#i also realize i went between muggle and magic aus i don't care it's all the same

[calamitoustide]

gabby give me some of your regulus raising Harry thoughts please :) to distract you from wanting to kill urself

anon let me tell you this ask just made me burst out laughing sure I'll give you some of my thoughts

There's the case of Regulus coming into Harry's life later in life which I have written about... but I quite like myself some Regulus being with Harry from the start and that's what I'll talk about.

I don't see Regulus wanting to have kids at first, he thinks he'll never have them and will never want anything to do with them. Though I don't think it's him necessarily not "wanting" kids, I think it's very complicated and kinda twists up inside himself. (though I have written a Regulus who has never and will never want kids and I love that idea too) I think he's scared of bringing a child into this world and raising it, doing right by it. He doesn't think he's fit for it. It's a combination of many things that could possibly change this and it depends on the au or situation.

It could be Sirius and him reconnecting with Andy and meeting Nymphadora. Even if she's not a baby when they meet I feel like being around kids would be good for Regulus. He would still have a lot to work through but he finds himself enjoying "parenting" a kid much more than he thought he would even if he isn't a parent himself. I feel like one night he'd be babysitting Nymphadora and work himself into such a bad panic attack that he has to call Sirius to come and help him because he realizes fuck i might want this and fuck what does that mean? How is he meant to be a parent when his parents never showed him.

I also love teacher Reg (as we know) and I feel like his students would be an equal substitute instead. Being around them would make him think about it.

Anyway! Once Regulus has Harry he is very... stressed about everything. He doesn't do good with punishments and he gives Harry everything he wants which is something they obviously have to work on and James is right there next to him the entire time showing him that is is okay and they're not hurting Harry by telling him he can't have cookies right before bed.

I also don't think Regulus would want to work while having Harry, or at least he's want to work at home for the first five years or before he starts school. He'd want to be there for every moment, not strangling him but he would want to be able to comfort him when he needs it. he wants to show Harry that he's always there for him. Of course, he can do that and have his job and it's a conversation but I just feel like once they have Harry he is Regulus' top priority. Not that he's not James' but it comes out in different ways.

I also think Harry would make Regulus have little tea parties with him, or something similar. Harry would have a little kitchen set and he'd sit Regulus down at a little table he simply can't fit at and take his order. Regulus would give in to everything he wants with the widest smile on his face, and James would take so many fucking pictures of them. Regulus would get all embarrassed but James would look at them all the time he can't help it.

I've been talking for a while, but lastly I don't think Regulus would want Harry playing Quidditch. I know there's the whole argument between James and Reg about what position Harry would be... but if I'm being honest Regulus' vote would go for not on the team at all. Obviously he would support him but he knows exactly what goes into Quidditch and the injuries that could happen and he would want to put his foot down so bad and force Harry to not try out. The only reason he doesn't is because James convinces him Harry deserves to be involved in the things he loves, even the terrifying ones.

Regulus would have a heart attack when he found out Harry got on the Quidditch team at 11, and would want to kill James for being over the moon about it.

[imagitory]

hmm, how about an au where the dursley's don't treat harry horribly but there's like, still some obvious tension? like idk, maybe aunt petunia is more prominent here due to her weird relationship with the wizarding world and her sister

Hmm…let’s see…

1) Back in 1980, Lily not only wrote Petunia a letter about Harry’s birth, but asked to speak to Petunia about something very serious. Petunia, naturally, purposefully ignored the letter and its request. Lily was hurt by the rejection and considered writing another letter, but James instead decided to speak to Petunia himself. When James showed up on the Dursleys’ doorstep, Vernon angrily tried to eject him from the premises, but James stood his ground and kept his temper as best as he was able. “Petunia, listen to me,” he urged her, “Lily is scared for your safety – we all are! She wants you to know what’s happening in the Wiz – our world, so you and your family will be safe! I know you hate magic, but I know you want your family to be safe, just as much as we do! If you don’t want to talk to me, I get it, but…just hear Lily out! Please!” Several days later, Petunia decided to meet with Lily. The two rode their respective children in their prams to the visit, and Petunia laid eyes upon Harry for the first time. Lily told her about Voldemort’s rise and her and James’s work with the Order. Although the two sisters still were very different people, Petunia was startled by the level of concern and genuine love Lily expressed for her and, despite herself, came to realize that Lily had never seen her sister in that “second place” category that her parents might have. Lily offered to place protective enchantments on the Dursley home, which Petunia refused, but Petunia didn’t reject Lily’s offer to stay in touch and even asked her to be careful.

2) This unfinished bridge toward reconciliation made it so that when Harry lost his parents and were sent to the Dursleys, Petunia at least felt immense guilt and obligation toward raising Harry for Lily’s sake. Vernon resented Harry immensely and Petunia still subconsciously favored her own son and distrusted Harry’s magic, but she still treated him like family. Petunia insisted on giving Harry the smaller of the two bedrooms upstairs (because Harry was always smaller than Dudley, and thus needed less room), and taught Harry to keep his “oddities” to himself so he could fit in with Dudley and his friends. Rather than Harry being hidden from everyone’s view, Petunia merely tried to make Harry appear and act perfectly normal. Vernon, who hated magic even more than Petunia, would insist on Harry being “normal” too, in the misguided thought that they could “stamp the magic out of him.” Harry would always know deep inside of himself, though, that he was not normal, and would get frustrated about Petunia and Vernon trying to tamp him down all the time.

3) Because Dudley would know about Harry’s “oddities” and Petunia would feel more of a flawed overprotectiveness toward both children, Dudley would grow up thinking he had to “keep Harry out of trouble,” and so would likewise try to follow both of his parents’ examples, giving Harry a hard time for “acting weird” and making up lies around the kids and teachers in school to try to cover them up. Dudley would still be “the golden boy” of the family, but less explicitly – it would be more insinuated in how Vernon would always compare Harry unfavorably to Dudley or in how Petunia would use Dudley as a positive example. This would prompt some resentment in Harry toward Dudley, but Dudley himself would only see it as him doing what his mother wanted him to do, which was to look after his cousin. Their relationship would sour dramatically when Harry started attending Hogwarts, as Dudley would hate that Harry rejected all of the “help” and “protection” he and his parents had given him throughout the years and Harry would be fed up with Dudley acting like he wasn’t ashamed of him and trying to make him conform just to make things easier for him. Nonetheless both boys would still feel some lingering familial affection for each other, since they grew up together and were in a way each other’s first friend, even if the friendship was unhealthy. It would be that affection that would fuel Harry to rescue Dudley from a dementor in his fifth year and that would prompt Dudley to completely reform himself by Harry’s sixth year, becoming thoroughly versed in Wizarding culture so as to better support Harry, much to his parents’ dismay. Eventually Petunia became more accepting of Dudley’s involvement in the Wizarding World, but only to the extent that she would ask the bare minimum of questions to get by – if she didn’t need to know something, she’d purposefully ignore anything magical in her general vicinity. Vernon meanwhile would often turn purple with anger and go very quiet whenever anything magical was brought up at all.

4) When Harry received his Hogwarts letter, Petunia and Vernon initially tried to conceal it from him, but upon Harry snatching hold of the letter and reading it, Petunia tried to persuade Harry to reject the invitation. After all, they’d planned that Harry and Dudley were already going to Smeltings together, right? Didn’t Harry want to go to school with Dudley? It’d be awfully inconvenient to return Harry’s school uniform and remove him from the school’s roster so abruptly. Harry felt the pressure to reject the invitation, but couldn’t accept it – he tried to persuade Petunia that it might be easier for him to keep his “weirdness” under wraps if he knew how to control it, but that argument went nowhere. After not receiving any reply for multiple weeks, Professor McGonagall paid the Dursleys a visit herself, in person. When she came to call, Vernon ordered Harry and Dudley to stay in their rooms upstairs and not make a sound until they came to get him. Dudley and Harry, however, disobeyed Vernon and crept out to the landing to listen in, where he heard the Dursleys talking to McGonagall, insisting that Harry didn’t want to go to their school and that he would be attending school with his cousin, as was proper. The meeting had been cold but relatively calm until McGonagall brought up James and Lily – the memory of her deceased younger sister brought out such a teary rage from Petunia that she ordered McGonagall to get out and to never come near her family again. McGonagall bringing up Harry’s parents, however, made Harry come downstairs at last. “You knew my parents?” he croaked, staring at McGonagall. Petunia and Vernon both tried to force Harry back upstairs, but McGonagall and Harry both ignored them, solely focusing on each other even as Dudley watched them apprehensively from the door frame. McGonagall stared at Harry, a slight shine in her eyes despite her severe face, and she said, “…Yes.” Even though Petunia was kinder to him in this version of events, she still almost never discussed her sister or her brother-in-law – the most Harry had ever gleaned was that they were also “odd” like him, and that they’d been killed by an evil man with similar powers. The thought of someone actually knowing them – of having liked them – was one Harry had always hoped might be real. Petunia and Vernon once again tried to throw McGonagall out of the house, but this time, Harry interjected, “I want to go. I want to go to Hogwarts.” The decision horrified all of the Dursleys, Dudley included, but McGonagall smiled proudly, saying that if Petunia and Vernon simply dropped him off in London that Friday, the Hogwarts gameskeeper, Hagrid, would be happy to escort him to Diagon Alley to get his school supplies.

5) Because of the shift in dynamic between Harry and Petunia, which resulted in him not being neglected and abused but prompted him to see his magic as a burden and something to hide, Harry is less starved for affection and more interested in following his own path, screw the haters. Therefore, when the Sorting Hat was placed on his head, it considered the mind it was reading very carefully, before finally shouting, “SLYTHERIN!” The Boy Who Lived – still a brave, hot-blooded, selfless young man – was Sorted into the same house as his schoolyard enemy, his mother’s ex-best friend, and worst of all the man who had killed his parents. Rather than treating his placement as an obstacle, however, Harry shrugged it off: he’d already been sort of held at arm’s length all the time back in Muggle school because of his magic, so being treated with suspicion was something he was used to. At least here he could actually do magic without being shunned for it! Instead he merely stayed true to himself, casually shrugging off his house’s negative reputation and falling back on his usual level of sass when he was down. His good humor, determination, courage, and noble heart resulted in him making many friends, including Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Theodore Nott, and Millicent Bulstrode. Even Draco Malfoy, who Harry still disliked immensely, eventually became a bizarre frienemy, not just because of their shared house and them being on the same Quidditch team, but also the faint similarities Harry noted between Draco and his cousin Dudley. Snape would still resent Harry quite a bit, but in Harry’s later years, Petunia would finally open up a bit to Harry about Lily’s and her past, and he’d learn from her about Snape’s connection to Lily. After she opened up, Harry rather kindly opened up about his experiences with Snape at school, and upon hearing about Snape’s bullying, Petunia went full-on Mama Bear and wrote Snape ten very long, mean letters, including one very loud Howler that Dudley helped her figure out how to use, which arrived in the Great Hall in Harry’s sixth year and screamed at Snape about how ashamed Lily would’ve been of him. Harry was very embarrassed about the whole episode, even if he felt some faint schadenfreude at how beside himself Snape looked. The flood of letters did temper Snape somewhat, however, and made him treat Harry with nothing but distant silence for the rest of the school year.

AU Ask!