#about to make sirius an american trapped in a british body

[carewyncromwell]

Hey guys! So, in the past, I’ve done “inspiration posts” centered around my HPHM MC Carewyn Cromwell, Carewyn’s mother Lane and her brother Jacob, and my HPHL MC Jackson Knightly...and now it’s my HPHL vampire boy Bartholomew “Bat” Varney’s turn!

As hilarious as it sounds, I can actually blame the Twilight films for the initial spark behind Bat’s character. I admit that I’ve never really been a Twilight fan -- I read the first book because of my interest in vampires and the (rather shallow) comparison the mass public made at the time between Twilight and Harry Potter, but the second Twilight book lost me once main character Bella started trying to hurt herself just to try to see her OTL Edward again, and I’ve never picked them up since. Skip about fifteen years, and I get invited to a friend’s house to watch and rib Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2. Even if I hadn’t read the books, I knew the overall trajectory of the story, so I was able to basically follow what was going on, but those films were and remain the only Twilight movies I’ve seen. And after seeing them, the main emotion I came away with was absolute exasperation...because the entire time Breaking Dawn Part 2 was playing, I couldn’t give a damn what was going on with Bella, Edward, Jacob, Nessie, the Cullens, the werewolves, or the Volturi. All I wanted to do was focus on one of the most minor, bit-part characters placed in the background -- a vampire who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and later went on to fight in just about every other American War since, played by Lee Pace, named Garrett. I was absolutely beside myself that we had an engaging, snarky, charming vampire who’d once lived in the 1700′s, one of my absolute FAVORITE historical eras, and he was shunted out of the way to make room for such a boring, stake-less, and kind of dysfunctional romance. I wanted a whole book about Garrett -- I wanted a whole TV series! It still boggles my mind that Stephanie Meyer could create such an interesting character and then only feature him for a fraction of the very last book in a four-part series.

The feelings I had about Garrett sort of lingered in the back of my head for a while, and one thought led to another, and I got to thinking about why I’d even tried reading Twilight to begin with. The answer, honestly, was that vampires was one of the biggest question marks left open in the Potterverse by Jo Rowling. She’s claimed in interviews that she didn’t think she could add anything to the vampire mythos through her work, hence why she referenced them existing, but didn’t feature them much at all in the story. And yet from my point of view, the vampire as seen in traditional folklore sort of contradicts one of the core themes of Rowling’s books -- namely, that death is both irreversible and inevitable. Because of the very diverse ways vampires have been depicted in different cultures and media over the years, there were so many questions left unanswered regarding which powers if any Potterverse vampires have, what their weaknesses are, why Voldemort never looked into becoming a vampire when searching for immortality, what their status in the Wizarding World is, why we don’t see any fighting with Voldemort like we do other “Dark creatures” like werewolves, and how their undead status fits in with the tenant of death being something you can’t escape. And the more I thought about it, the more exciting that potential became -- so I fleshed out a kind of vampire that could answer those questions and fit comfortably in the Potterverse without running the risk of “god-modding” or being too overpowered.

Vampires have more weaknesses than powers -- lessened magical ability, hypersensory sensitivity, the inability to sleep and dream, poor health, and intense and constant blood lust VS. lengthened life and increased durability.

Voldemort never sought becoming a vampire because someone else has to curse you both before and after your death, and not only are you not guaranteed to end up in the body you died in, but your magical ability is close to non-existent.

Vampires are on the absolute fringes of magical society and largely live in isolated colonies, hence why we so rarely see them or know much about them.

Vampires didn’t get involved in the Wizarding Wars because most truthfully don’t want to hurt anybody or create more of their kind by sharing the knowledge of their creation with wizards.

Vampires are similar to ghosts in the way that they died, but returned to Earth and cannot pass on, but are different in the way that they have a physical form and someone else forced them to come back against their will, rather than it being a choice on their part. They’re similar to Inferi in the way that they were brought back from the dead by Dark magic cast by another person, but they have a soul and are so trapped in the bodies they’re cursed into that they almost always outlive the person who originally cursed them and can only be killed through the traditional “stake through the heart and beheading” technique. Vampires also all end up dying sooner or later, whether by their own hand or intervention by wizards after they’ve lost so much of their sanity and humanity that they become dangerous.

With the vampire lore plotted out, I had to go back to figuring out who this vampire of mine was as a person. At that point, I hadn’t had an MC that was a Ravenclaw yet (unless you count Carewyn’s brother and mother), so I decided that could be something fun to explore, particularly if I wanted to steer clear of the brooding vampire trope. (All of the Ravenclaws I’ve known in my life are much less prone to self-loathing and depression than I am. XD;;;) Sure enough, though, one of the influences that popped up right away was Garrett. Like Garrett, Bat was originally from the 1700′s, only to die and become a vampire while fighting in the American War for Independence -- the biggest difference, of course, is that Garrett was an American Patriot, while Bat was a British regular!! LOL!! As I hashed out Bat’s backstory as a Muggle-born wizard who went to war with his best friend, however, I found Bat (or, more specifically, his original human self, Robert) picking up traits from another character -- Sirius Black! Like Sirius, Robert was disinterested in rules and a bit cocky, but also incredibly talented and intelligent and a deathly loyal friend, especially to his male best friend, who was like a brother to him and he would’ve died rather than betray. If Barty was the popular, well-liked leader of the group, Robert was his right-hand man and foil. Sadly, like Sirius as well, Robert also ended up losing his male best friend far too soon and being condemned to a fate worse than death thanks to a betrayal by his other best friend. They’re also both dog Animagi who become surrogate parental figures in later life! ^.^

As Robert, Bat’s face claim is Josh Groban. As a vampire stuck in his BFF Barty’s reanimated corpse, Bat’s face claim is Lee Pace, specifically in his role as Fernando Wood in the film Lincoln.