleys get back? Reluctantly, she pulled her eyes back towards Charlie.

“You’re right,” she told him, a strange sort of guilty relief settling in the back of her mind. “We should go. Jacob can wait. He’ll have to wait.”

By the time the twins were found and safely returned to the castle, dinnertime was almost over. In a hushed voice, Artemis told her friends about what had happened in the forest.

“Are you sure they weren’t lying?” Rowan asked, her eyebrows furrowing behind the silver frame of her glasses.

“I really don’t think so. They looked like they were telling the truth,” replied Artemis. “I think they really did see Jacob. Which means that he’s close by.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It sort of does. Jacob did say that he’d be in contact.”

“That’s not what I meant. Think about it,” Rowan shook her head. “Fred and George have never met your brother. How could they have known it was Jacob?”

“I… I dont know. Maybe because he looks like me?”

“Perhaps, but why would you assume that straight away? And surely you would’t follow someone into the forest on just a hunch; you’d want to know that it was actually them first. It just sounds a bit odd, that’s all.”

Artemis thought about it. Rowan was right, of course. Why would Fred and George have followed someone into the forest just because he looked like he might have been Artemis’ brother?

At the end of dinner, Artemis made a beeline for the twins, stopping them as they reached the top of one of the flights of stairs that made up the Grand Staircase and pulling them into a nearby corridor.

“Are you sure that it was Jacob you saw going into the forest?” she asked them. Fred and George nodded their heads in response. “It was definitely him?”

“Yes!” Fred rolled his eyes. “Honestly, it’s like you don’t believe us.”

“We saw him with our own eyes,” George added, nodding emphatically.

“How do you know it was him?”

“We just said, we saw-”

“But how do you know for sure that it wasn’t someone else?” Artemis repeated her question, and the boys frowned at each other. “You’ve never met Jacob. How do you know that it was definitely him?”

When neither twin answered her, Artemis’ questioning stare grew harder, more accusative, until George sighed.

“Okay, okay,” he said, with a sideways look at his brother. “Fred, we’re going to have to show her.”

“Show me what?”

“This,” said Fred. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blank sheet of parchment.

“Is this a joke?” Artemis wrinkled her nose.

“No, it’s… Look. Just look,” Fred opened the map, and George pointed his wand at the central fold.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

At George’s words, lines of ink started to spread across the parchment, spiralling outwards from where the tip of his wand rested against the central crease. In the middle were the words: Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers, are proud to present The Marauder’s Map.

“A map? A map of the school?” Artemis asked. Surely enough, as she looked at the map, she could make out the familiar outline of the Great Hall, the courtyards, and the moving staircases.

“Not just of the school.”

“Everyone inside the school. See?”

Artemis looked closer. On the point of the map that correlated with the spot where she and the twins were standing there were three tiny sets of inked footprints, labelled Artemis Hexley, Fred Weasley, and George Weasley. Artemis lifted her right foot, and one of her footprints on the map disappeared. She lowered her floor to the ground again, and it reappeared.

“You saw him on this?”

“We saw him coming out of the Forbidden Forest,” Fred pointed his finger to a point on the map where the trees started, and trailed his finger across the grounds. “He went to the Quidditch pitch, loitered in the changing rooms for a bit.”

“By the time we’d made it out of the castle, he was heading back to the forest,” George continued. “We followed him, but after he got so far into the trees, he disappeared.”

“Either he apparated away or whoever made the map never went far enough into the forest to make the map reach there. We don’t know.”

“But you’re sure it was him? And he was in the changing tents?” Artemis asked the twins, and when they both nodded their heads, she looked over her shoulder towards the Grand Staircase. “Right. I’d better go there, then. Thanks for your help, boys.”

“You’re welcome,” said Fred, pointing his wand at the map. “Mischief managed.”

“Wait,” George frowned at Artemis. “You aren’t going to tell Charlie about this, are you?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“You can’t!”

“This map is our most treasured possession.”

“We stole it from Filch’s office, if anyone finds out we have it…”

“Charlie won’t… Hang on,” Artemis reconsidered. “Tell you what. I promise not to tell Charlie about this map, on the condition that you two stop getting into so much trouble.”

“But that’s boring!” the twins chorused.

“I’m telling you to not get into trouble, not to stop making trouble,” muttered Artemis. “Just be better at not getting caught. You don’t have any excuse not to be, now that you’ve got that map.”

Artemis left the twins and went straight down to the Quidditch changing tents. She shone her wandlight around, but there was no sign of anything being disturbed.

“Jacob?” she called out. There was no answer.

Disappointed, she turned to leave, but as she walked past the pigeon holes where the team players stored their clothes during matches, she stopped. She went to the pigeon hole with her name on, and shone her wand inside. Sitting in her pigeon hole was a single item: a black quill. Artemis grabbed it, and held it in her open palm.

“Reparifarge,” she said, pointing her wand at the quill, which instantly turned into a scroll of parchment. Artemis unrolled the parchment, and read the message scrawled on it, written in her brother’s familiar spiky handwriting.

Rakepick escaped Ministry custody last night. I’ve done some digging, and the things she was trying to get hold of from Knockturn Alley held some hefty curses. I think she possibly intends for you to find them. Stay around the castle, don’t go opening any suspicious looking packages, and don’t tell anyone about this letter. I’ll be close, keeping an eye on things for you. J.

Artemis had every intention of following Jacob’s instructions and not telling anyone about Rakepick’s escape, but as it turned out, everyone found out the next day anyway. The following morning, the story was featured on the front page of the morning’s Daily Prophet.

“‘Rakepick defeated the three ministry guards tasked with escorting her to the Wizengamot, where she was due to be interrogated regarding her involvement with the criminal organisation ‘R’. Reports of Rakepick being sighted in Dufftown-”

“Dufftown?” Penny’s blue eyes widened. “That’s quite near here!”

“-are so far unconfirmed, but have led to widespread conjecture that she may be looking to return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Kingsley Shacklebolt refused to comment, but fellow Auror Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody has advised individuals to practise constant vigilance,’” Rowan finished reading aloud and lowered the newspaper to the table. “If she’s really been in Dufftown, she might well be coming here.”

“Why, though?” Tonks asked with a wide yawn, as she poured herself a second bowl of Unicorn Flakes. “The Cursed Vaults?”

“I expect so. Unless….” Rowan’s voice tailed off as she glanced at Artemis. “Well. Never mind that. But until she’s found again we should be careful, just in case.”

“Tell Artemis this, not us.”

“Hey!” Artemis flicked a CheeriOwl at Tonks with her spoon, and Tonks knocked over her cup of tea as she ducked out of the way.

“I don’t just mean Artemis, though,” continued Rowan, ignoring her friends’ antics. “She’s interested in the Vaults, we’ve all been inside the Vaults. We know about R, in a way. Her coming here could be dangerous for all of us, especially the people who were closest to her.”

Artemis stopped dodging the cereal Tonks was throwing at her, and frowned deeply. Rowan was right. Rakepick would stop at nothing to get to what she wanted; she had proved that on several occasions. And if she wanted to harm Artemis…

“I need to go,” said Artemis, standing up from the table. She suddenly didn’t feel hungry anymore.

“Go where?”

“I dunno, somewhere I can think. Maybe write to Bill. Yeah.”

“Do you want one of us to come with-”

“No,” Artemis shook her head. “I’d like to be by myself. Just don’t open any suspicious looking packages, okay?”

As she turned and walked out of the Great Hall, Artemis could feel her friends’ eyes watching her back. She didn’t look back, instead kept going through the entrance hall to the courtyard outside, where she sat in the cloisters and took a few deep breaths.

Why had she not thought about this before? She wasn’t the only one in danger from Rakepick. Her friends knew about the Vaults, about R, about all of it. And it was hardly like Rakepick had qualms about collateral damage. She had even used Artemis’ friends to get what she wanted in the past. Rakepick was just as much a risk to them as she was to Artemis herself, if not more so. And Artemis was the reason why.

“I guess you’ve seen the news, too, then,” said a voice from above her, and Artemis looked up to see Ben Copper standing over her. “Are you scared?”

“Sort of,” Artemis muttered. She did feel afraid, but not for herself. “You?”

“No,” said Ben. “I’m not scared of anything anymore.”

“Right,” said Artemis, her eyebrows furrowing. “So what are you doing here?”

“I came to reassure you,” Ben nodded, and puffed out his chest. “You won’t be in any danger. You’re my friend, and I’m going to keep you safe. I swear it.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.”

“Who are you worried about?”

“Everyone. You, Rowan, Tonks, Penny, Charlie. Tulip and Barnaby. Merula,” Artemis sighed. “All of you. Rakepick doesn’t care who she hurts, especially not when people are standing in the way of what she wants.”

“What does she want?”

“To hurt me. Kill me, probably.”

“Like she did in the Cursed Vaults last year.”

“Yeah. At least, that’s what my brother thinks,” Artemis bit her lip. Jacob hadn’t wanted her to tell anyone, but what did it matter now? “He left a note for me last night. She’s after me, and as long as I’m here-”

“Then she will want to be here, too.”

This time, the voice that spoke didn’t belong to Ben. It was higher, harsher, almost scathing. Both Ben and Artemis turned to see Merula Snyde looking at them, a peculiar expression in her violet-coloured eyes.

“Exactly,” said Artemis. Hearing the words out loud made her realise something. “Which means that… That means I should go.”

“Go?” Ben took a step backwards from Artemis. “Go where?”

“I dont know, anywhere! Anywhere where I’m not so close to you all that you’re all in danger because of me.”

“You mean… Leave Hogwarts?”

Artemis swallowed, hard. She didn’t want to leave Hogwarts, but if it meant keeping her friends safe…

“Yeah,” she said decisively. “I need to leave Hogwarts.”

“You can’t do that, Artemis!” Ben looked aghast. “You’ll be putting yourself at risk!”

“Better just me than all of you.”

“But-”

“As much as I hate to say it, Artemis,” Merula drawled, “Copper is right. You shouldn’t leave. We need you here.”

Artemis’ eyes widened. She was genuinely touched by Merula’s comment.

“Wow. Thanks, Merula. That’s… You know, after all these years, I’m really happy that we’ve finally managed to-”

“Stop embarrassing yourself, Hexley. I just mean that we need you to stay put so we can use you as bait.”

“Bait,” Artemis blinked.

“Yeah. If you’re here, it’ll lure Rakepick here,” Merula said, completely straight-faced. “And then I can take my revenge. I’m more than ready, I’ll take her down.”

“And I’ll help,” Ben chipped in, before Artemis could disagree with Merula. “Like I said, I’m not afraid of anything anymore. Not even her. I’ll protect you.”

“I don’t need your protection! The best way to protect everyone is for me to not be here.”

“Oh, come on, Hexley-”

“No, Merula. I mean it. I’m going to have to leave.”

Artemis stuck her chin out stubbornly. Ben and Merula exchanged glances, before Ben reached down and took hold of Artemis by the wrist.

“Let go! What are you doing?” she said, trying to wriggle free of his grasp. But Ben tightened his grip, and started to walk out of the courtyard, pulling Artemis with him. “Where are you taking me?”

“To someone who’ll actually be able to talk some sense into you.”

Ben took Artemis through the castle to the training grounds, where the Gryffindor Quidditch team were just returning from their morning’s practice session. At the sight of them, a look of concern came over Charlie Weasley’s face, and he waved his teammates ahead.

“What’s wrong?” He asked as he approached Ben and Artemis. “What’s happened?”

“Artemis is going to do something stupid.”

“I’m not,” Artemis scowled at Ben, before sighing and turning to Charlie. “Rakepick’s escaped. They think she’s coming here.”

“Alright,” Charlie swallowed and nodded his head, his red eyebrows starting to knit together. “Who is they?”

“The Daily Prophet. And Jacob. He was leaving a message for me when Fred and George saw him on- in the forest.”

“Did he say why she’s coming here?”

“She’s after me. Like she was in the Vaults. She still wants to open them and for that she needs to… Well, you know.”

Charlie took a deep breath.

“Yeah. I know,” he almost whispered. He looked between Ben and Artemis. “So what’s the stupid thing you want to do?”

“It’s not stupid.”

“It is,” Ben contradicted Artemis. “She wants to run away.”

“What?”

“It’s not running away, Ben. I just…” Artemis shook her head. “We all know what Rakepick’s like. What she can do, and she would do. If I stay here, then she’s going to come here, and what if she hurts someone? Someone who isn’t me, just because… Because they’re here? Because they know about her or the Vaults? It’s not stupid, me going away if it keeps everyone else safe.”

“No, it’s not stupid,” said Charlie, a pained expression on his face. “It’s bloody ridiculous.”

“But-”

“You aren’t seventeen, Artemis. You aren’t even allowed to do magic out of school, how the hell do you think you’re going to keep yourself safe?”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll-”

“Where are you going to go?” Charlie asked. “Where do you have to go to?”

“I…” Artemis tried to ignore the sting of Charlie’s words as she struggled to find an answer to his question. “I’ll go to Jacob. He’ll look after me.”

“Really? Will he?”

“Yes! He’s my brother, I’ll be safe with him.”

“It’s hardly like he’s kept you safe so far.”

Artemis opened her mouth to argue but Charlie wasn’t done.

“I know he’s your brother, but you need to stop making excuses for him,” Charlie shrugged. “You know what he’s done, and what he’s like. You know what Rakepick’s like, too. Jacob won’t be a match for her, even if he does want to protect you.”

Artemis felt her temper start to rise. “What do you mean, if he wants to protect me?”

“What I mean, is that he’s not got the best track record for sticking around, has he?”

“You said that leaving doesn’t mean not caring.”

“I know, and it doesn’t, but…” Charlie sighed. “Look, Artemis, I know it’s hard for you to keep your head together where your brother’s involved, but will you please just think about this? Think about the castle and the enchantments it has to protect it, and all the people here who can keep you far safe, far better than just Jacob could.”

“See?” Ben piped up at last, an expression of triumph on his face. “Charlie agrees with me, Artemis. We can protect you.”

“I was more talking about Dumbledore and McGonagall and all the other teachers, Ben. You know, the people who actually stand a chance against Rakepick.”

“I could stand a chance, too,” said Ben.

“Yeah,” Charlie half-laughed. “Alright.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I-”

“Oh, I get it,” Ben’s face dropped. “You know, Charlie, I’m not just some pathetic coward anymore. I’m just as good as you are.”

“I know.”

“Just because I’m not a prefect or a Quidditch captain and I don’t want to go off chasing after dragons, that doesn’t mean that you’re better than me.”

“I didn’t say that I was,” Charlie frowned.

“No, but you think it! Everyone thinks it, and you’re the worst,” Ben’s features were now contorted with a mixture of hurt, rage, and something that looked almost like fear. “Now that Bill’s gone, you think that you’re just as great as he was. Well, guess what? You aren’t.”

At Ben’s words, Charlie’s face went pale, and he looked almost wounded.

“Don’t say that, Ben,” Artemis said, already angry on Charlie’s behalf. “Don’t you dare say things like that.”

“Artemis, it’s alright…”

“No, Charlie, it’s not alright! Ben, Charlie’s never thought that he was better than you. He’s stuck up for you and believed in you, always!”

“And he told you that, did he?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Of course, because Charlie tells you everything,” Ben said, a note of pain in his voice. His eyes narrowed. “Has he told you that he’s leaving yet?”

Artemis suddenly felt cold all over.

“What?” she asked, her voice quiet and horse.

“He’s leaving Hogwarts. Leaving you, me, his brothers…”

“No. No, that’s not true. Charlie wouldn’t do that, would you, Charlie? Charlie, tell him it’s not true.”

But Charlie did no such thing. Instead, he slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were looking straight at Ben.

“Ben,” he said softly, “how do you know about this?”

“I saw the letter, the one from the dragon sanctuary.”

“You’ve been reading my letters?”

“I had to,” said Ben. “After what happened with Rakepick, I wasn’t sure who I could or couldn’t trust.”

“I’m your friend! You are supposed to trust me!”

“You mean it’s true?” Artemis felt as if her stomach was plummeting inside her abdomen. “You’re leaving?”

Charlie nodded. “Yeah.”

“Where are you going?”

“A dragon sanctuary,” said Charlie, at the exact same time as Ben said:

“Romania.”

“Romania?”

“I…” Charlie grimaced slightly. “That’s what I wanted to tell you before.”

“But you never said a thing!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you, but-”

“Well, you haven’t been trying very hard, have you? It’s not like we don’t see each other every day, or have lessons together, or live in the same building. You could have told me at any time, just like that, ever since you knew,” Artemis narrowed her eyes at him, as he looked at the floor. “How long have you known?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How long have you known?”

“I applied for the job in the summer holidays,” Charlie admitted.

“In the summer holidays? But I was at your house then. I was right there, that whole time, you could’ve… You shouldhave told me.”

��I’m sorry.”

“No,” Artemis shook her head angrily. “No, you can’t say you’re sorry and have it be okay, because it’s not okay at all! First Jacob leaves, and then Bill, and now you want to leave, too! And then you go and say that I can’t rely on Jacob because he left, and you have the nerve to say that I’m stupid for trying to leave, and this whole time you are going to go to bloody Romania, and you never even cared enough to tell me!”

“NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU, ARTEMIS!”

Artemis recoiled from Charlie. She had never known him to raise his voice to anyone, let alone to shout at her before. Surprised, shocked, and hurt, she glared back at him.

“Bill would have told me,” she said, her voice laced with a quiet fury.

“Yeah, well,” said Charlie, shaking slightly, “I’m not Bill, am I?”

“I wish you were.”

She had known as she said the words that they were the very words that would hurt him the most, and perhaps that was why she said them, but the second she saw the pain in Charlie’s eyes, Artemis wished she could take them back. But it was too late for that.

“Right,” Charlie nodded. “Great.”

“Charlie, no. I didn’t mean… Wait.”

As Charlie started to turn from her, Artemis reached out to put a hand on his arm. He shrugged it off.

“Don’t,” he said, the hurt audible in his voice. “You’ll just make it worse.”

“That’s it, Charlie,” Ben called after him as he walked back up the path towards the castle. “Run away!”

Charlie didn’t even look as he called back:

“I’m not running away. I’m walking.”

#artemis hexley #hogwarts mystery #hphm fic #hphm #charlie weasley #fred weasley #george weasley #ben copper #merula snyde #rowan khanna #nymphadora tonks #penny haywood #borf

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marshmallowloves · 1 year

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Finally came up with a decent ref for Cesylia, my Fates self insert! Fatesona? Corrin…sona? I dunno but! I'm pleased with how she looks~ (not gonna shade it right now tho cause I'm tired fjdsfhg)

She mainly uses ice magic, though she does still wield the Yato and can transform into a dragon. I figure having ice still makes sense, even though she's part Silent Dragon and the Vallite family has the whole water thing going on - ice is just frozen water after all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cesylia is a softie who gives "why can't we be friends" Corrin a run for their money. She'll always try to be civil and kind, but she's not a total pushover. When kindness is truly no longer an option, she is willing to stand up for herself and fight, but she'll definitely exhaust every other alternative first. This is also pretty apparent when it comes to a certain...prickly Hoshidan prince, who has a very hard time understanding why in the world she keeps being nice to him despite his bitterness towards her (but dw he gets over it…mostly)

I also spent way too much time coming up with a background that both suits her and tries to fix some of the dumb stuff about Fates' story, while keeping other parts I like ksdjfg. I tried my best to condense it, I really did - but the story of Fates is so long and complicated I found it hard to keep it under a few paragraphs while explaining everything. -u-; I'll put it under the cut if anyone's interested~

One thing I will say here is that she and the Hoshidan siblings know they're not related from the very beginning. I'm still confused how anyone in canon wholeheartedly believed this actual dragon lady who looks nothing like them and has a distinctly non-Japanese (sorry, non-Hoshidan) name is their blood sibling. Someone had to have suspected something at some point, come on now dkjfhg

Cesylia was born in Valla to Anankos and Mikoto. Mikoto prophesized that one day Anankos's degeneration would bring about the destruction of several worlds, so they worked to bestow an incredible power onto their child that would lay dormant until that day, where it would awaken itself and stop the catastrophe. However, they kept it a secret, even to Cesylia herself, because it has the potential to be as destructive as what it's meant to prevent.

Mikoto later flees to Hoshido, marrying Sumeragi after the death of his first wife, and Cesylia spends her very early childhood there. One of Garon's spies learns of her power, and when Sumeragi visits Nohr to discuss a peace treaty, Garon kills him and kidnaps Cesylia, hoping to harness the power for himself. She spends the rest of her childhood and early adulthood in solitude, locked away in a fortified tower in Castle Krakenburg, where she's periodically subject to "trials" by Garon's sorcerers to try and force out her power. She's often visited by the Nohrian siblings, who care for and bond with her while she's confined but have no idea what's really happening.

Hoshidan soldiers later strike, successfully recovering Cesylia and Azura, but the celebration is short-lived as Mikoto is soon killed by a Nohrian assassin. Hoshido makes their counterattack and meets the Nohrian royals on the battlefield. With a heavy heart, Cesylia chooses to stay in Hoshido - she doesn't want to go through the painful trials again, and fears that if the Nohrian siblings try to help, they'll be put in danger for standing against their corrupt father.

When Cesylia is back in Hoshido, she's treated very differently than she remembers - she's constantly doted on, and Ryoma in particular is overly protective of her. Prior to their infiltration of Castle Krakenburg, Mikoto had entrusted Ryoma with the knowledge of her prophetic vision and Cesylia's power. She tasked him and his siblings with guarding Cesylia with their lives, so that she may live to stop the catastrophe when it comes.

After that, she basically follows the plot of the game…s? listen I'm a big dumb baby and I don't want anyone to die so I honestly have no idea what to do after that. As I said, I tried to condense it, so there's more little details I didn't put here, but I like what I have here~ -u-

#I have a LOT more bits and pieces about her/her story #but this post is already so long #and I doubt people wanna read all that kdjfg #Cesylia #self insert #my art #fire emblem #fire emblem fates #fe fates #fe:if #fe14 #fatesona #corrin #fe corrin

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jojofox · 9 months

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Ok, new story dump. This one's not a fanfic this time, so get ready for some new characters :)

just setting the mood rq

"Questing and adventuring is hard, long, and quite tiring, so why not take a break from it all?! Ride on down to the Drag Inn hotel! Rest you and your party’s head for however long you need to! With inclusive accommodations from our tallest giants to the smallest fae, there’s always a room for you!"

This story, Drag Inn, is about the staff that helps run the hotel and their stories. It a bit more of a slice-of-life piece so far. Usually, my stories are linear and action-packed, so this one is a nice change of pace for me.

The world that this story operates in is pretty meta, with whole towns, cities, and districts centering around story genres, like a Drama city or a Fantasy town. One of the big events is something called a Prophetical Counsel will come up with a prophecy every six months for a chosen one to go and slay some evil. There are a couple councils in every district. They have to tell the other councils when a chosen one has been selected so there aren’t any overlaps. Sometimes, mistakes happen. Chosen ones usually become pretty popular and wealthy after their adventure, if they survive.

Oh wait, you wanna see drawings of it, don't you? Well, I don't have many (oddly enough), but I do have a ref sheet that includes the entire staff (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)/

Oooo and they have descriptions too (*^‿^*)

this is about to get very long ( 〃．．)

TL;DR Po is the owner/manager, Telady is co-owner/receptionist, Raven and Lucki are baristas, Jade and Edith are housekeepers, Donovan is a lifeguard, Veris and Axel are security with Pix being unofficial security, Dave is a bartender, Ash is a therapist, and Dyna and Derrin are cooks

Po Eider: Po is a retired chosen one from the Action Adventure genre who slew the Dark Dragon of ‘08. They had learned frost magic in order to do so and are in possession of a frost suit of armor and sword. Unfortunately, while fighting the Dragon, it touched their heart and cursed them. This curse is known as the Dragon’s Touch, and it severely limits the magical abilities of the victim to the point where they could die if they use too much magic. They have no home outside of the hotel as they blew all of their money on purchasing it and lost the lease on their apartment. They tend to act quite arrogant. Po is the owner and manager of Drag Inn.

Telady Pinsnap: Telady is a retired spy from the Spy thriller genre, as well as Po's aunt. She took down many organizations with her old partner. Telady had learned to not be scared of anything, otherwise, it could cost her her entire mission. She tends not to hesitate and is very sure of her decisions. Having retired from spying, but not about to let her nephew run a business alone, she works the receptionist position and is co-owner of Drag Inn.

Raven Macintosh: Raven is an out-of-work superhero from the Action genre. She has the power of electricity and her hero name was Fritz. The town she was in lost its villain as he was arrested and taken out of the country. Raven had always wanted to be a writer, but she could almost never find any good inspiration or conflict. She loves slice-of-life tales, so she thought working as a barista would give her the inspiration she needed, while also keeping her busy.

Jade: Jade is a bird-human hybrid from the Dark Fantasy genre. He used to live in a hollow tree in a misty forest, right around an area where people would walk in and instantly go missing. Jade liked to try to protect the smaller, younger people who came through from the darkness inside, but sometimes, he couldn’t help but indulge in the darkness himself. Always has a spooky story to tell or fact to share. Loves to try to keep the plants alive as there weren’t very many where he used to live. At least, not many that were harmless.

Edith Farley: Edith is an actor from the Fairytale genre who tried to be a Disney Princess. However, standards to being cast as one is much different there than it is here and she didn't make the cut. She is great at singing and can hardly stand a mess. Loves to meet new people. She was hired as housekeeper alongside Jade.

Donovan Clarke: Donovan is a survivor from the Horror genre. He used to be the generic jock stereotype, but for some reason, he managed to survive instead of the final girl surviving. The incident drove him to be a more caring and selfless person. Despite the incident taking place near a lake, Donovan still loves to swim and finds his comfort from bad days in the pool. He can sometimes be seen talking to something in the water. He takes full advantage of the free employee therapy. Donovan was hired as a lifeguard.

Pix: Pix is a fae that used to reside in the Dark Fantasy forest, but when she was hired to sabotage the hotel, she claimed a room to stay in. Overtime, she warms up to the staff and instead becomes an unofficial part of their team. Pix is a vessel for chaos and a master of trickery.

David Theodore Maridale II: Dave was killed in a duel where the hotel was built. He haunted the land and continued haunting even when the hotel was up and running, sort of. Dave worked as a bartender before he died. He loved to talk with his patrons and had the ability to summon multiple familiars to help him. His ability carried over into his afterlife, where he is now able to summon what he calls “ghostlings”. He comes from an older version of the Action Adventure genre and is a ghost bartender for the hotel. He is the oldest of the staff.

Ashtaroth Blackwell: Ash is the child of a demon and a human from the Supernatural genre. They spent their entire childhood being taught their father’s ways. When Ash turned 18, they moved away, not wanting to be associated with their father. They faced stigma wherever they went, due to their familial ties. Ash did manage to find a place in the Urban Fantasy district and study psychology. They became a therapist for people who struggled with family and sudden chosen status. Ash eventually got a job at the hotel to reach a broader category.

Dyna Harris: Dyna is a mechanical engineer and gamer from the Sci-fi genre. She is a shapeshifter who loves to cook. She uses her shapeshifting ability to get the intricate details of her mechanical builds. She had lost half of her right arm from a trap in the woods while she was shifted as an animal. She managed to rebuild that arm out of mechanical parts, but it can never come back, despite her shapeshifting ability. Inspired by the incident, she put aside building and took up her passion for cooking as her main career. She has been hired as the head chef at the hotel.

Veris Urgfim: Veris is an orc bard from a DnD town in the Action Adventure genre. Veris looks big and intimidating, but he is really a big sweetheart. He likes to make people feel safe, and has no time for assholes. His party had left him to die in a cave, but he managed to make it out and survive. He loves to joke and was hired as security for the hotel.

Lucki Caldwell: Lucki is an elf from the Urban Fantasy genre. He is the youngest of the staff. Lucki is very eager and naive. He was quite sheltered, so a job as a barista in a hotel that has all sorts of people coming and going every day is quite new for him. He doesn’t know much about how the other genres operate, so he is usually found getting into trouble. Raven tends to act like a mother towards him since they work together a lot. Lucki has some of the best energy in the hotel, so if someone is having a bad day, then they could count on Lucki to make things a bit better.

Derrin Torres: Derrin comes from a completely different dimension from the others. He came here after following what looked like ghosts of himself until one led him to a reflective, red pool that pulled him into this world. Derrin is usually the one to have a clever solution to something without the use of magic. Derrin had absorbed the magic that the portal used when he was transported, gaining illusionary abilities.

Axel Lavon: Axel is a former actor from a medieval reenactment group. He was usually performing as a knight, but took the role very seriously, even going as far as to learn how to fight with various blades and melee weapons. He was fired from his job for fighting with and injuring a customer. Axel is rarely seen without a weapon of his by his side, his favorite being his sword. Despite his fascination with fantasy things, Axel is from the Comedy district. He was hired as security.

Heheh, yeah. I like this story (*^‿^*) kinda debating whether I host the story on Tumblr or on Webtoon. Maybe I'll do both. One things for sure, I will definitely try to post anything random I draw about this on here.

That's all for now. Stay determined<3

#digital art #writing #original story #original character #Drag Inn #my art

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marisol993 · 3 years

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For some time now I've seen, over and over again, that the Qunari in the Dragon Age Universe are apparently some kind of racist caricature of black people, muslims and other types of poc's, bipoc's, minorities, ....

From a personal perspective I never saw them as such, but since a personal view of things isn't very objective and can be skewed by ones life-experiances I was completely willing to admit, that I might have been wrong about that and had an opportunity to learn something new here.

The more I thought about it and critically examined this statement though, the less I agreed with any of it. Especially since a lot of arguments in favor of this view seemed to boil down to "this person of [insert relevant minority here] said so". I.e. another "personal viewpoint".

So let's get into a critical analysis of the Qunari and why I think that they are so very far removed from any kind of "minorty" (from a western point of view) coding that you couldn't even see it with the power of the Hubble and James Webb space-telescopes combined:

First of all, who are the Qunari? The Qunari are tall, medium to heavily built, horned (or unhorned, if you only played Origins) humanoids, that come in varying shades of grey skin, with whiteish hair. They are more intensly sexually dimorphic than the Dwarves, Elves and Humans of Thedas, with the males being sometimes nearly twice as wide (especially in the shoulders) and much more muscled than the females. They call themselves the Qunari as they are followers of the Qun (their guide to life and society), though the word is more of an umbrella-term, since anybody of any race is called a Qunari if they "convert" to the teachings of the Qun.

Here's a picture:

At this point some people might already remark, that the Qunari are very obviously "black-coded" since apparently nowadays any deviation from natural, real-life human skintones automatically has to mean, that the fantasy-race in question is meant to reflect black or brown people (even if they are green or bright purple), unless you literally give them a complete and utterly snow-white skintone. If that is the argument you want to go with, I would like to redirect your eyes to the picture above, as it already disproves this. As it is shown there (and in the DA:I Character-Creator), the Qunari can come in a complete spectrum of skintones (from very light grey to nearly ebony), just like all the different races of Thedas (even the dwarves for some reason, which doesn't make much sense for a race that lived underground for most of their history, but what can you do..). This basically means, that yes there are dark-skinned (or "black") Qunari, but there are also those that could be better described as "light-skinned", so the coding-qualifier goes away.

Then there are the people, who might want to say, that because they are tall and "burly", together with the unnatural skintone makes them "black-coded" which is something I never really understood, since the tallest people in the world by ethnicity are the Dutch and if you look at heights in correlation with body-weight the Russians take first place. Both countries not really know for their large populations of darkskinned-humanoids. Another coding-qualifier that goes away.

And then there are the people (who I would seriously suggest should maybe review their own "racial" views, if "black and brown people" is the first thing they think about when it comes to this), who say, that they are a stereotype of the "savages and natives", which is something that is actively contradicted in canon. One of the most prominent traits of the Qunari is that they are efficiant to a T, use every resorce at the disposal to it's maximum (including their people) and that they are more technically and scientifically advanced than many other race in Thedas (except maybe the dwarves) . This is shown through their mastery of gunpowder (which they call gaatlok) and the fact that they can use chemicals and drugs to literally warp the mind of people without needing magic. They are in no way presented as "savage" and if they are named such, it's usually by people who they are actively at war with, who want to insult them. They are also not "natives" of Thedas. Even their so called "homeland" in Thedas, which is called Par Vollen, was colonised by them, when they landed at it's shores in 6:30 Steel-Age and started converting the original population of Tevinter humans and elves, with whom they have been at war with ever since. Let me say that again: The Qunari are active colonisers and at war with the Tevinter-Imperium, who's people are the original population of the land. Not exactly a typical "native or black" stereotype in western media.

So who do I think the Qunari are actually modeled after?

Well let's summarise:

The Qunari came from across the ocean in their ships filled with cannons and guns, to colonise the land and convert the native population towards their beliefs. They are currently fighting a war against the Tevinter-Imperium, an old and powerful empire, that engages in widespread slavery and practices blood-magic by sacrificing said slaves, sometimes also to one of their many gods.

(If you can't guess who I think they are supposed to be modeled after by now, I would recommend to maybe picking up a 7th-grade history textbook again)

Yes, you can make a very strong case for the Qunari actually being these guys:

The Conquistadors (heck, if you cross out a few letters you can even anagram the word "Qunari" out of the word Conquistador). Who also came from across the sea with ships, cannons and guns to colonise the land (south- and middle-america) and convert the native population (to christianity) and fought an ancient and powerful empire with slaves and blood-sacrifices (the Aztec-Kingdoms).

So after pissing of one half of tumblr with that, let's start with the other half by talking about the apparent "muslim-coding" and how I disagree with that too.

Let's start with a rough definition of what a muslim is and how I think that that alone shows how the Qunari are in no way coded to be them:

I would define a muslim as somebody who is an active member of the religion of Islam. Islam is defined by it's holybook (the Qur'An), which was revealed to the prophet Muhammad by an all-knowing and omnipresent abrahamic god.

This in and of itself basically already disqualifies the Qunari from being "muslim-coded" since first and foremost the Qunari are not a religion. They do not have a god and they don't pray to any, the Qun is not a "holy-book" and Ashkaari Koslun (the guy who wrote it) was not a prophet, who wrote down the word of god, but a philosopher who basically crafted a "guide to life and society" with his works.

If you really wanted to find something that is slightly "muslim-coded" in the world of Thedas, you might actually have more luck with the chantry-stuff, since they do have a prophet (Andraste) who could talk to god (the Maker), they have a holy book based of her teachings (the Chant of Light) and they believe that the whole world should follow those teachings, so god will return to them (singing the Chant from all four corners of the world). They even have their own flavour of jihadist religious warfare with the Exhalted Marches (though all in all I do think that the Chantry can be better viewed as a take on christian religions since the split between the Imperial Chantry and the original one is similar to the split of the (western) christian church into catholics and protestants).

So what do I think is a better representation for the Qun in the real world?

Well lets look at it in the simplest way possible that the canon gives us:

The Qun is a guide for the life of the Qunari (the people of the Qun) that ecompasses everything from laws, legislative guides, too how society should be struktured and how everyone has to fit into and function in that society, from the most mundane and simplest tasks and jobs to it's highest administrative bodies. Everyone in this society is evaluated, so that they can be put into a position that is best suited to them and their skill-sets. There they will then each work according to their abilities and each be provided for according to their needs (see what I did there). Yes, the Qun can in my opinion be best described as a take on an authoritarian-socialist guide to life, written by somebody with a similar philosophie as Karl Marx.

So all in all, I don't think that the Qunari are in any way black-, brown-, bipoc- or muslim-coded, but a fantasy take on the Conquistadors, if instead of a bible they had all carried around "A Guide to Life, Luck and Community, written by Karl Marx (during one of his more productive weekends)", visually represented by giant Minotaur-People of many colours.

Also I find this obsession with finding every and any kind of reflexion of our real world in some random fantasy setting, by people who are most of the time actively looking to get offended by at least something and mostly every- and anything, quite contrived most of the time and that the day people on tumblr learned the word "codeing" a significant part of the internets critical-thinking skills and will just shrivelled up and died.

Thank you for coming to my TED-talk.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #qunari #the qun #thedas #tevinter imperium

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memoirsofanerdygirl · 3 years

Text

The Gold in the Abyss - Chapter One: Going Over His Head

Summary:

London, 1991.

Katherine Clarke -- Auror, Slytherin, and in desperate need of Severus Snape’s help. A mysterious shadow has poisoned two victims with an unknown substance, slowly decomposing their stomachs from within. When more bodies turn up in cramped London alleys, she has no choice but to ask her former professor for assistance.

As Britain is plunged into war, Kate and Severus are forced to confront their demons of guilt and fear. Caught between two sides of a hopeless conflict, can they learn to respect one another, and, in time, perhaps even care for the other?

Warnings: Language, implied attempted rape, mild graphic depictions of violence/gore.

Notes: (feel free to skip this, it’s just to cover my ass) The Harry Potter Universe, all its characters and places are owned by J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended, nor am I making any profit from this story. All original characters, I own. This story does contain adult situations, language, violence, and sexual situations. If any of these offend you, please do not read.

Okay, now for the real notes. So, this idea has been floating around for quite a while now, and I’m super, super excited to share it with you all. Hope you enjoy! And remember, comments, reblogs and general reactions are ALWAYS appreciated :)

~~~

The bookshop was tucked away in a corner of Diagon Alley, hidden around the bend of a back road that branched off the main shopping street.Small, but stuffed from floor to ceiling with old and new volumes alike, topics ranging from Guide to De-Ghouling to the latest editions of The Dark Arts Outsmarted.

A sign with a bubbling cauldron and the words ‘The Melting Plot’ dangled above the entrance. Kate pulled open the door and entered. It smelled of old books and the unmistakable scent of a cooling charm -- artificial freshness, like the crisp air in the frozen aisle of a grocery store. All the same, she was glad for the rush of cold air that dispelled the muggy mid-August heat.

She slipped her wand out of the sleeve of her lightweight jacket and stuck it in her belt loop. Her armpits were damp with sweat. At least there would be no stains in the loose blouse underneath. She shrugged off the jacket and draped the olive material over her arm.

The bookkeeper was a spindly old man with a knotted hulihee beard, two bushels of coarse grey hair broadening his jaw to three times its size, but leaving his chin bare. He gave off whiffs of tobacco when one stepped too near, but he did, at the very least, know the store like the back of his hand. He looked up at her through thin rimmed spectacles.

“Research,” said Kate. “Poisons.”

He jerked his head toward the back right corner of the shop.

She nodded. It suddenly occurred to her that in all the times she’d been to The Melting Plot, she had never asked the man’s name. Hadn’t been able to stand the stench long enough.

The Melting Plot wasn’t large at all; perhaps, if she had to guess, half the size of Flourish and Blotts. Besides Kate, there was only one other patron present at the moment: a rather beefy man clad in deep violet robes. He barely glanced up at her as she breezed past his aisle.

Secluded from the busy areas of Diagon Alley as it was, the shop’s customers were a medley of sporadic regulars who forwent the noisy din of Flourish and Blotts for the empty silence of The Melting Plot. Kate, however, came for the prices. Two-for-a-Galleon days were simply too tempting.

Coming upon the aisle in the back, she sighed. She didn’t have the faintest idea what she was looking for; she had only the patients’ symptoms to go off of, and even those weren’t much. Vomiting. Bloody urine. Comatose state. How in the world was she supposed to find the poisonous culprit?

Encyclopedia, she answered herself. That had always been a good place to start.

She proceeded down the aisle, her finger brushing over the spines of the books as she quickly scanned the titles. Dark Arts Discovered by Eglantine Pickering… Vampires and Bats by Garrett Puckett… She was halfway down the aisle before she found a relevant title and plucked it off the shelf. She rested her foot on a bottom shelf, balancing on one leg, and propped the heavy book on her knee. She began to read.

Barely five minutes in, and already it was hopeless. Like finding a Knut in a pile of dragon dung. She flipped idly through the pages, and when she heard the front door creak open again, she peered through the aisles for a glimpse of the newcomer.

A flash of black between the stacks. Clacks of a forceful stride on the wooden floor. There was a low murmur, and Kate heard the bookkeeper wheeze, “ ‘Course,” and then the squeak of the backroom door opening and closing. Likely some customer picking up an order. She returned to the book in her hand.

A Compendium of Magical Poisons, it was called. An antique, too; the textured leather spine gilded and ridged. She snapped the book shut to inspect the front and back covers. It would make a fine addition to her collection.

Might as well.

She exited the aisle for the till. If it didn’t prove useful, it could always be used as a coaster for her tea. Or given to Tristan; Tristan knew all sorts of muggle markets that sold old items for a vastly inflated price. One of the advantages of being a muggleborn, she supposed.

The bookkeeper reentered from the backroom, carrying a small stack of books. “Four Galleons,” he said. “You want wrapping?”

The clink of coins hitting the counter. “Yes.”

But… she knew that voice. Deep, deliberate. Always the hint of a sneer. She snapped her gaze up from the item in her hands. “Professor Snape?”

He was exactly as she remembered him. A tall, sharp frame draped in black robes buttoned up to his neck. Lank black hair lay limp against his pallid face, upon which a sharp brow was quickly rising. “Miss Clarke. What a surprise.”

“Yes. Yes, indeed.” As his critical gaze swept over her, Kate was suddenly very conscious of her flushed face, slightly oily with sweat. And Lord, her hair -- she hadn’t washed the dark brown mess in three days, too busy stressing over the new case. She instinctively raised a hand to sweep her hair over one shoulder. It was surprising, him having recognised her without her signature schoolgirl fringe.

“It’s been six years, hasn’t it?” he said.

It… had. Six years since she’d left the confines of Hogwarts. “Yes. Yes, indeed,” she said.

The bookkeeper eyed them both with a twitching eye as he finished wrapping the books in brown paper and tied the package with a string of twine.

Snape whisked his purchase off the counter. He gave her a curt nod and turned for the door.

But -- he -- “How are the students?” she called. The least he could do was to finish their bloody conversation.

He turned around. “Simply charming,” he sneered.

“Wonderful.” He had never liked teaching, much less his students. Kate knew that. For four years, she had watched him stalk the dungeons. She’d watched him smirk in glee when a student answered a question wrong, watched him dock points by the bucketful when they made a racket in the halls. She, for some miraculous reason, had been on the receiving end of his withering stares only a handful of times. Owing to her Slytherin status, perhaps. Merlin knew she had never been a Potions Extraordinaire like Snape.

Potions… Could she…

“My cousin” -- she fished for something to say -- “my cousin is a first year student this year.”

“Your cousin.”

“Ron Weasley.”

“Splendid.” His nostrils flared. “Another shabby Weasley to add to my excessive collection.”

She bit back a retort. They were a little shabby, and she admitted as much. But when Snape said it like that, sarcasm dripping from each word, it made her stomach twist. Regrettably, defending them would have to wait. For now, she needed Snape to tolerate her.

Which, judging by the fleeting glance he cast toward the door, was going none too well.

“Perhaps,” he tucked the package under his arm, “we shall meet again in another six years.”

She smiled. “I doubt you’ll have to wait that long.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, I was wondering whether I might… consult your expertise.”

His brow arched up high on his pale forehead. “My expertise being…”

“Potions.” Kate made her way toward him, past the till and the bookkeeper. “You see, I’ve been assigned a case involving an unknown poison -- I’m an Auror -- and, well, unfortunately it seems that an ‘Exceeds Expectations’ N.E.W.T in Potions is not quite enough to find the antidote.”

“I can’t imagine it would be,” he said coldly.

It was her turn to lift a brow.

“Haven’t you contacted the St. Mungo’s Healers? They’re always eager to offer their services to the desperate.”

Kate forced a wry smile to her lips. “I have. A team has already begun to look into it. But, according to my father, we’ll all be dead in our graves before they find a cure.”

“And anything your father says must be true.”

Her smile was difficult to maintain. “He works at St. Mungo’s. Claims a horde of pixies could get it done faster. So, frankly, I am desperate. Two lives hinge-- ”

“So I’ve heard,” he interrupted. “I do read the Daily Prophet, Miss Clarke. ‘HIT Witch Janice Bulwark mysteriously discovered unconscious, admitted to St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries’, no?” He recited the headline.

Kate averted her eyes, muttering under her breath. She thought Kingsley had managed to get the reporter to keep the whole thing under wraps. “Yes, that’s the one.” She glanced at the bookkeeper, who was still eyeing them grittily. She caught a strong whiff of tobacco and resisted the urge to scowl. “Listen,” she said, “it’s rather sensitive information I’m about to share with you-- ”

“I’d much rather you didn’t,” said Snape. “I have no intention of involving myself in Ministry matters, much less a murder investigation.”

“Yes, but we have never seen anything like this before, and I’ve already exhausted every other option. I’m doing research in a bloody bookshop, for Merlin’s sake.”

He smirked. “Then I hope you are still a swift reader.”

Git. Kate lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “Their stomachs are being decomposed from within, Professor.”

His ink black eyes studied her woody brown ones. “I’m afraid I must disappoint you,” he said smoothly. “Term begins in a few short weeks, as you may well know, and I must prepare for the students.”

Prepare for the students? That was a load of dragon shit, and they both knew it. Snape’s gaze glinted, challenging her.

So, this was how he wanted to play things.

“Of course.” She smiled. “I understand.” She held up the thick encyclopedia in her hands. “Well, I had better go pay for this before the man suspects me of theft. Wonderful to see you again, really.”

The slightest twitch of his brows was the only sign she had surprised him. Abruptly, he turned and departed the store, leaving a very amused Katherine Clarke to watch the door swing shut behind him.

“You’re right about the stealin’,” the old bookkeeper grumbled. She caught another whiff of tobacco. “You going to buy it or not?”

“No,” said Kate firmly. “I don’t think I will.” She had too many books as it was. Besides, if she was right, she would soon possess a resource far more useful than a tatty reference book.

***

In the end, Kate did purchase the book. She had a terrible soft spot for beautiful books that left an even more terrible dent in her Gringotts account. She strode a little ways toward the main street before she stopped, shifted her paper-wrapped package more securely under her arm, and turned on her heel.

A swift pop, and she appeared once again in a back alley. Blaring honks and the rumble of traffic sounded from up ahead.

Exiting onto Whitehall, she wove among the pedestrians until she came to a row of black spiky railings that flanked two flights of descending stairs labelled ‘LADIES’ and ‘GENTLEMEN’. She took the stairs to the right and quickly emerged into the underground public toilets. Dim lighting concealed most of the grime on the black and white tiles, and the mirrors that were supposed to have hung above the three sinks were respectively cracked, nonexistent and spattered with a brown substance that looked suspiciously like spit and chewed tobacco.

Merlin, did everyone enjoy tobacco?

Despite being the main entrance to the Ministry, the Whitehall public toilets were quite disgusting, and the only reason Kate could think why they wouldn’t perform a few simple cleaning charms on the place was that it kept Muggles at bay. In all the years she had used the toilets, she had only ever seen four, perhaps five Muggles wander in. They had been chased out by the unsavoury sight, or else quickly Confounded and sent back overground. Today was no different. Of the dozen or so people queued up by the stalls, all bore some sign of being a Ministry employee.

Dawlish nodded at her from the next queue over. “Alright there, Clarke?”

“Just popping in for a quick chat with Scrimgeour,” she returned.

“Thought you were out on assignment.”

“I was.” She stepped forward in the queue. “Quite productive, actually. Lunch break?” she asked him.

He nodded and patted his stomach beneath his beige suit. “Genevive came ‘round.”

“What about the baby?”

“Helen’s with Gen’s parents.” His wiry brown hair looked grey under the flickering fluorescent lights. “I’ve got a holiday next weekend, so they decided to come down for a fortnight.”

“Excellent.”

Dawlish stepped into a stall. “It will be, as long as my mother-in-law quits smoking,” he called. “Terrible for Helen’s lungs, I told her.” There was a flushing noise and he was gone.

Again, she thought. Again with the tobacco.

It wasn’t long before Kate joined the throng of Ministry workers ambling toward the golden gates at the far end of the Atrium. The crowd was much thinner than the morning rush, however, and within minutes she was striding into the Auror Headquarters on Level Two.

Dawlish had gotten there before her and was already settling in his cubicle, a small mountain of paperwork before him. He adjusted the framed picture lovingly placed in the corner of the cubicle -- a smiling brunette cradled a pig-tailed toddler, both perched atop a broomstick -- then set about dipping his quill in ink to begin the first page.

“Oi, Clarke -- ” Gawain Robard twisted around in his chair, “ -- look at this.” He gestured at a chubby faced witch with cropped pink hair.

The girl grinned cheekily and squeezed her eyes shut as Kate turned to watch. The enormous mane seemed to sprout out of her very neck; bushels of tawny hair laced with grey grew and grew until they framed the girl’s face like a lion’s mane. The girl brought her hands up to her eyes and formed two circles, like glasses, and set her lips into a deep frown.

Kate snorted, then broke into a laugh as the girl growled in a spot-on imitation of the Head Auror.

“Brilliant, eh?” Robard gazed at the girl proudly. One half of his face was gnarled with raised white scars.

“Stunning,” she laughed. “Though I’m not sure Scrimgeour would appreciate the comedy.” She wracked her brain for the girl’s name… Tina… Tink… Tory, was it?

The girl flushed and brought her hands down. The mane retreated. “Bloody terrifying, he is.”

“Who -- Scrimgeour?” Kate asked.

She nodded, her hair turning to an apple red. “You know, I was getting myself some tea from the break room the other day -- adding my milk and sugar and everything -- and he appears next to me and he says -- ” the girl deepened her voice, imitating him, “ -- ‘Ought to use less milk. Have a mind to save the budget.’” She leaned against Robard’s desk. “I wasn’t quite sure what to say. He seems to hate me most out of all the A.T.s.”

Robard propped an arm on the back of his chair. “Well, there are only two of you. The man’s got to pick one, hasn’t he?”

Kate frowned. “Only two Trainees? I thought he hadn’t finished sorting through applications. Didn’t he have seventy some odd left?”

“Dunno.” He ran a hand over his close-cropped black hair. “Anyway, I’ve got a pair of missing twins to find.” He spun back around in his seat.

“Godspeed.” The Auror Trainee’s hair bloomed back to an offensive pink.

Kate could distinctly remember meeting the girl not a week ago when the two A.T.s had first stepped foot in the Headquarters. After all, it was difficult to forget meeting a metamorphmagus, especially one with hair that rivaled the most garish of Valentine’s cards. But she could not, for the life of her, recall the girl’s name.

“Can I get you anything, Ms Clarke?” the girl asked, stepping out of Robard’s cubicle.

Kate had the sudden, fleeting image of a hook nosed, sharp faced man sneering at her over a cauldron. She hadn’t been addressed as ‘Miss Clarke’ for six years, and now… twice in one day. “Just Kate,” she said. “Er -- actually -- could you… ” She gave a small laugh. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Tonks,” said the girl brightly, offering a hand to shake.

Kate took it gratefully. “Welcome to the Auror Headquarters.” She smiled. “Where we discuss murders over tea.”

Tonks grinned, and her hair turned yellow.

Merlin’s pants. The girl was like one of those Muggle mood rings.

“Is Kingsley in?” Kate asked.

“Don’t think so. I saw him dragged out by a group of Obliviators ‘bout an hour ago. A little irritated by the looks of it.”

Then he’d have to wait, she decided. Time was of the essence. She bid Tonks a quick goodbye and wove to her own cubicle to set her package down.

Kate’s cubicle, directly across from Kingsley’s, was cluttered. Very cluttered. A pair of reading spectacles rested lens-side down atop various open books. An unopened Chocolate Frog sat beside a red case folder labelled ‘BULWARK/GOLDHORN’, from which various photographs and documents threatened to burst. A marked map of London’s warehouse district was pinned to her cubicle wall, and next to that a rather crude drawing of a gnome Ginny had recently gifted her. Kate bent to pick up the scraps of parchment that had fluttered to the floor, set adrift by colleagues sweeping past her desk.

Someday she would find time to tidy everything up. Someday, when this whole decomposing stomach debacle was sorted.

She made her way to the back corner of the room where the Head Auror’s Office was located. Kate knocked softly on the door. The blinds looking out toward the cubicles were drawn.

“Enter,” grumbled a voice on the other side.

Scrimgeour’s office was rather dark; grey storm clouds twisted and gathered in the windows behind his desk, pregnant with heavy rain. He scribbled a few last words on a lavender coloured memo before it folded itself into a neat paper aeroplane and zoomed out the door just as Kate closed it behind her.

“Clarke.” Scrimgeour fixed her with a steadfast gaze, his mouth turned down in a deep frown. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles sat low on his ridged nose. “What’s the matter? Something gone wrong with one of them victims?”

“No, no,” she said. “Conditions unchanged, last I heard.”

“Comatose.”

She nodded. “Fortunately. Or they’d be in quite some pain.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“The St Mungo’s task force isn’t working fast enough to save them -- Bulwark and Goldhorn.” It was the truth, plain and simple.

“Aren’t they?”

Kate approached his desk but did not sit down; she rested her hands on the back of the chair before the table. “It’s been made very clear that they’ve only got a list of three possible poisons. Three, sir. It’s been a week and a half. Therefore,” she steeled herself, “it is my hope that, with your permission, I may bring the Potions Master Severus Snape in as a consultant on this case and work on an antidote myself.”

“Severus Snape? What -- the Death Eater?” His tone was incredulous.

“Former Death Eater, sir.”

Scrimgeour huffed a laugh, shaking his tawny head. His maned head looked too large for his rangy frame. When he saw that Kate’s expression was quite unchanged, he stilled.

She took the chance. “He is a brilliant Potioneer. A specialist in his field. In fact, I believe his knowledge of poisons and antidotes surpasses even that of the task force’s.”

“With all due respect, Clarke, you can’t expect me to believe that you and Severus Snape can produce an antidote faster than the task force. They’re a group of highly skilled Healers. They’ve studied poisons for years.”

“And with all due respect to you, sir, you have never been taught by Severus Snape.” Her straight, stubborn brows drew together.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, revealing small rows of snaggled teeth. He let out a suppressed sigh. “Sometimes I wonder if you weren’t sorted into Gryffindor instead.”

She ignored the comment. Her feelings regarding her house were muddled, and it was much easier to ignore them instead. Besides, no use crying over spilt potions. “Please, sir. It can only help the investigation.”

“Your job is to catch the wizard, not to cure the patients.”

“And the antidote will help us to do just that. You know it will. The sooner we find the antidote, the sooner we catch the wizard.” Kate released the chair back and slid her hands into the pockets of her trousers. “If you require it, I can have a copy of his professional record owled to you, but that will take time. Precious time I’m afraid the victims don’t have.”

Lie. She was quite sure she would not be able to obtain a copy of Snape’s record at all. The man certainly wouldn’t provide it willingly.

Scrimgeour narrowed his yellowish eyes behind his spectacles. “And if, in the end, you find you’ve spent too much time mixing cocktails in the dungeons and the case goes cold -- what happens then? What happens when you find you’ve lost?”

“I won’t -- ”

“Shacklebolt is an excellent Auror, top of the line. But no wizard shy of Merlin himself could conduct interviews, formulate theories, inspect crime scenes, subdue the Prophet, investigate suspects and catch the perpetrator singlehandedly.”

“But he won’t be, sir. I am in no way deserting him. I’m merely pursuing an alternate method of investigation in addition to the established method.” Kate took her hands out of her trouser pockets. She hastily swept her dark hair over one shoulder. “I’ve had a chat with Kingsley already. He agrees that it would be extremely helpful to have Snape on standby.” Her mouth dried slightly. She tried not to swallow.

Scrimgeour pulled his frown deeper and inspected Kate for a few quiet moments. Then his spectacles shifted as his ridged nose twitched in resignation. “Shall I inform him, or shall you?”

Warm satisfaction spread through her chest. “Oh, no, it had much better come from you.”

“Very well.” He pulled a blank sheet of parchment from behind his desk.

“Thank you, sir.” Kate returned to the door and pulled it open.

His rumbling voice called her back. “Remind me what grade you received on your Potions N.E.W.T.?”

This she couldn’t lie about. Scrimgeour had her records. “‘Exceeds Expectations’, sir.”

Scrimegour’s busheled brows lowered. “I see.” The doubt in his tone was unmistakable. “I don’t need to remind you that two lives rest in your hands. However you decide to proceed with the case, whether through investigation or experimentation, will determine whether they and their families receive justice. If you fail, it will reflect poorly on our department.” His yellowish eyes blinked at her in the dim office. “Be careful, Katherine.”

She dipped her head. “Of course.”

***

Kate had been right about Kingsley. Admittedly, he’d been rightfully irritated at her not having waited until after he’d got back to ask Scrimgeour, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. She’d even gotten him to confess that having Snape on hand would be useful. At least he hadn’t given her one of his ‘honestly, Kate’ looks. The last time she had gotten one of those was three years ago when she’d still been his trainee.

The keys jangled as she inserted one into the lock and opened the door to her flat. The bloody things were a nuisance, but living squarely in the middle of Westminster, it was a necessary sacrifice.

It was dark and quiet inside her flat. Street lamps outside cast a small pool of light by the window. Late night traffic grumbled past; Trafalgar Square never slept. Kate dropped her briefcase by the door and hung the keys on the coat stand. As she passed into the small kitchen, she dropped her linen jacket on the granite counter.

She had already eaten dinner with Kingsley, working on the case while nibbling on Ministry canteen sandwiches. Four empty wrappers lay crumpled on the table before they had looked up and realised it was nearly ten. But the brain burned nearly twenty percent of one’s daily calories, which meant an extra supper for her after a long day’s work.

And so it was that Kate rooted around the fridge, the white light casting an eerie glow on her pale face. She spooned down a bit of leftover curry from the Thai place down the street. A quick wave of her wand and the dishes were washed. She crept down the creaky hall to the bedroom.

The bedroom door was slightly ajar, but all was dark inside. White noise rumbled in the chambers. Kate eased herself through the crack in the door, then shut it behind her. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness before creeping to the dresser across from the large bed. Slowly, ever so slowly, she pulled the drawer out, inch by inch. The ancient wood squeaked, loud enough to be heard over the white noise.

A groan from the rumpled sheets on the bed. “Kate?”

Damn. She gave up and yanked the drawer open the rest of the way. “Sorry to wake you,” she whispered. “I was trying to be quiet.”

“It’s fine. Just got back from work?” His American accent was slightly slurred with sleep.

“Yes. Kingsley and I had some business to discuss.” She pulled her nightclothes from the drawer and pushed it shut again.

Mark grunted. Kate could just make out his lean form struggling to sit up.

She shushed him. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be right there.”

“No, no, it’s okay, baby. I’ll wait up for you.” But he fell back against the pillows and tried to conceal a yawn.

Kate shimmied out of her work clothes, carefully folding the white shirt and trousers and draping them on top of the dresser.

“What was the business with Kingsley about?”

“The new case.” She slipped into her nightshirt. “We brought in a new consultant today.”

Mark hummed sleepily and dragged a hand up to scratch his beard. She climbed into bed next to him.

“Come here,” he said. He opened his arms and waited until she settled in to continue. “Who’s the consultant?”

His chest was too high for her head; her neck scrunched uncomfortably when she laid against him. “My former Potions Master.” Kate shifted her arm under her shoulder, then changed her mind and wriggled it out.

“The mean one or the fat one?”

“Mean one. I actually haven’t heard from the fat one in a while.” She grunted as she shifted positions. “But Tristan says he keeps getting letters from him.”

“Really?”

“Apparently Slughorn wants a special invitation to one of his concerts.”

His beard scratched the top of her head as he looked down at her. “You okay?”

She removed her arm from under her shoulder for the third time and stilled. “Sorry.”

“So, what’s the plan with him? Your Potions Master?”

“Not sure yet.” Well, she did have a general idea, but the specifics would ultimately come down to how difficult Snape was set on being. “How was your day?”

“Good.” He rubbed her back, up and down. “Went to the Leaky Cauldron to get some writing done. Five thousand words and half a chapter finished.”

“Excellent. Has what’s-his-name found the killer yet?”

“Not yet. That’s in Chapter Thirteen.”

Kate laughed softly. “Thirteen, you say?”

“Yeah.” His fingers wove into her dark hair.

For a few minutes they were silent, white noise thundering over the sound of their breathing and the traffic outside. His chest rose and fell; Kate’s neck cricked awkwardly.

“I kept staring at our spot at the bar,” he said suddenly. “At the Leaky Cauldron.”

She thought he’d fallen back asleep. “Our spot?”

“Remember -- the day we met? You were sitting on the third seat from the left end of the bar -- ”

“You remember which seat I was sitting in?”

“Of course. How could I not?”

Kate huffed in amusement.

“You wore those robes -- I think they were blue, yeah, navy blue -- and you were reading that ratty copy of Pride and Prejudice.”

“And the ring too. Don’t forget the wedding ring.”

She could hear the grin in his voice. “Didn’t stop me from asking you out, did it?”

“Not sure what that says about you, Mark.”

“But I knew it was a fake.”

“Did you now?”

He hummed. “I was people-watching that night. There was no way I would’ve missed something as obvious as that.”

“And yet,” Kate propped her chin on his chest to look up at him, “I distinctly remember you ordering two bottles of firewhiskey, throwing me the worst pickup line, and proceeding to get me exceedingly sloshed.”

“You weren’t that drunk,” he protested. “You were still sober enough to help me with my novel.”

“Well, we both know it only sold so well because of me.”

“Really?”

“Most definitely. The murder mystery wouldn’t’ve been half so believeable if I hadn’t mixed in a dash of first-hand experience.”

He chuckled. “Of course, baby. All because of you.” His arms tightened around her back. His voice was husky when he spoke again. “My life is perfect because of you. So, so perfect.”

She could almost feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. She didn’t know how to respond.

“Sleep, sleep, baby,” he murmured. “I love you.” He kissed the top of her head. “My soon-to-be wife.”

And suddenly the ring on her left hand felt cold as ice. She could think of nothing to say without sounding like a lovesick chit, so she settled for sliding an arm around his stomach. “Goodnight, Mark.”

He merely hummed in contentment.

It took less than five minutes for him to drift off again. Kate’s head rose and fell in time with his chest. A powerful snore escaped his mouth. Wrapped in rumbling white noise, she let her thoughts race.

She’d been wrong before, when she’d thought Snape looked the same. Their exchange had lasted mere minutes, his words, tone, attitude all as she’d expected, but his posture, his body language… Taut, shallow breaths through the nose, fingers gripping his package so tightly they turned white…

Of course, noticing such details was part of her training, but even without it, she would’ve recognised the signs for what they were -- silent, creeping fear.

The fear of the unknown. The knowledge that something, at any time, could attack her from anywhere. Like stumbling down a pitch black corridor and feeling a hand latch onto her ankle.

Merlin.

Kate slid from the bed. For a moment, she teetered on the edge; she was being ridiculous and dramatic. Crawling back into bed was the right choice, the reasonable choice. Kate watched the sleeping man in the bed, his golden brown hair nearly black in the darkness, his beard freshly trimmed, his chest bare. Her left thumb reached for the ring around her finger.

Perhaps a cup of tea would do her good.

The warm beverage didn’t take long to make. Soon, she was cradling the mug in her hands, though not daring to drink for fear of burning her tongue. Waiting a few minutes would do the trick.

Out in the sitting room, there was no white noise. A siren wined in the distance. Kate leaned against the window frame, looking out over Trafalgar Square. Despite the late hour, pedestrians still dotted the brightly lit square; some gathered around the colourful fountains, while others stopped to admire Nelson’s Column, an imposing Corinthian column upon which sat the Admiral of the same name. He hopped the twig ages ago, but his mark was long since made.

Kate blew on her tea. The warm steam tickled her nose. Some marks, she knew, never faded. The sight of her former Head of House had only reminded her of the fact.

Even now, bundled in her soft cotton nightshirt and her hair cascading around her shoulders, she could still feel his hand on her breast. Gripping. Pinching.

Hyatt Travers.

Her stomach turned over. She set her mug on the window sill.

The Death Eaters swallowed Slytherin house like a riptide. She knew, because fighting the current had come with a steep price she’d paid in full.

Her hands itched in restlessness. Kate picked up her mug again, scraping the rim with a nail. She looked at her knuckles. It was too easy to picture his blood and hers, drops flying from her fist as she’d drawn back to strike him again. The blinding frenzy. His spit in her face, a mouthful of saliva and blood from his broken teeth.

The scars from that night were still there, faint but clearly visible between her knuckle ridges.

Mark asked about them once. A rough encounter with an illegal dealer a couple years ago, she told him. He hadn’t suspected anything then, but since then… Her random bursts of resentment were impossible to overlook.

From the window, Kate watched a couple amble across the Square, arm in arm. The woman turned her face up to his, and the man gave her a chaste kiss. Kate smiled, but it soon disappeared.

When her moods came -- as they inevitably would -- Mark would sit her down on their bed, poking and prodding with this tranquil voice. He was trying to avoid a row, but it was like a bloody piece of plastic wrap smothering her. She tried to contain herself, really, but her voice raised of its own accord, the tears came unbidden, the swell of anger unwelcome. And when he shushed her or pulled her to his chest, she just … she couldn’t. She didn’t want to be quiet. She didn’t need a hug.

Kate took a large sip of her tea. The hot liquid prickled her tongue.

Oh, Mark… He would never look at her the same way.

That night -- her violence -- was a secret to keep.

***

Loud beeping woke Kate in the morning. She felt better after a quick face wash, but last night’s sleeplessness lingered as she plodded into the kitchen. Mark was seated at the small square table, dressed in only a shirt and boxers. He sipped a mug, transfixed by the glowing picture box pushed against the corner counter. A blonde woman chattered on screen as images of rubble flashed behind her.

Kate gazed at the box for a long moment; it was called a telephone, wasn’t it? Well, tele-something, that much she knew. “You’re up early,” she said.

Mark glanced up. His brown gaze swept over her nightshirt clad form. A blush rose in her cheeks. “I’m meeting Steven and Wilson for some ball at nine. Told you last week, remember?”

She did not. “Football?”

He pushed his floppy brown hair back from his eyes. “They’re muggles. Can’t play Quidditch.”

“Shame.” She spotted a covered plate on the table. “Oh, what’s this? Breakfast?”

“Toast and eggs. There’s coffee in the pot, if you want it.”

Kate pouted playfully. “No baked beans?”

He grimaced. “I will never understand you Brits.”

“No matter. I’m sure I’ll survive.” She gave him a quick peck and settled down to eat. Mark turned back to his tele-box, downing the rest of his coffee.

She had just finished her toast when Mark interrupted.

“Incoming.” He was looking out the window.

With the way the table was pushed against the wall and window, Kate had to stand and move behind Mark to get a look outside. In the distance, above the narrow alley the window faced, two spots flapped toward them.

“Two owls?” She settled back into her seat. “You know, we’re much too popular to be living in such a busy muggle area.”

“I’m the one paying the rent -- ”

“Just having you on, Mark,” she smiled. “The concealment charms’ll hold up.”

And though Mark’s gaze followed the sweeping path of the owls as they swooped into the alley, to the Muggle passerbys down below, they were nothing more than thin air. Mark pushed the window open. A beastly eagle owl fluttered in, followed by a rather plain barn owl.

Tied onto the first owl’s leg was a bundled copy of the Daily Prophet. Kate reached over her eggs and untied the string. It took a few tries; several of her nails had broken during a nasty tumble in a duelling simulation a week ago.

“It’s for you.” Mark slid the letter from the barn owl across to her.

She hummed in acknowledgement, but opened the newspaper instead. She hoped Kingsley had taken care of the stray reporter. A quick scan of the paper confirmed her hopes: there was nothing about the case. In fact, the only interesting headline read, ‘GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION’, but she gave it no mind. That was Moody’s case.

“Here.” She handed the Prophet to Mark, then took up the letter on the table.

The letter was merely a small square of folded parchment sealed with flimsy black wax. Katherine Clarke was written in sharp lettering, as if the author had tried to stab through the paper as they wrote. She broke open the seal. There was no greeting, no signature, but she didn’t need them to know exactly who had sent the letter.

She couldn’t help it; she snorted.

Mark looked up at her. “What?”

Kate set the paper next to her plate. “Seems I’ll be visiting Hogwarts soon.”

For, written on the yellowed parchment in a cramped, spidery scrawl:

Potions classroom. 25th August. 4pm.

Without Rufus Scrimgeour, if you please.

~~~

Notes: Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist. No promises on when the next update will be, but I’m working on it :)

~~~

#severus snape #severus snape x oc #snape fandom #snape community #professor snape #pro snape #hp fanfic #fanfic #original character #auror #auror fanfic #snape x oc #the gold in the abyss #snapedom #ministry of magic

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kagrenacs · 3 years

Text

Explaining the Tes Iceberg #1

I’m skipping over the first level because most of it is easily searched for, or present within the games. I’m also skipping things that are present within the main quest lines/generally obvious/things that are just plain nasty because there’s a lot on this thing,

Giants are Orcs/Mer: Discussion on Skyrim Forums, probably derives from the giant’s pointed ears, not too sure of this one.

Star-Wound: Another name for the Heart of Lorkhan

Amaund Motierre: Found in Skyrim DB, has you kill the emperor. Shares a surname with Francois Motierre in the Oblivion DB quests EDIT: May reference a theory that Amaund, an Elder Council member, and the Emperor were in cohorts, planing the emperor’s own death.

Karthwasten Massacre: Mentioned in Season Unending exclusively, some people believe this is a conspiracy/hoax

Falmer Wispmothers: Theory from Skyrim Gamesas forums stating that wispmothers may be Falmer in origin due to their similar elven appearance, citing the book ‘The Wispmother’

Soul Trade: Theory stating that Daedric Princes trade in souls

Fort Dawnguard built for Lord Harkon: Couldn’t find discussions of this, but i feel it’s fairly self explanatory

Divayth Fyr still alive: Neloth survived the Red Year, Divayth may have as well

The Old Ways: A book regarding Daedra worship from a Psjic perspective as something similar to ancestor worship

Sload soap made of sload: Regarding the item description of Sload Soap in Morrowind, made from immature non-sentient forms of sloads, basically like embryonic cells

Memory Stones: Enchanted stones that keep memories

Tunnels under White-Gold Tower: You enter the tower through the sewers in ESO

Alessia Burial place: Her actual burial place is disputed, said to be at the Temple of the One or Sancre Tor

Lorkhan Demiurge: The Gnostic concept of a Demiurge is a subordinate god to a higher supreme being that creates/controls the laws of the material world. This theory states that MK may have used this concept in writing lore for Lorkhan as he was a Comparative Religions Major.

Nords actually from Skyrim/Humans were always on Tamriel: Can’t find original discussion on this, but if i had to take a stab at it i’d guess it theorizes that in the origin myth, Old Aldmeris is Tamriel, and the wandering/old ehlnofey migrated from it, only to migrate back. EDIT: One user suggested it may be from Pocket Guide to the Empire (Old Redguard lore, take it with a grain of salt) which is canonically Imperial propaganda to justify their rule. PGE states that the predecessors to the Nords migrated to Atmora, while others remained (Nedes). This is used by the imperials to justify their rule/colonization over all of Tamriel. However, critical thinking needs to be applied here, (as it should be with most of tes) as I’ve seen this theory used to justify colonialism as a whole. Going well beyond the games, by stating the right to rule is determined by what you conquer.

Wine-Knives: Mentioned in obscure MK text ‘Shor son of Shor’ A weapon that you only pull when drunk

Numidiumism: Mentioned in The Dragon Break Reexamined, in context sounds like an obsession/worship of the Numidium

Rieklings are Snow Elves: Lore from Bloodmoon as theorized by the Skaal

Sutch: An old fort in Oblivion that used to be a city

Wasabi Trade: Obscure lore from MK’s KIMMUNE, Aldugagga and Pocket Guide to the Empire. Wasabi is either something akin to glass or is just Wasabi. Nords like it quite a bit.

Knahaten Flu is Biological Warfare: It’s alleged that an Argonian created it via magic

Nirn testing ground for transcendence: Dunmer believe that Lorkhan created Mundus as a way to test lesser spirits to see if they were worthy of transcendence

Fal Droon: Author of The Dragon Break Reexamined and The Lunar Lorkhan, books that criticize supernatural beliefs, is an anagram for ‘Darn Fool’

The Illusion of Death: Book in eso discussing Marukh the prophet and founder of Marukhti Society’s alleged encounter with Alessia

Protonymics: The secret names of Daedra and other beings, if you know it you may possess great power over them

Temple Zero/Null Manifesto: A cult that follows the teachings of Markuth the prophet who was also of the Igma people. Critical of the Septim Empire. There is also an extensive RP/writing group dedicated to this ingame cult at http://www.monkeytruth.net/texts/manifesto.shtml

Emperor Zero: A cult established by Tiber Septim dedicated to his predecessor Cuhlecain. Honors him as the person who conquered much of Cyrodiil

The Shezzarine: An incarnation of Lorkhan’s soul/essence

Soul Gem immortality: ties to Lichdom and the practice of trapping your own soul within an object to gain immortality. May also refer to the theory that the Ideal Masters were mages that achieved ascension through bargaining of souls/Soul Stacking which is one of the Walking Ways.

Ankh: Presence of the Egyptian symbol of life within a few games. Some theorize it has deeper meanings, but it’s probably just another example of devs taking aspects of the real world and putting it into the games

#The Elder Scrolls #Tes Iceberg #Long post #Kagrenacs Journal

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fanfictionaries · 3 years

Text

Oh So Many Years: Ch. 16 - Flame Twin

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Fred Weasley

Summary:

What happens when two Weasleys get too involved?

Absolute chaos.

Warnings: Swearing, Death, Smut/18+ NSFW

Author’s Note:

OKAY! After 14 hours of traveling back home yesterday I fell asleep editing this chapter! So...I mean I do and I don't have any excuse for that. Thank you for your patience!

I am back to updating every week before midnight on Sundays (US MST)!

I hope you have as much fun reading this chapter as I did writing it! And as always, please, please, please feel free to like, comment, and reblog. I LOVE interacting with you all!!

Masterlist

<<<Chapter 15

You are the hider

I am the seeker

My twin, I’m in flames

I’m rolling about

I have a name

You call me by none

My twin, I’m on fire

Come put me out

George Weasley loved his siblings very much. His eldest brother, Bill, was easily the coolest bloke he knew – somehow being a prefect, Head Boy, and working for Gringotts, without being dull as dishwater. His second eldest brother, Charlie, always knew what to say in a pinch; certainly, the most level-headed person in England, but then he’d have to be to work with dragons for a living. Percy, for all his downfalls, worked harder than anyone he’d ever known and sometimes George secretly wished he had an ounce of his ambition. Ron was always down for a laugh which George liked very much, but he also wasn’t afraid to challenge George more than any of his other siblings. Ginny, his little sister, was unapologetically herself and took zero shite from anyone. She also had a fondness for trouble, in her own special kind of way. But out of all of them, Fred had to be his favourite sibling by far. Sure, he was a bit biased considering Fred was his twin and all, but George reckoned he’d have no trouble disliking Fred if he were any different. While he and Fred were similar in many ways, they were also very distinct. Fred was more outgoing, daring, and had a penchant to take things a bit too far where he was more laid back, erratic, and carefree. George supposed that was because Fred cared more about things than he did. Most people assumed, if they even bothered to assume anything about him and his twin brother’s differences that is, that Fred was the more callous of the two. But where others saw reckless cruelty, George knew it was really the opposite.

Fred cared – a lot. Too much, in George’s opinion. He let his emotions get in the way of his thoughts and it often resulted in him taking things too far. He pushed people past their limits when he thought he knew what was best for them. He punished people too harshly when he felt they deserved it. For example, Fred was the first to suggest they find Percy and beat him to a bloody pulp when he’d made their mother cry. Fred didn’t care what the consequences were. No one made their mother cry.

But he also let the poor actions of those he cared about slide too much. Like with Angelina at the moment – there was no way George would ever put up with his girlfriend ignoring him without any proper excuse. But Fred wasn’t George. So, he sat in silent misery, justifying, and making excuses for why his girlfriend wasn’t in the wrong.

Fred also forgave too easily where it wasn’t deserved. That’s why George knew without a doubt that Fred would be the first to forgive Percy if and when he inevitably apologized, and when Angelina eventually broke his heart, he would probably find some way to make it not her fault.

All these things George loved about his brother. But it was also all these things that led to the one thing George did not love about Fred. He always had to be a bloody martyr.

George knew Fred liked Hermione. He had had a subtle inclination that Hermione liked him back. And after yesterday morning’s little show in their bedroom, there was no question the two had chemistry. The way the electricity sparked between them…George was almost convinced they’d have started ripping each other’s clothes off if he hadn’t reminded them he was there. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say they’d already hooked up before, or something like it. But if that had happened Fred surely would have told him.

In George’s opinion it would be the easiest thing in the world for them to just fess up to each other and finally snog it out. Damn Angelina and damn Ron alike. But that was too easy – no, Fred had to take everyone else’s feelings into account. He couldn’t possibly take what he wanted if it chanced hurting Angelina’s or Ron’s feelings and somehow those factors had made him blind to the way Hermione looked at him. Which only made it worse of course, because he was annoyingly convinced Hermione would never be interested in him. George didn’t know why – he was a handsome chap. But then again, he was a bit biased.

It didn’t surprise him when Fred wasn’t in their room when he’d finally turned in for the night. He was probably somewhere in the house, sulking like the right stubborn prat he was. It was surprising, however, when he’d woken the next morning and found that Fred had never returned to their room. Where could he possibly be? wondered George, stepping out into the hall. He started with the kitchen. Fred was known to wake up early and enjoy a nice cuppa while he waited for the rest of the house to wake up. But the kitchen was empty – no signs of Fred or morning tea anywhere to be found. Peaking into the nearby dining room, he also saw no Fred in sight. Perhaps the parlour, thought George and he walked up to the second floor. Again, no Fred. He was irritated now. Was this tosser really going to make him search the whole bloody house for him?

Stomping across the hall, he thrust the door to the library open and paused. He could just make out the top of Fred’s head, his red hair peaking out at the end of the sofa in front of the fire. George crept quietly across the room, expecting to give his brother a bit of a scare. He supposed the only benefit of having to go searching for his brother would be to get a good laugh out of it. But when he got close enough to peer over the top of the sofa, he didn’t find just Fred. No, instead he found Hermione Granger wrapped around his brother like a Grindylow attacking its prey. Even more curious, Fred was very much awake looking down at Hermione like she was a goddess divine sent from the heavens to please him.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” asked George, crossing his arms and grinning widely.

Fred’s gaze snapped from the girl sleeping on top of him to George. He looked guilty, splendidly so.

“It’s not what it looks like,” whispered Fred, giving Hermione a tense glance when she stirred slightly. Fred only relaxed when he was sure Hermione was still asleep. She nuzzled her face further into his chest and her breathing deepened once again.

George took a step closer, leaning against the back of the sofa and staring down at his brother who was looking especially uncomfortable. “Really? Because it looks like you’re cozied up on the sofa with Hermione,” George whispered back, fighting everything within him that wanted to jump and scream ‘GOTCHA!’.

“We were only talking. She was knackered. She fell asleep.”

“And you just decided to be a gentleman and be her mattress for the night?”

Fred sighed quietly. “I fell asleep too.”

“Mmm, I’m sure.”

“Look, there’s no ulterior motive here. I’m going with Angelina.”

“Sure didn’t look that way when I walked in. Now, correct me if I’m wrong since I’ve never had a girlfriend or anything, but are you allowed to lovingly stroke other girl’s hair when you’re in a relationship?” George tapped a finger to the end of his chin in mock contemplation.

Fred let out a small groan of frustration, trying his best not to wake Hermione in the current situation. “Alright, fine. You’ve had your fun. You’ve taken the mickey out of me. Happy?”

“Not necessarily, no,” answered George, not at all amused by Fred’s lack of fight.

“What do you want from me, mate?” Fred asked in exasperation. He was bordering hysterics and George could almost see a bead of sweat forming at his brow. Good.

“You know what I want.” George fixed him with a pointed stare. He raised his eyebrows expectantly. Now’s the time Freddie boy, thought George.

Fred opened his mouth as if to say something in response, but no sound came out and he quickly closed it, scrunching his brow. This process repeated a few times, making Fred look very much like a fish in George’s opinion. It took a while, but George was willing to wait as long as it took for Fred to give him what he wanted. That’s it, that’s a good boy, you can do it, George thought encouragingly in his mind, hoping that Fred could hear his thoughts.

Finally he answered in a harsh whisper, “Fine! I like her! I’m raving mad about her! I fancy her more than I’ve ever fancied anyone in my life. Are you happy now?”

“Extremely—” George pushed off the back of the sofa and headed towards the library doors “—see you at breakfast.”

An hour later George was seated at the kitchen table, sipping on a cup of earl grey, and flipping through the Daily Prophet. Goblin stock options – boring. New cauldron regulations – boring. Which witch and wizard’s fashion were in and out – double boring. A feel-good piece on the Minister – nauseating. He threw the paper down and folded it roughly with a sigh before pulling out his wand and charming the pages to fold themselves into individual little chickens. He didn’t know why he bothered with the paper anymore. It was just like his father said these days, all a load of rubbish.

The house was mostly awake at this point. George could hear the hustle and bustle of his family combined with the odd Order member. They were always popping in. Sometimes they brought news, sometimes they were simply asking on the whereabouts of other members, and sometimes they simply needed a place to sleep. Despite housing a majority of the Weasley family, Sirius Black, and a full-grown Hippogriff, Grimmauld Place had more than enough room to spare. The kitchen was oddly empty that morning though, not even his mum had come down yet to start on breakfast. George heard the distant shuffle of shoes on hardwood as someone descended the staircase. He sat up a bit straighter hoping it was Fred. They needed to continue their conversation. The fact that Fred had admitted his feelings to George was a good first start; now he just needed to admit those feelings to Hermione.

However, it wasn’t Fred who rounded the corner and entered the kitchen. Instead it was his little sister Ginny, looking incredibly rumpled and cranky.

“Orite, Gin?” George asked, eyeing her misbuttoned blouse and wrinkled shorts. Contrary to the last few days, the morning was uncharacteristically warm and when George had looked out the window earlier he saw nothing but bright sunny skies. Perhaps summer had finally come at last.

“No. It’s going to be such a nice day out and mum’s got us cooped up in this ghastly place! I asked her if we could take the day off and go home to play some quidditch, but she said she found another Doxy nest in one of the fourth floor bedrooms,” whined Ginny, grabbing a loaf of bread from the breadbox on the counter and slicing into it with a sharp knife. “Toast?”

George nodded, watching the paper chickens on the table chase each other down it’s length.

“It’s just mental! We’ve always had chores and I’ve never complained…much, but we’ve also always had time for fun things too. But here it’s like every waking moment is devoted to cleaning this trash heap of a house and for what? Sirius doesn’t care, obviously and if Kreacher cared, well there wouldn’t be this mess in the first place!” She held a piece of bread over the flame of the stove, browning the side before turning it over carefully in her hand and toasting the other side.

“Fuck!” Ginny exclaimed, dropping the toast onto the flame, and sucking on her singed pointer finger. She kept the digit between her lips for a moment before pulling it out of her mouth and inspecting the damage. “You know, this process would go a lot smoother if I had magic.” She shot George a pointed look.

George rolled his eyes good-humouredly. With a flew flicks of his wand the bread began to balance itself over the stove flame, toasting to a golden brown before depositing itself onto a plate. While the bread toasted Ginny grabbed butter and jam from the fridge and placed it on the table before George.

“Why don’t you just try out for the quidditch team Gin? You’re well enough at it,” said George, not really wanting to get into the endless number of chores they did daily. While he agreed, he’d also been listening to Ron and Ginny complain for a month now and he was growing tired of it. At a certain point whinging got you nowhere and it was better to shut up and put up.

“Well enough? I kick yours and Fred’s butt more often then not. I’m bloody fantastic.” Ginny grinned widely, grabbing the now full plate of toast, and walking to the table with it. George grabbed a piece and began to butter it before globbing on an ample amount of raspberry jam. One of the paper chickens pecked at his hand and George broke a piece of his toast off, tossing it to them. The chickens pecked enthusiastically at it and George took a large bite off of the remaining slice. As he chewed, he looked across the table at his sister. She had four slices on her own plate, piled high with butter and jam. The amount was no surprise. Ginny always ate to excess. It was impressive more than anything. He honestly didn’t know where she put it all.

“I think I’d want to try out for chaser this year. Are there any open chaser positions?” asked Ginny, taking a large bite.

Fred shook his head. All the chaser positions were full. Ginny frowned.

“But we need a new keeper. Still haven’t filled the position since Wood left,” George offered kindly.

Ginny made a face that George didn’t quite understand. There was nothing wrong with keeper. It certainly wasn’t as cool as beater, but it was a respectable position. Perhaps it wasn’t exciting enough for his dear sister. She always did enjoy a bit of thrill, just like him and Fred. Speaking of Fred. His twin entered the kitchen looking wary as he sat down at the table and poured himself a cup of tea. Shortly after Ron and Hermione joined them. The atmosphere around the table was tense. Or at least George thought so. Everyone was too quiet. They chewed too slowly, as if the lot of them had stayed up late the night before drinking deeply from a bottle of Firewhisky.

“Everyone excited for a day of Doxy wrangling?” George asked cheerily, trying to lift the mood at the table.

His three companions groaned, their shoulders sagging. Ron, who’d snagged a piece of toast from the pile, dropped his slice onto the table and laid his head in his hands. Honestly, what was everyone’s problem these days? People needed to learn to lighten up, live a little.

George did not try to lift the mood again. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth trying, especially when Fred wasn’t in the spirit to help him. The largest of the paper chickens hopped across the table and pecked at Ginny’s hand. She gave a little giggle. George smiled. At least his little sister could still be agreeable when she was cranky. Looking to the others at the table, George caught Fred and Hermione sharing a look. To anyone else it might seem innocent enough, but George assessed the situation like a trained auror looking for clues. It was much easier to spot things when you were looking for them. Their smiles were a bit too warm, their glances furtive, and whenever they came close to touching they both stuttered away from each other. The idiots clearly liked each other but didn’t want the other to know. Ridiculous.

“Could you pass the sugar please, Fred?” Hermione asked politely, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot in the middle.

“I’ve got it, ‘Mione!” said Ron enthusiastically. He grabbed the sugar before Fred could reach it and placed it in front of Hermione.

Fred gawped, looking slightly put out, and sat back heavily in his seat. He crossed his arms, decidedly mopey once again. Great.

“…thank you Ron.” Hermione swallowed thickly and began to pile sugar into her cup.

The table fell back into a thick silence. Thankfully, it only lasted for a few moments more as the distant sound of his mother calling them from the parlour on the second floor broke the tension. Ron, Hermione, and Fred seemed to jump from their seats, rocketing towards the door of the kitchen like they’d been waiting at the starting line and his mother’s voice was the signal to run. George and Ginny hung behind, cleaning up the last bits of breakfast before they went to their mother.

“Merlin and Morgana…could you believe the tension between them? Could cut it with a bloody knife,” said Ginny, leaning against the kitchen counter.

George paused, the plates in his hand hovering in the air as he went to place them in the sink. “How did you…?”

“Oh come on George. I mean, it’s pretty obvious they fancy each other. Hermione doesn’t think he does of course. Just wish that brother of ours would finally fess up and tell her. That way we’d finally stop having to watch them make sad puppy eyes at one another.” Ginny laughed, pushing off the counter and heading towards the door out of the kitchen.

George stared at his little sister in disbelief. He clearly hadn’t been giving the girl enough credit. That or Fred and Hermione’s actions were more obvious than he previously thought. Either way, it was nice to know he wasn’t the only one in the house suffering because of them. He just wished there were a way to force them to—

“Ginny! Wait!” George reached out and grabbed his sister’s arm. Ginny spun around, giving him a confused looked. A large smile spread across George’s face and he knew he must look like an absolute maniac in that moment, but he’d just come up with a brilliant idea. An absolutely brilliant, devious idea.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Ginny reproachfully.

“Gin…how would you like to help me with something today?”

“What? Like one of your pranks?”

“No, not a prank. More like a…mission. A mission of love you might call it.”

Ginny’s eyes widened in understanding and her mouth stretched into an equally evil smile.

“Oh George, I thought you’d never ask.”

Fred groaned. Just when he thought the day couldn’t get any worse, life found a way to torture him further. It was a hot day. England had finally found its summer heat and soon the temperature rose so high even the strongest cooling charm couldn’t cut the stifling warmth. As a result the lot of them had divested themselves of their layers until they were as stripped as was proper. Fred, George, and Ron were shirtless as they cleaned out the Doxy nests in the upstairs bedroom. Getting rid of the Doxies had been fairly simple, but the compact, intricate nests they’d made in the wardrobes and drapes was another story. It would have taken less time with wands, but Fred and George had made the mistake of launching one too many Doxies at Ron, and their mother had taken their wands as punishment. Ginny, Ron, and Hermione had glared daggers at them as it really was a punishment for all of them. Now they’d all be forced to remove the nests by hand. Sweat rolled down Fred’s chest as he pulled out an old box from the top of the wardrobe to reveal another clump of nests. Damn Doxies.

Across the room, balancing on a ladder, Hermione prodded at the drapes. Staring at the girl, he thought this must be what they meant when they talked about forbidden fruit. She’d pulled her hair up, twisting it into a knot at the back of her head, but after several hours of work, tendrils had fallen loose, sticking to her damp neck. Her vest top had risen at some point, revealing the creamy skin of her midsection just above a pair of shorts that had to be the tightest things in existence, Fred thought. She hadn’t been wearing them earlier in the day, but after lunch when they’d returned to their work, she’d entered the bedroom and Fred had nearly swallowed his tongue. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she’d done it on purpose. To torture him. But that wasn’t right. It was foolishly arrogant to assume Hermione wore anything for anyone, especially himself.

In addition to the true agony that Hermione was causing him physically, George was causing him equal turmoil mentally. No, he hadn’t done or said anything, but that was entirely the point. After catching him and Hermione together that morning and finally getting Fred to admit his feelings for the girl, he expected a bit more from his brother. He was sure his twin would pull him aside to continue their conversation, or at the very least make pointed jokes. But there’d been nothing. In fact, it seemed George was hellbent on acting as if that morning never happened.

Fred’s thoughts drifted back to earlier in the library. Once George left, he took a few more minutes to bask in the glory of having Hermione in his arms before he woke her. She had been mildly embarrassed when she roused to find herself wrapped so tightly around him. But Fred played it off like it was no big deal. But despite the moment of embarrassment something definitely felt like it had shifted between the two of them. Fred felt a little less on edge around her and she seemed to be more relaxed around him as well. Perhaps realizing that she could be physically close to him without him making a move had her less concerned about being around him again.

Although Fred figured if Hermione could hear his thoughts at that moment she’d feel anything but an ease. He had to physically bite his tongue when she’d hopped off the ladder and bent over to pick up the duster she’d been using. A tightness formed in the front of his trousers and Fred turned his gaze away, banging his head on one of the open wardrobe doors to. Squeezing his eyes shut tight he thought about boring things like owl post, third year herbology, and potions essays. When that didn’t work he thought of disgusting things like Blast-Ended Skrewts and Hippogriff dung.

“Hermione, could you give me a hand with this please?” asked Ginny, motioning to the second pair of heavy drapes as she attempted to get behind the tangled mess of them.

“Yeah, of course.”

Fred watched as Ginny piled the ends of the drapes into Hermione’s arms. “There’s a nest back here. I think if you lift the drapes high enough, I’ll be able to reach it,” said Ginny, instructing Hermione to lift the drapes higher in her arms.

There really shouldn’t be anything sexy about cleaning out Doxy nests, thought Fred. But as Hermione raised her arms higher and higher, she revealed more of her sweat-slicked body. The wild-haired girl struggled under the weight of the drapes, now hold them high above her head. Fred supposed if he hadn’t been checking out Hermione in that moment, he wouldn’t have seen the way her arms buckled, dropping some of the drapes and tangling them in her legs. Sprinting across the room, he caught her just as she lost her footing, trying to untangle her legs from the heavy material.

“Whoa!” Hermione exclaimed, landing hard in Fred’s arms, as the drapes fell back onto Ginny.

“Hey! Hermione, what gives—oh…you okay?” Ginny had scrambled out of the drapes to see Hermione in Fred’s embrace, looking up at him in surprise. Fred’s mouth went dry as he looked down at the witch in his arms. Her face was delightfully flushed, and he could feel bare skin under his hands. He felt the tightening in his pants return and practically threw Hermione from his hold, stepping away from her.

“Thanks,” Hermione muttered, looking pointedly down at the ground.

“Yeah,” coughed Fred.

He was just about to try and come up with an excuse to flee from the room when his mother entered, looking around the space appraisingly. “I think that’s enough for the day dears. It’s quite hot, why don’t you wrap up and we’ll finish this room tomorrow?”

“Alright, thanks mum,” said George, wiping his grubby hands on his jeans and walking over to swing an arm around Ginny’s shoulders.

“Uck! You’re all sweaty George!” cried Ginny, shrugging off George’s arm in disgust.

George took a moment to assess himself, looking down at his sweaty form. “You’re right Gin. I think I could use a shower actually. What about you lot?”

A chorus of agreement rang through the room from them all and they exited it, heading down to their rooms and more importantly, the bathrooms.

Ginny was only slightly disappointed in herself. Her first “mission” with her older brother George and already she was failing at it. She’d never tell him, but she considered his invitation to be quite the honour. Sure, she’d helped Fred and George with some of their little schemes over the years, but never had one of them asked her specifically to help without the other. At first she wondered why Fred wasn’t involved in their plan, but they she realized it might be because Fred didn’t know Ron was desperately in love with Hermione and vice-versa. Perhaps Ron had only told George in confidence and didn’t want Fred knowing too – Fred was the type to tease Ron more than George would about something like that. Finding out that Ginny was clued in was probably a huge relief to George.

“I’m not really sure how doing this will make them confess their feelings though,” said Ginny, knitting her brow and looking sceptically at her older brother.

“Trust me, it’ll work. All we need is a bit of sexual tension to break them. Get them hot and bothered enough and they’ll be attacking each other before you know it!”

She still wasn’t sure if she was 100% sold on the plan, but George knew about these things more than her. It had been her idea to spill pumpkin juice all over Hermione’s clothes after lunch, forcing her to change. She’d subtly offered Hermione a pair of her shorts, her smallest and tightest ones and a when the older girl had asked whether or not she should just wear her vest, Ginny encouraged it. A small part of her felt like it was a bit demeaning to resort to primping Hermione up like a prize fair farm animal for Ron to ogle, but at this point she was desperate to get the two of them to admit their feelings. Her wants in the world were simple. She wanted her siblings to be happy and she wanted her friends to be happy. If she could accomplish those things in one fell swoop then even better.

When she’d piled the drapes in Hermione’s arms, she fully expected Ron to be the one to catch her. Bloody Fred and his chivalry. He already had a girlfriend, she thought bitterly, why couldn’t he just step aside and let Ron save the day?

Either way, they were on to part two of their plan and Ginny would not let George down. Her job was to direct Hermione to the right place at the right time. Third floor bathroom at the end of the hall. George would take care of the rest. Easy.

However, to her dismay, when she’d reached the third floor she saw Ron entering the first bathroom on the right and close the door. Damn him! Where was George? Wasn’t Ron his responsibility? Putting her ear to the bathroom Ron was currently in, she heard the rings of the shower curtain slide against the metal pole and the water turn on. Fine, she could improvise. This was fine. Ginny spun around at the sound of a door opening and closing and saw Hermione exit their bedroom with her towel in hand.

“Ginny are any of the bathrooms on this floor open?” she asked, wiping a hand across her brow.

“This one is—” Ginny stepped aside the door “—I started the shower, but mum called me and needs my help. You can take it!”

“Thanks Ginny!”

“No problem ‘Mione. What are friends for?”

Hermione was grateful for Ginny giving up the bathroom. She was in desperate need of a nice long shower. For more than one reason. There was a moment in the fourth-floor bedroom that she thought she was surely going to combust. In what fair and just world should she be forced to stare at a shirtless Frederick Weasley for an extended period of time? It was painful how good he looked. Hermione cursed her inappropriate thoughts. He was a taken man. But then there was the way he’d held her in her sleep – the way he’d gently woken her in the library. She’d been embarrassed at first, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he almost seemed sad to part, but that was ridiculous. Again, he was a taken man.

Entering the small bathroom, Hermione scowled slightly at the running water. Really, Ginny should wait until she entered the shower to turn on the water. It was such a waste to keep it running. She placed her towel on one of the hooks on the wall and grabbed the hem of her vest top, sliding it up her torso. The fabric stuck to her skin, damp from the sweat of a hot day and good, hard work. If she’d known she’d be spending a majority of her summer doing exhausting chores, perhaps she would have thought twice about abandoning her parents. But then Hermione’s mind drifted to the thought of her grandparents’ cat-fur covered sofa and dry Madeira cake and suddenly she was sure of her decision once again. She was just bringing the vest top over her head when something very odd happened. The sound of water stopped. Hermione froze, arms raised over her head and top covering her eyes. Turning towards the shower, she pulled her top completely off, freeing her sight just as the shower curtain pulled back revealing a very wet and very naked Ron.

While in reality it was probably only a few seconds, for Hermione it felt like an eternity that she stood still as stone staring at Ron absolutely starkers. Ron stared back, eyes wide and mouth hung open. How? Why? What? Hermione had so many questions and yet, nothing came out of her mouth. In fact the only thing her mouth could do was open and close like an idiot before she finally let out a high-pitched scream.

Ron screamed as well, bringing his hands down to cover his more…vulnerable bits. It was a bit late for that thought Hermione but closed her eyes tightly all the same.

“What are you doing in here?!” she screamed, blindly feeling for the door.

“What am I doing in here?! What are you doing in here?!” screamed Ron back, the tile squeaking under his wet feet as he exited the tub.

“Oh my god—” Hermione desperately felt for the door handle, letting out another scream when she felt wet skin “—OH MY GOD!”

“Bloody hell, Hermione! Get out!” Ron yelled.

“I’m trying!”

Finally Hermione’s fingers found the doorknob and she flung herself from the bathroom, running as fast as she could down the hallway.

“What is it?! What’s going on?! I heard scream—oof!”

Hermione collided into someone, her frantic fleeing impairing her ability to watch where she was going. Whoever it was, she hit them hard. Hard enough to knock her backwards. Desperately, she reached out to catch herself on instinct, but the only thing her hand found purchase on was the soft fuzzy fabric of a towel that gave easily as she fell backwards. Hermione landed hard on her backside, feeling slightly dazed. Looking down at the towel in her hand, she looked up in mortification. There standing before her, at eye level she might add, was Frederick Weasley’s entirely naked body. She screamed again, covering her eyes quickly this time, a little more prepared and a little more experienced at accidentally seeing naked boys now.

“Merlin!” Fred cried, yanking the towel from her hands, and most likely covering himself. Hermione didn’t know for certain though as her hands were still tightly glued to her face. She wasn’t risking it anymore. If another Weasley boy were to show up in the hallway naked, she was prepared.

“Oh my god. I’m so, so sorry!” Hermione cried, attempting to stand without her arms or her sight. She wobbled and bumped a bit, but eventually found her feet.

“What the hell is going on?!” asked Fred.

“Hermione I—” she heard Ron’s voice start and then stop suddenly before he let out a confused exclamation. “What’s going on here?!”

“What’s going on here? What was going on in there?!” Fred asked back, sounding quite angry.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god,” Hermione chanted in humiliation as she was now blindly trying to find her bedroom door. She needed to get out of there desperately.

“Bloody hell Hermione. You can open your eyes now,” groaned Ron.

Hermione shook her head frantically. “Nope! Sorry. I’m not chancing it.”

“What was she doing in there with you?” Fred questioned indignantly.

“What was she doing out here with you?” huffed Ron.

“I heard screaming!”

“So you decided to come and investigate naked?!”

“I wasn’t naked! I had a towel, but she pulled it off!”

“Why would you run out in just a towel?!”

“Sorry, next time I think there’s an emergency, let me just take my sweet time getting dressed before I come and help,” Fred bit back sarcastically.

“Boys—” Hermione felt completely lost at this point, walking into a wall, and hitting her head “—ow! Please. Now is really not the time to fight. Can someone please just direct me to my room so I can kill myself?”

“Stop being so dramatic Hermione,” Ron sighed. She could almost feel his eyes rolling in his head.

“Yeah, it’s just a bit of skin ‘Mione. No need to be so affected,” said Fred.

Hermione let out a high-pitched sound of disbelief. “Are you two seriously turning on me now?”

“Well, you were the one who walked in on my shower,” Ron said sounded very irritated.

“Yeah, and you pulled down my towel,” added Fred.

“How in the world is this my fault now?!” cried Hermione, no longer attempting to find her room. Instead, she stood in the hallway, eyes still covered but entirely invested in the argument that was now happening between the three of them.

It was that moment that they heard the loud and raucous laughter of two people from down the hall. Hermione knew at once who it was. Of course.

“Ginevra Weasley, I swear to Merlin I will kill you slowly in your sleep for this!” Hermione threatened. “George, I know you were involved in this too! Don’t think for a second you’re in the clear!”

Ginny and George’s laughter continued, both of them in hysterics at this point.

“You two?!” cried Ron. “Why?!” He sounded deeply betrayed, as if he expected a lot from the two, but never something as horrible as this.

“Merlin, this is…this is better than I ever could have hoped,” said George in between laughs.

“Really George? Really?” asked Fred pointedly.

“You know George, I was a bit disappointed you failed on your end of the plan, but I think this laugh was worth failing,” Ginny commented, finding her voice through deep breaths.

“What do you mean?” asked George. “It was you that got it all mixed up!”

“Me?! What do you—”

“I can’t believe you two! Actually, George I could expect this from you but Ginny?” Hermione scolded.

“Oh lighten up Hermione, it was just a bit of fun!” scoffed Ginny.

“I mean, what was the point of this? Really?” asked Fred, continuing his rant.

“I’ve been so nice to you lately George. I even did you chores the other day!” said Ron dejectedly.

“Indecent George and Ginny! Absolutely indecent behaviour!” yelled Hermione.

“That’s rich coming from someone only in their bra and trousers,” said George.

Hermione gasped, pulled her hands from her eyes now and covering her upper half. In all the chaos and confusion she’d completely forgotten she was half naked herself.

All five of them were now talking over each other, everyone yelling at someone different as they argued in the heat of the moment. The noise was beginning the rise in magnitude until the only thing that could be heard was the overwhelming sound of screaming voices.

“SCUM! MUDBLOODS! BLOOD TRAITORS! IN MY HOUSE?! OUT! OUT! DISGRACESFUL! DIRTY! DIRTY!”

Their arguing was suddenly drowned out by the horrid sound of Walburga Black’s portrait two floors down. Everyone stopped. Now they’d done it.

Mrs. Weasley’s shrill and angry voice drifted up the flights of stairs and mixed horribly with the shouting portrait. They heard stomping feat on the wooden stairs and looked at each other in fear.

“Don’t just stand here like idiots—” said George quickly.

“—Scatter!” finished Fred.

Chapter 17>>>

Taglist:

@theworldisugly-22

@aoonai

@sjh-07-10

@is-it-madness

@i-d-e-g-a-f

#Fremione #fanfic #fanfiction #fred weasley #fred x hermione #hermione granger #slowburn #mutualpining

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meteor752 · 4 years

Text

Harry Lupin-Snape AU

Started thinking of Snape and Lupin raising Harry.

Like, maybe James and Lily has written somewhere in their will that if something would happen to Sirius, Harry would be given to Remus or Severus.

And like, at this point Severus has started working for Dumbledore to protect this kid so it would be easier if he raised him (Plus, Lily’s eyes), and it’s his best friends kid, so Remus is all for it, but neither feels like taking it to court because of obvious reasons, so they just decide to do what divorced parents do, and have him every other week.

And Severus is surprisingly good at it, because he lives a pretty calm life, plus Narcissa and Lucius comes over every once in a while with their kid.

And Remus is just happy to have something left of his friends, plus Harry’s snuggles help when he’s feeling down.

(And they make sure that Severus takes him during the full moon week, for safety’s sake)

But when Harry turns like, three, Severus has to go back to his job at Hogwarts, and Remus is offered a position as like the Arthimancy professor, so Harry doesn’t have to be transported so far when he’s going to his other “parent”, plus Remus gets a job.

And now not a single student can focus in Severus’ classes, because while he is doing his scary vampire thing, a three year old with the greenest of eyes and a lightning bolt scar is sitting beside his desk, babbling away.

And every student wants to take Arthimancy classes, one because the professor is chill, and two because again, adorable three year old. Sometimes when Remus asks a question in class, Harry answers something completely irrelevant but he takes it as an answer.

This of course leads to the professors being very focused on the kid in the teachers lounge, and both Remus and Severus are on the sidelines being proud parents while making sure he’s not getting hurt.

And then Harry turns eleven, and Remus takes him to King’s cross because he needs the full Hogwarts experience Severus, and Ron sits by him because “Every other seat is full”, and yeah all that plays out.

Remus is as proud as he can be when he gets sorted into Gryffindor, and Severus just grumbles (While smiling under his breath because he’s just like his mother).

Harry defeating a troll at Halloween and getting grounded, but not for too long since they are still proud that their kid for taking down a troll when he’s just eleven.

Both Severus and Remus using counter curses during his first Quidditch match, so everything’s fine there.

Harry and his friends still believing that someone is trying to steal the philosophers stone, but not knowing who it is since Severus is Harry’s adopted father and he wouldn’t suspect him.

Remus and Severus both almost breaking down crying when they find out that Harry almost died, and deciding that they need to start working more as a unit while raising this daredevil of a child.

Remus not even being mad that Harry stole a car, because it’s too funny and it’s such a James thing to do, while Severus playing angrier than he actually is, because it was pretty darn clever.

Severus giving every kid detention that dares to mention that Harry have opened the chamber of secrets.

Remus and Severus starting to flirt a little between each other.

Remus having to console Harry after Hermione was petrified.

After Harry told Severus that he suspects that Lucius gave Ginny the diary, he is ready to fucking murder that bitch, Remus has to physically hold him back.

During the summer, Severus offers to help Remus during the full moons, and one Animagus Transformation later, the Big bad wolf now has a black cat following after it.

Remus being offered the position as Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher, because the only new professor they could find that year was someone willing to substitute for Arthimancy.

After the news of Sirius Black’s escape, Remus insists on following Harry on the train, and saving him from the dementor.

Severus substituting for Remus when it’s the full moon(except for the actual night), and Harry being strictly told not to tell anyone about the werewolf.

(Before this they maybe brought in some other professor, idk)

Remus and Severus constantly being scared of what Black might do to Harry, but Remus still doubting the whole thing.

Harry being given the Marauders map and immediately knowing it’s Remus and his friends who made it.

Despite that, he only shows him it after seeing Pettigrew on the map, and Remus confiscate it.

Remus and Severus goes after Harry together when Sirius strikes, Remus knowing that he’s innocent while Severus is still unsure, because of biases.

Remus and Sirius reuniting, with Severus standing in the background ominously, a bit jealous.

Sirius and Severus still getting into a bit of an argument, so Harry has enough and just uses Expelliarmus on his adopted father, to everyone’s surprise.

When Remus’ transforms into a werewolf, Sirius tries to calm him down while Severus turns into a cat and starts to chase after Pettigrew, but unfortunately can’t catch up.

Both Remus and Severus trying to defend Sirius (Severus only doing it for Remus’ sake), but everyone refuses to listen to them.

Until they are told that their “son” traveled back in time to save a hippogriff and Sirius holy shit WHAT-

So Harry’s grounded for a while.

But after some convincing from Remus, he’s allowed to go to the Quidditch World Cup.

Big mistake, he nearly died again, they should just lock him in a room because it seems like he has a death wish.

And then his name is placed into the goblet of fiyaghdofht

And Severus’ death eater mark starts to hurt again.

And Harry keeps having these dreams of Pettigrew and a strange man together with Voldemort.

And the new DADA professor teaches the kids the unforgivable curses

So it’s a lot for the both of them!

Plus the fact that Sirius is still on the run, but wants an opinion in how they are raising his godson, and Severus is just not having it.

Both Remus and Severus try their best to help Harry in their own ways, Remus by giving him tips and Severus by answering him questions about death eater stuff and who might have put his name in the goblet of fiyahdgfjeb

And when they both hear that dragons is the first task, well let’s just say they panic a little.

And then they argue for a bit if the broom stunt was more of a James or Lily thing, since James was a natural flyer while Lily was clever and creative.

Oh, little do they know.

They both can’t believe how stupid their “son” is when it comes to the Yule Ball, because for Merlin’s sake just go with the Weasley boy. But nope, he takes the Parvati girl and ends up being down the whole evening.

Remus and Severus end up having fun though, as they have a little too much to drink and dance a lot. That brings Harry’s mood up a little, because he’s been waiting for the two to get together for a while.

(And ye, they kissed, but they were drunk and it was brief)

They feel a bit more safe about the second task until Harry doesn’t come out of the water, oh merlin Lupin he’s dead isn’t he, oh I never thought I would loose a child this way-

But no, he’s fine, he was just being his usual chivalrous self, and Severus can’t help but smile because that’s 100% Lily’s son.

And then all the stuff about Rita Skeeter and the daily prophet, yeah that’s a mess. A few articles are written about Remus and Severus, on how they might be secretly married, on how Severus is an Ex death eater and is raising “The Chosen One” and how Remus keeps disappearing.

And then it’s the third task, and Severus gets called to Voldemort in the middle of it and they both just look at each other with panic in their eyes.

It’s a mess when Harry returns with Cedric’s dead body, shouting on about how Voldemort is back, and then he suddenly gets dragged away by Moody, and they both figure out what’s up.

Harry is very emotionally unstable after that, and they both do their best to be there for him, but Dumbledore tells them that he has to live with the Dursley’s that summer for protection, and for plot because otherwise this wouldn’t work.

So Harry is gone from their lives half the summer because they can’t contact him, and they now spend a lot of time in Grimmauld place, which Remus is happy about because Yay, Sirius, Best friend! while Severus ain’t having it because he’s a jealous darling.

And Sirius isn’t much for it either, so there’s a lot of tension there.

It’s all just sorta awkward until Harry gets fucking expelled and he’s to be moved to Grimmauld place, and both Severus and Remus volunteers to follow because that’s basically their son, but neither are allowed.

And when Harry reunited with his parental figures, he’s happy to see them of course, but also sorta pissed because he had to live with abusive muggles half the summer, and they both apologize a million times and say that they had too.

During what’s left of the summer Severus isn’t around much, as he has things to do concerning Dumbledore (And the whole double-agent thing with the death eaters), and Remus is fairly busy as well, so Harry bonds a lot with Sirius.

And Sirius is just delighted to spend time with his godson who is so much like both James and Lily, til he starts to notice some familiar quirks with him, like how he always reads with his nose very close to the book, or how he always seems to have a piece of chocolate in his pocket in case someone is feeling down, or how he pauses in the middle of sentances for dramatic effect, that he knows came from Remus and Severus.

And he’s a little sad about it, because he was supposed to raise this child as his godfather, Harry was supposed to have small little quirks from him, not Snivellus.

And when he founds out that Severus is now an Animagus that helps Remus with the full moon’s, oh he is pissed.

When Harry is sent back to school and it is revealed that the ministry has taken over Hogwarts, Severus and Remus share a worried glance, because that means that Remus is in a bit of a risk here, because of the werewolf thing.

They both to keep their cool when she comes to Inspect their classes (Well, in Severus’ case it was a bit more cold than cool), but they are honestly both really nervous about Remus.

When she asks about the fact that Remus keeps disappearing for a few days ever few weeks, he simply blames it on allergies, and the rest of the teachers back this fact up, as they like Remus, and the students enjoys his classes.

It’s the day that Harry shows up in Severus’ office, asking him for a potion against his bleeding hand that they get real mad, how dare she hurt their little lion cub.

Neither of them are aware of Dumbledore’s army, just because of safety. Harry wanted to tell them, he really did, but Hermione and Ron convinced him against it as the less people who know the better.

Their favorite event of the year is probably when Harry bursts into Remus office when they both were there, pouting as hell and complaining about Cho Chang. They both agree that it was a very James thing to do.

The whole occlumency thing puts a bit of a rift in Harry and Severus’ relationship however, since Harry gets very angry over his adopted father or just breaking into his mind, and Severus is frustrated that Harry hardly tries, and all he can see while doing it is James.

It’s when Harry uses the Pensieve and sees the memory of his father, Remus, Sirius and Pettigrew bullying Severus, and Severus calling his mother a mudblood that Severus gets real angry.

The two barely talk for the rest of the year, and Remus is basically stuck in these situations where the one he was talking to just rants about the other, and he’s just so done with this shit.

When Harry has a vision of Sirius getting tortured, and they all get captured by Umbridge, and she tells Severus to get the Veritaserum, Severus nonchalantly brushes it off, even though he is boiling inside because how dare this bitch hurt his son.

When Harry starts shouting about Padfoot, he immediately figures out what he has to do, and as soon as he’s left the office he runs to get Remus and the order.

Unfortunately he can’t follow since he’s still playing the Double Agent, but he is basically in his office pacing away worrying about everything that could go wrong to his little lion cub and to Remus.

Thankfully, both of them are allright. Unthankfully, Sirius is dead and they both are emotionally destroyed.

It’s a tough summer for the family, Severus has to make sure to be there for both of them, while Dumbledore is over there getting himself cursed because of greediness, plus he’s trying to get Severus to kill him, and tells him that his son needs to die.

Severus ain’t having none of Dumbledore’s shit.

And then he’s approached by Narcissa who also asks him to kill Dumbledore, and makes him do the Unbreakable vow.

So yeah, Severus has a lot of thing going on.

Remus notices this however, and tries to ease his mind with some wine when they are back at Hogwarts, and whoops there they go, second kiss. And third. And hOLY MERLIN CALM YOURSELVES-

When Harry finds the Half-blood prince book, he doesn’t bring it up with either Severus or Remus, because he doesn’t really see it as too big of a deal.

Harry ends up complaining to Remus about Ron and Hermione arguing and that he is caught in the middle of it, and Remus end up giving him the most annoyed glare, because bitch now you know how I felt last year, and Harry just chuckles awkwardly.

It’s when the cursed necklace is given to Katie, and Harry’s best friend nearly dies of posion when Severus is really starting to freak out in his own way, which is that he’s screaming in his head but is completely calm on the outside.

There’s also been this thing where since Severus was a part of raising Harry, some death eaters believe him to have grown attached to the boy, but he just replies that he’s simply playing his part.

When Harry and Remus goes to the burrow at Christmas while Severus goes to his place, only briefly visiting a few times to see his son but is still trying to keep up the Death Eater thing, Remus starts to suspect something is up with Severus when Harry can’t stop rambling about Draco, and how he saw Severus confront him about something, speaking about the unbreakable vow.

Remus brings it up one night when they are back at Hogwarts, when they are both sitting in front of the fireplace with Severus’ head in Remus lap, and Severus quietly panics. Remus doesn’t push him however, just says that if he needs to talk then he’s there for him.

When Harry fuels Draco in the bathroom, and Severus finds Draco bleeding out, he figures out that Harry has his old book.

Instead of just demanding of him to bring him it, he just says that they will talk later and then takes Draco to the hospital wing.

Severus is calm and patient when Harry tells him about the book he found with all these spells, belonging to “The Half-Blood Prince” and Severus is just beaming with pride in his mind because that’s his boy! His boy found his book! His boy learnt from his instructions!

But instead of saying that, he just says that he’s not mad, but tells Harry that he has to get rid of the book, and so he hides it in the Room Of Requirement, landmarking its place with an old bust and a diadem.

Both Severus and Remus gets very protective of Harry after that, because a lot of Slytherin students are angry at him, which they sorta have a right to be, but still no one messes with their little lion cub!

When Harry leaves to retrieve the Horcrux with Dumbledore, and then they return, and then they go up to the Astronomy tower and is confronted by Draco and Death Eaters...oh boy.

Severus has to go up there, knowing that his son was watching him, and perform the unforgivable curse.

And poor Harry was just standing there, watching his father kill a man that he trusted, feeling lost and betrayed and a hundred different feelings.

And Severus has to look at his son, anger twisting his face, demanding him to fight him, calling him a coward.

And then someone has the guts to hurt his son?!

But when he hears Harry try to use one of his spells, he is once again a little proud because his son is suing something he created!

And then Harry flies back, laying on the ground, looking up at him with both anger and fear, demanding him to kill him and calling him a coward.

And he does the only thing he can do, he mocks his father, reveals who “The Half-Blood Prince” is, and then flees.

And Harry is just so confused and betrayed, and Remus tries to comfort him but he is as confused, and neither of them knows what to do.

But there’s still this feeling Remus had, the same feeling he had about Sirius, that something is not right here.

Harry once again being sent back to the Dursley’s for safety before both him and the family will be moved to different places, and Harry end up having a bit of an heart to heart with Petunia about her sister.

And Severus over here is just screaming in his head constantly, because instead of having Remus and their son, he is now forced to be around the Death Eaters, half of which don’t even trust him, all because of Dumbledore.

And then Harry will be moved, and Severus is one of the Death Eaters being sent out to kill all the other’s, and he’s just not having it.

As subtly as possible he tries to protect his Remus and his son, and while doing it he accidentally cut off one of the Weasley’s ears, so whoopsie.

Remus not being able to return to Hogwarts to teach that year because he’s apart of the order and he’s a werewolf, so the two are separated that whole year and they both suffer.

And Remus tries to make Harry let him come with him for the Horcrux hunt, but Harry just says that it’s safer not too, because the fewer the easier, and Remus needs to take care of himself, which he’d been horrible at doing for the past couple of weeks.

He ends up spending a lot of time with Sirius’ cousin Tonks, and the two become close. Not in a romantic sense, but in a platonic sense. And Remus is happy to have someone to talk to, someone who’s also lost things.

And Severus is just as depressed as you can be over at Hogwarts, spending a lot of time using the Pensieve, reliving some moments he had with Remus and Harry.

Like when Harry first said his name, or when Harry first called him dad, or when Remus and him danced at the Yule ball, or all the times Remus used to pet his hair whenever he got bored.

And yeah he’s not in a good place.

When Harry and his friends is sighted in Hogsmead, Severus is a bit conflicted because on one hand, yay his son, but on the other hand, Harry what are you doing I’m trying to keep you alive here.

But when Harry confront him in front of the school, stare at him with hate and betrayal once more, it’s just too much.

So when McGonagall comes out and starts to duel him, he sees him moment to escape and takes it.

And then Remus dies in the first part of the battle, and Harry is hardcore sobbing over his body, because it’s too much.

And Severus gets bitten by a snake, and Harry is close to just breaking in and Avada Kedavring Voldemort’s ass because how fucking dare he.

But when Harry sits beside Severus’ dying body, crying like hell, Severus doesn’t say anything about Lily.

He asks about Remus, if he’s alright, and when Harry shakes his head a single tear escapes his eye, and he asks Harry to take it.

He doesn’t tell him he has his mother’s eyes, he says something else sappy, like how he’ll always be proud of his lion cub.

Harry takes the tear to the Pensieve, and pours it in before entering the the memory.

He doesn’t see Lily.

He already knows about Lily, and that she and Severus used to be friends before he did a mistake.

Instead, he sees himself, and he sees Remus.

He sees the moment they agreed to both adopt him.

He sees the moment they agree that they need to do this together.

He sees himself as just a toddler in Severus’ potions class, having no worries in the world, and the way Severus would give him the most joyus look he physically could.

He sees Severus and Remus at the Yule ball.

He sees himself reunite with Remus and Severus after half a summer without them.

He sees himself being comforted by Severus after Sirius’ death.

He sees Severus’ world fall apart when Dumbledore tells him that he needs to kill him, and that he himself needs to die.

He sees Severus cast a patronus, and a doe jumping out, the same doe he saw in the forest when he retrieved the sword. The doe this time not only representing Lily, but also Harry.

And then he is drawn out of the memory, tears streaming down his face as he walks into the forest, ready to die.

Harry finds the stone in the snitch, and out of it comes five figures.

Harry looking at Severus, and forgiving him.

Remus looking at Severus and forgiving him.

Lily looking at Severus and forgiving him.

James and Sirius still not being sure about it.

And then, Harry dies.

For like a minute, but still.

And he’s just pissed at Dumbledore when he sees him.

And when Voldemort is dead, and nineteen years later he comes to Kings Cross station with his wife and his three children.

And none of those children having the name Albus.

#Harry Potter #Harry Potter AU #The Marauders #Severus Snape #Remus Lupin #Lily Potter #James Potter #Peter Pettigrew #Hermione Granger #Ron Weasley #Ginny Weasley #Draco Malfoy #albus dumbledore #Snupin #Hinny #I didn’t even ship this when I started writing this #And now Wolfstar is dead to me #Harry Lupin-Snape AU

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fishoutofcamelot · 4 years

Note

I saw your r recent contribution to the post about hard vs soft magic systems and I agree wholeheartedly. You also mentioned having a bunch of worldbuilding and stuff about the magic system, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to share some?

(For reference, this is the post in question)

Certainly! While the worldbuilding/magicbuilding hellscape i was describing in the notes is actually in regards to an original-content wip I've been working on, i also have a LOT of headcanons regarding the BBCM magic system too! (Do not ask about my wip's magic system, because i won't be able to shut up about it)

WARNING: long post ahead and mobile won't let me include a cutoff/read-more line. If you're not interested, get ready to scroll down like your life depends on it (and it does).

So! First things first. Here's what we know about the BBCM magic system:

Magic requires spells, most of the time. This seems like a no-brainer, but still an important distinction. There are a lot of magic systems that don't require vocalized spells - Avatar: the Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Ninjago, to name a few. Spells are rather common for wizard/witch/medieval fantasies, and are typically used to control and channel the intent of the magic. This suggests that the magic of BBCM is some kind of force or energy that needs spoken commands to control.

Spells are repurposed words from Old English, aka the language of the Old Religion. (Let's ignore the obvious anachronistic nightmare of the fact that Old English is exactly the same language they would've been speaking in this time period.)

The use of a spell causes someone's eyes to flare gold, plus that fancy wooshing sound effect that Arthur miraculously never hears. This suggests that magic somehow changes your physiology, although it could be also just be a side effect of channeling.

However, magic doesn't always require a spell. Though never fully explained, it appears to be something only innate magic users are capable of - Merlin, Morgana, Mordred. It is something less controllable than spellwork, typically governed by moments of strong emotion rather than logical intent.

The show consistently flip-flops between the idea that magic is something you're born with, and that Merlin is rare for being born with magic. It's never clarified just how someone acquires magic. Gaius asks Merlin where he studied, suggesting that it's something you can learn, while Balinor claims that you either have it or you don't. Though not confirmed fact, i suspect it's similar to how it works in the show Supernatural. There, some witches are natural-born, while others are taught (and some get their powers from spooky demon deals).

It has a life-for-a-life policy. Basically like the Law of Equivalent Exchange from Fullmetal Alchemist, a life cannot be created without another one being sacrificed first. This rule only canonically applies to creating life/the Cup of Life, and any other possible applications aren't addressed.

This rule apparently doesn't apply to animals, as Merlin brought a dog statue to life without killing anyone (that we know of), and Valiant's shield had three live snakes in it. However, it's possible that lives were taken as payment in the process of animation without Merlin's knowledge, but it never happens on screen so we don't know. So either a) animals don't have souls to exchange in the life-for-a-life policy, b) they do but it happens off-screen, or c) those animated animals aren't actually alive.

The Cup of Life infuriates me from a magicbuilding perspective. Ignoring the obvious question of how it came into the druids' possession, its existence isn't clearly defined. Does it require the fancy rain ritual that Nimueh gave it, or was she just extra? Why does drinking from it give you life, while bleeding into it makes you undead and also mindlessly obedient to the sorcerer who made you as such? Were there life-for-a-life consequences for creating an immortal army? Wtf happened on the Isle of the Blessed to allow Merlin to "master life and death", and what does that even mean? All valid questions that never get answered.

Spells sometimes need need a 'source'. Think the staff from "The Tears of Uther Pendragon" and Morgana from "The Fires of Idirsholas." It is unclear what makes these spells different/special.

There is a power hierarchy. Some spells are too powerful for some practitioners to cast, although the reason for this is unclear. Does it drain you of energy/life force? Do you exhaust/overwork your magic muscles? Do you get a little pop-up that says 404 Magic Not Found? Unclear.

Magic is something that can be trained and improved. For example, Morgana gradually became more powerful over time. Merlin naturally had a lot of power straight off the jump and just had to discipline it, but he's a ~special~ case so he doesn't count.

There are some subsets of magic that are definitively born traits. Morgana is a Seer, possessing this capability even before her magic manifested. Likewise, Merlin is a dragonlord, which he inherited from Balinor. Although Balinor did mention that it wasn't a sure thing he would have the ability until he faced a dragon, so there may be some variation in whether or not someone lucks out in the Magic Gene Pool. This may suggest that natural-born magic is hereditary, as both Morgana and her sister Morgause had it. Vivienne and Gorlois both probably didn't have it, otherwise you'd hear Uther bellyaching about it, which raises the question of where they got it? A grandparent, perhaps? Maybe they both carried a recessive magic gene or something...

Unless you're Merlin, magic can be taken away by the Gean Canagh. It's not explained how this is possible, though, as it's never explained how you acquire magic in the first place. But Merlin never lost his magic because he's "magic itself" which if you ask me is just a deus ex machina wrapped inside a headache wrapped inside a heaping load of chosen one bullcrap. But it's canonical lore, so we have to consider it.

Despite my previous complaints, i actually find the idea of Merlin being "magic itself" rather intriguing. Is he a creature of magic, like a dragon or a questing beast? Is his body made of magic, like how a statue might be made of clay? Does it run through his veins like blood? If this is the case, then why didn't he suffer more severe ramifications for losing his magic? Why didn't it kill him? How did it restrict his magic in the first place? Placebo effect? The fanon explanation is that he's "the living embodiment of magic" but that makes my bullcrap richter scale shoot off the charts because that makes NO sense whatsoever. "Son of the earth, sea, and sky?" What does that MEAN?

There is a vivid link between magic and the Old Religion, which has its own beliefs and rituals and deities. Primarily, the Triple Goddess. The Triple Goddess is actually an existing deity in Neopaganism and Wicca. This also suggests the existence of the Horned God, another entity from neopagan lore and her masculine consort/counterpart, but that is never confirmed.

WHO. OR. WHAT. IS. THE. FREAKING. DOCHRAID. She's described as a creature of magic, which suggests that humans/humanoids can be creatures of magic, fueling my theory that 'Emrys' isn't human.

Destiny exists. It is unclear who creates/writes destiny, who controls it, who or what is privy to knowing about it, and what that means for the concept of free will.

The crystal cave is a thing, i guess. It's the heart of magic, is haunted by Taliesin, and is filled with prophetic crystals. I actually skipped the episodes that involve this stuff because i disliked them, so i don't know much about the Crystal Cave. Apparently ghosts can manifest there tho???

The veil is a thing too. It is unclear how some spirits can retain their human figure and mentality, like Balinor and Uther, but others become dorocha. I imagine its also like Supernatural - being a ghost for long enough will drive you insane, and though it takes a while all spirits eventually turn into dorocha.

Creatures of magic exist. These are normal creatures who have magic imbued into them somehow.

Okay, i think that's everything we know. It seems like a lot, but keep in mind that all of those rules are VERY nebulous. But that at least gives us a jumping-off point!

So here's my working theory/headcanon.

Magic comes from a connection to the spiritual energies of the Triple Goddess. Kinda like a third eye, and for the sake of simplicity that's what we'll call it. The druids have adapted a way of life that revolves around faith and magic, likely in an attempt to cultivate and one day attain this Third Eye. Like Gaius, who trained with the High Priestesses, you can study and practice and discipline yourself into acquiring it.

Magic is a cosmic force owned by the Triple Goddess, accessible to anyone with the Third Eye link. Imagine the Triple Goddess as a milkshake and the so-called Third Eye as a straw. The studying and training that people dedicate their whole lives to is basically just looking for/building a straw.

However, some people are just naturally born with a straw in hand, but require practice and study to be able to properly use it. Or like Morgana, it takes a few years for them to even find it/activate it.

Spellcasting is essentially just sucking through the straw, and the vocalized spells gives that Magic Milkshake some purpose/intent/shape.

The bigger the spell, the more Magic Milkshake is required. Some people have bigger/wider straws than others, so magic comes easier for them. But with enough training and practice anyone can widen their straw/strengthen their straw-sucking muscles to cast with the big leagues.

The Gean Canagh devours your straw/Third Eye. Perhaps you have to rebuild a new spiritual connection from scratch, or perhaps it permanently severs any and all connection to the Triple Goddess. Like getting excommunicated from the Church, only worse.

The Crystal Cave was/is the Triple Goddess's home, but she's out of town on a business trip atm so she left the spirit of her most loyal follower, Taliesin, to look after the place. It's super powerful and has all those cool crystals because it's hella steeped in her magic juices.

While most magic users get a standard-issue straw, others get Fancy Premium Membership Straws. Normal joe shmoes like Gilli have plastic straws, while a Seer like Morgana has a metal one or something (can you tell this metaphor is starting to get out of hand?). Those Premium Straws are only hereditary in nature. So there's a Seer Straw, or a Dragonlord Straw, or a Disir Straw, but it's also not a sure thing you'll even inherit it at all. It's all luck of the straw draw.

Creatures of magic aren't just animals that possess straws, though. They've been made/produced using magic rituals and processes and spells. Like Nimueh's afanc, nathairs, wraiths, shades, etc. So probably like a thousand years ago, some especially powerful shmuck came by and invented dragons. Which leads me to an important question: WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THE DOCHRAID WAS A GOOD IDEA.

Im reluctant to say these creatures were invented by the Triple Goddess, though, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

So this still leaves the whole Cup of Life, life-for-a-life policy thing to be explained. I do believe that the policy is universally applicable to the creation of souls, and i do believe that animals have souls too. But individuals get their souls exchanged for those of equal value. So every soul has a certain weight to it, and you need to exchange souls of equal weight to create one. So when Merlin brought the dog to life, some random dog somewhere dropped dead against his knowledge.

Creating undead armies involves killing them and then resurrecting them. That's what 'undead' means. Zombies. So yes, to raise an immortal zombie army, Morgause's spell probably caused a bunch of people around the world to mysteriously drop dead.

Which leaves two last things to explain: destiny and Merlin.

Destiny is, i think, a combined effort between human choice and supernatural predeterminism. That is, for the most part humans make their own choices, but there are occasions where the Triple Goddess has to step in and do some course correction. Uther starting the Purge was free will, but Arthur and Merlin's destiny was an act of divine damage control. The Triple Goddess sets destiny into motion and informs a chosen few about it.

Okay SO. That leaves Merlin. And this is the bit im kinda excited about.

The Triple Goddess is a reservoir of power, a cosmic force of spiritual energy intrinsicallu linked to the fabric of the universe. People can spiritually reach out and tune into/channel her supernatural frequencies. But as a milkshake cannot suck itself through a straw, the Triple Goddess likewise cannot cast a spell. She can influence destiny, but she can't physically cast any magic on her own. That's why she didn't create the creatures of magic.

So a few years ago, Uther hecked up big time. And people of magic, the Triple Goddess's followers and acolytes and straw connections, were dying in droves. I can imagine that all those Third Eye tethers snapping en masse was painful for her to go through. She relies on the tethers to remain connected to the real world, and if all the tethers snap then she will be cut off from Earth altogether. And Earth requires magic to continue existing/thriving, so that's kind of a no-no.

So, the Triple Goddess knew that the only way to save the world was through divine intervention. Thus began the destiny of the Once and Future King and Emrys. She knew humanity is bigoted so there was bound to eventually be a repeat of Uther, so she made OaFK resurrectable, so they could keep him on the bench in case anyone ever needs him again.

Where does Merlin/Emrys fall into things?

Well. The Triple Goddess knew that saving her people and the world would require an immense magical undertaking, something no ordinary magic user would be able to pull off. But she has the power, if only she could use it. But a human can. So the Triple Goddess decided to be reborn into the body of a dragonlord's son. Merlin. Emrys. Magic itself.

Of course, this whole Being Born As A Human Thing is tricky, and as anyone familiar with reincarnation knows, you don't usually recall your past lives. So she became Merlin, unaware that he was ever the Triple Goddess. (Although she did add a clause saying she'd be destined to remember her past life eventually, which got hecked up for reasons ill explain later)

That's why so many creatures of magic/magic users recognize Merlin by his presence, why thr druids carry such reverence for him. Whereas the sidhe and other individuals don't recognize him, because they are blinded by heresy. They may have a spiritual connection to the Triple Goddess, but do not use her magic as she intended, and she's too busy wearing jaunty scarves to excommunicate them herself.

Why get the Once and Future King involved when she could just save everyone herself? Well, the Triple Goddess prefers to let the humans keep their agency and save themselves, and would rather remain in the role of protector/helper. Its just her nature.

But if that's the case, then why did Arthur's destiny fail? It's simple: Kilgharrah.

Remember what i said about the Horned God, counterpart to the Triple Goddess? Yeah, that's Kilgharrah. Like the Triple Goddess, he's another power reservoir, but he's jealous because people worship her and not him. He is against everything she does and actively seeks the destruction of the Triple Goddess's magic/influence for Jealous Evil Reasons. To stop him, the Triple Goddess enlisted some of her followers to bind him into the body of a dragon (perhaps this is how dragons were created) so he would never be able to do that. Years later, the Purge happened and "Kilgharrah" got locked away, further cut off from his power.

When Merlin walked in, unaware that he used to be the Triple Goddess, Kilgharrah seized his chance at revenge and manipulated Merlin into setting him free. Then, once free, he decided to lay claim to the power vacuum left by the Triple Goddess's quasi-absence. He began controlling destiny in whatever limited capacities he could, using magic of his own to permanently bury Merlin's knowledge of his past life. Then he ensured that Arthur would die and the Triple Goddess's magic would never return. But since he doesn't have FULL control over destiny (his powers are still limited by his dragon form, after all), he couldn't rewrite the bit where Arthur gets benched in Avalon. He's probably conspiring with the sidhe to ensure Arthur stays trapped there forever, or else he would've come back a long time ago.

As for how the Gean Canagh took Merlin's magic...well, yes, it devoured his Third Eye straw, but those are created by a strong spiritual connection to the Triple Goddess. And since he's literally the big TG himself, all he had to do was find himself again (by returning to his old home, the Crystal Cave) to recreate a new one.

Over the last 1500 years, Kilgharrah/the Horned God has been steadily accruing followers and worshippers in the hopes that one will become strong enough to release TG's bonds on him. Then he can kill her once and for all and claim full dominion over the universe, with the sidhe to support him.

I imagine that's how Arthur's resurrection would happen - Arthur and the rest of the dead Round Table are in Avalon when they learn about the treachery and plot to kill Merlin/take over the world, and spend the next few hundred years fighting their way out of Avalon.

Okay, I think that just about covers it. God, that was long. Any questions?

#i should probably write a fic for this huh #bbc merlin #merlin bbc #merlin #bbcm #ask #magicbuilding #fish post

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5lazarus · 3 years

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This is gonna be fun because I know so little about Dragon Age, but here goes: A priest gets ex-communicated from his order due to a series of increasingly unlikely events which make the priest appear to be doing something sacrilegious when in fact he was trying to overcorrect for the previous appearance of sacrilege.

finally got this done! this was a lot of fun. Alistair the Accidental Heretic, crossposted to AO3 here.

Alistair gets bored during morning prayer and starts changing the words of the Chant as he sings. Mother Prudence and Knight-Commander Greagoir are less than pleased, and soon he finds himself tripping up over accidental heresy even within the kitchens of Kinloch Hold. It's not easy, being a half-elf templar with a conscience, because even having a sense of humor is heresy.

They’ve caught him snoring through Lauds three times this week, so Alistair really wants to stay awake through this time. He thinks active thoughts: fireballs to the face, Isolde screeching when he broke her favorite bottle of perfume, nug-racing with the kitchen staff. Still he finds himself drifting. Mother Prudence’s voice has this wonderful soporific quality. She gurgles the Chant like raindrops in a drainpipe.

He drifts off, eyes alighting on the stained glass window above the altar. Andraste stands silent, wreathed in flames, while Shartan without the ears fires arrows as Hessarian pulls out his sword. It’s all very Chantry, all very templar-y, which of course is to be expected because he is in a chantry and surrounded by templars and these robes are really quite itchy, they really need to try something finer spun, because what if he breaks out into a rash? Alistair is amused. If he scratches himself enough he can raise enough bumps to make it look like he has a rash, that he’s allergic to the templar uniform, and then they’ll have to let him home. They’ll have to. He’d rather go back to waiting on Arl Eamon’s squires than sing the Chant. “Maker have mercy, it never ends,” Alistair mutters to himself. He leans back in the pew. Sure, the shuffling is annoying, but at least he’s making it obvious he’s not falling asleep. He yawns. The guy next to him shoots him a glare. Alistair rolls his eyes.

Mother Prudence continues to sing, and boy is she getting old. She warbles and Alistair thinks this must be why the Maker turned away in the first place, because the singing’s so bad. If everyone singing at all ends of the earth in harmony would bring Him back, would He be mad if they’re off key? He snickers to himself. The guy next to him, some landholder’s brat from Honnleath, shoots him a furious stare. “What?” Alistair says. “You’re being disrespectful,” he says. “Oh come on,” Alistair says. The liturgy stops and the hall falls silent, but Alistair can’t help himself, he keeps going on. “At least I’m awake. Listen, singing that bad is the reason the Maker turned away in the first place.” Mother Prudence gasps. Alistair looks around at the shocked templar faces around him and mutters, “Damn. Tough crowd.” They wash his mouth out first for the swear and second for the heresy. Unfortunately he was not heretical enough to be thrown out of the templars--but they do flog him, and like a child. Alistair is left sniffling and resentful, avoiding the others’ jeers as he walks gingerly into the mess hall. He eyes the hard bench warily, and rubs his backside. He kneels at his seat instead of sitting. “What are you doing?” the Honnleath recruit asks. “Praying,” Alistair snaps back. He groans as Mother Prudence enters the hall for the evening prayer before dinner. Achingly he maneuvers back onto his feet. Mother Prudence warbles, “Blessed are THEEEEY who STAAAAAAND beFOOOORE the corrUUUPT,” she sings it like she’s hiding a burp, “and the WIIIIIICked and do not FAAAALter.” Alistair looks around questioningly. “She’s off-rhythm today,” he remarks. “This is worse than usual.” The templars, recruits and all, bellow back, “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, THE CHAMPIONS OF THE JUUUUUST!” Alistair winces and rubs his ears, massaging the tapered points. He knows his mother must have been an elf, because he’s got the eyes and the hearing. For a second he envies the servants, who get to avoid evening prayer as they clean up the kitchen. He knows he should be grateful that Arl Eamonn elevated him to his human father’s status, but he’d rather be a cheesemonger than this. A Chantry sister rings a bell. Mother Prudence grandly announces to the hall, “Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.” The templars reply, “Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children.” Alistair mutters instead, “Fowl and carrots are they who have taken His grits and turned it against his chitterlings.” The Honnleath guy elbows him. “What?” Alistair says, annoyed. “I’m hungry. Doesn’t ‘maleficar’ sound like a type of fancy Orlesian cheese?” He gapes at him, and Alistair shrugs. “Am I really the only one in this order who has a sense of humor? Is this what lyrium does to you?” A heavy hand comes down hard on his shoulder. Alistair giggles nervously to himself, and slowly cranes his neck up. “Ah, Knight-Commander Greagoir. Fancy seeing you here. Anything I can do to help?” “Alistair,” the Knight-Commander says wearily. “You know the drill. Out. No supper.” “Not even fancy cheese? We’ve been singing about it all day--” Greagoir gives him a gentle shove, and Alistair stops talking before he can dig himself deeper and make a joke about being a maleficarum, which would probably lose him the benefit of the doubt and get him killed. He hates the templars, but he likes living more. He paces around the dormitory to stave off hunger, because now he’s gotten himself anxious. He’s never met a blood mage and doubts he will, some of the older recruits will talk knowingly about Harrowings gone wrong, but from what he can tell, most of them go exactly right, it’s all about having the right mentality, and isn’t that the whole point of the Fade? It reflects what it’s given. So if he goes into the Fade with a mage and starts singing about chitterlings, there won’t be demons, just a feast. Alistair giggles in the silent room. Then his stomach growls, first going low, then rising an octave, warbling for a bit, and then settling to a moan. He clutches his gut. He’s a growing boy: he needs food, or else his thoughts will wander, and he’ll end up accidentally coming up with heresy again. He is particularly proud of that thought. Feed him or else he’ll become a heretic. Alistair grins and says, “Well, that’s sorted. Guess I’ll go to the kitchens then.” No one answers back, because he is in an empty room, but the Knight-Commander never actually told him to stay put, so he roves out in search of food, and maybe even companionship. The servants don’t like the templars or the mages much, though some of the other mixed-blood children give him the occasional curious look. Everyone is always trying to figure out whose son he is. Alistair would like to know, too. Arl Eamon told him his father is of noble blood, though not of Eamon’s own line--a nice way of telling him he isn’t his bastard, and Alistair can tell from his own face that his mother must have been an elf. He only hopes she hadn’t been coerced in some way, that she had been happy to have a baby, that it wasn’t ruination and damnation and shame, because the elves don’t like it when their people step out with humans either, but those thoughts are hungry thoughts, laced with despair, and when Alistair reaches the kitchen door frame, he silences them. The kitchen is empty but for the head cook, sitting at the head of a long flour-dusted table. He is studying a menu, squinting angrily. Alistair almost hesitates. He doesn’t want to interrupt. But the head cook catches his eye, and waves him in. The head cook has ears like him and the same eyebrows and chin. Maybe he’s a cousin. Everyone is related somehow, he hopes. He’d like to have relatives, and anyway, he’s nice to him sometimes, and has let him sneak leftovers before, so Alistair has high hopes for at least a snack tonight. “Hello!” Alistair sings out. “Was wondering if there’s any leftover cheese I can nibble on.” The cook stares at him. He says, “What are you, a mouse?” Alistair says hopefully, “Squeak, squeak.” He fixes his best innocent look onto his face. “They sent me to bed without supper again. But the Knight-Commander said nothing about a snack!” The cook scoffs. “What’d you do? Isn’t this the third time this week?” Alistair grins sheepishly. “I might’ve said ‘maleficarum’ sounds like a type of Orlesian cheese.” “Sweet Shartan,” the cook says, then corrects himself. “Maker’s breath.” He looks at Alistair significantly, and Alistair knows he is supposed to pretend he didn’t hear the elvhen prophet’s name. “Whoever’s bastard you must be, he’s a powerful man. Did they whip you?” “Eh,” Alistair rubs the back of his head. “Earlier, for something else.” The cook boggles. “What’d you do? Sing the Canticle of Shartan? How they haven’t burned you, I don’t know.” “Aw, they wouldn’t do that. They don’t burn people anymore,” Alistair says. The cook shakes his head. Alistair blinks. “They don’t, do they? They don’t even burn blood mages! It’s just a Smite or the noose nowadays. The Chantry wouldn’t do that!” The elf says, “They did that in the Dales. They did that to Andraste. What makes you special?” “Woah,” Alistair says. “You’re the one who brought up Shartan. I don’t even know the canticle.” He hesitates. “Well, the whole canticle.” He has heard some of the mages whispering it to each other, in corners of the library, where they don’t realize it’s enchanted to echo. “Do you?” The cook says sharply, “I don’t talk religion with templars. You might have the ears of the People, boy, but you don’t have the soul.” He folds the piece of paper and slips it into his apron, and Alistair understands suddenly that perhaps the week’s menu is not written on that piece of paper, but something infinitely more interesting. He thinks to himself, blessed are the chitterlings, the champagne of the just. “Hey,” Alistair says. “Hey! I didn’t ask for this. I won’t--I’m not a templar! I don’t want to be. What’s your problem? I’m just here for the cheese.” The cook sighs. “You need to get out of here,” he informs him. “Not just my kitchen. The Circle. Because with your sense of humor, and your ears, not even noble blood will protect you. And you’ll drag anyone seen talking to you down with you.” Alistair snaps back, “‘A dog might slink back to the hand it has bitten and be forgiven, but a slave never. If you would live, and live without fear, you must fight.’” He rears back, grinning proudly. He has always had an excellent memory for recitation. “Don’t I know it.” “Get out,” the cook says flatly. “Out. Don’t even look at me, kid. Get the fuck out, heretic. And for the sake of your mother, I’ll give you a piece of cheese.” Alistair leaves abruptly, gnawing on a piece of cheese, and takes a lesson from it. He keeps his mouth shut during lessons and prayers. The servants don’t even look at him when he passes them in the halls, and he doesn’t dare go to the kitchen when he’s hungry anymore. He speaks when spoken to, looks up only when addressed, and when the Grey Warden arrives, looking for volunteers, he throws himself at him, because he didn’t mean to be a heretic, but it seems like the only way to be.

#dragon age #dao #alistair #pre-canon #dragon age fanfic #fanfic #kinloch hold #alistair the accidental heretic #saathiray

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wiisagi-maiingan · 5 years

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Hiya! I just saw your post about microaggressions in media, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to explain a little bit more about how Dragon Age negatively represented indigenous peoples; personally, I saw how the parallel was drawn, but I'd like to understand the difference between metaphor/symbolism and negative derivement. If you don't wanna, that's ok! Thank you for your time : )

Sorry if you wanted this to be replied to privately. I’ve gotten a few other questions about it so I just decided to do a masterpost.

I do feel obligated to mention that I have a Dragon Age tag and that I’ve gone into detail about the issues with the games here and here.

Now, with that being said. . . I’m going to put this under a cut because this is an important topic to me and I’ve never gone into as much detail as I should have. I’ll also give a basic but long rundown for people who haven’t played Dragon Age and aren’t aware of the context. I’ll try to make it obvious where that part ends for people who just want to skip right past it.

Disclaimer that I never really played Origins so this will only focus on DA 2 and Inquisition.

This is gonna be really fucking long and I apologize for that.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the Dragon Age franchise, here’s some basic information relevant to this topic. There are four fantasy “races” in the game; the humans, the elves, the dwarves, and the qunari. For the purposes of this conversation, we will not go into the dwarves and the qunari.

Humans are the dominant race in the game, with control over every government in the continent that the franchise focuses on, Thedas. They follow a religion called Andrastianism, which is centered around the Maker (a vague and featureless single god who is almost always referred to as male) and Andraste, the Maker’s mortal wife and prophet who was executed and burned at the stake. In other words, it’s Fantasy Christianity™. The religion is separated into two branches, with one being led by men and only being common in one country in Thedas and the other being led by women and being common in the rest of Thedas. Just like Christianity, it is very heavily focused on converting people. As far as I’m aware, it is the state religion of every country featured in the franchise. For the purposes of this conversation, I will be referring to this religion as the Chantry, the in-game equivalent of the Church being used for Christianity.

Elves, on the other hand, are exactly what they sound like. They’re elves, but not traditional Tolkien elves. They have the same lifespan as humans and don’t seem to be particularly special. The important thing to note is that they are very much an oppressed group and most racism you encounter in the franchise is aimed at the. They were the original peoples of many parts of Thedas, indigenous to several parts of the continent before they were violently massacred in wars and outright genocide, all in the name of Andraste. Here’s some information about the main attacks on the elves, in the form of the second Exalted March, a form of religious crusade. Cultural sites, including burial grounds and religious temples, were pillaged and destroyed. Historical records were confiscated and edited, language and culture records purposely destroyed, and countless artifacts were stolen and sold to wealthy humans. This happened long before the events of the games, but are ongoing issues, which I’ll get into later.

Modern elves in the game are separated into two main groups: city elves and the Dalish.

City elves are elves who are disconnected from their cultures and live in human settlements, where they’re often forced to live in slums (called alienages), pushed into dangerous and poorly paid work, and face violent abuse and mistreatment from humans in the cities. City elves are usually Andrastian, just like disconnected Natives are often Christian, though they cannot hold positions in the Chantry.

The Dalish, on the other hand, are elves immersed in their cultures, living in nomadic clans led by their Keepers. The majority of Dalish elves follow the Evanuris, the Elven pantheon which is made up of nine deities that each represent different aspects of Elven life. According to Dalish lore, these deities are not active in the world anymore because they were tricked by the ninth deity, Fen’Harel, a trickster god who sealed away the rest of the gods from the world. When Dalish elves reach maturity, they undergo a ritual that involves receiving their vallaslin (blood writing), which are intricate facial tattoos that represent different deities in the pantheon and, supposedly, reflect that person’s role in their community. I suppose the Native equivalent is finding out what clan you’re in. Dalish communities are centered are around halla, a type of deer that the Dalish see as sacred and use as a form of travel (they pull aravels, a kind of wagon), food (milk and meat), clothing, companionship, and guidance. The parallels to bison should not be lost.

Elves are also frequently enslaved, particularly in Tevinter where slavery is still completely legal.

Now. Humans, elves, and qunari all have a connection to the Fade, the origin of all magic, spirits, and demons. That means that they all have the potential to have mages, people born with magic and a deeper connection to the Fade; they’re the DA equivalent of sorcerers in D&D for all you nerds out there. Across the board, mages are heavily oppressed (with the exception of mages in Tevinter).

Because they can be possessed by demons and potentially use blood magic, they’re seen as inherently dangerous and forced into Circles, isolated areas where they’re under constant surveillance as they learn to control their magic, and that surveillance is done by Templars, an order of warriors trained to be able to repress a person’s magic. Any mage that doesn’t have absolute control over their magic is made Tranquil, which cuts off their connection to the Fade and, along with removing their ability to use magic, also removes their ability to feel emotions, have desires, and experience dreams. It’s essentially a fantasy lobotomy. In some Circles, this is done on the whims of Templars to any mage that causes the slightest issue for them. Other forms of abuse are also incredibly common in Circles.

So! That’s the end of the context explanations! Let’s move onto the indigenous-coding in the game!

The coded group in question are the elves, particularly the Dalish. They’re also coded as Jewish and Romani, which makes the information that’s going to follow even worse. Despite popular belief, this coding is not actually up for debate and has been directly confirmed by David Gaider (scroll a bit, and be warned that he uses the g-slur). Since I’ve already explained what Dalish elves and city elves are, I doubt I have to get into how exactly they’re Native-coded and I don’t really feel like doing that anyway. So let’s just get right into the issues with this coding.

The first issue is the elves themselves. Elves are cool, I love elves. But it’s really fucking shitty to make the Christian-coded group human while the group coded as indigenous, Jewish, and Romani is inhuman. It’s a really common trope in fantasy and sci-fi and directly contributes to the dehumanization of our communities. It also gives fans the ability to brush off criticisms of their depictions because they’re “just elves”, something I see in the fandom a lot.

We also have to think of how elves in media are depicted in general. They’re usually magical beings with unnaturally close ties to nature, and as a Native person who has been asked if I can speak to eagles and if I live in a tipi in the woods, that is not a stereotype that needs to be further associated with indigenous groups.

Elves are degraded constantly by every character in the series, and the narrative depicts Dalish elves especially in a terrible light. There is only one companion in the entire series who actually genuinely cares about the Dalish, and that because Merrill is Dalish herself, having left her clan to live in the city; she’s also frequently mocked and depicted as naive and ignorant despite being a grown-ass woman and her rivalmance is dangerously unhealthy and toxic. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, you can have two elf companions, both of who explicitly hate the Dalish and disapprove of any pro-Dalish stances. One of those companions, Sera, also hates elves in general and frequently distances herself from them. Solas is a whole other can of worms.

If you play as a Dalish Inquisitor in DA:I, you are faced with constant mockery and scorn at every angle. Dorian, a Tevinter mage, explicitly tells you that slavery is better than being poor and that his family treats their slaves “very kindly”. You cannot call him out on this; he says his piece and then the conversation ends and can literally never be mentioned again, even if you romance him. Cassandra, who is very pro-Chantry, asks you why you can’t just “make room” for worshipping the Maker alongside the Elven deities. Any support of the Dalish earns you immediate disapproval from all of your companions. You cannot be openly Dalish without being directly punished by the game.

I mentioned earlier that Dalish elves and city elves both live in tightly-knit and isolated communities, Dalish elves in the form of nomadic clans and city elves in the form of alienages. There’s safety in numbers, but when you’re surrounded by enemies, that can also be incredibly dangerous. At multiple points in the series, entire alienages and clans are massacred. More often than not, this is completely unavoidable, and when it can be avoided, it’s extremely difficult to do so.

In Inquisition, if you play as a Dalish Inquisitor, you will start to receive war table quests regarding your clan. If you make even one wrong choice (and there are several choices you have to make, most of which are misleading), then your entire clan is massacred along with the elves in the city they’re settled by. The incident leading to their possible deaths is actually caused by a human noble poisoning other humans in the city and blaming the elves, since the alienage had a different water source and there was a clan settled near the city.

In Dragon Age 2, you can directly massacre Merrill’s entire clan. Even if you choose not to do so, the clan suffers heavily, losing their First (the future Keeper) to the city and then losing their Keeper to demons. They end up stranded in that area due to their halla dying, which means that their aravel couldn’t be pulled.

At another point in Inquisition, you encounter a clan that suffers heavily as well when a huge swath of them are massacred by Red Templars. You can do absolutely nothing to prevent this.

In the same area that the last clan I mentioned is found in, there are several quests regarding it, several of which stick out to me.

One requires you to literally desecrate a Dalish burial site to finish the quest (The Spoils of Desecration, it’s literally in the name).

Another quest gives you the task of finding a sacred golden halla, a legendary spiritual and religious figure to the Dalish, and guiding it to the unnamed Dalish clan. In this quest, you can also choose to just straight up kill it (The Golden Halla).

There’s a main storyline quest that involves going through a historical site to discover the truth about a massacre that had always been blamed solely on elves. At the end of the quest, you can choose to give these new records to either the clan I talked about or to the Chantry, who, if I remember correctly, modify the records to be about the Dalish becoming violent after one of their clan members converted to Andrastianism (The Knights’ Tomb). If you choose to give the records to the Dalish, a follow-up quest involves the clan asking for your help gifting a halla to the human village that was part of the incident, which you need to either trick or force the village into accepting (Bestow Mourning Halla).

Moving on. . .

In the quest Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you meet the human empress of Orlais, Celene, who you have to protect from assassins. You also meet her handmaid, spymaster, and former lover, an elf woman named Briala. And of course, Celene’s terrible cousin Gaspard, who is not really relevant for this discussion. Just know that he’s awful.

In this quest, you have to uncover information about these three people and use that information to manipulate the situation and get your desired ending. There are several possible endings you can choose, but we’re going to focus on one specific one for right now, namely the one where you can choose to help Celene and Briala reconcile and become lovers again, with Celene ruling Orlais and Briala being her partner and advisor. Sounds great, right? The lovely women get their happily ever after and everyone is happy.

Except that the game doesn’t give you the full story. Not in the slightest. Instead, it depends solely on you having read The Masked Empire, a book that is completely separate from the game and that many players don’t even know exist. It gives a very different context to this game, and especially to Celene and Briala’s relationship. I recommend reading this post from @dalishious because I cannot possibly explain the situation better than they have on their blog. If you’re into Dragon Age, I recommend giving them a follow in general because they offer some really great perspectives on DA as a Mi'kmaw person who knows a hell of a lot more about the franchise than I do.

(The quest also tries to convince you that Briala is on the same level as Celene and Gaspard. That is complete bullshit, as dalishious gets into here.)

So, to add to its very long list of crimes, Bioware purposely withholds information from the player in order to trick you into getting an elf back together with her violently racist and incredibly dangerous abuser.

And if I remember correctly, you can also discover a hidden room in Celene’s palace which is filled with broken Elven artifacts that Celene was experimenting with.

In Inquisition, you also encounter at least two Dalish elves who explicitly talk about being kicked out of their clans for being mages, left to make it on their own or die. Which is. . . absurd and doesn’t fit pre-existing lore at all, since clan Keepers and their apprentices are literally mages themselves AND it’s already been shown that if a clan cannot support or doesn’t need people with specific skills (not just mages but also crafters, traders, hunters, etc), then it will actually send those people to other clans to live with them. Merrill, the Dalish companion mentioned earlier, is one such case, with her original clan having an excess of mages and sending her to a different clan who needed a mage to train as a first. Changing that to say that clans now outright abandon mages, especially as children, was a ridiculous choice and makes me feel like it was done purely to show them as ~savage~.

(I personally headcanon that it was a lie spread purposely by clans to protect themselves, playing off of racist ideas of what they were like. No templar would go up against an entire clan just to drag two or three mages off to the Circle, but multiple mages? Five mages? A dozen? Now that would be worth the risk.)

And now it’s time to get into the worst part of the games, by far.

Trespasser.

In this DLC, you discover that one of your elf companions, Solas, is actually the god Fen’Harel, and that he’s essentially trying to destroy the entire world to “reset it”.

You also discover that your gods are false.

That’s right. Bioware based this community and culture off of Jewish, Romani, and Native peoples. And then made the gods fake. Explicitly told players that the Dalish are wrong about everything they’ve ever known, that their religion is all fake, and that it’s their own fault because they dared try to recreate their culture with the scraps they had left.

Oh, but it doesn’t end there, no. The gods aren’t just fake, they were actually slave owners! They were rulers of an ancient civilization and the vallaslin, those beautiful markings that represent a Dalish elf’s pride in their culture and their place in their community, are actually slave markings to show who your owner is!

I need you all to take a moment to process this. To think about the implications of basing a fictional culture off of oppressed communities in the real world, as a foil to the Fantasy Christianity™ that you as the player are constantly shoved towards, and then making that culture’s religion into something so terrible and warped.

Have you thought about it? Because I have. I’ve thought about it a lot.

So yeah. There’s my extremely long rant about indigenous coding in Dragon Age. I hope it helps the very few people who manage to get to the end without getting sick of it lmao

#dragon age #dalish #dalish elves #indigenous representation #indigenous coding #long post #i am so fucking sorry to everyone on mobile #jamesissosogay

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bornpariah-a · 4 years

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NECROMANCY is a topic minimally explored in the world of Dragon Age, and only became a true specialization with Inquisition. Notably, many of the spells in the necromancer tree existed in the games prior in the ENTROPY tree, as per Origins and II. What we know of necromancy is that it has a relatively negative reputation overall. It’s only Nevarra that views necromancy in a positive light, calling their necromancers the mortalitasi and giving them a good measure of power and high societal standing. It stands to reason, then, that it’s sensible for the Inquisitor to learn necromancy from one of these mortalitasi.

Never mind that Dorian is literally right there. ( no, i’m not bitter at all, what would have given you that idea? honestly !! )

Nonetheless, what we know of the necromancer specialization route in Inquisition is this : you find a specifically Nevarran skull, bind a recently dead necromancer spirit/soul to it, and it’ll teach you. Alright, not the strangest thing I’ve ever heard of by far, yet I couldn’t help but think that surely magic varies depending on the region. And, furthermore, specializations must carry a different weight. And even beyond that, that the path of specialization must differ between, for example, Nevarra and Tevinter. Thedas is a relatively large place, and though Nevarra and Tevinter are neighboring countries, I couldn’t help but think that there has to be a difference.

And thus : this monster.

Necromancy is, literally, death magic. In Dragon Age, it pertains specifically to the utilization of spirits and, furthermore, spirits drawn to death. That is one of the key points to necromancy as a whole, and heavily influences the following.

In the Imperium, magical specializations and the furthermore ability to specialize are seen, somewhat, as a status symbol. Being powerful enough in one subject to be able to master it, for all intents and purposes. The concept that specializations are almost like guilds, cohorts of mages who come together for a common purpose/reason/goal and henceforth have certain sets of skills that can be utilized in order to accomplish jobs and whatnot, isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. In a society as mage-heavy and magically inclined as Tevinter, that seems to be the only possibility, given that Circles are learning institutions and jobs requiring magic must exist.

But I digress, as that’s more a topic to delve into another time, but it’s essential to understand this : Dorian was marked by Death and chose to walk the path of the necromancer ( ha ) in part because of that. Specializing in necromancy is a difficult choice to undertake, and very few mages are able to truly complete such a path, and in fact must have a predilection for death on some metaphysical level. Furthermore, specializing in much of anything in Tevinter requires something like a benefactor, similar to what Alexius acted as for Dorian. That’s the first step. To be chosen, quite literally.

Dorian was chosen by a mage named Melinoe. A skilled necromancer in her own right, and the informal ( or perhaps formal ) head necromancer in Tevinter. The story of their relationship spans many years, beginning when they first crossed paths when Dorian was six years old and visiting Minrathous with his father for official business. They, quite literally, crossed paths on some random street between some random buildings and Melinoe sensed about him an incredible aura of Death. Something that drew her notice, and thus the notice of necromancers in Tevinter.

The process of a mage choosing their specialization or, I suppose, their specialization choosing the mage in a great deal of the cases is one frankly akin to courting. Mages attend Circles to gain their magical education as Dorian did ( running amok through every Circle in Tevinter, as well all know ) and there are a great deal of events surrounding mages coming into their magic. Some are strictly high society, the ones that Dorian partook in, naturally. Others are far more akin to parlours, public forums that allowed mages to find mentors, meet with others, and generally networking. Through these opportunities is the chance to prove your potential for a certain specialization, if a mage chooses to do so.

Now, Dorian’s only offer ( so to speak ) wasn’t just the necromancer specialization given the fact that he is a mage of prodigious skill, and therefore had generally vast potential. That being said, none of them particularly caught him at first. Not even necromancy.

Dorian didn’t choose his specialization until he was nineteen, in the care of the Alexius family, and had found Melinoe again. Or rather, she had found him.

The path of specializing in necromancy in the Imperium is a well kept secret, as is most specialization in general, passed from necromancer to necromancer. It is very much a process and a ritual, and an arduous one at that. First you must be chosen, and then you must choose to walk the path. Dorian decided to out of curiosity and because of the draw that he felt towards it ——— and the challenged that laid within. Necromancy is death magic, something that seems unnatural and fearsome to the living, and difficult to master besides. Dorian, an arrogant young man at the best of times, wished to best it, in some ways.

Once a mage decides to walk the path of the necromancer, which is a very spirit heavy specialization ( akin to spirit healers, in some ways ) they must prove themselves further. Not to their peers nor their mentor, no. To death spirits, themselves. Spirits of death. Spirits drawn to death. And so on and so forth.

as a mild aside, spirits drawn to death naturally are as follows : spirits of death, spirits of fear, spirits of peace, spirits of faith, and, of course, terror demons.

This process is one underwent by inscribing glyphs onto a mage’s body, with variable locations. Dorian chose the back of his neck, but it tends to vary depending on the mage. This marking includes some ancient sigils, as well as the words non mortem timemus, nascentes morimur in Ancient Tevene. The words translate to we do not fear death, for from the moment we are born, we begin to die. Morbid, certainly, but it gets the point across.

The glyphs are drawn into the skin with ink and there is a potion ingested that is called e morte vita. From life, death. This potion is created from blood lotus, prophet’s laurel, and death root. The candidate has this glyph drawn into their skin and ingests the potion, which puts them in a state suspended between life and death ——— all in the hopes of drawing a death spirit to them. A spirit will choose them if they have enough potential, quite frankly, and if the mage succeeds the glyph becomes etched into their skin and they awaken with a faint connection to a spirit of death. Or a spirit drawn to death, perhaps.

Dorian underwent this process, and when he drank the potion he awoke very soon after. Far faster than most who go through this process, but the side effect was a state of dissociation where he was neither in the Fade nor on the proper side of the Veil, and he remained that way for a short period of time. The spirit who chose him was not Death ( as Death is not a spirit, per say, but that’s another subject for another time ) but was a very powerful spirit of death who had been drawn to him for a great deal of time.

Following attracting a spirit to your person, aka convincing it somehow that a mage may be worthy to learn death magic wholly, there is something of a quest that is underwent. This is a quest done only by the mage wishing to become a necromancer, and is led by the spirit who they have forged a connection with. Naturally, this means that the mage only gets directions in their sleep. You can see how frustrating that may be. Nonetheless !! This quest can take a mage anywhere, quite frankly. To any corner of Thedas, over any ocean, etc. It’s entirely directed by the spirit, and brings the mage to a grave, or a crypt, or a tomb, or something of that nature, wherein they will dig / generally defile the sight at the behest of the spirit, to obtain the bones of someone deceased.

It’s unknown if this corpse had been the spirit, while they were alive, or had any particular significance. This is a mystery to all necromancers, and something hotly debated in the Imperial school ( so to speak ) of necromancy. Nonetheless, this is a journey undertaken by all necromancers-to-be.

Dorian’s spirit took him to the far corner of Rivain, entirely over land, a long and winding journey that was incredibly frustrating to him. It culminated in him finding a long forgotten tomb that had been constructed, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere and was unmarked, for all that it seemed to radiate old magic. Not ancient magic, mind you, but magic that was several Ages old, at least. Upon unearthing and opening the stone entrance to the tomb, he found a singular corpse, nearly all bone by this point in time. The logistics behind which were, theoretically, impossible lest there was magic involved. And thus, he took these bones, and returned to Minrathous. By ship, this time, thank you.

The next step in this path is the creation of a necromancer’s staff. The lore that I have behind staffs and magic in the Dragon Age universe is something for another time, but this magic is meant to be a conduit for death magic specifically, and it’s created via an ancient ritual that involves the femur of the bones taken from the grave site chosen, carved to form the primary hand-grip of the staff. It also involves rune inscribed leather, with death runes specifically, fade touched cloth, phoenix scales, to symbolize and empower the cyclical and natural nature of death and the use thereof, and veil quartz, to act as the primary conduit of magic at the head of the staff.

Once the staff is created, the spirit that has a tenuous connection with the soon-to-be necromancer trainee must be bound to it in a process that both parties are aware of, agree to, and utilizes the remaining ground bones of the body taken, and the mage’s blood. Not much, just a little bit of it, but this is a process that can occasionally go wrong and cause ABOMINATIONS to be formed. Dorian, at this age, saw no problem in minor blood magic, given the status of it in Tevinter and his spirit of rebellion, so to speak.

The binding ritual, for Dorian, was more complicated than he thought it would be, what with his youthful arrogance. The spirit had chosen him and agreed to it, but the stipulation was something along the lines of total equality to him, and while he had seen spirits be bound before, and had taken part during his times as a reckless and wild idiot, frankly, in the Circles, this was an entirely different process altogether. Gaining the notice and almost ( though not quite ) trust required for such a thing from a spirit is difficult ——— this is, in fact, where many people fail, if not at the first engraving to garner the notice of a spirit, to begin with. Dorian succeeded, in the end, and through that gained the understanding of the true will of spirits. Or the extent to their will, that is.

Nonetheless : the spirit is bound, and the creation of the staff is finished, and that mage walks the path of the necromancer from there on. The mentor, who often chooses the inductee, begins training the person properly, with heavy emphasis on the funerary and otherwise traditions that Imperial necromancers tend to take part in.

More on that in another headcanon, I think. This one is... far too long.

#( ∞ ┈┈ headcanon ) SOMEWHERE IN THE HISTORY BOOKS.#[ fuck it it's been a year i'm posting this ]#[ pls validate me i'm Begging ]#[ this is literally So Fucking Long it's FUCKING ABSURD ]#[ so the usual ]#[ i've been referencing parts of this for ages ]#[ so here it is in its full... ]#[ uhhhhh glory? stupidity? who knows lmao ]#[ just making up my own lore ]#[ once again because i haaaaate biowaaaaaaare ]

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thelonelywitchandthelonelytides · 5 years

Text

Herb Correspondents Master List Part 2. (E-H)

Enjoy part 2! I hope you find this helpful and are enjoying the series.

Echinacea (Echinacea)

Planet : Mars Zodiac Sign : Scorpio Tarot Card : Temperance

Uses

Useful to increase a spell or charms effectiveness.

Good for offerings.

Spells/Rituals

Strength = Carry a couple flowers in your pocket to provide inner strength during trying times.

Prosperity and Protection = Grow around the house or bring into the house to help draw prosperity into the home and protect the family from poverty.

Eggplant (Solanum Melongena)

Planet : Jupiter

Uses

Use in magickal cooking

Use to attract wealth and prosperity

Enchanter’s Nightshade (Circaea Lutetiana)

DO NOT CONSUME!

Planet : Saturn

Uses

Use for binding, hexing and transformation.

Aids meditation.

Helps to create energy and to draw energy into your life.

Use in spells to balance energies, forces and emotions.

Use to release our potential and find our true will.

Evening Primrose (Oenothera)

Planet : Moon Gods/Goddesses : Diana

Uses

Use to decorate altars for moon ceremonies.

Use in spells to increase luck in finding a new job.

Use in spells in achieving one’s goals.

Spells/Rituals

Inner Beauty = Use the whole plant as a bath tea to make your inner beauty show through and increase your desirably to potential lovers and friends.

Eyebright (Euphrasia Officinalis)

DO NOT CONSUME IF PREGNANT OR BREASTFEEDING!

Energy : Masculine Planet : Sun Element : Air

Zodiac Sign : Leo Tarot Card : The Tower

Uses

Use in clarity spells or to avoid deception.

Use in spells to rise above difficult situations and to see the silver lining on dark times.

Good for celebrations especially ones that mark an end or beginning.

Spells/Rituals

Sleep and Sight = Place a few drops of infusion of eyebright on your eyelids before sleeping to have prophetic dreams and during the day to see that which is normally unseen.

False Solomon’s Seal (Maianthemum Racemosum)

ONLY CONSUME IN VERY SMALL AMOUNTS!

Uses

Use to help to get through hard times.

Use to rebuild after your world has come crashing down.

Fennel (Foeniculum Vulgare)

Planet : Mercury Element : Air

Uses

Uses seeds in charms and spells to repel those bothering you.

Spells/Rituals

Confidence = Chew fennel before giving a speech to feel more confident and eloquent. Also it’s good to do this when trying to convince someone of something

Focus = Chew fennel while studying will help you maintain focus and retain the information better.

Feverfew (Tanacetum Parthenium)

DO NOT CONSUME!

Energy : Masculine Planet : Venus Element : Water

Uses

Charm bags

Spells/Rituals

Prevent Accident = Use alone or combine with hyssop and rosemary in a bag to help prevent accidents. Or add to a bath or tea to help break hexes made to cause accidents.

Prevent Illness = Grow outside the home is said to prevent illness from entering.

Pain Relief = Bind the flowers to your wrist to help draw pain out.

Fir (Abies)

CAUTION WHEN USING ON SENSITIVE SKIN!

Planet : Jupiter Element : Earth Symbol : Immortality

Uses

Can be used to seal a spell.

Spells/Rituals

Blessings = Needles of silver fir may be burned for ceremonies to bless mother and baby, or wet them and use them to sprinkle water over mother and baby.

Forget Me Not (Myosotis)

DO NOT CONSUME !

Uses

Use for love spells

Spells/Rituals

Love = Can be worn or carried to keep a lover close to your heart. Or give to someone you would like to keep in your mind.

Foxglove (Digitalis)

WARNING HIGHLY TOXIC!

Planets : Saturn and Venus

Spells/Rituals

Fae = Dew collected from foxgloves can be used in ritual to commune with the fae. Plant foxgloves anywhere you wish to invite the fae. Carry foxglove with you to attract fae energy.

Garlic (Allium Sativum)

Energy : Masculine Planet : Mars Element : Fire

Gods/Goddesses : Hecate Zodiac Sign : Aries

Uses

Use for an aphrodisiac.

Use to strengthen charm bags.

Good for exorcisms.

Good for spell-breaking.

Invokes passion, protection and strength.

Protection against psychic and physical vampirism.

Good offering to Hecate

Spells/Rituals

Love = Place a clove of garlic intersected with 2 crossed pins where he is sure to walk, when the unwanted lover walks over it, they will lose interest.

Good Luck = Hang garlic braids over the door to repel thieves and envious people and to bring good luck.

Love = Hanging garlic over a bedroom door will draw lovers into it.

Geranium (Geranium Maculatum)

Uses

Use to counter love spells when placed in tea.

Use in spells to encourage conception, successful pregnancy and safe childbirth.

Use in sympathetic spells.

Spells/Rituals

Attract Happiness : A bit of the root can be carried as an amulet to attract happiness and prosperity.

Ginger (Zinaiber Officinale)

Element : Fire

Uses

Adds power to magickal activity

Use in spells to “speed things up”

Use in spells to add passion to an existing realtionships

Goldenrod (Solidaga)

CAN CAUSE ALLERGIC REACTIONS! DO NOT CONSUME IN LARGE DOSES!

Energy : Feminine Element : Air Planet : Venus

Symbols : Luck, Money and Prosperity

Uses

Wealth spells

Aids the grieving process

Place in the home to attract wealth and good fortune

Spells/Rituals

Love = Concentrate on finding true love when holding goldenrod in your hand and it will point you in the direction of your true love. Also if it is worn or carried for a day, the next day you should cross paths with your true love.

Enhance = Dried leaves and flowers can be burned to enhance love spells for drawing love and to enhance your intuition when preforming any sort of divination.

Hawthorn (Craaegus)

ALWAYS ASK THE FAE’S PERMISSION BEFORE TAKING ANY OF THIS!

Energy : Masculine Planet : Mars Element : Fire

Gods/Goddesses : Belews, Cardea, Hymen, Maia, Flora and The White Goddess

Uses

Decorating May Poles

Related to love, marriage, health, fertility, chastity, protection and death

Place around doors and windows to prevent people entering in an astral state

Use to prevent spirits entering

Add to amulets to protect from spirits, harmful magick

Trees act as portal to the realm of the fae

Hazel (Corylus Avellana)

CUT WITH FLINT NOT A KNIFE!

Energy : Masculine Planet : Mercury Element : Air

Gods/Goddesses : Hermes, Mercury, Thor, Fionn, Artemis, Diana and Lazdona

Symbol : The Crone, Springs, Wells and Wisdom

Colour : Brown Stones : Band-Red Agate Animal : Salmon

Days : Wednesday Other Names : Coll

Uses

Burn for wisdom

Use for spirit contact

Use in manifestation, protection, wisdom spells

Use in dream work

Use in divination work

Anti - lightning charm

Sleep with hazel for vivid dreams

Contacting the fae

Spells/Rituals

Good Luck and Protection = Bound a couple twigs with gold or red thread to form a solar cross and carry for good luck and protection.

Samhain = Twigs, nuts and branches should be gathered after sunset on samhain for that is when the magickal powers are at its peak.

Heather (Calluna Vulgaris)

Energy : Feminine Planet : Venus Element : Water

Gods/Goddesses : Nechton Mac Labraid, Eupbearer of The Tuatha De Dannon, Guardian of The Sacred Well of Segais and Husband of Boane, Osiris, Venus, Aphrodite

Zodiac Sign : Gemini

Uses

Spells for new beginnings, self - discovery, entrancing physical beauty and bringing a peaceful resolution to conflict.

Used to bring peace

Use to attract friendly spirits, positive energy and good luck

Use to summon spirits and attract faeries

Good to make besoms, add to midsummer fires to ensure fertility

Add to a bridal bouquet to ensure good luck for the couple

Holly (llex)

DO NOT CONSUME! IN SCOTTISH FOLKLORE ITS CONSIDERED UNLUCKY TO BURN!

Energy : Unprickled Leaves (Masculine)

Prickled leaves (Feminine)

Planet : Saturn and Mars Element : Fire

Uses

Use in consecrations

Use in spells for revenge, beauty, luck, protection and dream magick

Use in rituals for death and rebirth

Use for fire festivals

Place in holy water for protection

Branches can be used to ward against evil

Spells/ Rituals

Banishing and Commanding = Holly wood can be used to banish unwanted entities and command evoked spirits.

Protection = Plant near the home to repel poison and protect from any witchcraft.

Yule = Use Holly at Yule to invite the fae folk but then burn at imbolc to ensure the fae don’t stick around all year.

Honeysuckle (Lonicera)

TOXIC IN LARGE DOSES!

Planet : Mercury and Venus Element : Earth

Zodiac Sign : Cancer

Uses

Use in honey jars

Use in spells to discover true worth

Use to clear the mind

Use to stimulate psychic powers and generosity

Use to sharpen intuition

Use to encourage psychic dreams and psychic abilities

Burn honeysuckle to aid money drawing

Grow honeysuckle near your home to attract love and wealth and to dispel negative energy

Spells/Rituals

Love = Bind the vines of the honeysuckle plant together to symbolise the two lovers being bound to each other and to ensure fidelity and desire.

Hyssop (Hyssopus Officinalis)

DO NOT CONSUME!

Energy : Masculine Planet : Jupiter Element : Fire

Uses

Use for purification and protection

Use in ritual baths

Aids breaking hexes and curses

Aids interactions with dragons

Spells/Rituals

Protection and Cleansing = Use branches to sprinkle water as a part of protective rituals. Also sprinkle the water around your home for cleansing rituals

Protection = Infuse hyssop into wash water to cleanse your floors, windows and door jams to clean away negative energy, curses and to prevent negativity from entering.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed part 2. Blessed be!

#wiccamagic #wiccan #wicca #wicca for beginners #witchcraft #witchlife #witch #pagan witch #eclectic witch #pagan wicca #pagancommunity #ecletic pagan #pagan #witchblr #baby witch #witchythings #wiccawoman #wiccapedia #paganpride

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