#deathly hallows meta

[dinarosie]

A plant kept in the dark

In my opinion, one of the most beautiful symbolic descriptions of Snape is found in The Deathly Hallows: “A plant kept in the dark.”

It's fascinating to me how such a small metaphor can add such depth to his story. When I reflect on his fate, I see that his entire life, from childhood to his death, can be encapsulated in this single image: he is always, until the moment of his death, that plant trapped in darkness. Deprived of light, his potential for growth and flourishing is wasted, never to be seen.

His childhood passes with the hope that one day he will find the light. He is a small plant, hungry for sunlight, full of potential, believing that Hogwarts might be the sun he so desperately needs. But he doesn’t realize that he is destined to live his life surrounded by darkness.

As an adult, he bargains with the light but remains hidden in the shadows. He is still deprived of brightness, yet he remains loyal to it. He no longer believes in his own salvation, but over time, he learns that despite the years of solitude and darkness, he can nurture love and sacrifice within himself for the sake of saving others.

His death, too, is steeped in this metaphor. He is killed in a derelict, darkened shack—a place filled with secrets and echoes of his shadowed past—without anyone ever truly understanding his nature or his loyalty to the light.

His death marks the final withering of this neglected plant, and there is a profound sense of wasted potential. A life that, had it been given light and warmth, could have blossomed into something so different.

Severus Snape spent his life surrounded by shadows, his true nature buried beneath years of regret and sacrifice until the moment of his death. He remained forever like a plant kept in the dark, never reaching the light.

[fandoomrants]

Some days I'm okay.

Some days I remember that when Harry sees his parents in DH, they're only four years older than him.

[iamnmbr3]

Draco doesn’t say he saw Harry even though that would've been the obvious way to distract his attacker and get himself out of trouble.

What was he supposed to say here? Was he supposed to just die?

Why was this Death Eater so sure that Draco wasn't on his side? What had Draco done that led him to that conclusion?

I love how Harry immediately, reflexively saves him without even thinking about it. He's moving quickly, trying not to attract attention or get involved. But when Draco is in danger intervening feels utterly natural to him.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

So, I continued my reread of book 7 and I found a line that broke my heart a little.

When Harry and Hermione decide to go to Godric's Hollow, Harry thinks this:

He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family. It was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday. He could have invited friends to his house. . . . He might even have had brothers and sisters. . . . It would have been his mother who had made his seventeenth birthday cake.

(DH, 321)

He calls Godric's Hollow "home".

This is really sad, like, yeah, Harry, you really don't have any other home. The Dursleys were never a home, Hogwarts, the first place to feel like a home (and even that came with dangers and problems) is unreachable, Harry can't go back there in book 7. So the only home that's left for him is Godric's Hollow and its ghosts. The reminders of a life he could have had. The home that was his for only a year and four months. The only real home Harry ever had.

It's just sad he refers to it as going home even when he doesn't remember said home at all.

[bookwormangie]

I don’t think Snape liked his students but I do think he care about their wellbeing - another scene that comes to my mind is in DH when he’s headmaster. Students are being tortured and mutilated on the regular under the new Death Eater curriculum (Snape needs to let it happen to play his role as Voldemort’s servant). But when he catches Ginny and Neville trying to steal the sword from his room, their detention is… dun dun dun… going to the forest with Hagrid.

Yes, that’s a great scene. Though Snape had already promised Dumbledore before his death that he would do anything in his power to protect the students if Voldemort took over. Given his history of safeguarding students from danger, I believe he would’ve acted the same way regardless of Dumbledore's request.

Additionally, comparing McGonagall’s approach to detentions with Snape's under normal circumstances, sheds light on their differing methods. McGonagall sometimes assigns risky detentions—like when she sent four first years into the Forbidden Forest to search for a wounded unicorn, despite warnings to stay out given by the teachers themselves. Snape, on the other hand, tends to give detentions that are tedious and unpleasant, such as cleaning bedpans or disemboweling toads, but never risky.

The scene you brought up, where he sent Ginny and Neville into the forest with Hagrid, was a strategic move on Snape's part and a necessity. He had to give them a risky detention to appease the new regime and avoid suspicion, while covertly shielding them from brutal punishment by the Carrows. It exemplifies Snape’s ability to navigate his loyalty to Voldemort while subtly protecting the students.

I love Snape so much; he’s such a complex character, and I love delving into his motives. Thank you for bringing up this scene—it’s another compelling example of Snape’s concern for his students' physical well-being. 🫶🏻

[toorumlk]

Hi I'm so freaking obsessed with your twitter.

Also what's your favorite Romione moment in the books and why?

ohohoho thank you, friend, i’m quite proud of some of the stuff i’ve posted on there B)

and as for my favourite romione moment in the books, when i read the question i first blanked out for a couple minutes, thinking of a bunch of smaller, sillier scenes. but then i remembered that i do have a favourite and it’s from chapter 11 of DH, when remus visited the trio at grimmauld place and filled them in on he goings on of the war -including the implementation of the muggle-born registry. ron’s response upon hearing this (after his immediate outrage) was

and it’s not just the hand holding and the “‘you won’t have a choice’ said Ron fiercely” that played out so vividly in my head like this:

but this scene demonstrates so perfectly the political weight of this pairing (muggleborn/blood traitor) which i think is the immovable narrative foundation of romione. all of their silly moments and idiosyncrasies aside, there is genuine narrative purpose behind this love. ron has always had an astute understanding of the blood supremacist politics of the wizarding world (need i remind that he was ready to curse shitco at the ripe age of 12 for calling hermione the in-universe slur) and just how wrong it is. ron is a pure-blood wizard and by design has so much privilege in this society bc of it, but by virtue of having parents like arthur and molly, he’s grown up knowing the importance of fighting against blood supremacist ideology. always.

so, after hearing about the completely horrifying muggleborn registry ("People won't let this happen," said Ron. "It is happening, Ron," said Lupin.), he immediately turns to his muggleborn best friend and love of his life and says “i’m making you a family member, i’m going to use the protection my family-name has and use it to protect you from the awful injustice of our situation, no you won’t have a choice but to let me help you”

i remember having such a… visceral reaction while reading this scene like holy shit .. these kids, THESE KIDS!!!!! this is the bone-marrow-deep love that makes me feel insane. this dynamic of the blood traitor/muggleborn always there, from CoS all the way to the epilogue. We get to see that romione is the story’s pure blood/muggleborn that finally made it (rip jily and tedromeda :(). we see it in hermione keeping her muggle last name after they get married (oh my god these two actually got married) and we also see it in the hyphenated Granger-Weasley (granger being first!) in their kids’ last names (oh my gof these two had TWO kids). they are a true symbol of change and progress in their world.

also this is one of those moments where i’m so glad that our only window to romiones relationship development is through harry’s narration because it so brilliantly shows the readers this blossoming love story instead of just telling us about it because harry obviously doesn’t have access to the inner thoughts of his two best friends, he can only witness them fall deeper in love. showing the audience acts of love is always more powerful and my god is this an act of showing your love to your beloved.

(and not to go on an unrelated tangent, but this is exactly why i could never ship my girl hermione w any DE or DE-adjacent character. no fucking way. not when the concept of a muggle-born registry exists in this universe, not when the antagonists in this story wish to eradicate people like her from their society. idk about the rest of y’all but im going to keep taking the narrative seriously bc the worldbuilding obviously has real world ties/implications and i like engaging with the canon. tangently to the tangent, i saw someone (a ron basher) on twitter say that ron, OUR RON FROM THE ABOVE EXCERPT, was “one bad day away from becoming a death eater” ohhhh ohhh i ought to beat you with sticks bc HUH? this is the same kid who said he would’ve boarded the train back to kings cross if he got sorted to slytherin, the house notorious for birthing DEs, at the tender age of 11)

anyways, all this to say is that romione is incredibly, realistically, materially romantic and i love them and i love their love <3

[ashesandhackles]

Harry and Dumbledore: Crisis of Faith

The Life and Lies of Dumbledore chapter from DH lives rent free in my head, and I would love to get on my soapbox about why. It's no secret that DH is an allegorical tale with Harry as Christ figure and Dumbledore positioned as God figure - often represented by the symbolism of the all-seeing eye. The eye in the mirror (which turns out to Aberforth, who sends Dobby to the rescue), the symbol of Deathly Hallows in Dumbledore's signature.

Eye symbolism:

A flash of brightest blue. Harry froze, his cut finger slipping on the jagged edge of the mirror again. He had imagined it, he must have done... If anything was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore would never pierce him again.

and

 Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure) , there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.

The Deathly Hallows or the Gifts of Death is marked by a triangular eye - and it is explicitly seen as God's eye in Christian art and iconography.

So now, back to the chapter, where Harry completely loses faith:

The sun was coming up: The pure, colorless vastness of the sky stretched over him, indifferent to him and his suffering. Harry sat down in the tent entrance and took a deep breath of clean air.

The chapter opens with the smallness of Harry against the vast sky, a bird's eye view shot to really highlight how vulnerable he feels. On the heels of the chapters where he sees himself and his family immortalised in statues and have their bombed home preserved as memorial - a site people take comfort from the legend of Harry, and Harry takes comfort from the graffiti they left behind - it feels especially isolated. The vulnerability is glaring: Harry has lost the protection of the twin cores. The church bells are distant.

His senses had been spiked by the calamity of losing his wand. He looked out over a valley blanketed in snow, distant church bells chiming through the glittering silence.

Harry does not deal with vulnerability, most specifically helplessness very well. As a child raised in an abusive environment - his savior complex is rooted in needing to have agency. We see him grappling with what he perceives as complete abandonment from Dumbledore: 'Dumbledore had left them to grope in the darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed-of terrors, alone and unaided: Nothing was explained, nothing was given freely, they had no sword, and now, Harry had no wand.'

And then, Harry reads the chapter titled Greater Good from Rita Skeeter's book.

So what was Albus doing, if not comforting his wild young brother? The answer, it seems, is ensuring the continued imprisonment of his sister.

This is important, because Harry's feelings about this are made clear in earlier chapters:

Could Dumbledore have let such things happen? Had he been like Dudley, content to watch neglect and abuse as long as it did not affect him? Could he have turned his back on a sister who was being imprisoned and hidden?

Harry is projecting onto Ariana Dumbledore, specifically with his experience of the Dursleys. He had once raged at Dumbledore in OOTP: "People don't like being locked up! You did it to me last summer!"

Harry's grievance with Dumbledore is not just about this exchange, but a specific choice Dumbledore made for his physical safety with blood wards. The narrative comes close to acknowledging it, in OOTP:

“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.” He paused. Harry said nothing.

to

“She doesn’t love me,” said Harry at once. “She doesn’t give a damn — ” “But she took you,” Dumbledore cut across him. “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.”

to

He knew one thing, though: unhappy as he felt at the moment, he would greatly miss Hogwarts in a few days' time when he was back at number four, Privet Drive. Even though he now understood exactly why he had to return there every summer, he did not feel any better about it. Indeed, he had never dreaded his return more.

Harry understands it then, so it is striking that the only time he allows himself to get truly angry at the position Dumbledore put him in this chapter, through Ariana:

 “I’m not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote,” said Hermione. “All that ‘right to rule’ rubbish, it’s ‘Magic Is Might’ all over again. But Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck alone in the house —”   “Alone? He wasn’t alone! He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up —”

“I don’t believe it,” said Hermione. She stood up too. “Whatever was wrong with that girl, I don’t think she was a Squib. The Dumbledore we knew would never, ever have allowed —”   “The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn’t want to conquer Muggles by force!” Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.

I am especially struck by the image of Harry's angry shouting making blackbirds fly into the pearly sky, and spiral over him. Blackbirds are associated with mystery, secrets and are seen as messengers to netherworld - this combined with the image of pearly white sky (heavens/God) seems intentional. It is carrying Harry's disillusionment to the heavens.

And then, the quote that pierces my soul, which is the heart of this chapter:

“Maybe I am!” Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of his own disillusionment. “Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!”

It is reminiscent of Snape's "you have used me! I have spied for you, lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you" - basically, "why have you forsaken me?" moment.

 He had trusted Dumbledore, believed him the embodiment of goodness and wisdom. All was ashes: How much more could he lose? 

The chapter being set in whiteness and emptiness, reminiscent of King's Cross chapter where Harry does get his answers from Dumbledore.

And then Hermione, who has modified her parents memories, can confidently assert that "He loved you, I know he loved you", because her love for her parents, for Ron, can also be sacrificed at the altar of greater good, even if it means doing things that would hurt them (not choosing to go with Ron) and dismiss their agency (as is with her parents). It doesn't mean she doesn't love them.

  “I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me.”

Harry ends the chapter with seeking comfort from Hermione's touch, brushing his hair - wishing he could believe that Dumbledore really cared. (shoutout to @bluethepineapple meta here about this chapter)

And it is then where Dumbledore's gifts come in motion next chapter: his Deluminator lets Ron find his way back. Snape, effectively Dumbledore's man, sends the doe. Harry counts on what he learned from Dumbledore to destroy the Horcrux - he gives Ron the opportunity to wield the sword:

As certainly as he had known that the doe was benign, he knew that Ron had to be the one to wield the sword. Dumbledore had at least taught Harry something about certain kinds of magic, of the incalculable power of certain acts.

And then by Shell Cottage, Harry accepts Dumbledore's plan as is, and reaffirms his faith in Dumbledore's idea of Greater Good:

Dobby would never be able to tell them who had sent him to the cellar, but Harry knew what he had seen. A piercing blue eye had looked out of the mirror fragment, and then help had come. Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.

And then Harry chooses to stay on path Dumbledore laid out for him, only wishing now that he simply understood the man:

When Harry had finished speaking (about Voldemort), Ron shook his head.   “You really understand him.”   “Bits of him,” said Harry. “Bits . . . I just wish I’d understood Dumbledore as much. But we’ll see. Come on — Ollivander now.”

And finally, he starts to understand Dumbledore - through his conversation with Aberforth:

"And Albus was free, wasn’t he? Free of the burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the —”   “He was never free,” said Harry.   “I beg your pardon?” said Aberforth.   “Never,” said Harry. “The night that your brother died, he drank a potion that drove him out of his mind. He started screaming, pleading with someone who wasn’t there. ‘Don’t hurt them, please . . . hurt me instead.’”   “He thought he was back there with you and Grindelwald, I know he did,” said Harry, remembering Dumbledore whimpering, pleading. “He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you and Ariana. . . . It was torture to him, if you’d seen him then, you wouldn’t say he was free.”

Finally, he gets his chance to have a conversation with Dumbledore at the crossroads of life and death. TLDR: Deathly Hallows is an allegorical tale and it is best to treat it as such and roll with it, because otherwise it's deus ex machina galore.

[fanfictionroxs]

I love grindledore, but Dumbledore siblings, however broken, were Always the true love.

Aberforth being his brother's keeper and the voice of reason that brings Albus back to reality, who sticks by his older brother in war after war (after all they do have the same morals.. almost). Ariana's ghost haunting them forever because their trio is forever incomplete without her. Albus finding his true desire to ultimately be them, his family.. remembering them, never forgetting or forgiving himself for the horrific things that happened almost a century ago because his siblings' pain is his own.. Gellert is his love, but what is 2 months of understanding to a lifetime of hateful begrudging love, love that never lets go come heaven or hell, love that is so understandably angry yet absolute, unwavering.. what is 2 months of Gellert's conditional love in front of a 100 years of unconditional love that his little brother gives him? And Albus doesnt know who really teaches him the true meaning of love or makes him fall in love with the idea of love, is it Gellert or Abe.. maybe it's both.. or perhaps it is simply in a dumbledore's nature to be enamoured with love and give it as much as possible like Abe does to Albus and Ariana. And it's almost a hundred years without Ariana yet Aberforth and Albus never forget to love her with every breath they take and she doesn't. And the three Dumbledores are doomed tragic siblings, but they are each other's true love until the end.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

hilarious to me that jkr set out to write a straighforward good vs evil story but almost all of the oppressed nonhuman/part human creatures in the hp universe side with voldemort bc they think he'll be at least marginally (or potentially much better) for them than the established order bc of how badly they are oppressed by the current government in wizarding society. and the implications of that...are not really explored.

In @rankheresy book club we're currently reading Deathly Hallows and it's very... noticeable is the word I suppose that Harry when meeting with these oppressed creatures (Kreacher, Dobby, Griphook) offers them nothing.

Not even a "I will try really hard to change the laws". Just nothing. And they sure do nothing once Harry and friends are in charge.

It's beautiful.

[whinlatter]

Harry’s thoughts of Ginny in the Forest: a meta

‘Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you... I wanted you to have something to remember me by.' - DH, p. 99 (UK edition)

Here I am, on a rainy Thursday, doing re-reads for some writing and thinking about the parallels between Harry and Ginny's kiss on his birthday, and Harry’s thoughts of Ginny as he goes to his death. 

I’m thinking differently about Ginny’s motivations for the kiss these days. I used to think about her words to Harry that morning, and the act of kissing him, as a promise she’ll wait for when he comes back. Lately, I’m wondering if it’s not something sadder, and more profound. I think what Ginny does on Harry’s seventeenth is the act of a person who is starting to process the fact that the person she loves is likely going to his death — that he might not be coming back. It's a scene of a person bracing for grief and thinking about love after death, and it will set the stage for how Harry meets his own death in the Forest.

So here’s a much-too-long meta to help me think through these ideas - about the kiss, Ginny’s suspicions about Harry’s fate, and what it means that Harry returns to the memory of Ginny at the end of his life. (Stick the kettle on for this one and if you worked this all out long ago before me, just give me an eye roll and forgive me).

I’ve always taken Ginny's words to Harry before their kiss at face value. I thought of it not quite as a fun scene - it’s certainly sad - but sweet, a little sexy, and sort of reckless, even a bit mischievous on Ginny’s part.

It’s the birthday of the boy Ginny loves. They’re not together anymore. She knows he's going away. She wants to give him a birthday present, but she doesn't want to give him something he has to haul around or might lose. She does want to let him know that, despite their separation, her feelings are still the same. She craves a moment with him before he goes. She is still in love with him, she is deeply attracted to him, and part of her still feels a bit possessive. Although she’s not really concerned Harry’s going to crack on with some Veela, she does want him to have a memento of their time together. She wants him to have a happy memory, of physical intimacy and emotional comfort, to keep him going while he's away, to feel less alone.

Most of all, I used to think of the kiss (and whatever Ginny imagined might come after the kiss) as a promise. I still love you. Even though we’re not together and I respect why you have to go, I’m still all in on this. I’ll wait for you for when you come back. I want you to have the memory of this, as proof.

Harry’s reveal

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think about the context of when this kiss happens, after Harry and Ginny's last conversation before his birthday. It's the one a few days before, when Harry and Ginny are laying the table for dinner, and Harry lets slip to Ginny what he, Ron and Hermione will be doing when they leave:

'‘And then what does she think’s going to happen?’ Harry muttered. ‘Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?’ He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.‘So it’s true?’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do? ‘I - not - I was joking,’ said Harry evasively. (DH, 78-9, UK edition)

This is a desperately sad scene, but it’s also an important moment. Harry, so used to having his guard down with Ginny, realises he’s accidentally confessed something big: that he’s going on the run to try and kill Voldemort himself, with Ron and Hermione’s help. 

Ginny is shaken by this. As a character, she tends to either take things in her stride, or yells first, processes later. But this catches her off guard. Her words suggest there has been speculation about what it is the three of them are going off to do (‘So it’s true?’ suggests that Ginny, and perhaps other members of her family or the Order, have been speculating about this for some time). But both she and Harry realise here that he’s flippantly confirmed something huge that Ginny did not already know for sure. He’s spoken aloud the task is that Dumbledore has left him. 

It is a sign of how close Harry feels to Ginny, how safe he feels in her company, and how difficult he finds managing keeping secrets from her, that he lets this slip. He won’t come as close to telling the truth to anyone else, even people he trusts. The scene before this, in his conversation with Mrs Weasley, he didn’t let on nearly as much (though he admits that he found affirming the importance of secrecy difficult when he looked at Mrs Weasley and saw Ginny’s eyes staring back at him):

‘Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,’ mumbled Harry. ‘Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.’ ‘What sort of ‘stuff’?’  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t—’  ‘Well, frankly I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Granger would agree!’ said Mrs. Weasley. Harry had been afraid of the “concerned parent” attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help… ‘Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley (…)  I didn’t misunderstand,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It’s got to be me.’ (DH, 77-8)

Later, he’ll also refuse to give any information to Lupin, for the same reason. 

'‘Can you confide in me what the mission is?’  Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick but greying hair, and wished that he could return a different answer.  ‘I can’t, Remus, I’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I don’t think I can.’  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Lupin, looking disappointed.’ (DH, 173-4)

But with Ginny, he’s accidentally gone much further. He hasn’t said Horcruxes, but he’s as good as. The trio are setting off to try to kill Voldemort, the most dangerous task imaginable in this war. He tries, in vain, to undo it, but the damage is already done. Ginny knows more now than she did before: that the journey he’s about to go on is one that very likely will claim his life. 

What does Ginny know about Harry’s fate before this moment? 

It's clear from this interaction that Harry has never discussed any of this with Ginny before. In their breakup scene, Harry repeatedly said that he was breaking up with her for her own safety. He said he did not want her to be used as bait, as she already had been previously, and as Sirius was: 'Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up...' (HBP, 602). The focus was entirely on the risk to Ginny's life, a risk Harry says he cannot live with.

Ginny’s remarks at Dumbledore’s funeral told us something about how she, at that point, understood the path ahead for Harry. She made her half-joke that Harry was always busy saving the Wizarding World, and says she thinks he 'would never be happy', never fulfilled or satisfied, unless he were 'hunting Voldemort' (HBP, 603). She showed she interpreted his actions as choices being made by someone brave, determined, and personally committed to bringing about the end of Voldemort, not someone destined to. Harry’s motivations and reasons are ones she respects and empathises with. She knows the path ahead is dangerous. She doesn’t yet think of it as lethal. 

Harry didn’t respond to her assessments at the funeral, neither correcting nor confirming them. He didn’t let her know, at that stage, exactly what it is he is going to set off to do. The closest Harry came to revealing the road ahead for him in the break-up scene was this:

'It’s been like… like something out of someone else’s life, these last few weeks with you,' said Harry. 'But I can’t… we can’t… I’ve got things to do alone now.' She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’  (HBP, 602)

This is a pattern throughout their relationship, both as friends and later as romantic partners. Ginny knows a little, but not a lot, about Harry’s path. She thinks of it almost entirely as a decision he has made himself. Conversations about Harry’s destiny - about the Prophecy, about being the Chosen One, and, eventually, about the Horcrux hunt - happen near Ginny, but never with her. She does not seem to believe that Harry is the Chosen One or in any way bound to Voldemort's own fate. At the start of HBP, on the train in Slughorn’s carriage, Ginny states publicly her belief that any speculation about Harry being the Chosen One is nonsense: 

‘We never heard a prophecy,” said Neville, turning geranium pink as he said it. ‘That’s right,’ said Ginny staunchly. ‘Neville and I were both there too, and all this ‘Chosen One’ rubbish is just the Prophet making things up as usual.’ (HBP, 140)

Ultimately, before DH, Ginny has been given very little information. We can assume that she’s decided to respect Harry’s decision to keep any information from her and not to push for it. She has reason to fear he might be in danger, but she doesn’t yet know the full extent of it.

Ginny’s response

The immediate aftermath of Harry’s confession at the Burrow is very telling. 

‘They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since their stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was sure she was remembering them too.’ - DH (79)

It’s important that, immediately after this confession, Harry’s mind immediately takes him to private time spent alone with Ginny at the end of HBP. His certainty that Ginny, too, is reminiscing about them is typical of their wordless displays of understanding. They both reach for memories. And the memories of the last time he was alone with her, when they were still together, suddenly trigger an intense emotional and sexual tension. They are soon interrupted, and the dinner afterwards is extremely awkward. Harry wishes he were further away from Ginny, and tries, with great difficulty, to avoid touching her at the dinner table. The energy between them is intense and charged, anticipatory and frustrated. There are lots of ‘unsaid things’ that have just passed between them, and both are aware of it (DH, 79).

There are important themes being introduced here. Whenever Harry thinks about memories of his time with Ginny in DH, he does so consistently in two clear ways. To him, those times were private, intensely intimate moments which carried huge personal significance. It is strongly implied those were moments of sexual intimacy between the two of them, and where they shared an emotional closeness neither has found with any other character. But those moments with Ginny are also something Harry feels he was wrong to take. His relationship with her was something that, in retrospect, he embarked upon against his better judgement. He now feels it was something he was not entitled to, on account of his own burdens and obligations. Those were ‘stolen hours’ that were ‘something out of someone else’s life’. If we look to the wedding scene, we can see this most clearly:

‘‘Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely,’ said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. ‘But I must say, Ginevra’s dress is far too low cut.’  Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the marquee, back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago; they had always seemed too good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead…’ (DH, 121) 

There are certain tropes at play here, that will that recur again and again in Harry’s thoughts of Ginny until the point of his death: the memory of time alone, the feeling of shared emotional and physical intimacy, to an intense degree; the sense of their time together being something stolen, both in the sense of it being snatched from within darker times, but also being forbidden, given with Harry’s fate when it comes to Voldemort. That Harry recalls these moments at a moment as two other characters make lifelong vows of marriage to each other is not insignificant: all is set up to maximise the sense of tragedy.

Ginny processing Harry’s fate

Ginny is not naive. Harry’s confession seems to change something about how she thinks about what he’s about to do. She may once have dismissed the prophecy of Harry as the Chosen One as nonsense. But she now has reason to suspect that might not quite be true.

She may well re-trace what she does know. After all, she was at the Department of Mysteries two summers prior, where she learnt that Voldemort, at least, thinks there is a prophecy of significance that involves Harry directly. She knows Harry has been having one-on-one lessons with Dumbledore: she even gave him one of the invitations (HBP, 228). She also knows that Harry and Dumbledore left school for a secret mission alone on the night the Astronomy Tower was attacked and Dumbledore was killed. She observed how Harry saw Dumbledore’s death as a catalyst to prepare for a path that required him to step back from her. Above all, we also know that Ginny is a character who understands Tom Riddle intimately. She is one of the people who comes closest to understanding the stakes of your life being bound, in some way, to Voldemort.

It is also significant that Ginny is a character canonically intrigued, and touched, by death, and by powerful Dark magic. The diary, and her own near-death experience, is the most obvious example. But in the Department of Mysteries during OotP, we are told she is also one of the characters most drawn to the veil, despite having far less direct experience of loss and grief than Harry, Luna, or even Neville:

‘[Harry] took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to — well, come on, then!’ said Hermione, and she led the way back around the dais. On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too. Without speaking, Hermione took hold of Ginny’s arm, Ron Neville’s, and they marched them firmly back to the lowest stone bench and clambered all the way back up to the door.’ (OotP, 775)

I don’t mean to suggest Ginny knew what was coming for Harry, that she foresaw him having to go to his death. She knows nothing of Horcruxes, she doesn’t know the contents of the Prophecy, and she certainly doesn’t know Harry himself is a Horcrux. Harry, of course, doesn’t yet know the certainty of him going to his own death, at this point in the text. But given the information she alone has been handed, inadvertently, by Harry, she has plenty of reason to begin to suspect the path Harry is on is one that might end in death, moreso for him than for an anyone else in this war.

Ginny doesn’t appear much in the following pages, other than in her role helping to prepare the house for the wedding. Over the next few days, she has lots of time to consider Harry’s words. We know she’s also sharing a bedroom with Hermione, who is actively preparing for their imminent departure, and watching the three of them try to sneak off together to make plans. This is time for Ginny to start to digest the information Harry has unwittingly divulged. She can now begin to think about how she ought to respond to the prospect of him leaving for a mission that will, likely, cost him his life.

The kiss itself

We can see Ginny has planned this interaction with Harry in her bedroom. The false casualness of how the scene opens - ‘Harry, can you come in here a moment?’ - and the actions of the bedroom’s other occupant, Hermione, suggests some level of premeditation and collaboration. For the first time, Ginny brings him into her bedroom, with the door closed. The setting is obviously intimate and suggestive.

Harry describes Ginny as seeming nervous, but purposeful, like she is readying herself for something - she ‘[takes] a deep breath’. She is looking at him ‘steadily’. Harry is nervous, too: he cannot bring himself to look at her, finding it almost painful, like ‘gazing into a brilliant light’ (DH, 98). Her trademark blazing look is in full force. She doesn’t entertain his attempts at small talk: she is serious about what she’s about to do.

‘‘I couldn’t think what to get you,’ she said.  ‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’ She disregarded this too.’ (DH, 98-9)

Ginny opens by revealing how difficult it has been for her to work out what she could give him, under the circumstances. She is, in her own way, acknowledging how hard she is finding processing what it is he has to do now. She has been struggling with the prospect of Harry’s departure, and the possibility, even the likelihood, of his death. But she has decided she wants to make that path easier for him. Despite his reassurance, she insists she wanted to give him something. 

‘‘I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.” He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful...' (99)

These lines are so significant. The first two lines in particular are deeply profound. They read very differently to how I first thought of them, if seen in this light. I didn’t know what would be useful, she says, because she doesn't know what she can say that will be useful. What could possibly make this easier, to help Harry think about the enormity of his situation, or to help guide him on a path requiring him to accept his own likely death? 

She doesn’t want what she gives to him now to be too heavy, too sad, or too serious, because she knows Harry will not be able to deal with it (‘nothing too big’). Anything too declaratory, too sentimental, or too enormous, would be impossible for him to leave with. In the last part of the sentence, her words are deliberately vague: because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you. 

I think this is the most poignant part, and it suggests the part of Ginny's mind that believes in, and is curious about, what happens beyond, after death: the voices on the other side of the veil. I think there is some part of her that thinks Harry might be going somewhere she can’t reach him - what Dumbledore will later call going on. Ginny does not openly speculate about where Harry will be taking whatever she gives him. That it could be to his own grave, or beyond, is left unspoken. He looks at her, finally, after these words, because he seems to understand, on some level, what she is trying to say to him.

‘She took a step closer to him. ‘So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.’’ (DH, 99)

Ginny has decided: the thing she will give him is a memory, one that he can take with him when they part. Something to remember me by. She wants the memory of her, of them, to be useful, to serve him in some way, and to be something that he might be able to take on with him after death. She tries to soften what she’s trying to convey, with the joke about the veela. But both seem to understand what she is really saying: that she isn’t really asking for his loyalty or fidelity. She doesn’t say she’s giving him ‘something to remember me by’ for when he comes back and they can be together again. Her words are very final. The joke is supposed to make it easier for him to hear what she is saying: she’s telling him, quietly, how to think about her when he leaves, whatever leaving might mean.

Harry, for his part, continues the joke. (‘I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.’) She plays along, sort of, in a very sad way (‘there’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for’). But both seem to know that there is no real silver lining to this. 

And then there’s the kiss itself: 

‘There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,’ she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than Firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair —’ (DH, 99)

It all comes to a head here. Harry recognises that this kiss feels exceptional, unlike any other they’ve ever shared - that Ginny has never put so much into a kiss before. It is ‘blissful oblivion’, this moment of extraordinary intensity, where she kisses him and allows him, for a moment, to think only about her and them together. It’s heady and sexual (‘the feel of her’). It’s a gift for Harry  to be able to forget everything and let this moment be a vacuum, to focus only on her. The crescendo effect of the short causes and run-on sentences allows the moment to build and build, a crescendo effect that anticipates something to come. 

Of course, their moment gets interrupted, again. Unlike when Ron interrupted her with Dean, Ginny doesn't rage at him this time: she is subdued, a response that is far more appropriate for her processing the fact that she may have just had her final kiss with the boy she loves. Harry suspects she has started to cry, something he notes is out of character. Ginny had imbued a lot of meaning into this interaction: this is a portrait of a character whose heart is breaking.

When Harry and Ron are discussing the kiss outside on the lawn, after the initial shock of being yelled at by Ron for going anywhere near Ginny, Harry has his own, shattering realisation of what all of this means for himself and Ginny:

‘Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again—’ ‘She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, she’s not expecting us to— to end up married, or—’  As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless, and unpleasant stranger. In one spiralling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his . . . he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.’ (DH, 100)

Thinking aloud, Harry says it would be idiotic for he or Ginny to imagine they could be together, either now, or at any point in the future. He expects her to find someone else; he cannot even begin to imagine a future for himself after the task set out for him. He does not say his inevitable death - he has not yet embraced that reality - but he remains caught in the certainty of an existential battle with Voldemort that he knows he may well not survive.

Later that day, Harry will receive the snitch from Dumbledore’s will. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he now holds the resurrection stone, the item that will open at the close in the forest. It is a birthday that starts and ends with hints about what little time he has left: the stage is set for an arc that, now, has to end in his own death.

Foreshadowing Ginny and the Forest

Moments foreshadowing the significance of the forest are all over Deathly Hallows. Sometimes, they mirror the moment of his own death; often, they are related to Ginny. When they leave the Ministry, with Ron splinched, clutching the Horcrux locket, they arrive in a forest. For a moment Harry’s heart ‘leaped’ at the thought that they were back in Hogwarts’ grounds, the site of so much of his earlier happiness with Ginny (DH, 221). When the trio hear that Ginny, Neville and Luna tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor, it is the Forbidden Forest they are sent to by Snape as punishment (248-9). Harry does not fear the Forest, and is consoled by the thought of Ginny serving detention there rather than anywhere else.

In the Forest of Dean, the scene where Ron returns begins with Harry thinking of Ginny. He sits at the mouth of the tent, wanting to look for Ginny on the Marauders’ Map, until he remembers it’s Christmastime and she is at the Burrow (297). Later, in a moment that mirrors his later walk to his death, he follows his mother - Snape’s patronus, the doe - into the woods, in order to recover and destroy the Horcrux, inching Harry’s own life closer to its close:

Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, [the doe’s] burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety. “Lumos!” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited. The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs…  He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?’ (DH, 299)

Foreshadowing Harry's end in the Forest means also foreshadowing Ginny's own appearance at the moment of his death.

Harry’s ‘death’ in the Forest 

In the final battle, Ginny is the last person Harry sees before he begins his walk into the Forest. He takes the words she says to the child on the ground as her final act of comfort. Harry hears them as if they are being spoken to him: 

‘He was feet away from her when he realised it was Ginny.  He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.  ‘It’s all right,’ Ginny was saying. ‘It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside.’  ‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore!’ ‘I know,’ said Ginny, and her voice broke. ‘It’s going to be all right.’  Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home (...) Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.’ (DH, 558-9)

Harry believes that this is his final moment with Ginny before he goes to die. A part of him wants her to know that it’s happening: he is leaving, at last. But he can't call to her, because he worries she will try and stop him, and he might let her. Instead, he walks on, and doesn’t look back. After watching Ginny comfort the girl crying for her mother, Harry then goes on to the Forest, and summons his own mother, his own family, to walk with him to his death.  

‘His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort. . . .' (DH, 561-2)

Harry is already preparing to go on from this world: his living loved ones are the ones he now feels furthest from. He stands now with the dead he has summoned, who recognise him and seem to have memories of him. He doesn't fear the dead: he is going to join them.

It’s the death scene itself that I think has subtle, but important parallels with the kiss scene much earlier. In both imagery and in writing style, the scene recalls that earlier moment, where Harry found himself on the edge of another kind of oblivion. There is this mounting, febrile sense of anticipation. There is a tension that is almost sexual, a dynamic injected into the scene through descriptions of Bellatrix’s body language and behaviour towards Voldemort:

‘Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.’  (DH, 564)

The ugly parallel of Bellatrix and Voldemort is not supposed to show the pair as the mirror image of Harry and Ginny. Rather, it is a theme that recurs throughout the series to demonstrate the gulf between Harry, with his immense capacity for love, and Voldemort, with none. Bellatrix and Ginny are memorably paralleled twice in the series: once, at the Department of Mysteries, where Bellatrix moves to ‘torture the little girl’, and Harry steps in to prevent her (OotP, 783), and again in the final battle: 

'Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch—  He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways…’ (DH, 589)

As Harry waits for the killing curse, we see the most direct parallel with Ginny's final kiss to him:

‘None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his — ’ (DH, 564)

There's such an intense physicality and breathlessness to the whole scene, and an enduring pseudo-sexual tension, with Bellatrix audibly panting. Even the sentence structure even invokes the kissing scene: the run-on build up of clauses, the repetition of the present participle to actively hold the reader in one present moment, building and building and ending on a dash, the promise of something more.

At the end of his life, Harry returns to the memory Ginny gave him. She meant for it to be useful, if he was to go to his death. And at the close of his life he chooses to use it, as he prepares to leave her behind in this world and depart for the next. Just as the Resurrection Stone helped accept death, so too does the memory of Ginny. He feels the memory of her, the sensation of physical touch and of being kissed, the look she gives him that he knows as one of love and great courage. As he is killed, he remembers her last gift to him, the certainty of her love for him impressed upon him.

--

There's a line in OotP that I think is such an underrated line that sums up who Ginny is as a character. Harry is trying to get to Umbridge's fire to speak to Sirius when he thinks the latter is being tortured at the Ministry; Hermione suggests using Ginny and Luna as a distraction, despite Harry's objections:

'Though clearly struggling to understand what was going on, Ginny said immediately, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,'... (OotP, 736)

This is who Ginny is. It's especially who she is to Harry, during the war. She doesn't fully know what's actually being asked of Harry (and, by extension, what is being asked of her, as the person who loves him, and who has most to lose if he is to die). But even when kept in the dark, she is enormously selfless, and her biggest act of bravery is extremely quiet. She keeps the secret Harry accidentally bestows on her, and she realises, in some sense, before he does, what it will likely mean for his life. She chooses to let him go on, knowing that he is loved, to make the path that he is on a little bit easier, even when she has realised that it will take him away from her for good.

[dinarosie]

hi i am actually very interested in the fact that you are "anti-marauders" because i have a strong feeling you've never actually had a conversation with a (real, not tik-tokified) marauders fan. i don't particularly "hate" snape, but i do NOT think he's a good person. i have a lot of similar nuanced feeling pertaining to peter, and i will admit that james and sirius are often childish and did bully snape. i've decided to reread half-blood prince, and rewatch the movie, so i can have a real conversation of my opinion on snape, and i will send in another ask later.

also, sectumsemprus (is that it?) is his SIGNATURE spell- for reference, voldemort's signature spell is avada kedavra, and harry's is probably expelliarmus. do you know how many times you have to use a spell for it to become your signature spell?

Hi there! Thanks for reaching out.

First, I want to clarify that I use anti-Marauders tags not because I created this blog solely to spread hate against them or to harass their fans, but because it’s a general Tumblr rule. For nearly any post criticizing a character, you’re expected to use anti tags, as fans of that character might not want to see critical posts about their favorite. This ensures fans who may not want to see criticism of their favorite characters can filter or avoid it if they choose.

Now, you mentioned that I probably haven’t talked to a “real” Marauders fan, which is why I have anti-Marauders posts. But honestly, I don’t think all fans of the Marauders share the same views, nor is it possible to talk to every fan before making a post. I see a lot of anti-Snape content daily—much of it from Marauders fans—and often get an idea for a post that I decide to share. I imagine most bloggers do this; it’s part of engaging with fandoms online. I try to offer thoughtful critiques when possible, but that does take time. Sometimes, seeing particularly harsh, illogical, or double-standard comments pushes me to post a short, sarcastic response—one that mirrors the style of some of the content I encounter.

Overall, I wouldn’t call myself “anti All of Marauder fans.” Yes, I use terms like “Marauders fans” and “anti-Marauders” tags, but my issue is only with fans who unreasonably hate Snape and mock him (even for things like his background) or who attack Snape supporters, labeling them with hurtful terms simply for supporting him. Outside of those specific cases, I have no problem with other fans.

As for your question about Sectumsempra, I understand you’re suggesting it became Snape’s “signature” spell through frequent, harmful use. I looked up the reference you mentioned, and here’s the passage from Deathly Hallows where Lupin speaks of Sectumsempra:

“He lost his hood during the chase. Sectumsempra was always a specialty of Snape’s. I wish I could say I’d paid him back in kind, but it was all I could do to keep George on the broom after he was injured, he was losing so much blood.”

It’s worth noting the term Lupin uses here: specialty, not signature. Sectumsempra first appears in Half-Blood Prince as an unknown spell by an unnamed creator. After Harry uses it on Malfoy, it’s still an unfamiliar spell until Snape admits to creating it at the end of the book. But in Deathly Hallows, right after the Battle of the Seven Potters, Sectumsempra becomes widely associated with Snape (via Lupin’s words).

While in Half-Blood Prince the goal is to keep the creator of this spell anonymous, in Deathly Hallows it’s crucial to know exactly who used Sectumsempra during the Battle of the Seven Potters. The inconsistency here seems intentional. The author isn’t referencing Sectumsempra’s notoriety here to highlight Snape’s past; rather, I believe she brings it up as an important clue about the future. This clue gains significance after we view Snape’s memories, especially after reading Dumbledore’s line to him just before the Battle of the Seven Potters:

And Severus, if you are forced to take part in the chase, be sure to act your part convincingly… I am counting upon you to remain in Lord Voldemort’s good books as long as possible, or Hogwarts will be left to the mercy of the Carrows..."

But in THE PRINCE’S TALE, we see that Snape defies Dumbledore’s advice—he steps out of his role as a Death Eater and targets another Death Eater with a spell that’s highly conspicuous, one that could jeopardize his cover. (If successful, and had it hit another Death Eater, they would have immediately recognized the spell as Snape’s own.) So why would Snape make such an irrational choice? Why take such a risk? To save the life of Remus Lupin.

This scene is one of many that show Snape’s growth and commitment to doing the right thing—not out of loyalty to Lily, not for Dumbledore, nor for any personal reward.( And that's exactly why, in the chapter where Snape's true loyalty and the real story behind him are finally revealed, this spell and its backstory are brought up.) As he admitted in his iconic line to Dumbledore, he had grown weary of watching lives be lost when he had the power to save them. Whether it’s an old bully, Lucius and Narcissa’s son, or James and Lily’s, Snape steps in without hesitation to protect a life—even if it endangers his own

Another reason I don’t believe the author’s aim here is to highlight Snape’s crimes as a Death Eater is that there are numerous scenes throughout the series discussing Snape’s actions during that time. Yet, we never see any indication or hint from the author that Snape committed serious harm or atrocities while serving as a Death Eater. In fact, in his argument with Bellatrix, it’s mentioned that Snape actively tried to avoid participating in missions. During his planning conversations with Dumbledore, we’re also told that his soul has never been tainted by murder. And in Karkaroff’s trial, there’s no crime or accusation he can use against Snape.

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

I sometimes think JKR completely forgot that her readers are all Muggles. At some point, I see young fans re-reading the series and realizing exactly where non-magical humans fit into the Wizarding World. Yes, a lot of people accept (or have made up, since I don't see much canon evidence for it) the excuse that wizards are outnumbered and afraid of the Muggles, but they actually treat them more like animals than potential enemies. Of course, that's also exactly how they treat the other magical beings, even Werewolves who used to be wizards. The question of normal humans' place is never even raised by our heroes (if we can call them that), and, in fact, one of them used magic to cheat on his driving test. If the wizards are hiding their existence because they're afraid of Muggles (which actually doesn't fit very well with the fact that they accept Muggleborn wizards into the wizarding world, necessitating telling some Muggles), then all they're doing is giving Muggles reason to fear, hate, and kill or enslave them as the wizards themselves been doing to other magical creatures. If you look at the series from the point of view of any non-wizard, it's like the tag line for Alien vs. Predator - whoever wins, we lose.

source: smurasaki's comment from this 2008 chapter review of the Deathly Hallows epilogue

[iamnmbr3]

When Harry witnesses Draco being forced to torture Rowle, he is extremely upset. Much more so than he typically is about these visions. There are a lot of very drarry implications. Let's break it down.

"Malfoy’s gaunt, petrified face seemed branded on the inside of his eyes. Harry felt sickened by what he had seen, by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort.”

Notable points from this passage:

1) Harry understands Draco so well that he immediately takes for granted that he doesn't want to be using the Cruciatus curse. It never even crosses his mind to take this as evidence that Draco is now a willing torturer who enjoys cruelty or that he deserves to be in this situation for having chosen the wrong side and for his role in Dumbledore's death.

Nor does Harry think Draco is just scared and upset because he's afraid Voldemort might lash out at him too - which is what Harry would think if he saw any other Death Eater acting afraid around Voldemort. He clearly sees that Draco is horrified by the acts he is being forced to commit. And he also completely accepts that it is Voldemort forcing Draco to commit these acts, thus absolving Draco of responsibility.

2) Harry is DEEPLY upset by seeing Draco in this position. More upset than he ever is about seeing any other Death Eater being terrorized or hurt by Voldemort (Harry doesn't even spare one thought for Rowle for example!) Not only that. He's also more upset than he is about seeing Ollivander tortured. Or about seeing Voldemort murder a woman and her children later on while searching for information about Gregorovitch. He finds those visions alarming but he shakes them off pretty quickly.

The only comparable strong reactions are how he responds to his visions of Arthur Weasley and Sirius in book 5 - i.e. visions of people he knows and cares about in danger and suffering. And it's not even the scene as a whole that upsets him. It's specifically Draco - whose frightened face seems "branded" on the inside of Harry's eyes. Harry can't get the vision out of his head, feels sickened, and fights to keep his voice casual afterward. Even though Draco wasn't even actively being hurt.

So canonically Draco matters to Harry in a way that almost all other people don't. It's not generic nobility that gives Harry sympathy even for an enemy - because he doesn't feel this way about other Death Eaters. And it's not general pity that Harry would feel for any innocent hurt by Voldemort - because he doesn't feel that way about victims like Ollivander or the children Voldemort killed. It's the type of reaction Harry ONLY has to people he deeply cares about suffering or being in danger. Harry may not think of it that way on an intellectual level. But his heart knows it even if his brain doesn't. He cares about Draco Malfoy. A lot. He cares about him more than he cares about almost anyone else.

3) Also notable. Harry starts out referring to him as Malfoy but then switches to thinking of him as Draco as he starts worrying about him. (Yes. The drarry trope of Harry switching from "Malfoy" to "Draco" literally happens. IN CANON.) And he keeps thinking of him as Draco after that point. The next time Draco is referred to is during the whole sequence where the Golden Trio are prisoners at the Manor. Harry refers to Lucius by his full name multiple times, but consistently refers to Draco as "Draco" rather than "Malfoy" in his internal narration.

4) (Also the fact that Draco's face is described as "gaunt" hits me right in the feels. It seems that he's in worse shape even than he was when Harry last saw him at the end of 6th year. Sad but not surprising given the guilt that is probably eating at him over his role in Dumbledore's death, what he is now being forced to do as a Death Eater, and the very tangible dangers and suffering that come with being out of favor with Voldemort while having him in your house.)

Tldr: I don't need my ships to be canon but drarry is. jkr who? ;)

[hollowed-theory-hall]

More notes from my Deathly Hallows reread about Harry's magic being super powerful and not working the way magic is supposed to work:

“Harry?” Ron’s voice echoed suddenly from the other side of the wall to Harry’s right. “Are you talking to someone?” With a whiplike movement, Crabbe pointed his wand at the fifty-foot mountain of old furniture, of broken trunks, of old books and robes and unidentifiable junk, and shouted, “Descendo,” The wall began to totter, then the top third crumbled into the aisle next door where Ron stood. “Ron!” Harry bellowed, as somewhere out of sight Hermione screamed, and Harry heard innumerable objects crashing to the floor on the other side of the destabilized wall: He pointed his wand at the rampart, cried, “Finite!” and it steadied.

(DH, 629)

Like, what Descendo does is make objects fall down. Like, the moment he cast it at the pile of junk, it started falling down, but Crabbe wasn't casting the spell anymore, he cast it once, for a short moment to make everything start toppling. To steady, the pile of junk, you'll need a spell to keep it steady since once it starts falling, a finite isn't going to help. A finite stops a spell that is in effect, but the descendo isn't actually in effect anymore, it gave the pile a nudge, and then gravity did the rest. At least in this case, since the items are described as falling down naturally and not shooting down by the magic of the spell.

But, apparently, when Harry Potter casts finite, it can work against gravity because he's Harry Potter.

[cimerran-714]

Okay, so as the fandom likes to claim that Harry/Hermione wouldn't work because Harry himself says that he likes her as a sister, I thought I'll make a post about that. After all, it's something we hear from his mouth, right? It's supposed to be the "smoking gun" evidence.

All we have to do, however, is to look at the situation more closely.

*rubs hands together*.

First of all, you can say one thing and mean another. As canon shippers claim that there's evidence of Romione before book 4 which are NOT romantic in nature (as in you don't have to actually say that you like someone, as Romione shippers bring up things like Hermione noticing Ron's face closely in the first book, etc), we can apply the same principle to Harmony. There's a whole lot of textual evidence that Harry finds her attractive.

“After you left,” he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron’s face was hidden, “she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn’t want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone..."

Two things to note here:

Harry's apparently grateful that Ron's face is hidden when he makes this statement, which should make us wonder how truthful he's being.

The emphasis on the "nights" is interesting. We do know that they were actively discussing the location of the Horcruxes, from an early chapter, despite being sad initially that Ron had left. But of course Harry cannot tell him that. He had just returned, and so he makes it sound as if they hardly spoke to each other after Ron had left. That's a lie.

Like I said, we have to look at the context. They had moved on without Ron, and part of the reason Harry says that is probably to make him feel better now that he's back.

And lastly, Harry even considered Ginny as his sister initially. Have a look at this:

They had lived, had they not, like brother and sister all summer, playing Quidditch, teasing Ron, and having a laugh about Bill and Phlegm?

Yes, Harry's rationalizing it to himself, but he's doing that by thinking back to how he essentially considered Ginny as his sister while they were at The Burrow.

So, no, it's not a slam-dunk argument when canon shippers bring it up, even though it certainly looks like that on the surface.

[meear]

The state of siblings in HP&the Deathly Hallows

Deathly Hallows is the book that shines a (new) light on every sibling in the story.

This is where we see Lily and Petunia's childhood, we learn about Aberforth and Albus' story, we read about Regulus' death, Percy's return (and even, to some extent, Harry and Dudley's goodbye, though of course they were never raised as siblings nor did they ever consider each other as such, but they did grow up under the same roof). This is the book where Ron finally confronts his insecurities, by destroying the locket who was throwing all of his family issues back into his face.

We finally meet Andromeda, the last Black sister, and we have Bellatrix mention her ("We—Narcissa and I—have never set eyes on our sister since she married the Mudblood"). In HP7, Molly even tells Harry that Fabian was her brother, which is something the reader never knew

I often see people drawing parallels between Sirius&Regulus and Lily&Petunia, both of these pairs being estranged siblings, but... They really don't have that much in common.

I've never seen anyone commenting on the Blacks' similarities to the Weasleys (by which I mean Percy) and the Dumbledores, when these three families have SO much more to offer. I think about them so often you do not understand. I don't even know where to begin. I've ended up putting a bunch of dialogue from the book, so it's a bit lengthy, but long story short:

Albus, Aberforth, Sirius, Regulus and Percy make me feel insane

Percy and Albus, two brillant, ambitious and arrogant young men, who felt trapped, who thought they were destined for more than the condition their family had condemned them to, who were desperate to leave their home and get their chance to shine despite their father's awful reputation, even by supporting corrupt ideals. Read what Dumbledore tells Harry at the end of HP7, and tell me it couldn't have come out straight of Percy's mouth:

"I resented it, Harry. I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory [...] So that, when my mother died, and I was left the responsibility of a damaged sister and a wayward brother, I returned to my village in anger and bitterness. Trapped and wasted, I thought!"

"[Percy] said he’s been having to struggle against Dad’s lousy reputation ever since he joined the Ministry and that Dad’s got no ambition and that’s why we’ve always been — you know — not had a lot of money"

Mind you, there's a bit of Sirius in it too, Sirius who also left. We learn about Percy and Sirius at around the same time (the beginning of Ootp, chapters 4 and 6) and I don't think it's a coincidence (edit: forgot to mention it but there's even a chapter named "Percy and Padfoot" in that book). Here's what Ron says:

"And if Mum and Dad were going to become traitors to the Ministry [Percy] was going to make sure everyone knew he didn’t belong to our family anymore. And he packed his bags the same night and left."

" 'You ran away from home?' 'When I was about sixteen,' said Sirius. 'I’d had enough.' "

"As far as I’m concerned, they’re not my family. She’s certainly not my family. [...] D’you think I’m proud of having relatives like her?”

Fred and George were angry at their older brother for putting his ambitions above his family and morals (I'm Percy's #1 fan and defender btw), and Aberforth was furious with Albus for the same reason. Again, this reads like something that Ron could've said about Percy, the pompous little snob (i love him):

Sirius and Percy are also not present on the family pictures:

"A photograph of the Weasley family stood beside the in-tray. Harry noticed that Percy appeared to have walked out of it."

" “I used to be there,” said Sirius, pointing at a small, round, charred hole in the tapestry, rather like a cigarette burn."

"Not Albus, he was always up in his bedroom when he was home, reading his books and counting his prizes, keeping up with his correspondence with ‘the most notable magical names of the day’ "

It's just that Percy and Albus betrayed their family by supporting wrong causes and Sirius betrayed his family by supporting the right one. but Regulus' support was an act of loyalty to his family. Aberforth and Kreacher tell Harry about Albus and Regulus' former goals:

"Didn’t I understand, my poor sister wouldn’t have to be hidden once they’d changed the world, and led the wizards out of hiding, and taught the Muggles their place?"

"For years [Master Regulus] talked of the Dark Lord, who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns...."

I know I've been comparing Albus to Sirius, both of them being the oldest brother, but really Albus' ideological progression and death most resemble Regulus'. (both Black brothers share traits with both Dumbledores really). though of course, Harry didn't let Ron and Hermione make excuses for Dumbledore just because he was young:

" 'it’s an awful thought that Dumbledore’s ideas helped Grindelwald rise to power. But on the other hand, even Rita can’t pretend that they knew each other for more than a few months one summer when they were both really young, and— '

'I thought you’d say that,' said Harry."

" 'Dumbledore being pals with Grindelwald, but now it’s just something to laugh about for people who didn’t like Dumbledore, and a bit of a slap in the face for everyone who though he was such a good bloke. I don’t know that it’s such a big deal, though. He was really young when they— '

'Our age,' said Harry"

" 'He was a Death Eater,' said Harry. 'Sirius told me about him, he joined up when he was really young and then got cold feet and tried to leave' "

(i would like it on record that the exact expression "really young" is found thrice in HP7, two of them being about Albus, the last one about Regulus. i'm so incredibly normal about this)

"and when he was sixteen years old, Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord"

"[Dumbledore] changed, Harry, he changed! It’s as simple as that! Maybe he did believe those things when he was seventeen"

"I know what you’re going to say, she went on as Harry began to protest, that Regulus changed his mind . . ."

Albus and Regulus were two misguided brothers who both drank the drink of despair in the Inferi cave before dying, the only two wizards to have done so. Not only that, both of them had actually planned their own death; though it was a secret only known by the one who had assisted them (the chapters revealing the truth about Regulus and Albus are literally called "Kreacher's tale" and "the Prince's tale", like they're referencing each other, I'm in my incredibly delusional era right now). They started something (the same thing, in fact) they could not see through to the end, and "faced death in the hope" someone else would finish it:

"We want to finish the work Master Regulus started, we want to—er—ensure that he didn’t die in vain"

"he left me a job [...] Your brother knew how to finish You-Know-Who and he passed the knowledge on to me"

Both Sirius and Aberforth hated their brother's choices, but actually (as Harry told Aberforth) neither of them fully understood their brother's last moments. and because they didn't have that knowledge, neither of them ever gained a complete understanding of their brother:

"And Albus was free, wasn’t he? Free of the burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the— '

'He was never free,' said Harry."

"From what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out."

"And he drank— all the potion— and Kreacher swapped the lockets"

"The night that your brother died, he drank a potion that drove him out of his mind."

"He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you and Ariana... It was torture to him, if you’d seen him then, you wouldn’t say he was free."

"Kreacher and Regulus’s family were all safest if they kept to the old pure-blood line. Regulus was trying to protect them all."

You know who ELSE "was never free" though??

I ask, but you already know.

" 'I don’t like being back here,” [Sirius] said, staring across the drawing room. 'I never thought I’d be stuck in this house again.' "

"I returned to my village in anger and bitterness. Trapped and wasted, I thought!"

Albus was never free. Sirius was never free either.

But wait! there's more!

"But Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck alone in the house— '

'Alone? He wasn’t alone! He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up— ' "

Of course, knowing this about Albus Dumbledore, this scene at the end of OotP might hit a bit different:

“ 'I was trying to keep Sirius alive,' said Dumbledore quietly.

'People don’t like being locked up!' Harry said furiously, rounding on him. 'You did it to me all last summer —'

Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long-fingered hands. "

Now do I think there's a link between Albus&Sirius being stuck in the house and Dumbledore keeping his sister locked up to protect her life and keeping Sirius locked up to protect his life... maybe it wasn't intentional, or maybe it was; either way, it's very juicy to think about, and Dumbledore's reaction after what Harry says? if there's even the slightest possibility he might have been thinking about Ariana...I'm EATING this up.

Let us not forget about Percy Weasley though. In the end, both Percy and Albus came to their senses, though not without losing a younger sibling, Fred and Ariana. Is it possible that Albus saw a bit of himself in Percy at the time? Maybe, maybe not, but he did try to comfort Molly about Percy:

" 'Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right,' said Hermione. 'I heard him telling your mum, Ron.' "

"Reality returned in the form of my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother. I did not want to hear the truths he shouted at me."

So yeah, they made wrong choices, but again, that doesn't mean they can't change:

" 'I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a— a— '

'Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron, said Fred. "

"Stupid idiot . . . he joined the Death Eaters."

" 'Don’t worry about Percy,' said Sirius abruptly. 'He’ll come round.' "

Remember the previous comparison between Albus and Percy, about both of them being the stuck-up pretentious brother?

"It was a porapous little sign, neatly lettered by hand - the sort of thing that Percy Weasley might have stuck on his bedroom door: Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black"

I think about this description a normal amount, the exact amount of thought warranted for such a short, inconsequential description, in fact

Another thing Deathly Hallows did was challenging our perception of Sirius and Albus (granted, mostly Albus) by developing a younger brother who, against all odds, might have been more admirable than them in certain aspects. when Regulus and Aberforth are first mentioned, one is a cowardly Death Eater and the other is implied to be a goat-fucker. alright. and yet, if you only read the last book, you end up having a more positive impression of Aberforth and Regulus than of their older brothers, to the point where Albus and Sirius even get compared to Voldemort. Interestingly, I feel like Albus makes an indirect reference to Kreacher here:

"That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing."

of course Regulus was not brought up in his last conversation with Harry, but there really isn't anyone else this comment could refer to, and it does echo "Kreacher's tale" nicely:

"Of course, Voldemort would have considered the ways of house-elves far beneath his notice . . . It would never have occurred to him that they might have magic that he didn’t."

"I’ve said all along that wizards would pay for how they treat house-elves. Well, Voldemort did . . . and so did Sirius."

"Sirius was horrible to Kreacher, Harry, and it’s no good looking like that, you know it’s true"

"He’s loyal to people who are kind to him, and Mrs. Black must have been, and Regulus certainly was"

"my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother"

"Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort?"

"Master Regulus always liked Kreacher."

"The barman face was impassive. After a few moments he said,

'I’m sorry to hear it, I liked that elf.' "

Sirius and Albus really wanted to distance themselves from the reminders of their home, and as a result, they weren't always decent people. Of course I don't believe for a second Sirius and Albus were actually as bad as Riddle. they both did fucked up things, so did Regulus who joined the Death Eaters and Aberforth who suggested using Slytherin students as hostages (tf), so I'm not saying one amongst these four is obviously better than the others, but. this reversal is still really interesting.

The fact that Aberforth was helping Harry through Sirius' mirror. The fact that one of Albus' names is Percival. Hell, let's reach even further, Albus meaning "white" and Sirius&Regulus' last name being "black".

Like I'm sorry, but to me this is cinema.