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jmwdoesthings · 5 months ago

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Snape's Search History - Part One

So this has been requested by quite a few people, now. For those who hadn't seen my previous headcanon post: here it is. I will try and tag all those who have expressed interest in the comments.

In short: After stealing Snape's phone and looking through his saddening search history, the trio come up with a plan to make Snape happy. This is how it unfolds, for the Potions Master has little idea what to make of it.

Enjoy and do reblog to inform the others!!

Part One.

All was still in the empty Transfiguration classroom. The dust lay undisturbed and thick upon the solid desks, which in turn were standing silent and endeavouring in their fortitude of unuse. The chalkboard looked dejected, the forgotten endeavours of clearing it of writing still visible in ashy smudges across the charcoal surface. And it would have probably stayed like that for another decade or two if the door wasn’t flung open and three small figures stumbled from behind it, making enough noise for the dust to twitch into the air again. A ‘quick, quick!’ was spat out by one of the disturbers accompanied by a few hisses of urge, then a scrabble as the doorknob was found and the door was pushed.

The dust jumped up from the desk as the door slammed shut and settled back upon it once more as Harry, Ron and Hermoine stood, panting, in front of it.

After a short moment, Ron pushed himself from the door. His face broke out in a wide grin.

“Blimmin’ heck, that was a mess!” He laughed and dusted his hands. “He’ll be looking for it, now, I bet.”

“But we’ve got it!” Harry grasped the trophy tight, as though he was afraid that it would slip from him, back to its owner. “Let’s do it quick, before someone else comes to find us and sees us.”

Hermoine said nothing, but she was far from calm herself - in fact, she was inches from jumping down on the spot and breaking out into a mad giggle. The latter she repressed with difficulty as they all stormed to the nearest table, swept off the perplexed dust from it with their sleeves, then laid out the shiny, sleek device upon its surface.

The device was a phone. It wasn’t any old phone, either, for if it was perhaps only a few of the more eccentric would deem it a subject of interest. This was a working phone, one which withstood any feuds between its power and the magic sparking and fizzing, though quiet and invisible, in the air; even better yet - this phone belonged to a certain man whom the three giggling and bending over its shiny, black surface, hated with a vengeance. This phone belonged to the Potion’s Master: Severus Snape.

“Go on, Hermione.” Ron slid the phone over to the small witch with bushy brown hair. “You said you knew the password.”

Hermione nodded, growing solemn at the task at hand, shoved her brown mane out of her eyes and bent over the screen, which grew illuminated at the touch of a button.

“Merlin’s beard, what my dad would give to be in our place,” Ron breathed, as Hermoine tapped out some letters and numbers with her forefingers. “A fellytone, and a working one too-”

“It’s called a telephone, Ron,” Harry corrected, though he could barely breathe as he watched Hermione’s fingers working. “Ha, I cannot believe we’ve actually managed to do this. Fred and George are nothing compared to us, now.”

“I’d love to see their faces,” Ron whispered, almost wriggling with glee. “And I’m the one who fished it out of his pocket! Now, all we need to do is-”

“Got it.” Hermione smiled as the screen changed, displaying buttons with different icons upon a plain, dark backdrop. “Now, if I remember correctly, it's called explorer…”

“Why aren’t we doing this in the common room, again?” Ron continued. “I know Percy’s a prefect, but even he wouldn’t-”

“Because, Ron,” Hermoine began as she chose the right button, “we have no idea what Snape actually keeps or searches for on this phone. If it’s all weird, we’d be too embarrassed to even attempt showing it to them. Plus,” she added, when Ron opened his mouth to interject, “it’s not like we’re going to cast it out of the window as soon as we’re done. It’s not magic - at least I don’t think it is - and it won’t just disappear or fly out to find Snape. We can show the rest of our classmates later.”

Ron opened his mouth again, but then understood the sense of this and closed it.

“There it is,” Harry said, as Hermione searched for the right option. “History. Oh, boy, this is gonna be good. If he’s not cleared it.”

Ron rubbed his hands and rocked on the balls of his feet as he leaned on the table. “Yeah, as ‘Mione said, I bet it's all weird. Let's see what’s first.”

Dangling hair and breathing mingled and hovered inches from the square surface as all three leaned in to see. However, there was hardly any giggling, after they all read the first position on the records of what, precisely, the Potion’s Master searched for whenever he had a spare moment. In fact, there was none at all, and the glee was slowly replaced with something that none of them had been expecting.

Hermoine’s eyes dulled and eyebrows furrowed as she read the first position aloud.

“... ‘How to be more approachable’.”

There was a rather awkward pause. Hermione made a rather sad ‘oh’ sound. Ron shifted slightly.

“That’s kind-of sad, to be honest,” he finally managed, frowning.

“Scroll down, Hermione,” Harry waved aside the tension and leaned forward again. “That’s only the first position. Perhaps he’s had a change of heart.”

“And the most recent,” Hermione murmured, but she scrolled down obediently.

“Yeah, I bet it’s all weird further down,” Ron muttered, but they were all disproved again. Their childish glee was completely reduced to something rather prickly and uncomfortable as Hermione ploughed through the searches:

“...Where can happiness be obtained…”

“...How to tolerate children…”

“...Patience, tips...”

“...Wholesome fiction with happy ending… stories with happy ending… which sad books to avoid… books to make one’s soul happy…”

And then:

“...Fast, effective…”

Here, Hermione paused and bit her lip, her eyes sparkling strangely, her brow now heavy. Harry glanced at her, then finished for her.

“Fast, effective headache relief.” He straightened and shifted from foot to foot, then looked at Ron for some sort of inspiration to dilute the thickness of the air. “Did you know Snape gets headaches, Ron?”

“Nope,” Ron offered, looking rather ashamed of himself and his gloating, the tips of his ears pink. “I didn’t think so. I mean, it makes sense though, doesn’t it…?”

“I feel terrible,” Hermione whispered, balling her fists.

“Yeah, we should probably put it back,” Ron said, though he didn’t look as enthusiastic about slipping the phone back into the Potion Master’s pocket than he did about proudly obtaining it. “Should we just leave it on his desk when he’s not in the classroom?”

“And how are we going to do that?” Harry asked, frowning. “We can’t go running around the dungeons. The Slytherin common rooms are there.”

Hermione sniffed, then rolled her eyes, pushing the phone away from her. “You have an invisibility cloak, Harry. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”

“Oh, yeah.”

They stood there for another few seconds, before Harry reached out and hesitantly pocketed the phone. “Let’s get back to the common rooms. We don’t need to mention this to anybody.”

“No, we don’t.” Ron said sadly, recalling his former words of potential victory over Fred and George and how they just went down the drain. “Never mind. Let’s just go.”

The dust was rather glad to be free of them, and so was the classroom. Only the desks, however, were rather miserable that they once again stood alone in their fortitude of unuse, unnoticed, only there to be berated and slandered by the students. Just like, as the trio would soon deduce, Severus Snape, the Potion’s Master, was.

A week passed. The phone was returned back to Snape’s desk without much ado. After that, it was unmentioned, and whenever it was glimpsed, three pairs of eyes were averted to the candles or windows, and most certainly not to each other, no words about it leaving their mouths, though they most certainly bounced around in their brains, though some were more cluttered than the others’.

It was through Harry’s mouth that the uncomfortable topic surfaced and it did so on a Saturday evening, in the library, when the day was slowly coming to an end and the sun was sinking slowly outside the mullioned windows. Ron was scowling at his Transfiguration homework, when Harry shot out a sigh through his nose and put down his quill.

“Listen, guys,” he started, nudging Hermione, who didn’t look as though she had heard him and just kept right on scribbling, her nose nearly touching the parchment. “I’ve been thinking… Hey, Hermione, are you listening?”

“Shush.” Hermoine glared at him, then shot a pointed glance at Madam Pince. “We’ll get kicked out.”

Ron’s scowl didn’t shift and was merely re-directed at its favourite subject of complaint with large front teeth and a vehement urge to stuff her head with new fragments of knowledge.

“Not if we keep our voices down,” he said, potting his quill too. “Talk, Harry.”

Harry opened his mouth mainly to play on Hermione’s nerves than to follow through on his plans, when his mind did a detour to the wisdom of him touching on such a sensitive topic in a public place.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” he said with a nod. “Not because this is the library. We need to speak about… you know what.”

This was of enough weight for Hermione’s quill to stop moving. She shot him a glance, then met eyes with Ron and sighed.

“Yes,” she whispered. “We can’t speak about this here. To be honest, I’ve been meaning to speak about this to you both too.”

They latched up their bags, grabbed their stationary, then swiftly exited the library, tripping over Harry and Ron’s untied shoelaces. Hermoine grabbed them by their bags when they turned the corridor towards the portrait of the Fat Lady.

“The common room’s full,” she hissed. “We should go outside. We won’t be overheard there.”

“Hermoine’s right,” Harry said, nudging Ron. “Let’s go.”

They turned around, then began slowly walking down towards the main gates. They all kept silent, their eyes trained mainly to the floor, sometimes only looking up to meander around the other students milling around the corridor. It was probably why they didn’t notice the ominous figure walking towards them until they had all but face-planted themselves into its black robes.

Hermione was the first to look up and stick out her arms to halt the other two, her eyes sharpening after she was prodded out of her thoughts by this slightly unwelcome reality. Harry and Ron had similarly dumb expressions as they blinked up at her, then at what was in front of them.

Professor Snape’s voice was as restricted to nothing but cold disdain as usual, and the black of both his clothes and expression matched this regularity.

“Where are we going?”

Harry opened his mouth, but Hermione beat him to it.

“Outside for a moment, Professor Snape.”

Harry paused, then nodded along with Ron, trying to appear as though they weren’t hiding anything at all. The Potion’s Master observed them for a moment or two longer, before lowering eyebrows and, as it seemed, his guard.

“I suggest you look where you’re going,” was all he said, before drawing his cape about him and turning to pass them. But he didn’t manage to pass them, when Hermoine opened her mouth and after drawing a deep breath, emitted a string of words strung upon the same one:

“I hope you have a good night, Professor Snape.”

It was quite uncanny, really, how all three males looked at her with the same degree of incredulity and astonishment upon their faces, apparently forgetting things like enmity and dislike. It was enough to make poor Hermione flush a deep red and her words to run away from her before she could properly filter them through her teeth and tongue.

“Just being polite, is all,” she muttered, before she tugged on Harry and Ron’s sleeves sharply. “Come on, let’s go.”

She dragged them off with enough force for Snape’s surprise to cool off and his usual stone face return as he watched them stagger, though that was only visible to Harry and Ron for a few seconds before the vehement grip on their arms prevented them from turning back around, in case they both got whiplash.

“Are you mental? What was that?” Ron hissed at her, when they rounded a corner, then he did a double take when he fixed his eyes on her features. “Blimey, Hermione, you’ve gone absolutely scarlet.”

“You’ve gone redder than his hair,” Harry commented, though with a hint of admiration in his tone as he stared.

“Oh, shut up,” Hermione muttered, then dragged them through the main door, into the cool of the evening. “Never mind that. Let’s talk about the subject at hand. And don’t tell me you’ve not been thinking about doing something similar to what I did.”

She glared at Ron and Harry, still flushed. They both pulled faces back, but they dropped their gaze after a few seconds as they trudged through the foliage.

“Alright, maybe,” Ron muttered under his breath, when they reached the black lake. “But it was nowhere near to what you just did.”

“What precisely did I just do?” Hermione snapped. “I was just being polite.”

“You were sucking up to him-”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Yes you were.” Ron put on a high-pitched voice. “I hope you have a wonderful night, Professor Snape-”

“Oh, shut up!” She stamped her foot. “You act as though you’re entirely ignorant. You were there when we looked at his history. You saw it. And if complaining and arguing about this is the best you can do, then I pity you, Ronald Weasley!”

“Alright,” Harry cut in, weakly. “That’s not what we came here to do. Let’s just get it over and done with before curfew.”

Hermione glared at Ron once more before settling down. Both folded their arms and stared at the lake. Harry pursed his lips, for it was much harder to project his thoughts than he thought it would be, now that they were actually all together for that purpose alone.

“I think Hermione’s right,” he began, when Hermione was no longer red. “It would be wrong to keep at… you know.”

Ron snorted. “Being mad at Snape for picking on us for no reason?”

“He picks on everyone.” Hermione said, her eyes narrowed. “We’re no exception. Well, perhaps Harry is, but then you did get off to the wrong start at the beginning of the year.”

“No he didn’t,” said Ron.

“He was talking back to him,” she argued. “And it was the first interaction they had. No wonder Snape hates Harry.”

“And you,” Ron said pointedly. “You’re pretty much every teacher’s pet but his, and do you know why? Because he’s an-”

“Can you two not?” Harry snapped. “Can you two calm down? Please? This is serious.”

The arguing pair scowled at one another and resumed evaporating the lake with their glares.

“So,” Harry said, once enough silence had passed, “I think we ought to… you know, help him a bit. Be, erm, nicer.”

Ron turned and creased his forehead, but Hermione nodded, solemnly.

“We ought to,” she said, softly. “I told you, I was thinking about it. It’s all about perspective, really.”

“Perspective?”

“Yes,” she said. “Think about it from Snape’s perspective. Do you reckon he has a lot of friends?”

Ron scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh. Who would want to be friends with him? ‘Course he hasn’t.”

“Precisely,” she said, though she looked at him reproachfully. “You’re teaching over five-hundred children Potions, all of whom, if I may add, are intent on either not listening, not doing homework, or just being downright rude. Yes, Ron, I know he’s like that too, and perhaps he does deserve it, and if we didn’t know better, we’d be justified in biting back. The point is, he’s clearly sad. He looks it. He looks downright miserable all the time.”

“You’re blowing this over.”

“Oh, am I?” Hermione said. “Tell me one time in which you saw him smile. And I don’t mean meanly. I mean happily. Have you ever heard him laugh? Because I haven’t.”

Ron sucked on his lips, looking torn. Harry listened, looking solemn.

“I haven’t either,” he said, quietly. “At first, I thought like Ron does, but… I’ve lived with the Dursleys my whole life. They’ve held grudges for no reason, for a long time, and it's tiring to be the person receiving them and keeping them up.”

Hermione looked at him with eyes lined with admiration. She nodded.

“Exactly, Harry. We could just be the reason for somebody’s… well, perhaps not happiness, but… tolerance.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Ron asked, still looking begrudging, but not unwilling. “By saying good morning and good night?”

“We could,” Harry said thoughtfully. “That wouldn’t be going over the top, or anything.”

Hermione must have thought about this more carefully than both of them put together, because she started counting out everything they could do upon her fingers as she spoke.

“Not just that,” she began. “We could do everything which is expected of us, for starters. Like doing homework on time, doing it correctly, not just so that it's done and boxed off without thought, the right parchment length, perhaps more… I know, we could get the older students to check it for us, so that we know we’ve done it right… then, we could actually listen in lessons and excel…”

Ron was frowning as she spoke. Even Harry was getting slightly doubtful they would ever manage such a feat.

“...Do extra work. If you don’t want to, Ron, then we could do something outside of lessons. Not necessarily work.”

“Then what?” Harry asked. “Like what?”

“We could… you know.” Hermione’s face became slightly pink again. “We could find out when his birthday is.”

“That’s going too far,” said Ron, firmly, looking slightly agonised. “Imagine his face… oh, no, I couldn’t.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Hermione agreed. “But then, I don’t know what else to do.”

“That sounds like a pretty good start to me,” Harry said. “Let’s start with lessons, Hermione, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll think of something else.”

Hermione’s face lit up, and for a moment both boys were afraid that she’d hug them.

“Great!” She grinned, then began walking towards the castle. “We have Potions on Monday, and homework due. Let’s get this done now! There’s still time. Alicia Spinnet’s good at potions - she’ll be able to point us in the right direction.”

Harry and Ron turned from the lake and began to follow Hermione as she marched towards the castle with an enigmatical spring in her step.

“I don’t know about you,” said Ron, as she talked on, “but I’ve got a weird feeling this is going to end up in a mess.”

“We’ve been in loads already,” Harry said, though there was something uneasy in his chest too, “so it won’t really make a difference. But Hermione’s got a point,” he added, after they reached the steps to the castle gate, “it must be annoying, being Snape. And, as we all know, doing homework properly’s always a good start to everything.”

“That’s utter garbage.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, grinning. “I’m quoting Hermione. She does it like she can’t live without it. And, from a teacher’s point of view, less marking seems like a good thing, at least to me.”

So the endeavours began, though they didn’t hold out to be as constant a flourish and blaze as Hermione made it out to be. Especially not after she insisted that they do twice the usual length as some form of surprise.

“I’m not doing that,” Ron complained, throwing himself back in his chair and folding his arms. “I’ve got enough work as it is. And I’ve already done it to the best possible standard. Even you’ve said it's not bad, Hermione.”

“It looks decent,” she said, unrolling her homework, which made both Harry and Ron’s pale in comparison. “But if we’re going to show that we’re not hostile any more, we ought to try harder.”

So the homework was done somewhat begrudgingly and everything seemed to be going to plan, before Sunday evening. More precisely, the free afternoon of Harry and Ron was disturbed by Hermione suddenly coming in through the portrait hole, clutching something behind her back, then moving swiftly towards them and sitting at the table at which they were currently playing wizard’s chess.

“I’ve got something,” she said, slightly flushed. “You’re not going to believe what I made in the girls’ bathroom.”

The game was paused and the boys looked suspicious as they turned to look at her.

“The girls’ bathroom?” Ron repeated bluntly. “What have you been making in the girls bathroom, Hermione, that could make you go so bloody pink?”

They both looked blank as she withdrew a hand from behind her back and placed its contents upon the surface of the table with a rather proud flourish. It was a glass bottle, the sort which looked rather like a cuboid, stoppered with a round cork. It was filled with a light blue liquid, which seemed to glow faintly as it rested within its cool, glass confines.

“That doesn’t look innocent,” Harry commented, knocking over Ron’s bishop. “What is it, Hermione?”

“It’s a headache draught,” she said proudly. “I found the recipe in one of the books in the library.”

Ron pushed his lips out as he stared at it, then picked it up.

“How d’you know he’ll know this is a headache draught, Hermione?”

“I reckon he’d know, since he’s the Potion’s Master.”

“But doesn’t that mean he’s fully capable of making these himself?” Harry asked. “It’s not like it would be a problem for him.”

“Yes, Harry,” Hermione said slightly impatiently, taking back the bottle from Ron, “but the thing is that some people, men especially, simply don’t bother with taking care of themselves. That’s what my mum once said, and I’ve observed it since. I have a good reason to suspect that Snape isn’t the sort to ensure his health is top-notch.”

“I wouldn’t care if I was him,” Ron agreed. “What’s there to live for, for him? If I had to teach a bunch of snotty kids Potions everyday, I’d probably kill myself.”

There was a bit of an awkward pause - Harry had begun to nod, but lost the ability to move his head as he caught the disapproval in Hermione’s eyes.

“I mean,” Ron corrected himself, “you’re probably right, anyway. How long did it take you to make this?” “An hour,” she replied, “but that was because I messed up the first one. I added a bat-wing too many, so I had to pour that down the sink. Anyway.” She sat up straight again, folding her hands on the table neatly. “It said that half this bottle is to be drunk with fluid twice daily. So we need to make this once a day.”

“We’re going to run out of ingredients within a week,” Harry commented.

“Not unless we take a little too many during Potions,” Hermione said coolly. “It’s a basic potion, using basic ingredients. Nothing Snape doesn’t have in his cupboard.”

“That would be stealing, though,” Ron said.

“No it wouldn’t, though, since we are giving it back to him in the form of self-help,” Harry replied. “And you are going to be making it every day, Hermione?”

In response, Hermoine thrust her hands into her pockets and produced another six vials, placing them with a clink, clink, clink upon the table, neatly. The boys looked at her with varying degrees of astonishment and admiration as she lined the bottles up.

“When these run out,” was the nonchalant reply, though the pink returned to Hermione’s cheeks as it was spoken, “I will do so. Unless you’d like to help me make them.”

“I think I’m good,” Ron said. “You can take all the credit if you want, Hermione - I’ll be happy with just doing extra work.”

“Great,” Hermione replied, ignoring the slight annoyance tinging the last two words spoken. “Then we will start from tomorrow.”

As all three of the enlightened Gryffindors lined up outside the dungeon’s classroom on a Monday morning, all three could feel their hearts beating somewhere in their stomach. Hermione, as usually was the case when feverish with excitement or trepidation, wouldn’t stop talking, even for the danger of any nerves exploding in her counterparts.

“Remember what I mentioned yesterday,” she whispered with obstinance, leaning in so that she wouldn’t be overheard. “If anything happens, try not to shout, don’t argue, just try to be as polite as you can. Yes, even if it isn’t your fault, Ron,” she added, cutting off Ron’s indignant reply. “Just try to be as good-willed as possible.”

A drawling voice cut off this heartfelt advice.

“What are you three whispering about?” Draco Malfoy called from the front of the line. “You must be conspiring, since you’re standing so close to each other. Or are you just trying to kiss Potter, Granger?”

Hermione straightened, Ron scowled, Harry opened his mouth to retort, but they never got to, since the former turned around and raised her eyebrows.

“I hope you’re not jealous,” she replied, coolly, “because that would be gross.”

Malfoy scoffed. “Jealous? Of kissing you? Bleh.” He made a show of shuddering, then nudged Crabbe and Goyle, standing beside him. “Imagine kissing someone with teeth like that. They're absolutely massive. It would be like trying to kiss a beaver.”

Hermione’s lips turned down; Ron flushed a fiery red and took a step forward, but Hermione grabbed his shoulders before his clenched fist could go into swing.

“Snape will invite us in any second,” she hissed. “Don’t be provoked, Ron.”

“Yeah, don’t listen to him,” Harry said, shooting a look of hatred towards the blonde, pinched-featured boy guffawing. “He’s just being an idiot. It’s his natural state, he can’t help it.”

At that moment, the doors to the classroom creaked open, and they all began to file into their places. Harry and Ron began to meander towards the back of the classroom to their usual spot, but Hermione knocked on their arms and pointed towards the front row instead.

“Oh no,” Ron moaned, looking fearful, “no, not the front desks, Hermione…”

“Shut up, Ron,” was all she said before she dragged them towards the ominous front desks, just (oh, horror!) in front of the black board. They ignored the strange looks they received from the others around them and instead focused on unpacking all of their things needed for the lesson.

It seemed that they were all off for a good start, when Harry opened his bag, rummaged around in it for a moment, then looked stricken.

“What is it?” Hermione hissed, noticing, as she laid out her stationary geometrically on the desk. “Did you forget your homework?”

“No, I’ve forgotten to bring my Potions book,” he replied, turning his bag upside down. “Oh, great…”

“Silence,” Snape called from behind his desk, watching them with a distasteful look on his pale face. “Sit down.”

They all sat and slid their bags off the desk. Harry hoped nothing amiss would be noticed and instead of wriggling around nervously, he tried to listen carefully as the lesson began. Of course, Hermione had made the effort of ensuring that she was sitting between him and Ron, so that they wouldn’t give into temptations and burst into conversation with one another during inappropriate times.

Snape’s eyes darted towards them in a rather suspicious nature as the lesson began, as though he was expecting something dishonest at the least from this sudden change of seating and eagerness. However, the three looked back with innocent eyes, which, in turn, made the Potions Master’s eyes narrower, before he turned to write upon the chalkboard.

“You will be working in pairs,” he said, once all the instructions had been written and the sleeping draught introduced, “I expect this to be done and detailed on parchment by the end of the lesson.”

The vehemence with which Hermione threw herself into the task was quite unsettling, at least for the other two. However, since there were three of them, either Harry or Ron was going to have to go and work with another, and since neither of them wanted to be parted from Hermione (who, as usual, looked as though she knew exactly what she was doing) there was a little bit of dithering done.

“Ron, why don’t you go and work with Neville?” Hermione suggested, as Harry slid over to her and almost grasped her arm as though to claim her for the lesson.

Ron looked stricken.

“Are you mad?” he hissed, as discreetly as he could. “We’ll blow up the classroom!”

Hermione sighed. “No, you won’t-”

“Yes we will! It’s already happened twice before!”

However, Snape intervened before anything could be decided. They flinched, feeling the cold of his shadow and turned to see him standing behind them with his arms folded and his eyes still narrowed.

“Well?” He looked at the dithering three, from bushy brown hair to green eyes to freckles on nose. “This doesn’t look like a pair, to me.”

Harry shot a look at Ron; Ron glowered and made no move to move away. Hermione looked desperate.

“I’ll work with Neville,” she said, making them both shoot her panicked looks instead. “You two work together.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Snape said coolly, his eyes darting back and forth between them. “Potter, move your things to Longbottom’s desk. Weasley, you will work with Granger.”

Harry was about to open his mouth to protest, when Hermione stood on his foot and he ended up shutting it and nodding instead.

“Yes, sir,” he said, though sounding slightly dispirited, then obediently gathered up his things and went to sit with Neville, whose round eyes didn’t leave Snape for the entirety of the time. He laid out all of his things, trying not to look at Ron, who looked rather smug at the change of circumstances, then looked up to find Snape’s eyes narrowed more still as they swept over the things he laid out on the desk.

“Where is your textbook, Potter?” Snape asked softly, his arms folded about him, looking much displeased. “Did you perhaps think that the presence of the scar on your forehead makes you unobliged to bring it? Or perhaps you think you know what to do already, without the book’s aid?”

Malfoy, who was working with Goyle to their left, snorted and nudged his crony. Harry remembered Hermione’s words and swallowed down his words, which were far too red and sharp for the plan they were trying so hard to execute.

“I apologise, sir,” he said, managing to sound relatively polite and stop himself from glowering at the same time, then took a deep breath. “I must have left it in the library yesterday. It’s my fault entirely.”

Neville stared at him. So did Snape. Harry turned to the former.

“Can I share your potions book today, Neville?”

“Sure,” Neville stammered out, then slid it over to him. “Here… here you go.”

“Thank you.” He turned to look back at Snape, who was looking incredulous at the least, almost nervous at the fact that he wasn’t firing a projectile of arrogance back at him. “Sorry to be an inconvenience, sir.”

At this, Snape actually took a small step back, twitching his cape around himself as though putting up a shield of defence, his eyebrows unbending themselves and creeping slowly upwards. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione shoot him a huge grin and give him a very big thumbs-up. Ron looked torn between cringing and clapping, but ended up nodding in approval.

Snape must have been so thrown off-balance by this alarming bout of humility on Harry’s part, that didn’t even give him a reply. He just slid away from their desk with a last thorough look at him, probably deciding he was under the influence of some spell and not being worthy of both his time or his nerves.

“Nice job, Harry,” Hermione said to him over her bubbling cauldron. “See, you can keep your cool if you want to.”

“I nearly didn’t,” Harry replied with a grin, feeling some odd sense of pride from this accomplishment. “But tell me, Hermione, how are you going to put that vial on his desk?”

“Oh, I’ve got that all figured out,” she said rather breezily, dropping powdered porcupine spine into her mixture. “I’ll leave my book here, then come and get it during break, while he’s gone to the staffroom. Or perhaps I’ll just do it when his back is turned. I’ll manage somehow.”

With that Harry couldn’t argue, so he turned back to his potion and met with Neville’s intrigued face.

“What are you up to?” he asked quietly, as they cut and measured. Harry thought there wasn’t any point in elaborating, so he just said:

“We’re trying to be nice to Snape.”

“Nice to Snape?” Neville repeated, pausing with his cutting knife hovering above his cutting board. “Why’s that?”

Harry shrugged, stirring his potion the way it said on the chalkboard. “Nothing much. Thought we’d have some fun and do some good, you know, Neville?”

Neville didn’t look as though he understood, but then he shrugged and nodded.

“That’s… nice,” he murmured thoughtfully, then nothing more was said on the matter, though he didn’t look quite as uneasy as he did before. In fact, he looked slightly impressed.

Everything would have ended nicely and according to plan if Harry and Neville weren’t stationed at that particular desk. Their sleeping draught was slowly turning a bright-purple colour, as was Hermione and Ron’s (when Harry glanced over), when suddenly there was a sound of splashing and Harry was slapped in the face with several globs of his concoction; someone had thrown something into their cauldron.

Goyle was grinning. Malfoy sniggered, then moved a few steps back to his desk.

“Looked like it needed more bat-wing, Potter.” He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

Harry stepped forward and was about to tell him exactly what he thought of him with his fists, when Neville poked him frantically and said, “Look!”

He turned back just as the huge, purple bubble swelling out of the rim of his cauldron popped; there was a sound like a giant slug being squelched and Neville and Harry were drenched from head to toe in sticky goo.

There was a gasp, silence, then a few pounding footsteps, rustling of fabric and Snape stood before them with his eyes black and his mouth sneering.

“You idiots,” he began, whipping out his wand as their cauldron gave another sickening squelch and more gunk splattered out. “Did you not read the instructions? Can you two even read?”

“It wasn’t our fault, Professor,” Neville stammered, wiping gunk off his face, looking worriedly at his ruined robes. “Malfoy threw a bat wing into our cauldron. It was coming along so well, too…”

Snape’s eyes flickered to Malfoy, who pulled a face which was obviously meant to look innocent, then back to Harry, who had taken off his glasses and was frowning as he tried to remove the sludge from their surface so he could actually see.

“That’s right, Professor,” he managed, frowning. “We’d followed your instructions, this time.”

From the corner of his eye Harry saw the shape of Hermione draw something out from her pocket, nip backwards a few steps and discreetly place it on Snape’s desk.

Snape didn’t notice anything, still looking furious. He looked at the purple gunk disdainfully, waved his wand, vanishing it off them and the table.

“Five points from Slytherin,” he snapped at Malfoy, then turned to Neville and Harry. “And five from Gryffindor, for the disturbance.”

This was horribly unfair and normally, Harry would have exclaimed and let him know that it was just so, but Harry had a certain mindset now along with Hermione making frantic motions at him from behind Snape’s back, and so he didn’t say a word as he put his glasses back on and stared at him.

“I apologise for the inconvenience, sir.” He pursed his mouth and shot a look at Malfoy, who’s grin wasn’t as prominent, now that he had been put in his place. “Thank you for cleaning the mess up for us.”

This time, Snape certainly looked baffled. He even looked displeased, his lip curling downwards, though Harry had a feeling it was because he had no idea what was going on, rather than him being disgusted at the good upbringing he was no doubt convinced Harry didn’t have. Ron stifled a snigger with his hands. Hermione smiled.

“Yes,” Neville piped up, surprising all of them, as he examined his clean robes. “Thanks for the help, sir.”

Snape stared at him, then shot a glance at Harry, then made a sound similar to an incredulous scoff and waved his hand for the rest to get on with working. The babble of chatter slowly resumed, as did the clinking of vials and hushed muttering of the flames beneath the cauldrons.

Harry watched Snape walk back to his desk with his eyes still narrowed, sit down, apparently lost in thought, then actually look at his desk and pause.

Hermione’s eyes shot a discreet look at the Potions Master and the corner of her mouth couldn’t restrain itself from twitching upwards as Snape picked up the headache draught in two fingers (it was very clearly labelled in block writing, so that it was unable to tell who had written it) and read the label. The trio watched his eyes grow wide as his eyes scanned over it - he was astonished! - then flash upwards with suspicion.

Hermione had already averted her eyes with Ron, pretending to be reading a passage in the book together, and Harry managed to do the same very shortly after, so Snape simply scoured the room and found no potential gifters in any of the gathered. He looked back down to the little blue bottle. He uncorked it, brought it up to his nose hesitantly (probably expecting a lungful of poisonous fumes, Harry thought), then with the same expression lowered it, corked it and carefully placed it back down on his desk.

Like Hermione, Harry couldn’t keep himself from smiling as he watched the Potions Master’s reaction. Snape looked blankly at the vial for a second longer, then a strange expression of bewilderment came over him: he dragged a hand down his face, pinched the bridge of his nose and began to massage his eyes. He looked impressively beaten. More befuddled than Harry had ever seen him, which was strange, for this was nothing but an apparent act of thoughtfulness - it was as though he had no idea how to react to it!

As the class began to unroll their parchments to copy down the writing on the blackboard and add notes, Snape’s eyes kept shooting reluctant glances towards the strange present on his desk. Once or twice he even picked it up with a strange look of calm and intrigue on his face to study it.

Harry couldn’t sit still, and from the looks of it, neither could Hermione and Ron. Ron kept snickering to himself; Hermione was pink with pleasure and often joined him in his quiet outbursts of laughter. Before the lesson was out, all three were in such high spirits that Neville looked unsettled, because whenever he caught their eye they beamed at him richly, then went back to their work smiling.

“Homework,” Snape called at the end of their lesson, back to his dark mood and expression. “I want you to place it on the front table as you walk out. Now, go.”

Harry withdrew his homework from his bag - this, he hadn’t forgotten since Hermione had checked both their bags thrice - along with Hermione and Ron. They packed up, put on their bags, then approached the desk together. All three parchments were unmistakably longer than anybody else’s and almost rolled off the table as they placed them on the pile.

When they turned to Snape, his face was made of marble.

“See you later, sir,” Ron began. “Good lesson.”

“Have a good rest of your day, Professor Snape,” Hermione added.

“Thanks again for your help, Professor,” Harry finished with a polite nod, then turned and walked out.

As soon as they were out in the corridor and the door was shut, they all burst out, clutched at one another in excitement, hissing out observations and whispering:

“Blimey, did you see his face?” Ron chortled, punching Harry in the arm. “He was absolutely gob-smacked.”

“I bet he feels bad about taking points off you, now,” Hermione added, her teeth gleaming as she grinned. “But listen. In a sense, this is completely worth it.”

“Yeah, we couldn’t get him so out of it any other way if we tried,” Ron added with vehemence. “We’re closer to getting him to quit his job by being decent to him than by being awful. Did you see his face when he picked up Hermione’s vial?”

He pulled a face of bewilderment, doing such a good impression that they all burst out laughing as they rounded the corner, running straight into Professor McGonagall who raised an eyebrow at this buzzing of laughter and jovial mood which they were exhibiting.

“Good morning,” she said to them, clearly looking for an explanation which, unfortunately for her, she wasn’t going to get, for her recipients were having far too much fun in their enigmatical benevolence to provide it to her.

“Good morning, Professor McGonagall,” Hermione sang as they walked past. “You look really nice today!”

“Yeah, enjoy the nice weather, Professor,” Harry added, “while it lasts!”

“Have a good morning,” Ron added as they got out of earshot, then waved and turned back around.

Minerva McGonagall stared after them with her lips pursed, wondering whether to follow them to check whether any charms had been cast on them to put them in such a cheerful spell or to pen this strange enthusiasm as the aftereffect of something ridiculous. The former seemed most likely to be the case, since they had just come out of Potions, and as far as everybody was aware - unless something catastrophic had happened which had temporarily rendered the Potions Master a fool in their eyes - it wasn’t exactly their favourite lesson for obvious reasons.

She made up her mind a moment later, and after twitching the quill she was holding in two fingers, she directed her footsteps towards the dungeons and the Potion’s classroom to find out more about the state of affairs.

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short666bread · 23 days ago

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Ron is looking for them

#insomnia scribbles #x files screenshot redraw #s1 e5 the jersey devil #just like in Jersey devil there’s a baby #it fits ok #except they’re in the snow instead of New Jersey #unrelated but every time I play YouTube at like 4 am #it autoplays folding ideas after my selected video #every time!#like it’s good!#but I already know abt GameStop meme stock #yk I do you have my watch history #ykw seamus is sufficiently malleable that he’s been one of my fav and least fav side characters fic by fic #I mean as a consequence of authorial direction that feels to me like #equally plausible #but if I have one solid hc abt the guy #it’s that he’s the most likely of his year group to get sucked in by Reddit memestock hype #crypto whatever #specifically as a consequence of the community aspect/atmosphere #Seamus diamond hands finnegan says hodl #sorry to this man #anyways #draco malfoy #drarry #harry potter #harry x draco #hp fanart #hpdm #ron Weasley #the x files

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347-emeraldbitch · 2 months ago

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Percy: I am bored and depressed.

Percy: I’m going to go get another degree. Bye ✌🏻

Fred, George, Ron, & Ginny: Nooooooo!!!!!

Molly: Yesssss!!!!

#percy weasley #harry potter #hp #older sibling problems #weasley siblings #it’s like in law history or fucking aerospace engineering #the siren that is higher education 🎶📚🎶

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beggars-opera · 6 months ago

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New favorite gravestone unlocked in Sunken R'lyeh New Haven

#history #hp lovecraft

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dronescapesvideos · 1 year ago

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The Red Baron, WWI. Soldiers examine what remains of Manfred von Richthofen's aircraft after he was shot down, and killed over Vaux-sur-Somme, France, just days before his 26th birthday, but by then already an aviation legend.

➤➤ HIGHER RESOLUTION IMAGE: https://dronescapes.video/RedBaron

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cursed-herbalist · 2 years ago

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THE LEGEND OF THE PORTKEY HP • HISTORY OF MAGIC

—

‘Love doesn’t fear the flames.’

Once upon a time, there were two feuding families. Both were powerful and magically bound to dragons; their rivalry centuries old and deep-rooted. Whereas one could speak to dragons, the other was gifted with extraordinarily long lives.

As the fates would have it, two members of the warring families fell in love with each other—a girl cut from marble, and a boy as wise as the vines.

They knew each other since childhood; yet had looked at each other with spite. One day, however, in a fit of frustration, the girl fled to the woods. There, she stumbled upon the boy and his dragon. His calm soothed the girl and they quickly laid down their quarrel and formed a strong bond.

Scared of their families, they kept their love hidden. And so, they contented themselves with secret meetings and swift touches whenever they could. Both, however, lived on opposite ends of the world, so they were forced to part ways, eventually. But their love was strong and they found a way to be together.

As there was no way to travel far distances, fast and much less unnoticed, the two lovers took to spell-crafting. Countless moons passed but they soon managed to charm an object they held dear to take them to a chosen location merely by touch.

The objects they enchanted took them to a hideaway which the boy had found somewhere in the Chinese mountains. And to ensure their safety, they guarded it with elaborate magic. Anyone who dared follow them would either prove worthy or be lost forever.

And so, every night, the couple escaped to the misty mountains to see each other.

Alas, the young couple’s joy didn’t last long, as their love entailed much more consequences. A long brooding conflict within the first family threatened to escalate as she and other members of her family opened their eyes to the wickedness of their traditions. The boy, however, had sworn loyalty to the girl and so the couple fought side by side to defeat her relatives.

Seven days, flames heated the earth. Seven days, the clashing of metal hummed through the air. Until, on the last day, her uncle’s sword pierced through the boy’s dragon’s scales.

Thinking her beloved was dead, the girl gave in to her rage. She killed her uncle and declared the war to be over. But despite their victory and the change it brought about, the couple never returned from the scorched battlefield—their souls forever lost to the roaring flames.

No wizard has since found the location of the hideaway nor the key to enter it. Yet some say, if you hone in closely while using a Portkey, you can still feel the invisible thread attaching the two—the desperate pull to be together.

—

An ancient ship cannot go without a legend @kathrynalicemc ❤️🐉

#the legend has been edited over time and the battle is no longer part of it 🤫#only a few know of this version and I guess the common one would end with:#And so every night they escaped to the misty mountains to see each other. And one day never returned.#what’s the truth? what’s fiction? will we ever know?#there are probably more versions of it out there #the legend of the portkey #aako #aalis durand #mako song #the durand family #the song family #wizarding world #history of magic #hp lore #hp history #less loves lore

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egosdelirium · 2 months ago

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On Losing James Potter

And on feeling his absence like an amputated limb - By Sirius Black.

("Stag", by Edwin Henry Landseer)

Nowadays, one single thought of James is a death sentence. Every stray memory of the way his glasses used to sit a little crookedly on his tanned face, every deconstructed image of his toothy smile feels like what Sirius thinks being shot through the head must be like.

At the slightest mention of his name, Sirius' brain starts to stutter, stumble, trip.

It shakes around his cranium aimlessly, trying to regain a semblance of balance after taking the hit. The sound echoes in his eardrums with a murderous roar and it defeans anything around him.

Once, a fleeting thought of James would've brought Sirius comfort on the darkest of nights.

Now, it's mutilation.

Since Sirius watched James die,

(No, he was already DEAD, you were late!)

his eyes have not registered any other image. In fact, neither Lily's corpse nor Harry's desperate crying frown come back to haunt him during day and night alike, because Sirius simply didn't see them.

It's just James

On the wooden pavement

With his brown eyes wide open,

And a pool of drying blood around him that sticks underneath Black boots,

And a hole underneath his sternum that was once leaking but not anymore,

And no glasses on his face.

There are no glasses on his face, no glasses... where are the glasses?

... And a pair of round spectacles with a shattered lense a couple of feet away from him.

Sirius had picked them up with shaking fingers and gently placed them on his unusally pale face.

For the first time, those damned glasses had seemed to sit straight on James' nose, maybe because of how his head leaned limply to the side.

Sirius had then kneeled in front of him, in death just like he would've in life, and gently placed James' head on his own lap.

He'd caressed his cold skin once, twice, before the tears had come to blur his sight.

Sirius had sobbed, retched, gasped for breath, and choked on it when he couldn’t get any air inside his lungs. Screamed into the blood-soaked pavement.

Sirius had dried the teardrops that had fallen on James' face - most beloved face - with the backs of his hands, as the palms were too dirty and bloodied.

He'd tried to fix the glasses again, then tucked a couple of stray locks of hair behind his ears.

Sirius had placed a trembling kiss on James' forehead, and that had been it.

Afterward, he hasn't been able to see anything at all.

#prongsfoot #sirius black #james potter #grief journey #hp #marauders #james will haunt sirius forever #because that’s what loving someone does #grieving like a dog #dog motif #platonic prongsfoot #or not #you do you #the dog mustn't leave his owner's grave #losing him = losing half of everything that has ever existed in the history of the waking world #I had to put this delirium into words

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nostalgicacademia · 10 months ago

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Romanticising life at Hogwarts 🤎 Dark Academia

PD: Hi, I'm doing a survey on Aesthetics for my university research, anyone who knows what aesthetics are can answer and I'd be very happy!

Link to the survey

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jmwdoesthings · 5 months ago

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Snape's Search History - Part 2

Hello! Slightly shorter, but slowly crawling forward. I'm writing a book of my own which requires quite a lot of time and creative inspiration, so that's taking priority... anyway, enjoy!

Featuring: our favourite grumpy bat-boy and Minerva's I'm too old for this attitude.

Tags are at the bottom - if I've missed anyone, I do apologise.

***

Minerva McGonagall rapped sharply on the Potions classroom door and entered without waiting for a reply. She half expected something short of a calamity - perhaps the desks all scorched into remains beyond recognition, an infestation of some sort, chaos in the form of the furniture being stuck to the ceiling or anything else which would claim “round-way-wrong” - and Severus’ face contorted and twitching as he muttered dark things under his breath, but no. She was most mistaken.

Snape stood in the middle of his classroom, his arms folded, one hand propped beneath his chin as he stared blankly at his chalkboard, his face quite placid, even serene, as he stood deep in thought.

Minerva paused, feeling an odd pang of unrest in her chest at this strange change, for he was hardly in such a state and something must have been certainly very wrong. She followed the line his eyes made to the blackboard, saw nothing which could be the subject of such intense evaluation, so she merely looked back and forth between him and the wall a few times before clearing her throat.

His eyes flicked towards her, but the rest of his position remained stagnant.

Minerva didn’t say anything; neither did he. After a few moments, she looked past him, walked a few steps into the room, then turned around to look at the walls for any sort of unobvious differences that could have brought on this change of facade. Snape let out a dry chuckle.

“Nothing has changed since you were last here, Minerva.”

She turned to look at him.

“Then I don’t understand.”

Snape nodded thoughtfully.

“Me neither,” was the reply, before he marched up to his blackboard, turned on his heel, stood still, then began to evaluate the desks in the same position as before. This was enough for her to become slightly unnerved and her eyebrows to climb up to the highest ring on her forehead as she watched him. Still, the silence dragged on long before she formulated a question of any sort and that was only after the Potions Master got down on his knees and began to look under the desks as though he had previously misplaced a cork of a bottle, looking rather silly.

“What are you doing?” she said flatly, tilting her head to peruse him.

“Investigating,” he replied calmly from under the desk, looking up at the underbelly of the furniture.

“Investigating.” Minerva nodded, though she was everything but enlightened. “And what on could you be investigating under the desks, on the floor?”

Snape banged the back of his head on the desk-edge as he emerged from beneath it, cursed viciously, then this alien demeanour he had borrowed for a moment shattered and dissolved into his standard one. The dark scowl looked so normal back on its master’s face that Minerva’s chest loosened a little.

Snape drew out his wand. After a moment, in which more investigation and observance occurred, his scowl deepened and suddenly lunged and struck the front desk with it.

“Revellio.”

Nothing happened. Minerva watched him, po-faced. Snape repeated the gesture.

“Revellio!”

Not a peep. He growled, then pointed his wand at the ceiling.

“Revellio!” The wand was pointed at his blackboard. “Revellio!” The tip was directed at his desk, at the floor, at the back of the classroom, at the door of his store cupboard.

“Revellio! Revellio! REVELLIO-!”

“Severus, please,” McGonagall said, approaching him as he scowled and his eyes darted around the classroom. “This verges on nonsensical. There is nothing here.”

“That’s the problem!” Severus snarled, his knuckles white on the black of his wand. “This makes no sense whatsoever! Confounded brats… This is idiocy!”

“What is?”

“This innocence… this consideration!”

The last word was spat out like something vile. Minerva’s eyebrows dropped down and she looked completely exasperated.

“Consideration? Severus, what precisely is going on?”

“I don’t know!”

Minerva’s hands stiffened as she grew impatient.

“Can you please calm yourself down and tell me what brought on this… this whole examination?” she said. “I would be very grateful. This hysteria is quite past what is expected of both of us. Put your wand away, Severus.”

Snape seemed to regain himself as she spoke. He straightened, breathed out a long sigh through his nostrils, arrested the fire snapping in his eyes, then slowly fed his wand back into his sleeve and drew his cloak tight about him.

“Your pupils, Minerva,” he began in his low voice, looking much displeased, “have been behaving in a very strange manner today.”

McGonagall watched him, remembering the giggling trio she had passed on the corridor and their strange mood.

“You mean Potter, Weasley, and Miss Granger?”

“Indeed,” he spat, then grimaced disdainfully at the front desk which had been occupied by the unwelcome trio a few moments before, before looking back up at her. “Well? Are you surprised?”

“No,” she replied immediately, glancing at the desk too, then paused. “Have they been causing trouble?”

Snape’s face stretched into a very dry smile.

“Trouble?” He scoffed, then grew solemn again. “Why, yes. Well, no. In fact… ah, confound and bebother those varmints-!”

Minerva had pursed her lips. “Severus-”

“Yes!” He clenched his fists and stormed towards his desk. “Yes, they have been causing trouble! They have undoubtedly been causing trouble, otherwise Potter wouldn’t have had an accursed aureole shining around his head for the entire lesson!”

At this, McGonagall frowned, but Snape wasn’t done.

“Weasley, too!” He fell into his chair then sat up, rigid with passion, his fingers digging into the wooden armrests. “Not a single word out of his mouth during the entire lesson! He usually doesn’t shut up, his mouth works like a watermill! And this time, silence!”

“One moment.” McGonagall was close to pinching the bridge of her nose. “You mean to say-”

“And Granger,” Snape cut her off, snapping, his fingernails making scratch-marks in the wooden armrests as his fists clenched. “I’ve never seen her so pleasant in the entire time she’s been here. Didn’t put her hand up once! Her head was down, she did the work without a word and not a bullet of the usual know-it-all piffle left her mouth!”

His form loosened and he fell backwards against the back-rest, his hand dangling over his face as he worked rest into his face muscles and the creases around his eyes with his fingers. McGonagall watched him with pursed lips, feeling it wouldn’t be wise to interject until he finished with his mental breakdown.

“And that’s not all,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “The homework they handed in today is twice the length I asked for. And I mean twice the length. The spaces between words and the size of their handwriting wasn’t different from their standard lettering.”

“I fail to understand why that calls to get so worked up,” Minerva said carefully. “Surely, you don’t find this irritating?”

“And it’s top standard,” the wrecked Potions Master continued, his voice almost breaking. “It was concise and intelligently written. Into the bargain, all three pieces of work were different. The pair of idiots clearly didn’t copy off Granger this time. It seems they have put effort into those rolls of parchment like never before. I dread to think what it is they have done to act in this manner.”

Minerva shook her head as she watched the black bat sprawled out on his wooden chair. He saw her scrutiny and growled.

“You weren’t here, Minerva - I have very good reason for suspecting nothing but trouble. Potter didn’t talk back to me once. He claimed blame, even if it was unjustified.”

At this, Minerva frowned. “Harry Potter?”

“What other Potter is there?”

Minerva, this time, did pinch the bridge of her nose and both adults stood there feeling quite shaken. The former regained herself first.

“Let me sum this up,” she said. “You are completely and utterly indisposed because Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger were well-behaved for the entirety of your lesson.”

“I am completely and utterly indisposed,” Snape repeated with disdain and through clenched teeth, “because they have clearly done something, or are about to do something, which must have stirred enough remorse within their hollow little souls to not place a toe out of line for the entirety of my lesson. Not to mention this.”

He leaned forward and grasped something, then offered it to Minerva. She stepped forward and squinted at the object; it was an empty glass vial, with a square label which read: headache draught.

She glanced up at him as she took it in her fingers. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“This appeared upon my desk when my back was turned.”

“And you think they placed this on your desk?”

“No,” Snape said after some thought. “This is something far darker than both of us think.”

Minerva looked at him over the rim of her spectacles.

“This empty vial?” she said flatly.

“It was full when I first beheld it.”

“And what happened to its contents?”

“I poured it down the sink.”

Minerva paused.

“Why?”

Snape rubbed his face and stood up, looking fixated. “It was very cleverly disguised. It smelled exactly like what it claims to be.”

He began to pace. Minerva placed the sinister, empty vial back on his desk and folded her arms, looking down her nose at him as though he was an adolescent hissing about overblown drama which had happened upon the corridors and had tarnished his reputation into disrepair. Not that she hadn’t seen that before.

“There can only be one explanation for this,” he finished, standing still. “It has to be.”

“Which is?”

He turned and met her eyes with his obstinate, dark gaze.

“Someone is trying to exact their vengeance upon me.”

Minerva said nothing, her face betrayed nothing.

“It wouldn’t be the first time it happened,” he muttered. “I’m not taking any risk. I don’t have a very tolerant stomach…”

Minerva began to shake her head. “Severus.”

“...headache draught indeed.” He scoffed. “The only question is: who? And why? I am beginning to doubt that Potter wasn’t involved in it, though perhaps he wasn’t acting of his own accord. Our favourite trio wouldn’t even know that they were under the Imperius curse-”

“Severus.”

He turned to her impatiently, then shut his mouth under the impact of her gaze.

“Has it not occurred to you,” Minerva began patiently, “that instead of poisoning or attempting to murder you, someone could be simply trying to help you out?”

Snape looked at her incredulously, then burst out laughing. It was his usual harsh, grating laugh, which was emitted more to mock than to express amusement. It bounced off the classroom walls like hailstone.

“Of course,” he chortled. “That would make sense. Let’s be nice to the irritable wretch of a teacher who resides solely in the dungeons of the castle.”

“I’m sorry you struggle to understand the concept of compassion,” Minerva said, rolling her eyes and moving towards the exit. “Perhaps you ought to take this as a sign, Severus, and with it this concept into consideration.”

“Nonsense,” he replied, then placed the base of his palms to his temples and moved to sit in his chair as he grimaced. “There is no such thing as compassion. If there is, it is very hard to find, and simply non-existent in these particular corridors, between these particular individuals.”

Minerva didn’t see the sense in trying to convince him otherwise. Instead, she simply looked at him pointedly as he grasped his head and shut his eyes to try and contain his headache.

“Stop spearing me,” he muttered, sighing. “I’ve not forgotten what brats are capable of. I was one too. It’s certainly nothing but chaos and infidelity. I’m not stupid.”

“No. You are stubborn,” she replied, shaking her head, “and prone to jumping to very unfavourable conclusions. Now that you poured that draught down the drain, why don’t you make yourself another? Lessons resume in fifteen minutes.”

Snape groaned and muttered some dark words, followed by a very low: “I will manage.”

“As you like,” McGonagall replied in a tone which seemed to highlight her claim about how stubborn Snape was. “I will see you at lunch, Severus. Don’t get yourself too worked up, now.”

He didn’t answer; Minerva shut the door behind her, taking the rest of the noise and warmth of presence with her.

Five minutes of silence and dwelling later, Severus Snape rubbed his eyes, opened them, then fixed them onto the glass vial with the ‘headache draught’ lettering arranged upon the label, apparently nothing but innocent.

“Help me,” he repeated absentmindedly, then snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Of course the intention was to help me. Because that is what we do when we have a spare moment. We all come together, sit down at a round table and discuss how to make somebody’s life less of a damned hellscape over a light cup of coffee.”

Snape’s rigid posture broke as the sneer ebbed off his face. His eyes flicked around at the walls of his empty classroom, then to the pale skin of his hands which hadn’t held another for over two decades. He thought of the bleak and empty days the future promised him, feeling something horrible, hard and gooey congealing in his chest. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.

“Silence!” Snape commanded nobody in particular, feeling his voice begin to crack as it echoed around the classroom.

He put his face in his hands, pressing them to his facial features to keep them in stone, but they creased into something embarrassing and despairing anyway.

“Silence…” he repeated, but with his voice hoarse and thick. “Very well. Fine. Let it be so.”

He regained himself, then fixed his face into the window, making a sharp move to smear any stray tears away, then folded his hands tight and pressed them to his lips. Still, the red rimming his eyes, cheeks and nose gave him away, though his face was cold and disinterested as marble.

His voice was a mere whisper, though the boggart hiding under the sink heard it and obeyed:

“Let it be silent.”

***

Tags! I do appreciate all of your reviews and ops, I enjoy reading your excitement!

@overlord-of-fantasy @severus-snaps @slytherinmagic38 @enderdeservesbetter @acupnoodle @ace-aussie-asshole @halfbloodprince137 @seleneprince @memelovescaps @clingingtoskeletons @lilithofpenandbook @tumblingghosts @jade-eclipse-li @fluffyneondinosaur @lessdepressy @praline-elegy @captainsky-photori @likelightinglass @flyingflosser09

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wisteria-lodge · 2 months ago

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hi op!! hope you're doing well. genuine question, but do you think lucius pays his taxes? he makes public donations and associates with the ministry to a rather personal extent that i imagine he at least forks over some to whatever department at the MoM handles taxes but he does strike me as the person who'd at least find ways to evade being taxed (writing off business dealings as personal purchases to avoid getting taxed for them, donating to charity to get a write-off for the money, having some under the table deals so what taxes he has to pay for wiltshire are rather minimized) but what do you think?

Now I'm thinking about how taxes work in the wizarding world.

Okay, so one of the interesting things about HP is that pure-blood wizards are sort of stuck in the 1700s. There are a few aesthetic/fashion details from the 1800s, but in terms of tech level and the way the world is set up, we're still pre-industrial revolution. Which makes sense! The wizards never had an industrial revolution, and split away from the muggle world in the late 1600s.

(Phillip Pullman was also doing a psuedo 1700s-1800s thing for his children's fantasy series at around the same time. Cannot prove that JKR has any knowledge of His Dark Materials, but another English author writing a similar kind of book? Stealth-setting a book in the 1700s isn't such an out-there choice.)

That means a lot of the issues people have with the HP world building are really just issues with... life in the 1700s. Why is there no mental health care? 1700s. Why is the Hogwarts curriculum so weird? 1700s. Why is slavery okay? 1700s. Why is there no drinking age, and you can just purchase drugs (love potion) over the counter? 1700s.

In a similarly 1700s way, the Wizarding World seems to be composed of semi-autonomous fiefdoms, which report back to the Ministry of Magic. On paper, the Ministry has has control over Hogwarts, St. Mungos, the various pure-blood estates. Whether or not that's that's totally true... I mean the Ministry tries and fails to take over Hogwarts in Book 5, and in Book 2 they clearly *try* to prosecute the Malfoys for holding dark contraband, but never get very far.

Here's what I would do, if I were writing something political based in the Harry Potter universe. The Wizengamot seems to be the oldest ruling body (its name is a pun on the Wittengamot, which is from the 7th century.) So probably those seats are inherited (House of Lords style) possibly with a magical component involved. New members can be added, but only by existing members voting them in. The Wizengamot serves as the High Court (as we see - more normal cases are processed by the Council of Magical Law, and Arthur is really wrong-footed when he hears Harry is getting a *Wizengamot* trial.)

They also probably have some sort of pass/veto power, and the power to elect/replace a Minister of Magic. (the position was "offered" to Dumbledore multiple times, but he turned it down. So he's definitely not campaigning in a general election.) I doubt they actually *write* laws - that seems to be handled by the more bureaucratic-flavored Ministry members like Arthur and Percy, who do *not* sit on the Wizengamot.

I'd also have it so that taxes were handled in a more 1700s style. There'd be a lot of sales tax, which the Ministry would be able to enforce because I'm pretty sure they they oversee food production. There would also be a fee for the various Ministry-run procedures like booking overseas portkeys (and legal-social functions? the officiant at Dumbledore's funeral and Fleur's wedding is pretty Ministry coded.) "Pay a fine" seems to be a pretty common punishment in this world - which isn't a tax, but definitely a way for the Ministry to make money. I wonder if people like Ludo Bagman *bought* his position. It would be very 1700s of him.

Then there's property tax, and this is where the the old pure-blood families on the Wizangamot come in. I think the Ministry presents a budget to the Wizangamot, and *they* make up the difference, among themselves. At which point yes of course Lucius finds ways to weasel out of paying if he doesn't like the current minister, if he doesn't like the deal he's getting, if he's just feeling pissy that day, whatever. But at the end of the day, they collect their own taxes from the various spheres they control.

Now we're getting into headcanons, but I think the Malfoy money comes from primarily being landlords. At *very least,* Malfoy Manor has a magical satellite village (a la Hogsmeade or Ottery St. Catchpole) that they just own and probably low-key police. (they probably also just own a chunk of Wiltshire.) I also highly, highly doubt that the Malfoys gave up all their ties to the muggle world post Statue of Secrecy. If every new Muggle Prime Minister has a meeting with the Minister of Magic, then... I bet every time Lloyds of London gets a new CEO, Lucius Malfoy shows up to say, "We get 1.5% off the top. My bankers will be in touch." Goblins don't care about the Ministry's laws even slightly, and there's got to be an exchange rate if Hermione's parents can show up to Diagon Alley and buy her books.

All of the old pureblood families are going to have their own *thing,* their own under-the table agreements and sweetheart deals. The Blacks strike me as being big into shipping, probably because they're so based in *London.* But yeah, at least to me, this is the sort of thing that gels with the universe that we see.

(Hogwarts and St. Mungo's would be funded the same way, on a smaller scale. A huge part of St. Mungo's budget just seems to be the Malfoys. And Hogwarts has a board of governors who under normal circumstances raise money and make decisions on how to run the school... but they don't seem especially powerful these days. I'll bet it's because whatever endowment Hogwarts has/whatever funds Dumbledore has at his disposal *are* enough to run it... which is why Dumbledore can do whatever he wants, and becomes an almost independent political entity.)

#hp #hp worldbuilding #hp laws #history stuff #1700s #lucius malfoy

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sweetnnaivete · 5 months ago

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i feel like barty crouch jr looked up to evan rosier (in the context of evan being in the year above him), because he's so smart and pretty and barty, who was pushed forward a year and is younger than all his classmates, feels the need to prove his talent. so he tries to become the next evan, and manages to get himself (as well as regulus and dorcas) into evan's weird elite group at school

#pandora meanwhile is evan's only real friend #until barty n reg n cas #and the rest is history #ceri talks ₊˚ෆ #hp marauders #marauders era #harry potter series #marauders #hp #mwpp #mwpp era #evan rosier #barty crouch jr #barty crouch junior #rosekiller #regulus black #dorcas meadowes

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hollowed-theory-hall · 5 months ago

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do you think it’s strange that the uk monarchy is, as far as i remember, never mentioned in the books? it seems so weird to me since, for better or worse, it’s such an integral part of the concept of “britishness” - even if wizarding society seems pretty removed from muggle society, the monarchy has such a long history that it seems weird for the two societies to not intermingle in it. has wizarding society cut ties with it after the issue of the statute of secrecy? how many of the crown jewels are actually magical items? how *noble* is the house of black, really? were there ever kings or queens who were wizards?

there’s so many questions i have about this! such a world building plot hole!

Ok, so there are a lot of questions here and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability. I will note there are a bunch of my own headcanons in this post. They are based on what we know about Wizarding History and what I know about irl UK history but they are still headcanons.

So, we know the Ministry of Magic was founded in 1707 after the Statue of Secrecy was enacted in 1692. The ministry was an immediate response to said statute since wizards needed a more uniform government to enforce their secrecy and cover up any slip ups. This means that before the Statue of Secrecy, the muggle government or monarchy earlier was the governing force for wizards as well as muggles. Yes, the Wizengamot already existed, but it seemed to behave differently from how it does in the modern ministry.

I wrote about the Wizengamot and how I believe it works along with some of its history here although I learned more UK history since, so this post is more accurate on the history front.

Now, I hope you won't mind me going into some medieval history of the UK in general, since the monarchy has changed over time, and in the early Middle Ages, the UK was comprised of multiple smaller kingdoms. Wales had 3 big kingdoms, but also a bunch of smaller ones (there were also warlords that took over abandoned Roman fortresses after the Romans left Britain in eastern Wales), England had the Anglo-Saxons settling in after the Romans left and creating multiple Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (like Wessex and Marcia). Scotland and Ireland were similarly divided. There were the biking invasions and a whole Viking kingdom in north-east England that's referred to as "The Dane Law". England did unite under King Aethelstan eventually, but with all these fractured kingdoms and warlords, I'm sure there were some wizards among them. Then, of course, there is the Norman monarchy and nobility established after the Norman conquests, which officially settled in 1066.

My point with all of this history is that like muggle society, wizarding society changed and evolved and that the monarchy in Britain wasn't the same throughout the entirety of history. So, the status of wizards and wizard nobility changed based on the specific time period we are discussing. But let's look at post-normans pre-Statue of Secrecy wizarding high society, and for that the Pottermore article about the Malfoy family is incredibly helpful:

Like many other progenitors of noble English families, the wizard Armand Malfoy arrived in Britain with William the Conqueror as part of the invading Norman army. Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.

(from Pottermore)

Most nobility in England after the conquest were normans close to William who arrived with him and were given muggle noble titles, lands, and status. irl, the first Peverell in England, William Peverell was similarly given lands as he was said to be a son of William the Conqueror. That being said, some Anglo-Saxon nobility (mostly from the south of England since the northern Anglo-Saxon nobility were mostly killed after their rebellion) were kept in place by William as long as they swore fealty to him. Families like the Blacks and Longbottoms (both having Anglo-Saxon surnames) are likely among this leftover Anglo-Saxon nobility.

Now besides the muggle nobility, which is very much aware of wizards and even includes wizards (like the Malfoys, Peverells, Lestranges, and the Gaunts) we have the Wizangamot. The Wizaengamot, which I wrote more about in the post I linked, have likely been around and acted as a council of wizard nobility alongside the muggle one before the Norman invasion since around when Hogwarts was founded (around 990). The Blacks and Longbottoms (and the Notts who also have a Germanic name dating to the Dane Law I referenced earlier and King Knut who ruled that portion of England) were probably in this council.

We also know the Malfoys aren't in the Wizengamot in the books, meaning the circles of nobility for each council were different. This is easily explained by the Wizengamot being there earlier and being Anglo-Saxon rather than Norman. The name Wizangamot is, in itself, from old English which supports this speculation.

Since the Wizengamot continued existing after the conquest, I assume William the Conquerer left it as it is, wanting to ally himself with the local wizarding community rather than going to war with them. Wizards are, after all, really fucking useful, and irl he did keep some of the Anglo-Saxon nobility, so that's in character.

I think, after the conquest the Wizengamot either grew in the number of families there or that the families that opposed William were replaced with Norman wizard nobles that William trusted to represent him in the magical community.

The same Pottermore article about the Malfoy family also notes:

Historically, the Malfoys drew a sharp distinction between poor Muggles and those with wealth and authority. Until the imposition of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692, the Malfoy family was active within high-born Muggle circles, and it is said that their fervent opposition to the imposition of the Statute was due, in part, to the fact that they would have to withdraw from this enjoyable sphere of social life. Though hotly denied by subsequent generations, there is ample evidence to suggest that the first Lucius Malfoy was an unsuccessful aspirant to the hand of Elizabeth I, and some wizarding historians allege that the Queen’s subsequent opposition to marriage was due to a jinx placed upon her by the thwarted Malfoy.

(from Pottermore)

This means the monarchy throughout history was well aware of wizards and that the magical nobility was also muggle nobility and allowed in the same circles, but not vice versa. It seems to me, that the Malfoys had a muggle noble title from William I, and once the Statue of Secrecy was enacted they lost their title since they weren't also Wizarding nobility (Wizengamot members). (The Malfoys did keep all their money though).

Considering what Pottermore implies, it seems to me, there is a high chance of some crown jewels being magical. I mean, Lucius Malfoy I proposed to Queen Elizabeth I, and in my headcanon the aforementioned Willaim Peverell is the father of the three brothers of the Deathly Hallows, and in this headcanon, William Peverell is a half-blood wizard. Point is, yeah, the monarchy was well aware of wizards and seemed to have been in an alliance with the Wizengamot and the magical community. Although, I'm sure attitudes changed over time and differed from monarch to monarch with some being closer to the Wizarding community than others, but in general the Wizengamot and the wizarding community as a whole were under the governance of the muggle monarch.

It's actually possible there were a few wizards who ruled the UK (or any of the earlier kingdoms that eventually united) across the Isles's history. I think it's even likely if we're being honest. Egbert the Egregious, for example, might've been a king of Kent or Wessex (two of the older kingdoms before England united) as kings of the same name are recorded in both.

Once the Statue of Secrecy was enacted the wizards drew away from muggle society and wizards who held muggle noble titles likely lost them. But we know some muggles are aware of wizards' existence. We see at the beginning of HBP that the muggle Prime Minister is informed of wizards' existence and obliviated when they leave office. If I had to bet, the monarch (and perhaps more in the royal family) are similarly aware that wizards exist but aren't really involved. Like, the monarch probably knows but is only informed when something in the Wizarding World spills out to the muggle one. So, the monarch knows wizards exist, but not much more than that.

As for how noble the House of Black really was, I mentioned I believe they were nobles of the Wizengamot and Anglo-Saxon nobility before the Normans. I think all magical families in the Wizengamot that were around before the Normans would be considered: "Noble and Ancient". We see the Blacks being referred to as "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black" compared to the Gaunts who are just: "House of Gaunt" which is how wizard nobility from after the conquest would be titled in my headcanon.

The name Gaunt is one that arrived in Britain with the Normans as stated in a survey of England's land done by William after the conquest (this survey is known as the "Doomsday Book" and it essentially details which land belongs to which lord. The book names both Norman lords and Anglo-Saxon ones and is a super useful historical document. It occasionally even mentions which Anglo-Saxon lord was deposed for the sake of a new Norman one). Gilbert de Ghent (standardized spelling wasn't a thing yet), named in said survey was the nephew of King William I's wife and as such received lands. A lot of them, actually:

"Few among the Conqueror's companions of arms were so splendidly rewarded as Gilbert de Ghent, who held one hundred and seventy-two English manors."

(Manors refers to actual manors, but also the land surrounding them. Basically, it refers to a family seat)

As the Gaunts were so favored, it's likely William I placed his nephew's family (who I headcanon at least some are wizards) in the Wizengamot. I believe the Slytherins married into the Gaunt family around the same time to add legitimacy to the Gaunts' status in the wizarding community.

The Malfoy Family that doesn't have a magical noble title and lost their muggle one is just referred to as: "Malfoy Family" and never "House of Malfoy" which again, to me, suggests this is how these titles work.

The aforementioned Doomsday Book does mention a William Black with 5 manors in Devon. William Peverell, as a son of King William I is mentioned to have 153 manors given to him and another 75 to Ranulf Peverell (not sure of the familial relationship). Reginald Cnut (older spelling of Nott) is also mentioned in the Doomsday Book to have 26 manors. Malfoy is a name JKR made up and isn't mentioned in the Doomsday Book or any other survey of UK landowners done in the Middle Ages. I did read a legend about one Guy Le Strange who participated in a tournament at Castle Peverell around 1083 and won the hand of Mellette, the niece of William Peverell. Although the Lestranges are not mentioned in the Doomsday Book and this legend likely dates from the 13th century a good 200 years after the supposed events it details.

So, to summarise, wizards don't seem to have or ever had a royal family of their own but there were most likely wizard royals throughout the various kingdoms that existed in history. Some wizards do have a noble status that I headcanon/speculate is connected to their status as members of the Wizengamot. These Wizengamot titles were also muggle titles and there were wizards with muggle titles that weren't part of the Wizengamot. These wizards probably interacted very closely with the muggle nobility and even shared family trees and were all probably considered half-blooded if you asked a Death Eater. After the Statue of Secrecy, the muggle titles became irrelevant and stopped being used leaving only the Wizarding titles behind (I headcanon "Ancient and Noble houses" refers to Anglo-Saxon nobility, and just "noble houses" refers to Norman nobility among wizards). The UK monarch likely is informed about the wizarding world to a similar degree as we see the muggle prime minister is informed. Blood purity probably only became relevant after the Statue of Secrecy as before that we see intermarriages with muggle royalty and nobility being practiced (I talked a bit about the timing of the witch hunts and the Statue of Secrecy here).

Sorry for the nerdy history talk, but, I answered this after a few weeks of medieval UK research and I have so many thoughts about medieval wizarding society in Britain.

#harry potter #hp #hp meta #hollowedtheory #hollowedheadcanon #hp headcanon #asks #anonymous #anon asks #wizarding world #wizarding society #wizengamot #wizarding history #wizarding politics

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