#anti horace slughorn

[missdblack22]

Nuevo capítulo de Vivencias.

Red de contactos.

Horace Slughorn reflexiona sobre todos los miembros de su Club de las Eminencias a lo largo de los años y lo útiles que son a la hora de darle nuevos contactos.

New chapter of Experiences

Network of contacts

Horace Slughorn reflects on all the members of his Eminence Club over the years and how helpful they are in giving him new contacts.

[missdblack22]

Slughorn:

- Tells Voldemort about Horrocruxes

- Hides Dumbledore he told Voldemort about the Horrocruxes

- Haves a club about the students who can connect in the high of the society and being useful for him in a future

- Ignores the students who aren't in this club

- Harry (his favorite student's son) has to give him alcohol for talking about the horrocrux

(and not talking about him ignores how his students become a death eater and the Severus' bullying by the Marauders)

I don't get this idea that Snape is the worst teacher at Hogwarts

Yes, he is a bullying snarky ass but the worst teacher? Compared to others?

Hagrid -uses magic to attack a child because their parent insulted Dumbledore -had students smuggle an illegal baby dragon out of school to save his ass and berated them for breaking the rules to do it -sends students alone to search for injured unicorn while there is a unicorn-killing monster around -sends students to chat with his buddy giant spider whose kids try to eat them -started his first lesson with an animal that will murder you if you offend it -wasted a year on flobberworms -spent a year forcing students to take care of his illegal-experimental-creature-breeding-projects resulting in multiple students getting injured and wasting a whole year on nothing -threatened to turn a student into a ferret after he had already been turned into one and smashed against the ground multiple times (because the student refused to spend extra time outside the class taking care of his illegal-experimental-creature-breeding-projects) -made students promise to hang out with his giant brother who has been beating him for months

McGonagall -uses live animals as transfiguration practice for students and lets them keep the results -pulls a student by the ear -sends students into the dark forest as a punishment to look for a monster that's killing the unicorns -bends the school rules for Gryffindors to allow Harry on the team and buys him the best broom despite first years not being allowed one and there being poor students who need help more -forbade Neville to have passwords to enter the common room during the time a mass murderer was on the loose who had already tried to break into the Gryffindor common room twice, succeeded the second time and tried to murder a Gryffindor student.

Even Lupin -hid the fact a mass murderer is animagus (just to save his reputation) -hid the fact that the same wanted mass murderer knows hidden ways into the school and has helped create a map that can track everyone and show those hidden entrances (despite knowing he is trying to kill Harry - the son of a man who did everything he could to make Lupin feel accepted) -continued to keep those things secret after the mass murderer broke into the school twice and tried to murder a student (again to save his reputation with Dumbledore) -forgot to take a potion that keeps him from turning into a murderous beast -continues not telling Dumbledore that there is a map that can track everyone at school and shows hidden places

Umbridge, fake Moody, Quirrell and Lockhart all tried to murder at least one student among other things like having them engrave stuff on their body as punishment, impersonating a person and using forbidden curses in front of and on students, trying to erase their memories, etc…

And don't get me started on Dumbledore - putting a three-headed dog behind the door easily unlocked by an 11-year-old, keeping the school open with a deadly beast roaming about, keeping it a secret from parents that he hired a werewolf, letting a student continue trying to kill him and getting others nearly killed instead,...

What did Snape do? -insult students -favour Slytherins -threaten to poison a toad -Throw a jar at a student once

The worst he ever did was throw a jar at Harry after he found him snooping in his memories where he is tortured by James and Sirus and it's the only time he tries to physically hurt a student.

He is far from pleasant but at least with Snape you don't have to worry about getting seriously injured or eaten alive or suffering a slow and painful death!

[aezran]

Slytherins are written to be the opposite of what jkr considers “good” and “appropriate”.

You know what that means?

happy pride

[wisteria-lodge]

And now for a HP fandom question - do you have any thoughts on queercoding in the series and if JKR ever actually intended it, and then backtracked, or if it was always completely unintentional? I'm thinking specifically about Lupin and Tonks (as individuals, not as a ship) Inspired by your post about the intention vs how fans perceived Draco Malfoy. Thanks!

So the first thing I want to do is make a distinction between femme-coding and queer-coding. They're tropes with very similar histories, and a lot of works treat them as the same thing. But Harry Potter doesn’t, and I think we can chalk this one up to JK Rowling’s habit of grabbing aesthetics and visuals without really thinking through the history behind them. 

(Like - the goblins. She says she didn’t mean to write an antisemitic thing, and I actually do believe her. But did she use a lot of tropes and images with a long history of being tied to antisemitism? yes.)

So when I say “femme” I mean giving a male character traits stereotypically associated with femininity. Heightened sensitivity/emotionality, an interest in hair, clothes and being attractive, a love of lace/pink/frills, a dislike of violence and physical confrontation, and a preference for the soft power of manipulation, character assassination and poison - versus the hard power of direct confrontation and physical prowess. Are these things super stereotypical? Yes. But they’re ALSO traits you see all the time on male villains, especially ones that you don’t want to seem that threatening. Femme-coded villains show up a lot in children’s media, or as the Big Bad’s #2. They’re not meant to be heroic or sympathetic (since all these feminine traits are not desirable, especially for guys.) But they also aren’t scary, and you can pretty much always play them for comedy. 

For example: see almost every male Disney villain. And JKR was writing children’s literature in the 90s, so of course she’s pulling from the same zeitgeist as the Disney Renaissance. 

JKR loves herself a femme villain. The absolute gold standard is of course Lockhart - who wears pink, wants to start his own line of hair care products, is self-centered, vain, obsessed with popularity… but he sucks in a fight. His entire MO involves manipulating people into thinking he has these traditional masculine qualities when he just doesn’t. But there’s also fussy, prissy Percy wearing his prefect badge on his pajamas. Bitchy, emotional mean-girl poisoners Draco and Snape (especially early book Snape - which is Snape at his most villainous.) Draco, Percy and Snape are also unusual for being male characters who we see crying for reasons other than grief (apparently the only truly acceptable reason for masculine crying). 

Lucius Malfoy is an interesting case because he starts off quite masc. He’s threatening to curse people, the governors are scared of him, etc. But, as the books go on… and he gets less powerful… he also gets more femme. When we meet him in Book 5 he’s no longer threatening people, but bribing them, spreading rumors, and giving interviews to the Prophet casting Arthur Weasley in a negative light. He's also getting really into peacocks. In Book 2 he was a major threat, but as he gets recast as Voldemort’s #2 he becomes a more femme, soft-power villain. When he leads the attack on the Department of Mysteries, he absolutely bungles it, which defines his character (and relationship with Voldemort) for the rest of the series. And it makes sense that Lucius is given this kind of treatment! It’s a way of communicating that there's a new villain in town, a real villain. 

So, are any of these femme-coded villains additionally queer-coded? I’m actually going to say no. Queer-coding is (like it says on the tin) finding ways to imply that your character is specifically gay. Like maybe giving them a same-sex relationship that is written romantically, but not explicitly called out by the text. Or pairing up all of the characters except them. Maybe have other characters joke about them being gay, and use that as a way to talk about the subject with some plausible deniability. Or they could just play suggestively with a cigar, or a walking stick. There are different strategies.  

But Lockhart doesn't get any of that. Honestly, I think that if JKR actually thought of him as gay, she would have been a lot more wary about a scene where he keeps Harry alone with him in his office for way longer than he’s supposed to. And she might have skipped this joke: 

“Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf (...) “Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat (...) he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good —” 

Like. At least she would have picked a different word than “moan,” right? Which unfortunately has slightly sexual connotations. Especially if she wanted to keep Lockhart a buffoon, to properly set up the twist at the end. 

Slughorn also gets femme-coded in a similar way: he loves his candy, his parties, his smoking jackets, his lilac silk pajamas, his web of connections he can use to get stuff (Lucius style.) We are introduced to him squatting in specifically a “fussy old lady’s” house. He’s also unusually emotional, getting weepy at Aragog‘s funeral. But I don’t think we’re meant to read him as actually gay, or else his relationship with Tom Riddle might’ve read a little too close to Tom seducing/trying to seduce him. Which is a beat JKR does subtly play out with Hepzibah Smith, but idk. by that point at least Tom is a legal adult.

(As a side note - the Harry Potter series got so lucky that all of its adult characters are played by absolutely top-shelf actors who are aware of the connotations and history behind various symbols, and do consider these things in their performances. Kenneth Brannagh and Jim Broadbent are good enough to make sure there’s not even a hint of iffy subtext when they play Lockhart and Slughorn. Also, Emma Thompson took the potentially very problematic character of Trelawney and made her cute and sympathetic… and not Romani in the slightest.) 

Draco, Snape, and Percy all have a case of the not-gays. Percy has a girlfriend (we don’t really see her or anything, but we’re told she’s there.) Snape of course gets his whole thing with Lily, and Draco… after one too many beats where it’s clear that Pansy is into him, but he’s not into Pansy…  gets a scene where he’s talking to his buddies with his head in her lap. (JKR uses “no one‘s good enough for me” beats with Blaise, Draco and Sirius, and the idea there seems to be more that they have undeservedly high opinions of themselves, and less that they don’t like girls.)

But, I do agree that a lot of JKR's characters do come across as a little more queer than intended. It boils down, I think, to the general lack of any kind of romance in the Harry Potter books and JKR being generally bad at/uncomfortable with writing male attraction directed at women, BUT being perfectly happy writing attraction directed at pretty guys. And because of that… yeah, it can sometimes feel like maybe Harry has a thing for Cedric. Especially when Dudley goes on to tease him about Cedric being his boyfriend, which I believe is the only actual mention of gay people in the entire series.  

So is there any intentional queer-coding in the book? It’s really subtle, but yes. I think Dumbledore is queer-coded. He is unusually emotional/cries unusually often for a Rowling guy. He is also given a scene which emphasizes his “flamboyantly” cut plum-velvet suit, and his relationship with Grindelwald is implied to be romantic for one book and two movies before being actually confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 3. (With the line of dialogue “I was in love with you.” Big step up from “We were closer than brothers.” which is an odd thing to say about someone you are interested in romantically.) 

But you brought up Tonks and Lupin, two characters very commonly interpreted as queer. So let’s get into that. JKR has said that she considers Lupin’s lycanthropy to be a metaphor for stigmatized diseases like AIDS. And… as incredible as it is to say… I actually do not think that she made the jump from there to thinking that maybe the character suffering from AIDS should be gay.

Because the narrative places so much weight on Lupin being bitten young and then on maybe not being allowed to attend school, I’m pretty sure that he’s not intended to be queer so much as he’s meant to be Ryan White, the literal poster child for AIDS activism who got infected via blood transfusion when he was two. Tragic, absolutely. But not gay. Honestly, I hope JKR was thinking of ‘lycanthropy’ as a metaphor for stigmatized illness in the abstract and not as a comment on gay people specifically. Because otherwise, Greyback’s thing about biting children becomes a mash-up of two of the biggest homophobic boogeymen from the 80s: gay men infecting people with AIDS on purpose because… idk, they hate the world or something. And the influence of gay men somehow “turning” children gay. Both absolutely real, if ridiculous, moral panics.

On top of that, Remus and Sirius do get a pretty clear case of the not-gays early on (“He embraced Black like a brother.”) Buuuut Alfonso Cuarón did think through those implications for Movie 3, absolutely saw Lupin as gay, and directed David Thewlis to play him accordingly. No reports confirming or denying whether Alfonso Cuarón ships Wolfstar, but I think that if I’m an actor trying to make sense of Lupin’s motivations… and I know he didn’t show Dumbledore the Marauders’ Map and didn’t tell anyone Sirius was an animagus… and then I’m told my character is gay… well. Anyway, I think there are absolutely hints of Wolfstar in that performance. 

And there's Tonks. Tonks is introduced during a very spooky segment in Book 5: Harry has been going through it, been left alone at the Dursleys while having what sounds like a depressive episode. It’s dark, he hears intruders. It's a really good piece of writing. But JKR knows that it’s the good guys who are coming and thinks, okay. Let’s make that as clear as possible from the word go. And so the first thing Harry sees is Tonks' pink hair. And what kind of person has pink hair? A young adult. A punky young adult. And what power would a teenager think was cool? Well, the ability to change the color of their hair at will. That, by itself, would have worked perfectly fine for this character.

But then (for reasons best known to herself) JKR goes further. Even though Tonk’s hair changing color is easily 90% of the transformations we see and there is no plot reason her appearance needs to change more than that, we see her drastically change her age and body type. When you think about this power for more than five seconds, it becomes kind of OP. For worldbuilding reasons alone, my instinct would’ve been to tone it down a bit. 

But no, we have this counterculture character who seems interested in her career and not in a relationship, who can easily change anything about her body, and (if her ability works anything like Polyjuice) that means she should definitely be able to change her gender. Cool.

Then, in everyone’s least favorite romance, Tonks and Lupin are paired up. I have heard the argument that this was meant to walk back queer-coding, or to punish people who thought they were queer... but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think JKR expected these two to be fan favorites, and then was kind of surprised when everyone wanted to hear about their continuing adventures. 

(There are a handful of characters who JKR clearly really enjoys - and really enjoys writing - that fandom honestly could not care less about. Mundungus Fletcher and Ludo Bagman spring to mind. But the reverse is also true. She had one story for Lupin and people wanted to see more. Tonks is probably supposed to be her comment on immature young adults: she is loud, in your face, causes mild destruction and is “a little annoying at times.” But the fans fell in love with her.) 

So JKR has these two fan favorite characters and nothing for them to do. A romance is something for them to do. JKR also has a kind of weird pattern where good people need to either have kids or take care of kids. It’s not good to be a woman who isn’t involved with taking care of children in some fashion: see Rita Skeeter, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange. This is also (I think) why Harry names his kids specifically after Severus, Sirius, and Albus. Since they’re good men, JKR had to find a way to give them kids after the fact. 

So yeah. I think we were meant to read Tonks and Lupin having a kid as kind of a reward, or at least as proof of their intrinsic goodness. There also just isn’t another guy in the right age range to ship Tonks with. The only other option is Sirius. 

(Harry in the books and Lupin on Pottermore both suspect that Tonks/Sirius is a thing. Completely forgetting, I guess, that they're cousins.)

[severussnapemylove]

(Some time at Hogwarts in the 1970s)

Lucius (throwing darts at a target on the wall)

Severus; (reading quietly)

Narcissa; (Doing homework)

Slughorn: (Walks into the room) "What have the three of you done?"

Narcissa; "Nothing."

Severus; "Just keeping busy."

Lucius; "Killing time, you know, the usual."

Slughorn; (narrows eyes suspiciously but leaves)

Lucius;

Severus;

Narcissa;

Lucius; "He is definitely losing his touch."

...

Lucius; "Should we let him down then?"

James, (glued to the ceiling, gagged and furious) mmh!

Narcissa; "Not just yet, I prefer him up there."

[silmarillaure]

I don't care about Regulus's relationships with anyone besides Kreacher, Sirius, Walburga, Orion, Narcissa, & Bellatrix

In that order (I'm also interested in Voldemort & Slughorn a bit, but less so than those listed above)

[nettedtangible]

Kinda funny how Dumbledore kinda judged Slughorn for liking the backseat to the throne or whatever, as if that isn't the exact same thing he does. He also has connections with old favoured students like Kingsley and Remus, and before Goblet, Fudge was constantly asking his opinion and he had massive amounts of sway with the Ministry. Like?? He's exactly the same as Slughorn. Harry's like ew I don't wanna let Slughorn collect me, while being the prize pig in Dumbledore's little circus.

[expectopatronum18]

Lily's dynamic with the marauders (unpopular opinion)

Am I the only one who feels that lily wasn't as close to the marauders as the fandom makes her out to be?

Now before u jump at me, it's obviously fun to explore the dynamics btw different characters thru hcs and fanfics. However, i m only considering canon facts in this post.

First off, we never hear sirius or remus speak about lily when james isn't involved in the conversation. James was obviously a close friend, more lyk a brother, so its only natural that they reminisce him often. Both of them remark on harry's resemblance to james pretty often. It's literally the first thing sirius mentions when he sees harry for the first time in poa, saying james would have taken risks for him the same way harry came for ron. Remus compares harry's humor and unflinching belief in his friends to james aswell. There are constant little mentions post gof of james by both of them.

But lily? Absolutely nothing. We obviously can't expect her to be mentioned as many times as james coz she wasn't in their original friend group, but she isn't mentioned at all. The only time she's spoken about is post swm, and that's still in relation to her getting together with james. We learn more about lily from snape, someone she cut ties with when she was 15, than from her supposed besties. Heck, we learn more about her from Slughorn, her school teacher, than we ever did from sirius and remus.

Ik lily addresses sirius and peter by their nicknames in that letter, but i honestly always saw it as a casual thing, obvs in a fond way but not an indicator of their relationship.

There is obviously potential for a close friendship, there's often potential for a lot of things in fiction, but that doesn't make it canon. Apart from fighting the same war these characters don't seem to have anything in common. Yeah, both lily and sirius have complicated relationships with their siblings, but I would hardly compare a failed relation to having your sibling be brainwashed by your abusive family into following a cult that's trying to get u and ur friends killed.... Besides, lily is portrayed as this pure, perfect mother in canon while sirius and remus are both massively flawed characters, and that leaves little room for understanding between these characters.

Now, this isn't to say that the didn't like each other ofc, but the way lily's only mentioned with respect to james, they probably liked and respected her as their best friend's wife. There's no way I'm believing that they were super close when she isn't mentioned on her own even once after she's dead, it makes it pretty clear that the relationship was only because of james. There's nothing wrong with that ofc, it happens in plenty of friend groups and families, i just wish there were more fics representing their relationship the way it was originally written( although fanfics exploring their relationship are LIT in their own fanon way).

[lilithofpenandbook]

What if Snape's teaching style is the way it is because he's trying to compensate for how Slughorn taught, and has gone into overcorrection? Like, their teaching styles are the exact opposite. So what if Snape's game plan, from the beginning when he was a teacher at 21 and also a Head of House (and how messed up is that? The boy who just came out of a severely traumatic situation is now the Head of House too? Considering how reluctant Slughorn was to return, I wouldn't be surprised if that very September he quit and forced Snape into that role, the role of authority over boys and girls who were his peers just a few years ago, the oldest of them who witnessed his humiliations at the hands of the marauders, like that's just so messed up) was to do everything that Slughorn didn't do and nothing that Slughorn did do?

I can imagine there would be a lot of resentment from Snape's side. Slughorn failed him, failed Slytherin, spectacularly. Forget his neglectful teaching, he didn't even try stop the cult growing in his House. How can you be the head of a house and not be aware of the cult being formed? The kids are there more than they are at home. If there's any place to correct their beliefs, it would be at Hogwarts. And considering how horrifically Snape was bullied, I can imagine he'd still be so angry that Slughorn didn't notice, didn't try to protect him, especially now he's in Slughorn's place.

So I can imagine that he swore to not repeat any of Slughorn's mistakes and went hard into the other direction. Very hard. The reason he's so ludicrously strict is because he's still young. The other teachers have had the decades of experience needed to form their own style and know when to be strict and when to bend. Snape doesn't have that, he probably just has "Don't be Slughorn" and still doesn't know when to be flexible.

Anyway, it's just an interesting thought I had.

[therealvinelle]

A small continuation of the Pensieve post

Three things, to be specific, one to counter a point raised in the replies of the previous post.

Dumbledore plays the memory Harry received from Slughorn right away. How could he have tampered with it?

It's not so much the how to me that matters so much as it is that everything points to the memory having been tampered with. Do I know how he did it, no, but I know it wouldn't have been impossible.

A few suggestions:

Harry's memory of what happens when he gives Dumbledore the memory is tampered with. His memory of what happened in Dumbledore's office is false, at least partially. The books are told in the past tense, implying they are what Harry remembers and not necessarily what happened. What we know is that Harry arrived at Dumbledore's office at night after having already spent a long (And unknown quantity of) time with Slughorn and Hagrid, Dumbledore had all the time in the world to a. obliviate Harry and give him a slightly different memory of what he saw in the Pensieve, b. confound him while he doctored the memory and make it so Harry didn't remember there had been an interim, c. take the memory, doctor it, give it back, obliviate Harry and let him hand the freshly collected memory to Dumbledore, d. anything and everything in between

Dumbledore switches the new memory out with the old one He already had the old one to serve as blueprint, and all the time in the world to make it do and say what he wanted it to

Ultimately, to me it doesn't really matter how Dumbledore did it. He could have made Harry remember whatever he wanted. The fact remains that Slughorn acts the way he does about it, Riddle's behavior changed completely, the memory itself is... absurd (I'll write a post!) and... there was the fact that Dumbledore knew to search for it in the first place, which I'll get into a bit below.

Why did he do it?

He already had the proof he needed that Tom created at least two horcruxes in the diary and the ring. He didn't know how many, however.

And... this is worthy of its own post, but Dumbledore likes to be the person who knows Tom better than anybody, who understands him and can predict his actions. Dumbledore believes he knows Tom so well that his guesses are rarely if ever wrong.

I think he deduced, on his own, that Tom had created six horcruxes.

This is a feasibly high number, monstrously high and tied up with a significant magical number that Dumbledore would see Tom as being enamoured by. In other words, a number Dumbledore could believe.

My problem with the six horcruxes is twofold, one being that we're here relying on Tom having only made the number of horcruxes he discussed with his teacher when he was a teenager, the other being that... I'm not convinced he made six. The evidence Nagini is a horcrux is too circumstantial ("Voldemort adores his pet snake and that pet snake is peak r/likeus, Harry, I think it's a horcrux." - Dumbledore being an evidence man who proves things. No really, those are his arguments, Tom likes his snake and the snake is pretty smart), and while Harry has his feverish "I'm a snake" hallucinations he never experiences that for any of the other horcruxes. I could go either way on this one.

Point ultimately being, the memory was always worthless because Tom could easily have been lying about the number he was thinking of, just as Dumbledore could easily have come up with the contents of his conversation with Slughorn on his own.

Secondary point being, the conversation as is is... not damning. Tom asks about horcruxes, gets told what they are, it is information Magicke Moste Evil already had to offer, Tom asks a hypothetical question and Slughorn is disproportionately disturbed. Perhaps I'm desensitized, but if you tell someone "horcruxes means putting your soul in an object so the object has to be destroyed before you can be killed" and they reply "cool, so if I make a bunch of horcruxes I'll be really hard to kill" you should have seen it coming.

It's a conversation that reads as scripted by someone who sees Tom's evil as so obvious, so plain to the eye, clearly poking out from just beneath the surface, that of course Slughorn would see his innocuous question as damning. Dumbledore certainly does.

With that, onto the next point.

Were horcruxes brought up at all, then?

Oh I'm sure they were, otherwise Slughorn wouldn't have responded the way he did when Harry first asked about them. The first part of the memory, with the party, Tom lingering, and then asking about them, that all happened or Slughorn wouldn't have had the reaction to Harry that he did.

My whole hypothesis is that something else happened after that.

Dumbledore knew there was a memory to ask Slughorn about in the first place

Slughorn is an able Occlumens, he always carries the antidote to veritaserum on his person, and he guards this memory like his firstborn.

He never, ever, would have given this memory to Dumbledore if there was a way he could deny its existence, just as he never would have tipped Dumbledore off it existed in the first place. We know Slughorn didn't tip off anyone else, or Dumbledore would have had the memory through that person already.

And yet, Dumbledore has to have known it existed, that a sensitive conversation between Tom and Slughorn happened, in order to ask for the memory in the first place.

Two people knew that conversation had happened, Tom Riddle and Horace Slughorn.

Slughorn never would have told Dumbledore, just as Tom Riddle never would have said a word if the conversation was what we were presented with.

Except, one of them must have.

The only explanation, then, the only way for Dumbledore to have known the conversation happened, is if Tom told him.

This is where I think inappropriate conduct on Slughorn's end is the only feasible explanation. And Dumbledore, as it happens, was Deputy Headmaster at the time. Tom, for obvious reasons, would have been unable to approach his Head of House.

Do I think Tom told him exactly what had occurred, not necessarily, but he must have said something that led Dumbledore know there had been an incident with Slughorn. As for what he wanted to achieve by going to Dumbledore, that's again up to speculation but Dumbledore, for all his flaws, had made it clear to Tom that he's a strict, no nonsense allowed at Hogwarts, type of person.

Tom approaching him explains how Dumbledore knew, and Slughorn having behaved inappropriately is the only circumstance in which I can conceive of Tom doing this. Certainly, I think it proves that the conversation can't have been what we were presented with.

As for his interest in getting the memory, that's for another post but I do think it ultimately comes down to the man having a fascination with Tom Riddle, with collecting every memory he possibly can as he pieces together the Tom Riddle mosaic.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Hi, I just saw the ask someone sent you about the theory with Slughorn and the SA but I can't find the post where you originally theorized this. Have you ever elaborated on this?

Not posted yet. To convince you people this one's going to take a lot of quotes and be... long, because it turns out there's a story within a story in Half-blood Prince (and that story is hilarious but so awful) so neither of us has gotten around to it/at this point it might just become an RH episode.

[dramioneasks]

Teach Me What I Don't Know - bi_sexual_polar_tch - E, WIP - When the performance of the Headmistress’ and Professor Slughorn's star students faces a decline in their weaker subjects, what could the teachers do except find someone to help them? Or Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger are forced to help one another and the only positive thing coming out of this is they get to antagonise the other for their shortcomings.

[hitchell-mope]

No duh

[dhr-ao3]

Chrysopoeia

Chrysopoeia https://ift.tt/x93WHIa by La_nayru Reasons why being in love with Draco Malfoy is wholly unacceptable: 1. He is insufferable 2. He is married 3. He is her academic rival 4. Now, unhappily, he is also her colleague, and they are meant to be collaborating 5. Professional boundaries ought to be observed with colleagues 5b. Especially when her application for tenure is fully dependent on forging a successful academic collaboration with said colleague 6. It is not compatible with her five-year plan (see items 1-5 for specifics) Hermione has a deeply compelling list of reasons not to be in love with Draco Malfoy. To her dismay, when her department chair at St. Mungo's Medical School forces her into close proximity with Malfoy for the sake of undertaking an alchemy collaboration, she begins to develop romantic feelings she never meant to have. Desperate to remedy this lamentable affliction, she invents a potion that can reverse the state of being in love. The only trouble is, she can’t seem to bring herself to take it. Or: In which Hermione tries to force quit being in love. Words: 6239, Chapters: 1/3, Language: English Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M Characters: Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Astoria Greengrass, Harry Potter, Horace Slughorn Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy Additional Tags: Post-War, Rivals to Lovers, Academia, alchemist hermione granger, Former Death Eater Draco Malfoy, Emotional Infidelity (not between D/Hr), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Torture, References to War Crimes, Explicit Sexual Content, Pining Hermione Granger, Oblivious Draco Malfoy, Slughorn is very meddlesome, Anti-love Potions, Slow Burn, Eventual Romance, Women being excellent to one another, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE via AO3 works tagged 'Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy' https://ift.tt/zq8QBhb October 30, 2023 at 03:50AM

[float-me-now]

fandom questions for: harry potter? 😊

Hi! Yay for Harry Potter! I’m not really into the fandom and I stopped reading after book 7 (that’s the end for me), but this should be fun! So, just for reference, I was a preteen when I first read the books and about 13/14 when I started the movies.

1. The first character I first fell in love with: Draco Malfoy. I read the first book and I was like: “Oh. This one. The snarky little snob shit”. He was mean yes, but also very entertaining. Tom Felton did the rest (I heard he’s kinda problematic tho, and it kills me inside a bit).

2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Luna Lovegood. When she came out in the books I felt that she was too strange and exaggerated even for that world, I though that she was, well... too much? Then I saw the movies, Evanna Lynch was great and as I grew up I understood her character better.

3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t: James Potter. I get the Marauders hype, but I couldn’t for the life of mine bring myself to like him because he was such a douche when he was young. Don’t get me wrong, Draco was a bastard plenty of times, but as the story unfolds we gather info about his bad upbringing, his abusive household, the pressure he’s put under, his insecurities etc. On the contrary, as far as I remember, the only thing we see about young James is that he was horrible to Snape and nothing else. Sure, he grew into a good, brave and responsible wizard, a courageous father and husband, but it’s just... not enough for me?

4. The character I love that everyone else hates: Hmmm I don’t know, some people hate Draco so I guess that’s him?

5. The character I used to love but don’t any longer: Tough one! My taste in characters is very constant through time so I don’t think there’s a character who really fits the description. As I grew up I became more critical towards Snape though, because of his attitude as a professor. I used to justify his harshness towards his students because of his past, but growing up I realized that he was a grown ass man treating literal children like sh*t, and after meeting a couple professors in real life that were utter b*stards too I understood that he could and should have been a better teacher and man to them (even though he actually saved them, etc). I still think he’s a solid character and there are still some qualities I like in him though.

6. The character I would totally smooch: I’m not much of a smooch person but if I had to I’d say Draco or Cedric (the poor boy!)

7. The character I’d want to be like: Hmmm there’s not really a character I want to be like but many of them have beautiful qualities. I love Ron’s loyalty and generosity, Hermione’s intelligence and courage (in the movies, the girl erased her parents’ memories of her to protect them, if this isn’t courage I don’t know what is), Fred and George’s carelessness and Snape’s brains and cold blood.

8. The character I’d slap: This doesn’t come as a surprise I bet, but catch these hands, Dolores Umbridge! Also young!James Potter, and also a half-slap to Slughorn because of his teaching methods that pitted students against each other to enter his (rather ridiculous) club.

9. A pairing that I love: Here comes the difficult part! So, as in everything I read/watch I’m not really into ships but I’ll give it a try. I kind of appreciate Ron and Hermione as a ship: they balance each other and they know each other well, they’re supportive and overall pleasant. Remus and Tonks were pretty cute too, a woman who could change her appearance as she liked and a man who was forced to transform into something he feared? Interesting! As far as fanon is concerned, I see the fascination with Drarry and Dramione as dynamics (Draco is pretty shippable tbh). I would have liked to see more of them (the parallels and differences between Harry and Draco? Poetic cinema), but at the same time I feel like they’d have some work to do to avoid being toxic before actually being a couple (especially on Draco’s part towards Hermione).

10. A pairing that I despise: None in canon, actually. In fanon, anything involving relationships between one of the kids and an adult, and also in*est.

Thank you so much for your ask, I don’t really get to speak often about hp so this was nice! 💛

(Also, sorry for the late reply!)

[mytoesfelloff]

It’s a shame that the most notable members of my house are all characters that I hate. Snape, Draco and Regulus are really fucking up my Slytherin pride 😒 but Bellatrix and Slughorn are making up for it so it’s ok