Tumgik
#you guys ever thought about what voldemorts plan was? bc you shouldn’t
petruchio · 6 months
Text
harry potter is so funny honestly bc ultimately yes it’s just a fairly run of the mill middle grade mystery fantasy series but the thing that really sets it apart isn’t the magic, it’s that it’s a series starring only jocks.
like there was a whole house for the smart kids and not a single one of the main characters was in it. blows my mind that there’s a whole bit in one of the books where harry is gifted a mysterious potentially dangerous enchanted broom while there is a suspected murderer who is thought to be actively trying to assassinate him and when hermione is like idk maybe don’t just immediately use the potentially cursed mystery gift he low key goes ballistic on her bc he cares more about getting to play with cool sports gear more than he cares about, like, being alive. and the book fully supports him in that!! the narration is like, isn’t hermione so crazy for that. she should’ve just let him play with his new sports stuff. how dare she imply that this mysterious object that was given to him from an unknown sender might be tied to the larger plot against harry’s life despite the fact that that’s the main conflict we’re dealing with rn.
idk it’s just so funny to me that hp got such traction with nerds when the entire series is actually just about exploring the question “what if the meathead star athlete of your high school tried to solve mysteries. and also there was magic.”
73 notes · View notes
twoidiotwriters1 · 3 years
Text
Written In The Stars CXXXVII (Harry Potter xF!Oc)
A/N: Book 6 was beyond complicated to write due to some artistic choices I made lmao but again I do hope you guys like it even if I don’t feel it was perfect bc I enjoyed how most of it turned out -Danny
Words: 4,005
Series’ Masterlist
Previous Chapter // Next Chapter
Listen to: ‘The Black and White’ -by The Band CAMINO.
Tumblr media
Chapter Thirty-Five: A Prophecy.
Harry walked back to his chair and sat down heavily.
"Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well — not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years. I considered it almost a miracle when Emily agreed to move in next door so she could keep an eye on you..."
Even though Lord Voldemort perished that night in Godric's Hollow, his followers continue to hunt down answers for months, neither Harry nor Mel would've been safe in the wizarding world.
"You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated — to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died —and your father too, Mel— to save you. They gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother's blood, Harry. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative."
"She doesn't love me. She doesn't give a damn —"
"But she took you. She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother's sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you. And as for you, Mel, you were just a baby, therefore Voldemort's followers couldn't tell if you were as skilled as your dad. It was only until last year when Voldemort realized you were hiding great power."
"I still don't —"
"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, Harry, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years."
"My mother isn't a Dumbledore," Mel frowned. "If that's what kept Harry safe, living with his aunt, then why did I only meet you after I turned eleven?"
"You were a direct descendant from my brother and not me, you weren't in danger as much as Harry. Once I found out about your outbursts I talked to him, I knew you'd need his protection... I'm afraid his guilt stopped him. I've been taking his place, having you come into my office for a weekly lesson as a way to make sure you would be both, protected, while also learning to defend yourself."
Harry came into a new realization.
"You sent that Howler. You told my aunt to remember — it was your voice —"
"I thought that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate son." 
"It did. Well — my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler came she — she said I had to stay. But what's this got to do with..."
"Five years ago, then, you arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well-nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well."
The memory of that small boy came to her. He didn't look much different from the Harry sitting beside her, except perhaps, for the way his gaze had darkened. 
He'd always known Harry and Mel would eventually be hunted, and he'd made sure they'd be ready. Dumbledore had a plan from the moment they set a foot in the castle. She wondered exactly how much of everything happened accidentally, and how much had been planned.
"I don't understand what you're saying." 
"Don't you remember asking me, as you lay in the hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a baby? Ought I to have told you then? You do not see the flaw in the plan yet? No... perhaps not. Well, as you know, I decided not to answer you. Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age, just like I refused to tell Mel about the rumours surrounding our family."
'The knowledge would be too much at such a young age'. Now, after four years, Mel felt weaker than when she was eleven. Somehow thinner, and far more fragile.
"Do you see? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."
"I don't —"
"I cared about you too much. I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act."
Mel visibly deflated, a new wave of hurt crashing against her heart.
"So it's true, then?" She asked. "Caring only makes us weak?" 
"My dear, I defy anyone who has watched you as I have —and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined — not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a pair of young souls on my hands..."
Mel had held something similar whenever she would reach out to kiss Harry, and nothing else in the world mattered when they were alone together... but after the third task, they were always so alone.
"...You came out of the maze last year, having watched Cedric Diggory die, having escaped death so narrowly yourself... you, Mel, gave away part of your own life, selflessly risking your own well-being just for the frail chance to see Harry again, and I did not tell you, because to tell you after having almost lost each other in such a way would've been beyond cruel, though I knew, now Voldemort had returned, I must do it soon. 
And now, tonight, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long, because you have proved that I should have placed the burden upon you before this. My only defence is this: I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school, and I could not bring myself to add another — the greatest one of all."
"...I still don't understand," Harry responded, though now his voice was a bit more quiet and fearful.
Dumbledore admitted what they already knew: Voldemort tried to kill him because of the prophecy, and he'd tried to stop it before it could be fulfilled. Now, years after and once again in a proper body, Voldemort set his mind on hearing the whole thing, looking for a way to end it.
The sun was fully out now, and as he finished, Mel felt the first glimmer of hope peering through.
"Mel broke the prophecy," Harry said quietly. "She crushed it against the ground..."
She closed her injured hand tightly without caring about the sharp pain that shot up to her elbow. 
"I knew we could get rid of it."
"How?" Harry frowned. "How could you know?"
"Because that orb was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly," Dumbledore explained, looking at her with a strange glint in his eyes.
"Who heard it?" asked Harry, though he already knew the answer.
"I did. On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head Inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer, and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."
As Dumbledore stood up to retrieve something from a cabinet, Mel continued her story.
"That was the reason why my uncle knew what Voldemort was looking for," She swallowed harshly. "As soon as that thing broke I recognized the figure. How could I not? We've been seeing her for three years..."
Dumbledore came back holding the Pensieve, he put the tip of his wan on one temple and pulled, Mel stood up abruptly. 
"Maybe I shouldn't be here to hear it."
"You've earned your place in this conversation," Dumbledore replied. "Your life is linked to Harry's, is only fair for you to hear it too... that way you'll be able to make an informed decision."
"Only if he agrees." 
She was used to Harry keeping her at a proper distance from his doings, nevertheless, Harry grabbed her wrist.
"Sit down... please."
Before she could reply a figure rose from the Pensieve, there stood a small version of Sibyll Trelawney with a voice Mel had only imagined thanks to Harry's tales from two years ago:
"THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES... BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES... AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT... AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES..."
Professor Trelawney vanished slowly.
"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry said after a moment. "It... did that mean... What did that mean?" 
"It meant... that the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy would be born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times."
"It means — me?"
Dumbledore eyed both teenagers carefully before speaking.
"The odd thing is, Harry, that it may not have meant you at all. Sibyll's prophecy could have applied to three babies, one of them being Mel."
"What?" 
"I thought it was meant to be Matthew's baby," He sighed, "an Auror and a Dumbledore... but alas, you were born at the start of the month — and you were a girl. There were still two more babies in line. Both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom."
"But then... but then, why was it my name on the prophecy and not Neville's?"
"The official record was relabeled after Voldemort's attack on you as a child. It seemed plain to the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy that Voldemort could only have tried to kill you because he knew you to be the one to whom Sibyll was referring."
"Then — it might not be me?"
"I am afraid that there is no doubt that it is you." 
"But you said — Neville was born at the end of July too — and his mum and dad —"
"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy, the final identifying feature of the boy who could vanquish Voldemort... Voldemort himself would 'mark him as his equal.' And so he did, Harry. He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar that has proved both blessing and curse."
"But he might have chosen wrong! He might have marked the wrong person!"
"He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him. And notice this, Harry. He chose, not the pureblood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing), but the half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far — something that neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved."
In her mind, an alternate life started to take form: Mel as the orphan, Harry's parents alive and well, it was her the one facing death every time... 
Then poor scarred Neville, while Mel and Harry lived surrounded by their families, perhaps even together. The fact that the only reason why Harry was the chosen one was a matter of gender and dates... 
"Why did he do it, then? Why did he try and kill me as a baby? He should have waited to see whether Neville or I looked more dangerous when we were older and tried to kill whoever it was then — or even Mel... She's a Dumbledore — She's the strongest!"
"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course, except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete. The Hog's Head Inn, which Sibyll chose for its cheapness, has long attracted, shall we say, a more interesting clientele than the Three Broomsticks. As you and your friends found out to your cost, and I to mine that night, it is a place where it is never safe to assume you are not being overheard. Of course, I had not dreamed, when I set out to meet Sibyll Trelawney, that I would hear anything worth overhearing. My — our — one stroke of good fortune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building."
"So he only heard..?"
"He heard only the first part, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you — again marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait or to learn more. And once Mel was born at the start of July as a girl, and you a boy, this only narrowed it down to his apparent advantage. He did not know that you would have 'power the Dark Lord knows not' —"
"But I don't! I haven't any powers he hasn't got, I couldn't fight the way he did tonight, I can't possess people or — or kill them —"
"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," Dumbledore replied carefully, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. 
That power is what has aided Mel to know if you're in danger and allowed her to help, that power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you. So you see, Mel," He added, "caring it's never useless."
"The end of the prophecy... it was something about... 'neither can live...' "
"'... while the other survives,' " Dumbledore concluded.
"So... so does that mean that... that one of us has got to kill the other one... in the end?"
"Yes."
They stayed silent for the longest time, Mel found her voice at the same time as her courage.
"Okay," She spoke. "We just have to make sure you're the one that lives."
Dumbledore's face hinted at a smile, but it did not form fully. Harry stared at her like the thought of surviving was next to impossible.
"I feel I owe you two other explanations," said Dumbledore carefully. "You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as prefects? I must confess that I rather thought both of you had enough responsibility to be going on with..."
Mel let out a dry chuckle, Harry just sighed. 
"The second and final... is about the decision you ought to take."
"What decision?"
"Your lifeline," He started, "I've been reading about it since the third task... It's called Unio Azoth — A universal cure for any kind of injury, you heal with life itself, and it's always effective. However, not many people dare use it because it demands great sacrifice from both sides of the connection. It's created through highly complex magic, or it can happen, as it was your case, after multiple shared near-death experiences," He paused. "It can also be removed."
There was a split second in which the students didn't know how to react. 
"You're saying," Mel started. "We've been hurting each other for a whole year — and you hid this from us?"
"You were on bad terms after the tournament, the removal can only happen if both sides consent, and you were holding onto it tightly, Mel."
"Is it dark magic?" Harry asked abruptly. "Our connection?"
Dumbledore took another long look at him.
"I believe that what you're trying to ask is if it's damaging for any of you," He replied. "Which is something that depends on the circumstances. There have been moments your connection has improved your lives, but it's also damaged you physically to a great extent. You're asking a question only you can answer, Harry."
"This could've fixed everything between us," Mel felt her anger increasing. "And you just let us argue instead? Why?"
"It was your impulsive actions that kept me from speaking, I couldn't risk one of you trying to cut it without the other knowing, it would've resulted in tragedy."
"We would've acted differently if only we’d known! The reason why we fought was because of how guilty Harry felt about putting me through extra pain — We could've just cut the damn thing — You thought I would've just decided to abandon him?"
"Isn't that what you were attempting this year?" Dumbledore asked pointedly.
"Harry and I couldn't stop fighting, I was tired — I had to keep my distance," Mel stood up. "He spent a whole year drowning in guilt thinking we couldn't change things —"
"When I found out it could be removed," Dumbledore's voice came out just as firm as hers. "You were already far too traumatized. Losing this would've felt like losing a limb. You weren't ready to make a choice then, but I can't keep you in the dark any longer, you have the whole picture now, so you can make an informed decision, but I must ask you to think —"
"I don't need to think it over," Mel said, but Harry spoke at the same time.
"I want to keep it."
"What?" She looked at him in disbelief.
Harry stared at her. 
"It's thanks to this that I knew you were having panic attacks, you've saved my life many times now, I owe you — and it doesn't have to hurt, you can control it, I just need to learn how to do it too!"
"You've been nagging me about how much of a burden this was and suddenly you cling to it as if it were a blessing?" She narrowed her eyes.
"It's just..." His jaw tensed. "It works both ways — if I give it up and Voldemort takes you... I can't leave you to deal with it alone, you'd do the same for me. You've already done it."
Mel shook her head, speechless.
"The decision is yours to make..." Dumbledore concluded. "You have until next term to tell me, and then we'll do whatever you please."
Tumblr media
They were walking side by side without speaking. She did not wish to fight, and she felt like it would happen if they were to bring up... well, everything. 
"I'm sorry," He muttered. 
"I don't want to hear it. I'm to blame as much as you are. I ignored you — Dumbledore's right, knowing would've tricked us into thinking we could deal with it on our own, it would've killed us... I've been selfish enough this year to know I would've felt tempted to try and cut it on my own. I won't admit it in front of him, though..."
"You weren't —"
"I don't want to have this conversation," She stopped walking. "Everyone thinks I'm like my father or my uncle... and I'm not. When I was with you I was just Mel... whoever that's supposed to be. When we fought I got lost — you said awful things to me, but you were the only one who wasn't treating me like some overpowered freak..."
"I can't promise we won't fight in the future, but there are worse things than disagreeing and the thought of dying without telling you that I..." He came to a halt, voice breaking.
They wanted to talk about so many things, and yet Mel felt like they would never get to say anything at all.
"You know," She said softly. "We've gone through so much already... and it's hard, looking at you and having to pretend I can continue like this."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm feeling so alone, Harry," She forced the words out of her. "I miss you."
She'd almost been murdered that night, treated like a ragdoll, and traumatized until there was no safe place in her world. Still, nothing made her feel quite as vulnerable and tiny as Harry's understanding of her, the way he knew every single corner of her mind as if it were his own.
Harry gazed at her with hurt, he clenched his jaw and shook his head lightly. She was ready to watch him leave when suddenly, he hugged her.
Mel was having trouble breathing against his shoulder but her arms kept him close, one hand made its way up to the back of his head while the other went to the middle of his back. He was a few inches taller than her, but she still felt like they were a perfect fit.
"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled against her hair, and Mel knew he wasn't just talking about Sirius.
"Me too," She closed her eyes tightly. "We'll find a way through this... together."
Tumblr media
Next Chapter —>
Taglist.
@dee123ksha @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @stardusthigh @mikariell95 @vernon-dursley @thesuitelifeofafangirl @tomshollandz @kylosleftbuttcheek @reverse-hxlland @bloodorangemoonlight @omiwashere @t-rexs-world @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @21bruhs @i-am-scared-and-useless-bisexual @dielgonacoffee @thelastpyle
12 notes · View notes