#because i typically dismiss most of them for being The Mascot or related

[brownbirdtown]

Greymon Paint-bbs oekaki warmup

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

@sundayswiththeilluminati replied to your photoset 

“Accidentally came up with two separate Good Omens fanfic concepts...”

Here's the real question though: does anyone ever try to sell/buy magical books at Aziraphale's bookshop, and what does he do with them if they do? Are magical books Not Allowed as per heaven, or does he end up running a sideline in magical texts since all of them are hilariously basic to him and he can part with them without guilt?

Your answer is provided in the form of a fanfic in which only the latter half relates to the question, but all of which I had far, far too much fun writing.

--

There is a disagreement between Heaven and Hell, as there are wont to be, about which side is responsible for unleashing magic among humanity. The suggestion that it was part of God’s design from the start - that it was in fact of neither angelic nor demonic origins - has been made exactly once, by Aziraphale, who only made this suggestion as a counter to Crowley’s suggestion that magic came about in humans for a reason to do with that flaming sword which Adam and Eve spent so much time about. Crowley then mockingly dismissed Aziraphale’s suggestion by hissing “ineffable” a few dozen times, as they were both a few bottles deep at that point and actually more concerned with heckling each other (and, more simply, with each other) than they were with unlocking the great secrets of Godly intent and Her design. 

This is not to say that Heaven and Hell, and of course more specifically Aziraphale and Crowley, have not meddled prolifically in the affairs of wizardry. It would be easy to blame Crowley for the existence of the Chamber of Secrets, for instance; and he may have taken credit for it but it pressed might confess that a basilisk is quite a bit too nasty for his tastes, that castle is full of children, and he just thought it would be nice for one of the Founders to appreciate snakes - they get such a bad rap, snakes, so undeservedly, and wouldn’t it be nice if they got to be the mascot of one of these Houses too? A bit of appreciation for snakes, really, is all he swayed Salazar Slytherin toward. How was he to know that the bastard would take it so far? And it ended with snakes getting a worse rap because of Slytherin himself, too. This last matter is how you are assured that Crowley had any hand in it at all, because the undercutting of his own intent is a typical Crowley design feature. 

(Crowley would also like to make the assurance that he had nothing in any way to do with Gilderoy Lockhart, even though Gilderoy Lockhart’s habit of claiming credit for things he did not do is also typical Crowley. Gilderoy Lockhart did not have Hell breathing down his neck demanding temptations be done, and frankly it is Hell itself who ascribes credit to Crowley for human inventions and he who simply nods and agrees and then goes to see what humanity has done to itself this time. Gilderoy Lockhart is no demon; he is, by Crowley’s standard of demonic, which is a very mild standard of demonic, much worse.)

Hogwarts’ moving staircases are to Crowley’s actual credit, however. That the sweets shop Honeydukes is built atop a direct secret passage to Hogwarts, allowing discerning students to eat their fill any time, is to Aziraphale’s.

-

To back up for a moment to the broadest scale - setting aside, for a moment, a particular angel and demon - neither Heaven nor Hell sees magic as an affront to themselves. Both know what they do is miracles, not magic, a subtle distinction in that magic has many more limitations than miracles. And even then, Heaven and Hell often conflate the two terms anyway. No one ever accused either of them of holding to strict logical consistency. 

Heaven is unsure whether magic was meant to end up in human hands, given the difficulty they often have over wielding it and the way it spills out of magical children like their bodies cannot contain the power they hold, but God’s intelligent design also includes both wisdom teeth and the intricate and delicate bones of the shoulder, so by that reasoning magic cannot be refuted as something that was part of Her original drafts. Hell does not care, because humans are easily tempted in their most basic forms, and the ones who carry small wooden sticks that assist them in thinking they can channel the full power of magic can even more easily be swayed to catastrophic choices, by virtue of how they are almost never found without those sticks upon them, ready and willing to attempt something that will likely go wrong. Demons are very fond of wizardry. 

Most of the wizarding side of British society is thus of demonic (read: Crowley’s) influence. This includes the rates of magical currency (29 knuts to a sickle, 17 sickles to a galleon) while Hogwarts does not teach any kind of maths courses (Arithmancy is absolutely not maths); rats becoming a popular pet in a society that to function is required to be full of owls; the practice of storing sole copies of prophecies in glass orbs on unstable shelves (Agnes Nutter was an innovator simply by writing hers down on paper); the given name of Harry Potter’s middle child; the entire sport of Quidditch; and some pervasive erroneous beliefs about unicorns.

(Crowley very much likes unicorns, ever since he watched one, survival and God’s plan be damned, book it as far from Noah’s boat as it could. He was thrilled to find that more than the one left on the boat had survived the flood, because they are beautiful and stupid and that is a combination that Crowley holds certain affection for. They are also quite soft and drool a little less than horses and have the added capacity to gore someone with a headbutt. The value of their hair, horns, and blood - though not drool, which is a shame, because Crowley could do a bustling business trading in unicorn drool - means that wizards seek them out, and that means that Crowley seeks to vex them. It is very wily and evil of him to keep the humans from those powerful magic healing properties, of course.) 

(One of his methods of diverting the casual unicorn-seeker was through the creation and spread of falsehoods about the kind of people whose presence unicorns tolerate. A few stray remarks, some influence applied to make sure it is believed, about “purity” being required to approach unicorns, and the wizards did the rest, deciding it seemed like girls were more able to approach unicorns. Thus already roughly half of the populace is discouraged from attempting, and the rest given weird hang-ups about it. Of course, this is all ridiculous, because Crowley, as a demon, ascribes to gender only when he wants to, and would be described by no one as “pure” in any way. Crowley did once attempt to describe himself as “pure evil, and unicorns only sense purity, so that counts” but he was promptly called a bitch by Newt Scamander and banned from the Leaky Cauldron again. He did not care, because drinking is only really fun with Aziraphale, and the fact of the matter remained that he still gets to cuddle unicorns when no one else does.)

-

There is a mild, subtle war fought between Heaven and Hell over most instructive books on magic. That is if “mild” and “subtle” could be taken to mean that there is one generally book-loving angel who very much disdains these particular books, and one generally book-agnostic demon who very much loves them. 

Wizarding Britain does not have a robust publishing industry. Wizarding Britain does not have robust anything, excepting their robustly ineffectual and expansive bureaucracy, but Aziraphale finds their literature particularly shameful. Surely some of this is owing to the limits of the courses offered at Hogwarts, where language and spelling is whatever of the form of your homework essays, as opposed to the much more valued content of said essays, that a professor chooses to comment on. (In a certain era, much of the spelling tutelage for a generation of Hogwarts students came from their Potions essays, because Severus Snape took a certain glee in marking up as much as he possibly could and watching the faces of students as they found their parchment returned to them covered in red ink even though the substance of their essays was sound.) 

This may also be a consequence of the way British wizarding society has a certain cultural stagnancy. The way things are done is the way things are done. (In this manner it reminds of Heaven and Hell and their inability to keep with the times on Earth. This is also another reason that demons like wizards, because they don’t have to keep up with new technology like “personal phones” and “computers”.) Hogwarts curriculum does not update with any regularity and looks much the same as it did 400 years ago, variation arriving mostly with the competency of the professors. 

And magic is what is valued, so magic is what books are written on. And while wizarding Britain has its innovators - it has humans, so inevitably it has innovators creating new spells, potions, and devices - they are not so encouraged and valued. And often they do not bother to write books. 

As a result, the bulk of the book movement through wizarding Britain is Hogwarts textbooks, which are rarely updated. The edition numbers occasionally change, as do a sentence or two of the interior, but Aziraphale lacks interest in any of it. He lacks an interest in all of this sort of magic. He cannot perform it - as a celestial being he can do far more anyway - and it cannot be learned - unlike coin tricks and sleights-of-hand and rabbits - and there is nothing exceptional in the writing or rarity of any of it. The wizarding books that Aziraphale has interest in are settled firmly in the great library of Hogwarts, and not for sale, though Aziraphale has made offers. He had then considered theft but decided that theft from a school was a certain step too far. 

(The one wizarding book that Aziraphale both cares about and possesses is a first-edition The Tales of Beedle the Bard, who is not Aziraphale’s favorite bard. However, Aziraphale does find “The Tale of the Three Brothers” to be an interesting look at the wizarding perspective on death. It is an inaccurate one, of course; Death does not grant boons, not even ones that will become curses to sooner send their holders into his hands. That is the parlance of demonic temptations, and Crowley will freely admit, though he has gotten numerous commendations for the Elder Wand over the centuries, that like Slytherin’s basilisk, the humans took the whole thing a bit too far.)

At any rate, Aziraphale’s bookshop was prominently placed on the map of wizarding London when he offered to purchase some certain unique volumes from Hogwarts, and this has been a curse of his own making, as more usually happens to Crowley. The wizarding population of London had, since the opening of A.Z. Fell and Co., admittedly always considered it one of theirs, in the same way that the Muggle population eventually came to consider it a front for the mafia, but the uptick of attempts to sell wizarding books back to the shop, or wizarding books just being left amidst the stacks, definitely corresponded with the one time Aziraphale made official contact with wizarding Britain. These magical books are a blight upon his bookshop and he would have miracled himself into being forgotten by Britain’s wizardry some time in 1847 were it not for the Arrangement.

That being, Crowley likes the books dropped at Aziraphale’s shop, often books on Hogwarts’ reading list, which are the most often sold, because it is very easy to accomplish simultaneously temptations and miracles with them.

Since the mid 1800s, it is known, amongst the poorer population of wizarding Britain, that there is a particular drop point in Diagon Alley where, if you are in need enough, you can find almost any relatively-common book that you were not able to afford but was necessary for your education. “In need enough” and “necessary” are miracles with much wiggle room. For instance, in 1992, the Weasley twins did not strictly need NEWT-level Charms and Transfiguration textbooks for their courses at Hogwarts, but they needed them to properly innovate on their pranks. 

Providing magical knowledge for free is, of course, very demonic, given the capacity for destruction by the untrained wizard, especially if that knowledge is far above their years. It is in fact incredibly necessary that it be for free, else parents or guardians would stop them. 

Truly, another genius ploy from the wily serpent. 

Almost as good as the bit with the unicorns.

[awfully-sadistic]

Hospital

“You may want to try avoiding the use of the ‘H’ word right now, Grandfather.”

       Angelino looked up from bouncing Lala on his knee. A look of mild surprise had crossed those old, gray features before it was replaced by his typical expression of amusement; twinkling gold eyes and an ever-present grin spread widely across a hardened jaw. The silver fox had taken the statement in stride, just like any other aspect thrown at him. Except he very clearly had no idea what his grandson had been speaking of.

       “Che cos'è...?” he asked before shifting his attention to Lala once again. It wasn’t that hard to do because her giggles filled the room and their ears in the most pleasant of sounds. It had been a very long time since Angelino had the chance to play with a small child. Never mind the strange circumstances surrounding the small toddler body now wiggling and babbling in baby speak for Angelino’s attention.

       “I meant…” Angelo looked a little hesitant before it hit him that he could just speak in Italian without tipping Lala off to the word. “…Ospedale.”

       Angelino’s dark brow just rose at the word, confused as to why it would have been scary for Lala to hear that word. It seemed like he didn’t need to wait for an explanation before Angelo started again.

       “It’s Alessio’s doing,” he simply put and perhaps first because he didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings that this was any of his doing. Of course, this wasn’t sufficient enough of an explanation for Angelino and to be honest, it really did not make any sense. “Alessio has been having a tough time trying to have Lala warm up to him. It is not that she refuses to, but it is that Alessio is …scary.”

       Angelino burst out into laughter that startled the three toddlers. Lala was in his lap, having stilled in her babbling to stare wide-eyed at the laughing giant while Felina and Renee were seated at those big dress shoes, playing with blocks. The giant man himself hadn’t even noticed he had disturbed the children as he continued on his conversation with his eldest grandson.

       “I can see why she would be scary. Alessio has his mother’s face.”

       Angelo paled before looking around as if something would have stormed into the room at the mention of that slight; but Angelino wasn’t wrong. The Frenzy Matriarch had such strong features that could have only accentuated that diamond shaped face she had. Angelo resisted the temptation to cross himself before glancing back over to his grandfather, looking weary.

       “Mother is going to be paying you a visit in your dreams tonight, Grandfather…”

       And apparently, Angelino had forgotten about this until Angelo had brought it up. The color immediately drained from his face and his entire body tensed, ducking down low enough so he could hide behind Lala’s toddler body—which was entirely ridiculous looking. It was like an elephant hiding behind a small mouse.

       “Are you trying to curse me?!”

       “I think you did that to yourself when you kept bringing Mother into this.”

       “Quella donna è così spaventosa…” he muttered before straightening his spine. It wasn’t like anything was happening right now. That brief exchange was allowed to be pushed into the furthest part of Angelino’s mind (like most supernatural aspects he’d sooner like to forget) before the topic switched back to Angelo’s predicament.

       “As I was saying… Alessio was trying to condition Lala to fear me but instead, it backfired and now he cannot even be in the same room as her without Lala crying her eyes out.”

       “Then he deserves it, no?”

       Angelo would have agreed if Alessio wasn’t taking his aggression out about it with everyone else in the Family. “That much is true but…” and he explained the many instances around the Haus where not only the Frenzy’s but the Dreadful’s are getting mingled into Alessio’s bad mood.

       “I don’t think the one named Jax has even woken up yet. Ripley was the first one taken out and I think she is still buried in the backyard up to her neck.” Angelo muttered, hand to his chin as he looked thoughtful reciting the last bit of information to the Frenzy Patriarch. “So far, I’ve just put word out to stay out of his way.”

       Angelino was nodding though he was making silly faces at Lala. “That would be for the best, yes.”

       Angelo’s shoulders slumped when it seemed like he wasn’t going to get anything useful out of Angelino at this point and it wasn’t because he was distracted with Lala. Angelo’s guess was that the situation wasn’t an emergency despite his heir, one of his grandsons, and …well, Lala was a special case in relation to him… fact of the matter was that they were still toddlers and not getting any closer to a solution to revert them back to their original states. However, looking at Angelino, it really didn’t seem like he was in any hurry.

       “I still don’t understand how Alessio managed to ruin the word hos—“

       “A-Ah, not aloud, Grandfather!” Angelo cut in as soon as his ears picked up on the word, placing a hand on his Grandfather’s shoulder and squeezing in gently reminder.

       “Sì, sì…” he waved a hand to dismiss that reminder and Angelo lifted his grip, still looking weary about the direction of this conversation. Angelino seemed so light-hearted about the matter! But the elderly man continued. “That forbidden word. I don’t understand how it came to that point. Explain.”

       Angelo’s mouth pursed to the side as he tried to think of the easiest way he could explain. “Mmm, Alessio took my profession into consideration. He would use anything associated with eh… l'ospedale like my lab coat and stethoscope, trying to make them sinister so he could associate my profession into something she would find terrifying—like a horrible twist of this word association against me.”

       Angelino let out another laugh, “And how well did that work for him?”

       “Well enough for it to backfire on him; she now associates those “scary” things with him. My guess was that it was because of the intense look on his face; he really does put 100% of himself into the things he does… and without realizing the harm he was doing.” Angelo finished while using a hand to rub the back of his neck. He looked tired just reciting this info.

       “Where is he now?”

       “My guess is…” Angelo paused, his gaze trailing over Angelino’s broad shoulder to the door behind him. A set of narrowed eyes were glowering at him. “…there.”

       Angelino turned his head, looking in the direction Angelo indicated and true enough, his grandson was peering around the corner and not being too sneaky about it either. He was blatantly staring at them and luckily, those broad shoulders of his enabled him to block the sight from Lala. At least, until he walked inside.

       “How long are you intending on standing there?” Angelo asked with a dry tone.

       “As long as it takes,” Alessio replied without missing a beat.

       Angelino just chuckled, turning in his seat now and bringing Lala with him. Once those little eyes settled on Alessio standing at the doorway, she began screaming her head off. Angelino looked mighty surprised and Alessio looked mighty annoyed. To calm her, Angelino had to turn back around, hiding her from his sight.

       “See, the bad man is gone!” he laughed, extending his hands out and wiggling his fingers. Lala was smiling and giggling again at Angelino’s silly antics, Alessio seemingly forgotten.

       “You brought this on yourself for what you tried to pull,” Angelo jabbed. Alessio just snorted.

       “I just need to stay around, exposure therapy.”

       “…Do not…”

       “Well, perhaps it would be best to expose Lala to Alessio in small doses and he can’t look scary.” Angelino stated, throwing a look over his shoulder to his disgruntled grandson.

       “I’m afraid we cannot do much about his face,” Angelo said. “We are twins but we are so different.” He gave a forlorn sigh.

       “I’m going to punch you.”

       “You’ll only further scare Lala.”

       Alessio answered in silence like with most things he does. Angelino suddenly snapped his fingers, looking very enlightened. “I’ve got it!”

       “What is it?” Alessio asked, partly tempted to try anything at this point. He hadn’t had the chance to really hold toddler!Lala whatsoever. It was more annoying than a pebble in one’s shoe or that annoying sound that comes out of Ripley’s mouth that she calls her voice.

       “A costume,” Angelino answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

       “No.”

       “What kind of costume?”

       The twins asked at the same time. Of course, Angelo was asking about the sort of costume Alessio would have to fit in because it would also have to cover his face and Alessio thought there could be a hundred different other plans that would have worked better than wearing a costume.

       “Hmm, I think we have an old mascot costume from the last Headquarters picnic.”

       “Oh, the purple dinosaur.” Angelo smiled though it wasn’t back on the fond memories of any of their company picnics. The thought of Alessio wearing the costume was giving him some sort of sadistic pleasure. “I think that’s a great idea, Grandfather.”

       I think I’m going to drown you in the lake with it, Alessio shot straight into Angelo’s mind with so much venom, Angelo was only blinking in surprise.

       “That is so violent, Alessio. Lala will never warm up to you that way.”

       An annoyed grunt was the only other thing thrown his way for the rest of the night.

 Translations:

1] What is it?

2] Hospital

3] That woman is so scary…