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lunapwrites · 4 years ago

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(I am once again posting unedited nightmares to Tumblr.)

CW: strong language, violence, character death. The first thing Remus noticed was that the floor was cold. The texture rough against his stubbled cheek, scraping against his forearms as he slowly pushed himself up. He blinked blearily, eyes adjusting to the dim torchlight. Stone floors, stone walls, iron bars.

A cell.

His head was throbbing; there was dried blood in his hair. This time it might have been his own. He recalled bright lights, curses flying, sizzling past his ear. Red. Darkness.

A Stunner.

How did they find me?

He couldn't remember.

If he concentrated, he could hear breathing, other heartbeats. One, two, three... no, four. He scented the air; three male, one female. Human, goblin. Familiar — very familiar, though he was struggling to think beyond the pounding in his skull. He couldn't recall their faces.

Somewhere out of view, a door swung open: hinges creaking, wood groaning, scraping along the floor. A jangle of keys. This scent... (juniper berry and wood shavings and cheap dusty tea) this scent he knew.

rat rat rat

"Oh good, you're not dead," Peter said in a tone that might have sounded cheerful if not for the underlying tension of attempted murder and heart-wrenching betrayal.

"Sorry to disappoint," Remus replied. His voice was rougher than the stone he'd woken on and twice as cold. On the other side of the wall, two heartbeats quickened; a quiet intake of breath.

They know me.

"Ah, don't be like that, Moony. I've brought you supper."

"Think I'd rather starve, thanks."

Peter gave that snorty little laugh that Remus used to privately think was endearing and now just made him want to yank the bastard's brains out through his nostrils.

"Just as dramatic as ever, I see." He showed the plate to Remus. "It's just a bacon sarnie. Light on the butter and practically raw, just the way you like it."

It was the way he liked it, and Remus hated him for it.

"Why am I here?"

"Skipping right over the small talk, eh? That's not like you at all." Peter opened a small grate, pushing the plate through the bars. "Come on, Moony. You know why."

"Don't call me that."

If he hadn't been watching for it, he'd have missed the tiny flicker of hurt across Peter's face. The twitch of his brows, the near imperceptible thinning of his already too-thin lips. The shadows under his eyes darkening.

He looked terrible. He looked sorry. Remus hated him even more.

"Alright, Remus then. Or would you prefer Lupin?"

"I would prefer you didn't call me anything, honestly."

"Too bad," Peter said briskly. "I'm the jailor, so unless you just don't want to talk at all..."

"That would be lovely, actually."

"Liar." Peter grinned. "You love hearing yourself talk, always did. You were worse than James—"

The bars rattled as Remus slammed into them, fury bubbling in his veins. Peter leapt out of his reach, eyes wide, frightened as he'd been that night in the shack.

"DON'T!" Remus snarled, fangs bared. "Don't you ever speak his name!"

Peter stared at him, his hummingbird pulse slowly steadying as he remembered who was on which side of the bars. He put his hands up, placating.

"Alright, Remus. Fair enough. I'm sorry."

No you're not.

Peter hovered awkwardly for a moment, rocking on his heels like he had something more to say — like there was anything more to say. As if he had a right to be disappointed that Remus would sooner swallow his own tongue than accept anything he offered.

"Right. I'll leave you to it, then. Be back tomorrow."

Remus watched him slip out of the room in silence, the heavy door swinging shut, the lock turning with a dull click just as the plate shattered against the wall.

"Brought you some soup today," Peter said conversationally. "Figured you might need it after talking to Bellatrix."

He slipped the bowl through the grate; Remus didn't move from his spot against the opposite wall. Every one of his nerve endings was on fire, but he'd be damned before he'd show it.

"She really needs to work on her conversational skills," he croaked, and immediately regretted it. Peter's eyes sharpened, searching his face.

Nothing to see here. Not for you.

"She was always mad as a hatter before, but Azkaban really didn't do her any favours in that regard." Peter sighed, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed. "Can't say I'm upset about getting out of that one."

It was in that moment that Remus decided that the Killing Curse was too good for Peter.

He hauled himself to his feet, trudging over to the front of the cell on shaky legs, leaning over carefully to pick up his supper.

"I see you remembered my favourite again." He sniffed at the bowl of soup suspiciously, checking for strange ingredients.

Potato. Leek. Broth... chicken I think. Cream. Bacon again, probably leftover.

"Figured a taste of home might not go amiss," Peter said quietly, frowning. "I haven't poisoned it, you know."

"I'm well aware that the only thing you poison is friendships," Remus agreed. "If you wanted to kill me, I should watch for a knife in my back."

"...That's not fair."

"Isn't it?"

They stared one another down silently, Peter with his best rainy morning face on, Remus towering above him like a thundercloud. He slowly poured the soup out onto the floor, flinging the bowl back through the bars. Peter dodged at the last second; it bounced off the wall next to his ear and clattered harmlessly to the floor.

He'd learned his lesson since the plate, apparently.

"Right," Peter declared in an overly plummy tone as he pushed off the wall, "we'll just try again tomorrow, shan't we?"

The following day, Peter brought down bangers and mash; it was cold and grainy, and the bangers were burned to hell.

Remus ate it anyway.

"You know, as pleased as I am that you've stopped throwing tantrums over the food," Peter mused through a mouthful of toast, "I'm genuinely surprised you haven't asked me why I did it."

Remus paused, looking up from his plate through one, unswollen eye.

"Probably because it doesn't matter."

He spoke slowly, as if to a particularly dim child, as if he weren't lying through his teeth.

Peter scoffed, spots of colour rising to his cheeks.

"Please, like you didn't spend twelve years tearing yourself up over Sirius. Why should my reasons matter less?"

"I'll give you three guesses."

Peter wrinkled his nose, scowling.

"You always liked him best."

"Dunno what to tell you, Pete. He gives great head."

There was a muffled snort from the neighbouring cell. Dean, by the sound of it. A week ago, Remus might have even been embarrassed.

"Remus Lupin, unfiltered," Peter said with a wistful shake of his head. "I fucking missed you, you know."

"This is very good bread. Do give my compliments to whichever unfortunate elf was responsible for it."

"That would be me."

Remus snorted at him, raising his mug of water in toast.

"Here's to moving up in the world."

"Fuck off." Peter eyed him speculatively for a long moment. "It was because I wanted it to end."

Remus peered at him over the rim of his mug.

There was a dark intensity emanating from Peter. Not dangerous in the same way that Bellatrix or even Sirius was; sharp and sinewy, a predator stalking prey. It was as if Remus was moving among the stars and encountered a vast nothing that devoured everything it dragged into its field.

No sound, no light, just cold, dead silence.

"All my friends were dying or turning into people I didn't recognise anymore, and I was terrified," Peter continued quietly. "Every day I was terrified, and I just wanted it to end. I didn't care how."

He pushed off the wall, leaving without waiting for a response.

It didn't matter. There was nothing to say.

On the fifth day, an apple rolled off the plate as Peter approached the cell. It hit the ground, rolling at his feet. He leaned down to recover it, and the rest happened very quickly.

Remus rushed forward, his arm darting out to catch Peter around his neck as he rose back up, yanking him back hard against the bars.

"You always were an idiot."

Peter thrashed and struggled in his grip. His fancy silver hand clawed at Remus' forearm, more powerful than Peter had any right to be.

But Remus was stronger.

"I would be lying if I said I didn't miss you, Pete," he said calmly, tightening his grip. "I missed you every day, like a limb. I still do."

The keys were jangling against Peter's belt loop, against the bars. Remus could reach through and grab them now, if he wanted to.

"You weren't the only one who was afraid, you know? We were just kids. Only the rest of us learned to kill our enemies instead of our brothers."

It wasn't about the keys.

"My brothers died twelve years ago." The fingers scratching and scrabbling against his arm were weakening, slowing. "I buried one with his wife in Godric's Hollow, and they put up a little statue for them that I still can't stand to look at."

Peter's knees buckled, his weight against Remus' steady arm adding pressure.

"I buried the other in a little plot in Coxheath, and I used to wonder why it couldn't have been me. And I grieved."

Remus took a deep, slow breath. A holy calm settled over him.

"I want you to know," he continued in that same soft, conversational tone, "that everything you've done has amounted to nothing. That you are nothing, and no one will remember you."

Things happened very slowly after that.

Peter stopped struggling.

Remus counted heartbeats.

There were six.

And then there were five.

He reached down and pulled the keyring from Peter's belt, popping the beltloop clear off. It wasn't like Peter needed it anymore. He left the body against the bars, opening the door to his cell without looking back.

"Hullo Professor."

Dean was watching him open their cell door with wide eyes, more surprised — appraising — than fearful. Luna waved at him cheerfully, same as when he'd last seen her, if a little taller. Remus nodded to them both in greeting.

"I'd say it's good to see you both, but I'm rather sorry you're here. Can everyone move under their own power?"

"Ollivander and Griphook are both a bit worse for wear," Dean said apologetically.

"Alright, well give me a hand now then."

It only took a few moments for them to get Griphook and Ollivander situated on Dean and Remus' backs, respectively. Remus, in the meantime, had been coming up with a plan.

So long as they were quiet and careful, he could sniff out the exit while avoiding the manor's residents. They just needed to be quick about it; he didn't know how long it would be before Peter was missed.

But no sooner did he reach his hand out for the door than it burst open, revealing a particularly unhinged-looking Sirius, closely flanked by Harry and Ron.

There was a short pause in which the two men processed one anothers' sudden appearance.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Remus asked faintly.

"We came to rescue you," Sirius said with a vaguely affronted tone.

Remus turned around, looking at the assortment of prisoners he'd broken out and the cooling body of the jailor at the other end of the room, and then turned back to Sirius.

"Well done."

Harry let out a choked sort of noise that might have been either a sob or a snort, he wasn't quite sure.

"Right," Ron said quickly. "So, mission accomplished, let's go!"

He and Harry ushered Dean-and-Griphook and Luna up the stairs first, Ron taking point and Harry flanking. The moment they were out of the room, Sirius reached out and cupped Remus's jaw, brushing a thumb across his cheek. He felt something damp on his face.

"Have you been crying?"

Remus shrugged.

"Maybe. I didn't feel anything," he said quietly, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter. Let's go."

Remus pushed past him, following the boys up the stairs. Sirius followed close behind.

They didn't look back.

#remus lupin #peter pettigrew #malfoy manor #dark fic #angst #mild humor #lunapwrites #i am on my bs #finally #please note the cw #read at your own risk #wolfstar

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xomarauders · 5 years ago

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okay i’m posting it now cuz i can’t wait :) enjoy!

—

“I can’t remember how you take your tea.”

Remus looked up, the book in his hands falling to his lap as he saw Sirius standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. His eyes were cast downward, and his shoulders were hunched inward, looking like a child who was waiting to be scolded by their mother. His bottom lip was tucked neatly between his teeth and Remus fought the urge to stand up and kiss it better. Sirius’ eyes were sort of glossed over and there was a melancholic look on his face mixed with pure agitation and confusion.

Azkaban had taken a lot of things from Sirius; Remus knew that. The dementors were vicious creatures who toyed with the happy memories of their victims and twisted them into faux nightmares. Sirius had spent twelve years with them and when he finally escaped, the man who came out was not the same as the man Remus once knew.

There were still instances of the old Sirius that Remus’ heart would melt for whenever they happened to appear. Like the crunch of his nose whenever he was thinking intently and the way he bounced on his toes whenever he got excited. The way his eyes lit up when Remus read to him and the barking laugh that was rare to hear these days. Little things like that made it bearable for Remus to withstand the screaming he woke up to every night and the blank expression that resided on Sirius’ face most of the time. It was heartbreaking to see, but Remus would bear it in the hope that one day, the Sirius he loved would fully return to him.

“That’s okay, Sirius.” Remus said calmly even as his heart sank deeper into his stomach. How many other details had the dementors made foreign to the man in front of him? “Just a splash of milk. No sugar.”

Sirius let out a disgruntled sigh and his eyebrows furrowed more. His bony fists clenched at his side as he became frustrated with himself and Remus thought for a brief moment that the frail bones may break under the pressure. Apparently, Sirius’ impatience was still intact.

“Okay.”

He turned and left the room, leaving Remus alone with his book once more. He couldn’t be bothered to focus on reading now, though, and set the novel down on the small coffee table before him. The sound of dishes clinking softly together came from the kitchen where Sirius was attempting to make the tea and Remus wondered if he should go in to help or stay put. It was always like that now. The decision making that should have been simple but seemed near impossible now because of the circumstance. Remus knew what he would have done fourteen years ago but things had changed—they had changed—and Remus was walking on pins and needles, waiting for the inevitable breakdown to come.

“Here you go.” Sirius’ voice brought Remus out of his mind and he reached forward to take the tea from Sirius’ outstretched hand. He took a sip, feeling Sirius’ gaze on him and his heart broke a little bit more as the taste of sugar filled his mouth, but it might as well have been salt because of the bitter flavor it left.

“Is it right?”

Remus looked up to the hesitant eyes of the man he loved and the hopeful gleam that was hidden behind them and smiled the best he could. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

* * *

“I can’t remember the lyrics.”

Remus had come home from the market to see his records scattered across the bedroom floor with Sirius sitting in the middle of them, head in his hands and tears streaming down his face. The record that was actually playing was instantly recognizable to Remus as Billy Joel’s “Turnstiles” and the track was “James,” making the whole scene that much more painful to bear witness to.

It would have been so much easier if James were here, Remus thought. James always knew how to handle the worst sides of Sirius, the two of them always having some sort of connection others couldn’t even comprehend and it jarred Remus not for the first time in his life that he ever believed Sirius could betray James Potter. How the war had twisted them, broken them down into fragments of distrust and paranoia.

“That’s okay, Sirius.” Remus said because what else could he say? What comfort could he possibly offer the broken man before him when he was partially to blame for it all? Remus had left him to rot in Azkaban just like everybody else did. He should have known better. He did know better.

“I miss him. I miss them both.”

Remus just nodded. There was nothing he could say that would banish the pain and anguish Sirius felt over losing James and Lily. He himself had yet to figure out how others dealt with such grief, how they woke up every morning claiming to feel better. All Remus felt was worse, with each passing day acting as a reminder that James and Lily Potter were gone from the Earth, taken in such a cruel and devastating way. The world had celebrated—the Dark Lord was gone! Let the light thrive! —but Remus had felt nothing but despair, a hole forever left in his heart. How could there be light with the two of them gone? They should have lived. Over him, Sirius, Peter and everybody else who had somehow survived that first war, it should have been James and Lily who made it out alive. But it wasn’t. Because fate or destiny or prophecy or whatever the fuck it was had made up its mind.

So, Remus sat down on the floor next to Sirius, and they cried for their fallen friends.

* * *

“I can’t remember how she died.”

Remus cringed, closing his eyes and willing himself to keep it together. They were standing there, he and Sirius, in front of the smallest headstone in the cemetery—it was all Remus could afford—looking down at the name scrawled across it.

Hope Howell Lupin

1938 – 1979

She was only forty-one when the cancer had finally consumed her. It was almost ironic that Hope had survived the early stages of the war and all the attacks against muggles but was defeated by some chronic disease that had no cure—magic or otherwise. It pained Remus to sit there and do nothing as he watched her wallow away to nothing those last few months. She had grown thin and frail that Remus had taken to carrying her around like a small child everywhere she went. A part of him was glad that Sirius couldn’t remember. It was hard on the both of them. Sirius had adored Hope and she adored him in return. He was so starved for motherly affection and she was so happy that Remus had someone who loved him that the two of them became fast friends. The day she died, Sirius cursed every star in the sky for taking away such a woman. He screamed about how unfair life was that it had taken her away, that he would die ten times over just to have her back. At the time, all Remus could do was watch Sirius yell into the night as he tried to understand his own feelings. He was never truly able to.

“It was a brain tumor.” Remus said and he hated how his voice cracked. “Cancer. Terrible.”

Sirius nodded minutely and they were quiet once more. After everything happened—with James and Lily’s deaths, Peter being assumed dead as well, and Sirius being locked away—Remus thought his life was an embodiment of irony. He had lost everyone that was important to him in a matter of two years when in all reality, he should’ve been first to leave them all. The wolf inside of him was bound to kill him one day, and Remus was okay with that. He never thought he’d have to be the one grieving.

He would have rather taken the former option.

The feeling of Sirius’ cool fingers intertwining between his own pulled Remus from his thoughts and he turned to the man beside him. Sirius smiled, albeit a bit brokenly, and gave Remus’ palm a squeeze. All the walls Remus seemed to have put up broke down in that moment and he fell to his knees, pulling Sirius down with him. It was as if all the emotions he had been holding in for the past sixteen years came flooding to the surface, making him crumble.

“Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Sirius whispered, delicate fingers running over Remus’ scalp.

“I’m sorry,” Remus stuttered, because he was. God, was he sorry.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine. It would never be fine. But Remus nodded anyway.

* * *

“I can’t remember our last kiss.”

Remus almost missed the quiet admittance of Sirius’ latest lost thought. Usually he sounded frustrated or sad whenever he talked to Remus about the things he couldn’t remember but now he almost sounded ashamed for forgetting such a thing. They were sitting on the back porch because Sirius was feeling too claustrophobic to be inside at the moment, gazing up at the night sky. Remus’ eyes would always find the moon while Sirius’ tended to linger on Regulus. Neither of them mentioned it, though.

“It was August. 1981. The 31st, I believe.” Remus said. He remembered it perfectly, the way it down poured that night, as if the universe knew what was about to come. “It was our last night together before Dumbledore sent me off…off with the werewolves.”

He took a breath to compose himself. It was the last good night before everything went to hell. The last good night the two of them had together before suspicion and paranoia drove them apart. Remus often wished he could go back to that night.

“We made love. You had left the window open and so the rain came in and chilled our skin, but we didn’t care. I just kept kissing you and you kept saying my name, like some sort of mantra or prayer. And afterwards we just laid there, arms wrapped around each other and legs intertwined. I didn’t want to let you go. I really didn’t. I wanted to…to run away with you that night. Just run away from it all. But I knew that we couldn’t. So, I just kept kissing you. Trying to memorize the way your lips felt on mine just...just in case.”

The silence between them seemed to stretch on for ages after Remus finished speaking. It was a lot to say, a lot of emotions to unpack. Remus was never good at talking about his emotions, but Sirius deserved this. He deserved to remember how much they meant to one another, no matter how much it hurt now.

“Remus?”

“Yes, Sirius?”

“I…will you kiss me?”

He finally turned to Sirius, who was looking at him sadly, silent tears streaming down his face. The moonlight illuminated his pale skin, offering an almost celestial glow on his broken appearance. Silver eyes that had long since turned to ash stared at Remus with such longing sorrow and the werewolf felt his heart break. Even though he was damaged, possibly beyond repair, he was still the most beautiful thing Remus had ever seen.

Remus nodded minutely and leaned forward, pressing his lips gently against Sirius’. It was soft at first, hesitant, but then Sirius surged forward, hands reaching up to cling onto the back of Remus’ neck and pulling him forward. Remus brought his own hands up to curl in long locks of dark hair that crowded Sirius’ face, urgent and desperate, holding on like he would be taken away from him again at any moment. He wouldn’t let it happen. This was everything, Sirius was everything.

They were together again. Despite the odds, despite fate, they had somehow found their way back to one another. And Remus was not going to let go.

They broke apart, hands still holding one another close, gasping for the same air and looking at each other like they used to, back when all that mattered was their love.

“Was that like how you remember?”

“Yes,” Remus gasped, and he smiled genuinely for the first time in years, “Exactly how I remember.”

#remus lupin #sirius black #wolfstar #wolfstar angst #remus lupin angst #sirius black angst #post azkaban #harry potter fanfiction #angst #happy ending #james potter #lily evans potter #jily #peter pettigrew #memory loss #💭 by kat

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crazyfreckledginger · 5 years ago

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Your First Kiss With Philip Would Include...

Requested by anon: “I saw that luckily you do imagines also for Sirius the Jaeger! I read the request for Mikhail and liked it so, since there's like no content about Phillip, can i ask what a first kiss with him will include?”

A/N: I’m aging up Philip to 18 years old, hope you don’t mind.

It was surprising to you when Dorothea told you that he’s pretty vocal around everyone else.

Actually, Philip’s behaviour was much different around you, he’d be a little awkward and reserved, it made you a little upset, did he have a problem with you or something?

You grew up pretty close to Dorothea until you lost all contact for a loooong while, you crossed paths and decided to join forces.

Meeting everyone and getting along with everyone.

Except Philip of course, he was a tough bean.

Because they were Dorothea’s friends, you really wanted to get along with everyone, but you never managed, you just thought that was his character.

So it made you a little depressed when you found out he’s pretty lively normally.

You didn’t want to put more effort into being friends with him since clearly he wanted nothing to do with you so you just let it be and accepted that the way you were wasn’t something he wanted anything to do with so fine.

Yuliy noticed and casually slipped it into a conversation between the both of them, leaving Philip blabbering over his own words and cheeks flushed.

Philip decided he should apologise, so he went to you when the moment was right, i.e. when Yuliy not-so-discreetly shoved him into you and left you alone.

You started off as a clean slate, and it was going great, although you grew feelings for him slowly but surely, even though you didn’t want to.

You didn’t know he returned the feelings, however, until Dorothea teased him, saying that you were nearly in a death situation when you got attacked by a vampire.

It wasn’t true, obviously but the whole group could tell you fancied each other and watching Philip squirming wasn’t something any of them would miss.

He went R U N N I N G to find the both of you -- who went into town to buy some groceries.

Whilst Dorothea’s story seemed a little unreal given that you were both in town, it wasn’t completely untrue.

“(Y/N), (Y/N), (Y/N)!!!” you heard someone calling out behind you as Yuliy walked into a bakery.

“Huh?” you frowned as you recognised the blond head racing straight towards you, “what’s-”

He did that.

I.e. cupping both your cheeks in his palms and slamming his lips into yours, kissing you desperately.

Your mind went black, you froze into place, in shock and surprised.

When he pulled away, he hugged you tightly.

“Don’t scare me like that again, I’m sorry it had to come to this for me to tell you, but, from now on I’ll be honest and never leave your side -- if you’re okay with that.”

His voice was slightly muffled by how buried it was in your neck but it was crystal clear to you, which ironically only confused you more.

“What?”

Philip pulled away to get a good look at you.

“What do you mean ‘don’t scare me like that again’?”

“Dorothea told me you nearly died because of a vampire!” It was his turn to frown now.

“I never was, Yuliy took care of it before I even understood what was going on.” clearly, you were eyeing him suspiciously and his heart nearly dropped out of his stomach, face read and he let go of you.

“O-ooh, I’msosorryIdidn’tmeantodothat,forgetiteverhappenedIwasn’tthinkingstraightokay?I’msorry!”

He was blabbering in embarrassment and your heart was waltzing with joy, a huge grin on your face as he avoided eye contact.

“I’ll uh, just go,” he murmured, turning around after he calmed down.

Gripping his jacket to stop him in his tracks.

When he glanced back at you, he had a desperate look in his eyes, not something he wanted you to see, on the contrary, he was trying to hide it.

He wasn’t significantly taller than you but you gazed up at him, slowly walking up to him and placing your lips back against his.

Philip didn’t hesitate to slide an arm around your waist to pull you closer, his other hand gently grasping your chin to savour the kiss fully.

“Um, did I miss something?” Yuliy’s voice interrupted the both of you.

The pair of you never had such quick reflexes than in that very moment.

You pulled away in the blink of an eye.

“What?” you gulped, glancing at Philip as he stared at the ground with burning cheeks, red ears and scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

“I’ll just go, I trust you can get (Y/N) home safety hm?” he had a polite, oblivious tone but Philip could tell he was sending him an amused smile.

The both of you watched him leave until he turned around a corner, before acknowledging each other’s presence again.

Slowly, he redirected his attention back to you.

“Do you wanna get something to eat? I know a place…” he trailed off.

A smile found its way onto your face as you nodded.

“That sounds nice,” it sounded so soft to his ears and he looked up at you in shock, surprised you even agreed to this despite what happened moments ago, he didn’t have a response to that.

Seeing the blank look on his face, you chuckled, intertwining your fingers with his and tugging on his arm.

“The place?” you tilted your head to the side.

“R-right,” he blushed, squeezing your hand and guiding you towards it.

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#Firippu #Firippu x reader #Firippu headcanon #philip #philip x reader #philip headanon #sirius the jaeger #sirius the jaeger x reader #sirius the jaeger headcanon #stj #stj x reader #stj headcanon

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centavrvs · 5 years ago

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⧼ saoirse ronan, cis female, she/her / kitchen fork by jack conte + & once you were the wildfire, eager to devour, leaping from branch to bush, but then the rainstorm came and now, now you are the cold, abandoned hearth, empty flames snapping at those who get to close, afraid they’ll realise what isn’t there, & the click of the door as it shuts behind you is the only greeting you receive as you wonder how anyone ever knows what to call “home”, & as you sit in your old patchwork armchair, perpetually cold fingers clutched too tightly around a slightly chipped mug of tea you can’t help but think maybe only you are the answer to the question you have been asking your whole life – where do I belong? ⧽ ━━ hey, isn’t that HEATHER PETTIGREW? i read a daily prophet article on them, once ; the TWENTY THREE year old half blood WITCH is a SLYTHERIN alumnus who has gone on to be a PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR AND PART-TIME FLOURISH AND BLOTTS ASSISTANT. i’ve heard they can be quite INGENIOUS & PUNCTILIOUS, but i don’t know… they came off very CALLOUS & MERCURIAL in that interview. it really is hard to know what to believe these days though, isn’t it?

[ PERSONALITY ]

heather is not a very open person. she tends to keep to herself and hold everyone at an arms length

to anyone who knew her at hogwarts - this is a complete switch around from how she acted back then. she used to be loud and in your face, refusing to be ignored

if heather has retained one trait from her childhood it is her penchant for unintentional cruelty. her distancing can come off as cold and her social self-defense mechanism tends to aim at hurting others before they can hurt her

speaking of a social self-defense system, heather, despite outward appearances, has a tendency to snap without warning when under emotional duress or when others try to get closer than she wants them too. a proximity alarm if you will

but if you manage to make it past this, you will find heather is actually very clingy and a very loyal friend (almost gryffindor-ish)

she loves puzzles and solving problems (hence, private investigator) and strives to become extremely successful at her investigation job but people do tend to think twice before hiring her (being a pettigrew and ex-death eater and all)

books! reading is one of her favourite pastimes and that has nothing to do with the sense of relief escaping into a fictional world brings

the friend you can sit in companionable silence with but also the friend who will talk to you for hours about an obscure concept she stumbled across and also the friend who will whisper slightly mean jokes in your ear so you laugh and get all the weird looks while she escapes unscathed

doesn’t buy into the blood purity bullshit and if she’s being honest with herself, she never did

crippling fear of abandonment / never finding a place to “belong”

tl;dr: not coping with what happened during the war

[ THE LOVERS ]

The year was 1996 and Peter Pettigrew was a traitor, a cheat and a liar. In the midst of the first wizarding world war, he had betrayed his friends and switched sides. He would eventually go on to be the catalyst for the death of countless friends of his, the orphaning of a child and the rebirth of the dark lord, however, in the moment such misdeeds were merely shadows of the future. Right now in fact, Peter was simply at a bar. A muggle bar. Talking to a muggle girl. And her name was Angela Coates.

And such is the story of how Heather’s parents met. It was never a relationship, per say, more of a friends-with-benefits, minus the “friends” part. For Peter, this was a break from the wizarding world and its war, and it posed no risk of awkward questions concerning allegiance. For Angela, it was a way to blow off some steam. No strings and certainly no commitments. That is, until January of 1997 and Angela found herself knocking on Peter’s door with, sick to her stomach with nerves. The door opened and after a relatively quick argument, it shut again. Peter had made it clear – he didn’t want a child and he refused to play any part in the baby’s life. Angela was all of 20 years old, single and pregnant.

[ THE EMPRESS ]

TW – MENTIONS OF DRUGS, AND ALLUDES TO NEGLECT

On the 27th of October of that very year, Heather Debbie Pettigrew was born. Heather because Angela had read the name in a magazine and like the sound of it, Debbie after the lead singer of Blondie, Angela’s favourite band and Pettigrew because Angela thought in some odd way this was making Heather a part of Peter’s life, something he clearly didn’t want. A revenge move that only ever served to hurt Heather, but Angela was not to know this.

Circumstances aside, Angela was not cut out to be a mother. She was the quintessential twenty-year-old, living life hard and fast and Heather was an unexpected speed bump that didn’t do much to slow her down. As soon as Heather was old enough, she was sent off to daycare, while her mother worked full-time to put money in the bank and the pockets of local drug dealers. Angela wasn’t entirely incompetent. She knew to keep most of her illicit activities hidden from her child (as far as Angela knew, Heather had no idea – Heather would tell you otherwise). The longest time Heather would spend with her mother was while sat on the couch watching television, her mother out cold beside her. Desperate for the attention of others, Heather was by no means a well-behaved child. This, combined with the assortment of strange incidents and accidents that Heather seemed to get herself into that had no plausible explanation was too much for Angela. When Heather was eight years old, Angela realised she couldn’t keep living the life she was living and care for Heather. And so Heather was dropped on the steps of a foster home, with a note that gave a few details about her and she never saw Angela again.

TW OVER

[ THE MAGICIAN ]

By the time Heather joined her first foster family, she had long since accepted that Mummy didn’t want her and, despite what she had said – she wasn’t coming back. The adults had told her that she didn’t need to lash out all the time and that she should try sit quite, behave properly, but none of them understood. When she said she didn’t know how Emilia’s doll had ended up in pieces, she meant she hadn’t even touched it! Heather tried to fit in with these people, she really did, but this was a muggle family fostering a magical child. After a particular incident involving a broken window and a trip to the hospital (magic was, ironically, not involved in this), the family decided that Heather just wasn’t for them. Feeling left behind once more, Heather was quickly matched with another couple eager to foster. But the branch had already been burnt and she was not to be reaching out to these people any time soon. A welcome reprieve soon came in the form of a lady wearing robes and a pointy hat knocking on the door of the couple’s flat in Birmingham. The explanation for previously unexplainable scenarios calmed the couple considerably and Heather felt a small flame of hope spark in her chest. A magical world? It all made sense now. Of course, she didn’t belong here, she was a witch.

Heather’s first step into Diagon Alley will forever hold a place in her most cherished memories. The sounds, the sights, the smells – everything felt right. She was whisked through the usual first year trip around stores, buying robes and cauldrons and books and a wand! Hogwarts couldn’t come quick enough. And the sorting ceremony? It all sounded fascinating. Personally, Heather was hoping for Ravenclaw, but she knew not to have any solid expectations.

Which was lucky, for although the hat certainly considered the blue and the bronze, in the end it decided that silver and green would suit Miss Heather more. A choice that Heather would later come to question. For in Slytherin house Heather came face to face with her first taste of blood purity. And she didn’t like it one bit. Who were these older students, to question her “blood status”? And how was she to know? Determined to uncover any knowledge of her family, Heather poured over the student records in the library until – there. Peter Pettigrew, graduated 1978. It fit! Heather was more than a little relieved. At least one magical parent. She had been worried she would be one of those, what did that older boy call them? Oh yes, mudbloods.

But the discovery of her father’s name opened another can of worms – where was he? Ever the independent child, Heather was determined to find out on her own. And she did, stumbling upon an old article in the Daily Prophet. He was dead. Murdered. By his own best friend. She truly had no proper family left ( her mother stopped counting long ago). Hogwarts, while a chance to be in the world she belonged to, did not help build a strong relationship with her foster family. Heather rarely saw them, choosing to spend her days in summer exploring wizarding London or, when she was older, spending the nights with the muggle teenagers who partied too loudly down the street. Home was simply a stop-over. She belonged at Hogwarts now.

In her second year, Sirius Black, notorious mass murderer and the man who killed her father escaped from Azkaban. Heather was terrified. And angry. But mostly terrified. She hated that man, hated seeing his stupid face in the Daily Prophet, hated hearing his awful name whispered in the halls. How dare he rip the only family member who would have loved her away from her, how dare he rob her of the chance of a proper home? For surely, if her father had survived that horrific attack, he would have raised her, her would have taken her in. Instead, she was left alone and Black now roamed free, free after escaping Azkaban and free after slipping through the ministry’s fingers once more.

And the very next year, Cedric died. It was the first of many darker stains on Heather’s memories of Hogwarts. Despite what the Ministry said, what everyone seemed to say, she could sense a tense current winding its way through the halls of her school. Voldemort or not, something dark had returned from that graveyard.

[ THE EMPEROR ]

Heather was 16 years old when she discovered her father was in fact, alive. Standing in the Slytherin common room at the start of her fifth year, the murmured conversation of two older students reaching her ears. Heather was 16 years old when she discovered her father was alive and he was a Death Eater. The force of such a revelation left Heather reeling. She couldn’t pay attention in class, she couldn’t finish her meals, she couldn’t sleep. He had been alive this entire time. Did he not wan- no. No of course he would have wanted her he, he just must not have known! Yes, he was unaware of Heathers existence and it would be up to her to go to him. Heather grabbed all her doubts and questions about her father’s secret (lie?) and shoved into a deep, dark corner of her mind where she could hopefully ignore them. She had a purpose now. She needed to see her father. And to do that – she would join the Death Eaters. The stories Heather spun to convince herself were many and varied. This was a chance to belong to something bigger than just Hogwarts, she needed to pick the right side in this war anyway, this would keep her safe. But above all – this would make her father proud. Never mind the bitter weight in her chest that burned with something suspiciously like guilt, never mind the whisper-quite voice in the back of her mind that pleaded with her to do better, be better. This was the right choice. (Spoiler: it wasn’t).

[ THE TOWER ]

Heather was 17 when she killed a muggle. She was 17, shaking hands barely holding onto her wand at her side as her body went cold along with the one on the floor in front of her. It wasn’t meant to end like this, it had been a simple enough task, capture a muggle for the Dark Lord, something she could, she should have been able to undertake on her winter break. But then he had a knife and objects were being thrown and...and now someone was dead. The mark flared to life, the burning a welcome reprieve from the numbness that had spread from her hand, across her whole body. She was to meet the Dark Lord himself.

Heather was 17 when she first saw her father. The Dark Lord was speaking, addressing those before him but Heather heard none of it. All she could see was that thing, all but crouched at the feet of the man in front of him. He was a starving dog begging for scraps. And he never even looked at her. Not when she entered the room, not when Voldemort started to speak and not when she was called by her name. The world Heather had painstakingly built in her mind, each brick filled with another lie to get her out of bed in the morning, was crashing down around her head. Peter Pettigrew didn’t want her.

Heather was left with nought but the rubble of her life and the mark chaining her to all she hated splashed across her arm. She drifted through her sixth year, hoping and praying for the first time in her life to be left alone. And then came the Battle of Hogwarts.

Watching your school turn into a battleground, watching your peers lie dead in the hallways, watching children fighting for their lives – Heather didn’t feel like a child anymore. She felt like a soldier, reluctantly shoved into a fight she didn’t start. But it was amongst the chaos and the death that Heather could finally attempt at what her conscience had been screaming for her to do. Disguised by rubble and school robes, Heather fired spell after spell at the very Death Eaters she could have been standing beside. And then Voldemort lost.

[ THE PRESENT ]

The war and everything leading up to it doused the fire that used to roar in Heather’s chest. She was pardoned, for fighting for the “right side”, (and no one ever knew about the muggle) but it doesn’t feel like it. Some days it feels like she is hated more for her last name than the dark mark on her arm, especially after the truth about Sirius Black came to light. She feels torn in two - on one hand it feels like a worthy punishment for her misdeeds, on the other - she just wants to live her life and she can assure you no one hates Peter Pettigrew more than she does. But Heather is tired of fighting. So she simply does whatever job someone will hire a PI with two social strikes against their name for and she works part-time shifts at Flourish and Blotts and when she comes home to an apartment emptier and colder than her bones feel, she does. not. cry.

#//*- [ heather | about ]#nox.intro #second time round babeyyy #death tw #drugs tw #neglect tw #abuse tw

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owlways-and-forever · 5 years ago

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HSWW Asst 11, Thaumatology Task 3 - Write about someone having an accident.

Camp Hogwarts, [Song] Hold You Down by X Ambassadors

IPC #943 - [Title] What Time Doesn’t Heal

365 #5 - Ache

Warnings: character death, funeral, graphic injuries

o . o . o

When there’s no one to hold you, I will still hold you down

I will still hold you down

- Hold You Down, X Ambassadors

There were five people between Lily and James. His father was to James’ left, then James, Sirius, two stuffy relatives that she couldn’t for the life of her remember, Remus, and then Lily. She could have stood before Remus, but he had offered to go first so she would attract less attention, and honestly Lily was okay with it because whatever second uncle was standing next to Remus smelled incredibly musty. Except she wasn’t okay with it because there were five people between her and James and all she wanted was to hold his hand. She snuck a glance over at him, and felt her heart shatter a little bit more. He was staring straight ahead with glassy eyes, adamantly refusing to look at the ornate coffin in front of him. Lily understood. If he didn’t look at it, it wasn’t there. If he couldn’t see her body, maybe his mom was still alive. Damn, if only she could hug him right now.

Remus elbowed her gently, a subtle reminder to face front again. It was hard to remember all these stupid rules. Especially since she had only met Euphemia twice, so she wasn’t really all that sad. Well she was, it was awful losing such a tremendous public figure, but mostly she was sad because James was going through hell and there was nothing she could do about it. Lily peeked over again, and she could practically feel Remus roll his eyes. Great job, Lily , she internally reprimanded, channeling Remus as best she could, I’m sure none of the billion photographers have gotten a picture of you craning your neck to stare at the bloody Prince of England at his mother’s funeral. That definitely won’t be plastered across tabloid covers in a week. She sighed and tried to refocus her attention on the service that was taking place around her.

It might be easier if the stupid Abbey weren’t eight hundred degrees inside. Not to mention if her heels weren’t pinching her toes. People just shouldn’t be allowed to die during the summer, it was far too uncomfortable. Lily mentally slapped herself for that. She had no business thinking about physical comfort right now. Grief, Lily, grief, that’s what you should be feeling right now. Nothing else . She looked at the Queen’s face, waxy and preserved. So much must have gone into making her look right for her burial, because Lily had been there, and the woman certainly hadn’t died peacefully in her sleep.

o . o . o

Lily and James had excused themselves, leaving the private Royal car of the train, ostensibly to go find some food, but really they were looking for some privacy, ironically enough. It was just that it was only the second time Lily was meeting his family, and they were only 19, so who could blame them if they wanted a little bit of alone time? Euphemia was more than a little bit heavy handed with her hinting as well. When his mother said she was getting peckish, James had hastily offered to go get something to eat for them, needing a brief moment of reprieve. And then he had wisely claimed to need Lily’s help carrying everything back, and they had both departed the little compartment with their hands clasped. Which is precisely how they had ended up in an empty compartment two cars down, the privacy shades pulled all the way down as their hands groped to find skin and they pressed desperate kisses against lips and noses and jaws. Lily thought she might actually spontaneously combust from longing when a loud metal creak tore through the air and she fell crashing to the floor of the train.

She barely had time to comprehend that the train was tipping on its side before she was sliding to the wall, James scrabbling for purchase beside her. An awful metallic shriek was rending the air as the train continued to surge forward, its outer wall scraping along the tracks. The lights blinked off as the train lost all power, and slowly, the train ground to a halt.

“Are you okay?” James asked her, struggling to get on his hands and knees in the sideways compartment.

“I think so,” Lily answered. Later, she would feel the sharp ache of her broken wrist, but at that moment, she felt nothing.

James had a cut across his forehead where he must have banged it on the seat or something, and she was sure both of them would have more than a few bruises.

“We need to go find my mum,” he said, kicking the compartment door open and carefully dropping himself through it. He reached up to Lily, helping her as she wiggled her way through and dropped down next to him.

Together, they quickly made their way back to the Royal Family’s car, careful not to step on the compartment windows, half of which were shattered anyway. James pried the door open, kneeling on it so Lily could pass. But there was nowhere for her to go, with no floor to step on and the door on the other side of the gap firmly shut. James swore, clearly not prepared for that outcome, and quickly took stock of the situation.

“Go up,” he grunted, nodding at the outer door, which had sprung open as part of the emergency protocol.

Lily nodded and grabbed onto the edge of the metal above her head, struggling to heave herself out. She kicked her feet as her stomach met the edge of the doorway, and she leaned forward so her chest was resting against the outside of the train car. Reaching up to try to grasp anything and finding one of the handholds for climbing aboard, Lily dragged herself out of the door, her muscles howling in protest as her belly scraped across the door. When she was finally out and stood atop the side of the train, she rolled her eyes slightly. Of course she’d gotten up on the wrong side. She leapt over the doorway, landing with a metallic clang on the other side, and then waited for James to join her. He managed to pull himself out in a smooth motion, seemingly with as much ease as vaulting out of a swimming pool, and if she wasn’t so bloody scared right now, she would probably hate him a little bit for how graceful it was.

He grabbed her hand and tugged her along, their footsteps echoing heavy and hollow on the metal siding, until they reached the joint between the next two cars. James peeked through the doorway and huffed when he found the inner door to the Royal car firmly shut. Looking up though, he saw a window broken in, and immediately made a beeline for it. They could hear muffled shouts from inside the car, and James lowered himself inside, worry written in creases along his forehead, leaving Lily for the first time as he rushed to his mother. Lily tried to follow him carefully, but the broken window left a jagged, stinging cut along her palm. She hissed at it slightly before turning her attention back to James and his mom. When she turned around to face the compartment where the Queen had been sitting, her heart broke.

James was kneeling on the window next to the compartment door, held back by one of his bodyguards, grief and anger and disbelief battling for control of his features. Inside the compartment, Queen Euphemia was collapsed against the outer window, craggy glass shards littering the ground outside. The post of a track-side sign was sticking up through the broken window, piercing the Queen’s stomach. Blood dripped through the cracks in the glass and oozed slowly across her shirt, but it was the only movement anywhere on her body. No flutter of the eyelids, no twitch of the fingers. Not even the faintest rise and fall of her chests to indicate breath. She was just… still.

“Mum,” James gasped, nearly hyperventilating. “Come on, Mum, please.”

Lily crawled over to him, reaching out to cover his hand with her own but he jerked it away sharply. She understood. She wasn’t the one he wanted right now, she couldn’t comfort him the right way. These were the one shoes she would never be able to fill. Even so, James leaned into her shoulder, reaching out and squeezing her hand softly before pulling away again. Just enough to let her know that he wasn’t angry with her. She looked at him carefully, taking in the anguish and the way he just couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from his mother’s body.

“I’m sorry, James,” she whispered, her heart sinking even further.

His mother died and he hadn’t been there. Lily wasn’t sure James was ever going to forgive her for that.

o . o . o

The Garter King of Arms stepped forward, taking his place next to the Archbishop, and took a deep breath, projecting his voice throughout the Abbey for all to hear.

“Thus it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of this transitory life unto His Divine Mercy the late Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Princess Euphemia, Queen Consort by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms and Territories Queen Consort, Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Lady of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Lady of the Imperial Order of the Crown of India, Grand Master and Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order upon whom has been conferred the Royal Victorian Chain, Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Dame Grand Cross of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John. May God save the Queen.”

“God save the Queen,” a chorus replied, sincere in their wishes for their beloved monarch, and many people bowed or knelt in a show of respect.

The orchestra struck up a somber and melancholic version of the national anthem, and voices joined with the instruments. Lily peeked over at James as she sang, seeing the struggle on his face. She could tell he was desperately trying to hold back his tears and present the strong face that he had been counseled to display, but he was entirely overcome with grief. How could he not be a mess? To the country, the woman before them was a symbol, a figurehead, but to him she was so much more, and he grieved as any son would for his mother.

As the music transitioned seamlessly to some instrumental piece and the Archbishop walked around the coffin to begin the parade out of the Abbey, James pressed the heel of his hand into his brow bone and took a deep breath that shuddered through his frame. He repeated the action again, searching for composure as he prepared to face the masses of people gathered outside, lining the route. James stepped forward, taking his place next to his father, right behind the coffin, as officers of the Royal Navy stepped forward, carrying the top of the coffin from where it had been sequestered out of sight, and laying it over the Queen’s body. They latched it securely shut, standing at attention. Two of the officers unfurled the Queen’s personal standard, carefully draping it over the coffin like a blanket. In unison, the six officers reached down and grasped the handles of the coffin, slowly moving forward, one marching step at a time.

James flashed a look at Lily as he and his father began to move forward, following the Queen’s coffin. He seemed to be searching for something in her face, some kind of strength or courage to keep going. She nodded to him, trying to encourage him and wordlessly reassure him that he could get through this. She would only be a few steps behind him.

The parade route was a mile and a half long, taking them along Whitehall, passing the houses of government along the way, and then along The Mall, with St. James’ Park on their left, an imposing march through the Admiralty Arch with Buckingham Palace looming at the end. When they reached the end of their journey, the coffin was laid on a catafalque in the palace square, while the Royal Family, extended family members, and close friends made their way to the balcony.

In the privacy of the Palace, they were free to break from their strict procession order, and Lily immediately sought James out. His shoulders sagged under the weight of his grief, and Lily thought he might collapse from the strain of the day. She laced her fingers with his and he squeezed her hand as if he could extract strength from her grasp.

“It’s almost over,” he whispered, blinking quickly to contain the tears as they climbed the stairs together. It seemed like James was talking more to himself than to her, as if he was reminding himself to keep it together for just a little bit longer.

“James,” the King said quietly, a gentle signal that it was time for their last public duty.

James stepped out onto the balcony with his father, and Lily returned to Remus’ side, both of them taking their own places far off to the side. It was the final salute. The Royal Army began, conducting a spectacular gun salute in the courtyard. The Navy followed with a smaller display, their primary role as bearers of the coffin serving as their salute to the Queen instead. Finally, the Royal Air Force flew an array of jets over the palace, leaving streaks of red, white and blue, interspersed with a coal black. As the jetstreams faded in the sky, the Naval officers once again took up the coffin, this time conducting it into a waiting hearse. From there, the Queen would be driven to Windsor Castle and interred in St. George’s Chapel. The guests on the balcony watched as the car departed, each privately saying their final goodbyes to the beloved queen.

As soon as the car was out of sight, James turned from the balcony, retreating to the privacy behind the palace walls, unable to take any more ceremony. His father followed a moment later, pausing only to wave farewell to his people, and then the rest of the guests on the balcony returned inside. The King patted his son’s shoulder sympathetically, before moving down the stairs, still intent on being a good host. They still had a lunch for the attending dignitaries and attending guests, but Lily knew that James needed a few minutes before he would be ready for that.

She took his hand and pulled him off to the side of the room, and no sooner had they moved out of the path of the other guests than James collapsed in her arms. His head dropped to her shoulder as his hands wound around her waist in a tight hug. Lily had to stretch onto her toes so that she could reach around his neck to hug him in return, rubbing her fingers soothingly against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, feeling his tears wet on her dress, not that she cared in the slightest about the scrap of fabric. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you for being here,” James murmured, as his breathing steadied and his tears slowed. He looked up at her and Lily reached up to wipe some of the tears from his cheeks with a soft brush of her thumbs over his skin. “There’ll probably be rumours after today, I -”

“I don’t care,” Lily interrupted, fixing him with an intensely sincere look. “None of that matters at all, James. I just want to be here for you.”

The corners of his mouth twitched in the closest thing she had seen to a smile in a week, and he pulled her into another hug. After a long moment, he pressed a quick kiss to her temple and pulled back, taking her hand and turning toward the now empty grand staircase.

“Come on, everyone is probably waiting on me to start lunch.”

Lily squeezed his hand and moved forward with him, glad that at least now she could stay by his side and be the comfort she knew he so desperately needed.

#hp ff #hp fic #jily #james potter #lily evans #marauders

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hufflly-puffs · 6 years ago

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Chapter 6: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

I really wonder why the Order thinks Voldemort is after a weapon. Is it simply one of Dumbledore’s assumptions, that usually turn out to be right? Is it the information Snape gathered? Does Voldemort himself refer to the prophecy as a weapon, because he thinks it will help him find out how to kill Harry? The whole weapon theory is such a false lead and I wonder where it has its origin.

Fred and George tell Harry that the joke shop is a mail order service so far, and that they put an advertisement in the Daily Prophet, which their mother won’t see as she stopped reading the Prophet. But you would think others still read it, even members of the Order, to keep in touch with what they write, and might tell or ask Molly about it. It is not a very fool-proof plan.

So, let’s talk about Kreacher. It’s been said that he has lived alone in the house for ten years now, ever since Mrs Black died. The only remaining member of his family, Sirius, had been in prison, and so he took instead orders of the portrait of Mrs Black. Hermione is probably right in her assumption that Kreacher thinks they can’t hear what insults he mutters. They can’t set him free because he knows too much about the Order. And his loyalty is clearly to Mrs Black and not Sirius, so he probably would have no problems telling their secrets. (Dobby however never told anyone about the Malfoys’s secrets, and I think it is because part of him is still afraid of his old master.) Kreacher’s case is quite interesting because it is so unique. After Mrs Black’s death he legally belonged to Sirius, but obviously Sirius could not use him as long as he was prison and so Kreacher was forced to stay in Grimmauld Place, waiting for either Sirius’s return or his death. And all this time alone made him mad. Only Hermione and Dumbledore seem to pity him, though Hermione’s suggestion to set him free would be too risky for obvious reasons. Dumbledore tells Sirius to be kind to Kreacher, because he is aware of the power a house-elf has and how Kreacher’s hate for Sirius can backfire (which we see at the end of the book). To Sirius though Kreacher represents everything he hated about his former home and his family, and as he is the only one left he places all his hate on Kreacher.

“‘Is it true? Is it Harry Potter? Kreacher can see the scar, it must be true, that’s the boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how he did it –’” – Are house-elves political? Obviously they are not allowed to express their opinions but that doesn’t mean they don’t have ones. Dobby disagreed a great deal with his former master and even risked severe punishment in order to warn Harry. We know that Voldemort completely underestimates house-elves (and this will part of his down-fall), that he treats them as objects, and shows no real interest in them. Kreacher is loyal to his old masters, especially Mrs Black, who supported Voldemort and his ideology. But Kreacher, unknown to everyone, has his very own history with Voldemort. And in the end he will lead the house-elves of Hogwarts in the battle against Voldemort. So his question is probably genuine, as Voldemort is also responsible for the death of Regulus.

Harry knows Sirius for a little over a year but only now learns more about his family history because he never bothered before to ask. It is possible that Ron had at least heard about the Black family, as there aren’t many pureblood families left and it is always possible Hermione has read about them. His family and their reputation might also be the reason so many people likely believed Sirius to be a mass murderer (mostly Muggle victims on top of it), and even those who knew the full story about his assumingly betrayal of the Potters might have wondered if perhaps he had never been disloyal to his family in the first place. Harry of course immediately sees the similarities between him and Sirius; both forced to grow up in a family they hate, both found a new family through their best friends who took them in like their own. And Harry of course entertains the idea to live with Sirius again, because in his eyes everything is better than the Dursleys.

I always wonder about the relationship between Sirius and Regulus. Sirius calls him an idiot, but also says he was soft, and after his release of Azkaban Sirius had tried to find out more about his death. I do think that perhaps not everything was lost between them, that a part of Sirius did love Regulus and it hurt him to see what became of him. It always saddens me that Sirius never found out what Regulus did, that he played his part in defeating Voldemort.

“‘No, no, but believe me, they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having pure-bloods in charge. They weren’t alone, either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colours, who thought he had the right idea about things … they got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for joining up at first.’” – I don’t know if it was actually said in this book or only the movie adaption that you just can’t divide the world into Death Eaters and Others. Because they are still people who are racist, who believe in purity and have a great dislike for everyone slightly non-human, characters like Fudge or Umbridge, who are not Death Eaters, but dangerous in their own right. The Death Eaters are the most extremist group, ready to kill and torture for their ideology, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of other wizards won’t share their ideas to some degree.

“‘No, he was murdered by Voldemort. Or on Voldemort’s orders, more likely; I doubt Regulus was ever important enough to be killed by Voldemort in person. From what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out. Well, you don’t just hand in your resignation to Voldemort. It’s a lifetime of service or death.’” – Do you see the massive parallel between Regulus and Draco? Both joining the Death Eaters on their own, both terrified by what they have to do, though obviously Regulus in the end gave his life to redeem himself. I always wonder about Draco and how different things could have been, how he perhaps at some point could have changed sides, could have interacted with Sirius and/or Tonks, members of his family who choose a different path. I always hope that after the war he got in contact with his cool aunt Andromeda though.

“‘The pure-blood families are all interrelated,’ said Sirius. ‘If you’re only going to let your sons and daughters marry pure-bloods your choice is very limited; there are hardly any of us left.” – It is fair to assume that there is a great deal of incest between the Pureblood families. I think at some point it has been said that wizardkind would have died out if they hadn’t started to marry Muggles. Which is why the American Wizard Society, that has a law that forbids marriage between Muggles and Wizards, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“[…] a heavy locket that none of them could open;[…]” – Well, I wonder what that could be? I did re-read book 1-6 before the release of book 7 and I really didn’t notice this, so respect if you did.

You know when Mrs Weasley says she had ironed Harry’s best clothes I assumed it to be something formal, but we learn the next chapter it is just a T-Shirt and jeans, probably still Dudley’s old clothes, because Harry can’t seem to bother to buy himself some decent clothes.

#Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix #the noble and most ancient house of black #chapter notes #ootp

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fireeaglespirit · 6 years ago

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@beyond-far-horizons as promised, a short summary on my Orion, he takes a lot after the mythology of the constellation but not completely as you’ll see... I’ve done some homework ^^

I’m writing a larger post for one reply to Vivi concerning this all and it involves much more characters so I summed it up here for yah:

There’s probably some new things here so I’ll try to be slow.

Basically, Orion is a legendary guy who originated an entire dynasty under his name, the Orionis. In the story we have two main characters with this surname: Lyra and Procyon the sibling dragon-slayers and their dad, the King Sirius. There’s also another character with this surname in prequel timeline, called Adhara, so you can see he is quite important as ancestral figure for all these people...

Basically my Orion is the archetypal heroic figure and a legendary human warrior. He was the first king and one of the founders of the kingdom of Novencia. He’s quite the dude!!

So, this is my dude Orion (made on Azalea dolls):

I meant for him to look a bit like an older rugged version of Procyon, he’s more buffed and I kinda imagine him like early 2000′s long haired Hugh Jackman with gray eyes, lmao. The creator is limited but just imagine that.

This is his tale, more or less:

“The legend tells that Orion was a common man born in Vraen’dur, yet he managed to led humanity to their uprise against their dragon lords.

Orion grew up as a Zunak (some sort of dragon servant) and witnessed the heart of Balauria from inside and vowed to protect humanity from the dragon’s cruelty, even if at the cost of his life. It is said that the goddess Astraea heard his prayers and saw his bravery, and she wept… observing from the skies she judged him worth and sent one of her own stars to aid him in his quest… from the fallen star’s material several weapons were forged, powerful like no other and said to even surpass the avian mythical swords according to the lore of Novencia.

Orion managed to fulfill his dream and free his kin, even so, with all that power, he paid a great price to his deed. The legendary warrior died a few days after taking down Antares and namely founding the new city of Lindefal upon the ruins left from their battle. The great dragon managed to rip the hunter’s abdomen with the tip of his enormous tail before going down, like the iconic scorpion of the greek legends… despite the dragon’s size, the wound was minor, but it somehow festered as if he was poisoned and not the best healers of the time could intervene. Fate seeming claimed the hunter, ending the cycle..”

From an old post to Vivi.

Note that the story completely erases any interference from other historical figures on Antares’ downfall, so its certainly not reliable… but Orion is nowadays seen as a savior among Novencia and his descent is widely respected and loved, not without a reason… but its not the complete story.

And this is Antares, the big bad red dragon. His arch-enemy:

First of all, I choose Antares name because he is a huge red dragon.

Just to place you what exactly Novencia means, it was the first human kingdom founded after an uproar against evil dragons (the old empire called Balauria whose ruler was Antares, the eldest, most powerful dragon and asshole in charge). This uproar was historically attributed to Orion as he was a central figure in the war and he died tragically little after that so everyone remembers him as the savior of mankind, but actually tons of people fought in this including some avians and early draconians, such as Galatea (Eltanin’s younger sister) and even dragons such as Antares’ own siblings Polaris and Ishanur were fundamental to the red dragon’s downfall... anyway.

Orion is the spirit of mankind and their pride, no less, this is why people are so proud of him and they love his descent. Antares is the heart of the Scorpio constellation, which was faced by the hunter, Orion, this isn't very different in my story, because my Orion kills Antares but he dies afterwards from a wound in his chest caused by the dragon’s tail striking him slightly as he fell to his death... kinda ironic and scorpion-like, I did as a homage to the ancient tale.. so they kinda destroy each other.

The Scorpio kinda represents the monster defeated by mankind, also which is very interesting, as Antares wasn't originally a monster.

Its impossible to talk about Orion without talking of his arch enemy. I don’t know how much you know about this all, so just for refreshment: my dragon Antares is the elder brother of both Ishanur and Polaris, the black and white dragons respectively.

To sum it up, Antares was magnificent and the most powerful dragon that probably ever existed, he challenged his predecessors with the intent of freeing himself and his siblings, however he eventually got addicted to POWAR and control and he left it corrupt it badly, he was overly proud and unbearable. He basically became which he swore to destroy, a tyrant, and the ancient kingdom they founded became hellish, so someone needed to take him down.

Anyway, random facts about Orion:

Orion was born and raised in Vraen’dur (the old dragon city), I don’t have details but I imagine he was born among the Zunak (dragon servant family) and his father was serving directly under Antares himself so Orion must have had a closer look at the injustice of this system and he certainly had personal beef with the dragon Antares. The zunak are early ‘dragon priests’ but they didn't commune with the dragons power as Antares would never share it so they had just political advantage..

Orion’s lineage is called the Faelany, they could trace back to Astraea herself (the human turned goddess). Eltanin and Galatea belong to this too, they’re likely his cousins. All Faelany have black hair and gray eyes and ability to withstand colder climate easily, they also have the dreamblood (innate ability to access magic and use astral weapons (’weapons forged from stars’)), however this is not very important for now.. just linking this together to the draconian ancestors so you get an idea of the timeline, nowadays this name is mostly forgotten and everyone calls them the ‘Orionis’;

Orion’s legendary astral weapon was named Rigel. It even has the blue color of the real life star but I haven’t decided if it is really an arrow-like weapon as the mythology suggests (you can help me on that);

The astral weapons are thus human weapons unlike the solar/lunar weapons who are always meant for avians and draconians.. I always name them with names of stars belonging to constellations I align with my human people, such as Orion itself;

Rigel and most of his weapons were lost forever and they’re holy grails to the dragon slayers as it was told they have been forged from the heart of a fallen star, and so they’re regarded as one of the few things in existence able to kill or seal a true dragon… even if temporarily (they can be revived but it corrupts them). Dragons are known as creatures of the stars and only similar power can harm them properly;

Orion had a friend called Regulus, the founder of house Leonis and he was king after him. The meritocratic ruling system and laws of Novencia were established by Regulus, actually. One way or another, Orion was a cool guy and he wanted to free humanity from the shackles of slavery, there’s was never an intention to rule or anything but he still ended up as the most famous king ever even if technically he barely ruled at all, Regulus honored his memory afterwards;

He was the one to give the final, decisive blow to Antares. I choose this for several lore reasons but he wasn't alone in that feat;

The Orionis dynastic name was not created by him or Regulus either, it was Adhara, his young kin who crowned herself after his name as Adhara Orionis, giving birth to the tradition of human houses naming themselves after the founders... p.s.: she is something else as she caused a lot of problems for early Novencia which would make Orion cringe, but that’s for another story.

I think this is it! This is all I know about him right now.. I’m writing a complex post on early Novencia so this will cover some of Orion’s story and how he rebelled against Antares and his friendship with Regulus, etc.. I love that guy, he is great!

#orion #novencia #fantasy #lore

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justbeth96 · 7 years ago

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Sirius/Snape

When it comes to Snape and Sirius there are so many different opinions and arguments whether your Pro Snape or like me a huge supporter of Sirius and because I’ve been torturing myself all day reading all the Pro Snape blogs I have to say something.

The biggest most reoccurring arguments I see is how Sirius tried to kill Snape when the were younger. I can understand that. His actions were wrong. Unjustified. Not only could he have killed Snape but he would have ruined one of his best friends life. I could say it was Snapes fault for being a nosy asshat trying to get Lupin expelled but in the end it was Sirius who was in the wrong in this case.

That being said, no matter how much I love Sirius I can see his faults. I see his mistakes and can admit he was far from perfect.

I love Sirius, out of all the deaths in the series I believe his was the most senseless. Lupin, Fred, Tonks, Colin, Cedric all close behind him. He’s in first because out of all of them he had the crappiest hand dealt to him.

All his life he felt like an outsider until he met James. Than for a few years he had a brother he could rely on. He had a family he believed he could trust and he found happiness.

Then the prophecy is told and the Potters find themselves in trouble. They go into hiding and James wants to make Sirius their secret keeper. But despite knowing he’d never give up his best friend he knows its too obvious and at the last moment changes places with Peter.

He would soon realize that was the biggest mistake of his life. Shortly after he he hears of the Potters deaths. He goes to the house to find his best friend dead along with his wife. Just imagine what must have gone through his head standing their with little Harry crying and crying while his parents died for him. The overwhelming guilt must have made him drop to his knees. He didn’t do this, but he very well might have. Hagrid arrives for Harry, and Sirius lets him take him giving him his motorbike saying he wouldn’t need it.

He goes after one of his other best friends, red rage all he can see. In a stunning turn of strength Wormtail get the better of him. Faking his death and framing Sirius for his death and those of the muggles around them.

Sirius spends 12 years in Askaban with nothing more than his anger and guilt. Everyone wants to talk about how bad Snape had it as a double agent for so long. That’s bull. For 12 years Snape had it good under Dumbledores protection as a teacher… now tell me who had it worse?

Then once he is finally free he gets a year. One year where he is locked up in his hated childhood home for most of it.

Now for his death. Ultimately it was Bellatrix who killed Sirius. But it was Snape who sent him to his death. Ironic isn’t it?

Sirius is criticised for his actions when they were teenagers yet no one wants to talk about how Snape did practically the same thing. Only he succeeded.

1. If Snape had put aside his hate for Harry, and actually tried to teach Harry how to block his mind, the dark lord wouldn’t have been able to trick him.

2. If Snape had just given Harry some sign that he understood him when he was caught by Umbridge, maybe Harry wouldn’t have rushed off to the Ministry.

3. If Snape hadn’t goaded Sirius into feeling so useless maybe he would have listened to Lupin and the others and stayed behind.

Snape could have saved Sirius. He wanted him dead. If it was up to Snape he would have died in book 3. So no I don’t see Snape as a great hero. Or the bravest man Harry knew.

#snape #sirius black #remus x sirius #pro snape #anti snape #anti snily #harry potter #fandom #potterhead #james potter #remus lupin #book #series #book series #jk rowling #snape hate

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peterchildofiris · 7 years ago

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Biography

Name: Peter Pettigrew

Birthday: February 24th, 1994

Gender/Pronouns: Nonbinary. More specifically, agender. Peter uses a mix of he/him and they/them pronouns.

Sexuality: Bisexual.

Occupation: Cleaner. Were the magical community of Britain not at war, he might have set his sights a little higher (emphasis on the might). If Peter had a penny for all the times he’d told someone his profession then heard the words “but you’re not a squib”, he wouldn’t have to beg so many free pints off Sirius. There’s something about the word that deters people--perhaps because it’s easier and faster for those with magic to clean than it is for muggles. Doesn’t mean the job is easy. The messes are proportionately more complicated, in Peter’s experience. Owning house elves just isn’t as popular as it used to be, and many wix aren’t accustomed to cleaning up their own messes. Only ignorant people believe cleaning is a form of unskilled work. Take it from Peter, no one wants to sit on a toilet after a botched cleaning charm. Does he like his work? No, but if he clocks enough hours it pays the rent, and it leaves him enough time to make himself useful to both warring parties. He cleans at a variety of locations, including a weekend shift at an art college in central London, which Peter never misses, using the opportunity to fill his pockets with supplies. With a flakey goddess for a mother and a dad devoted to his work, now remarried with two young step-daughters, Peter never asks for help. If he needs something--if he stumbles upon a rare shade of paint and believes it will improve his life--he takes it. He has bigger mistakes to feel guilty about.

Powers: Peter possesses the power of photokinesis, meaning he can manipulate light to his will. He doesn’t rely on James and his cloak for invisibility; by bending light away from himself, he becomes invisible to the naked eye. He is also able to create illusions, making things appear where they are not. He doesn’t advertise his abilities--not like Sirius. He’s less occupied with helping others than helping himself, meaning the less people who know his true power, the better. There are advantages to being underestimated, and standing beside the likes of James Potter and Sirius Black, almost everyone estimates Peter.

Past:

Peter had a gift and it was not to be stifled. He was the child of Iris, goddess of the rainbow, after all. Lesser men would be put off by such an association to femininity but not Peter’s father. Peter’s talents were nurtured, his fondness for art enthusiastically supported. Memories with his father are often set against the background of the V&A, the Saatchi Gallery, the Scottish National Gallery, and Royal Botanic Gardens. It was an interest they shared, his father being an architect. The homes he designed were modern, with suggestions of grandeur--nothing garish, nothing cheap--but most of all comfortable. Ironic, considering how little time the man spent in his own home compared to the office.

Growing up, while his father was at work, Peter spent his days playing assistant to his grandmother, whom he addressed using the Korean halmoni. Cooking was always Peter’s favourite, learning fruits and vegetables by their colours, how the pigment bled once the flesh was cut, and how the different colours swirled together on the chopping board, logging this information in his head for future illusions. As the child of Iris, it was thought unwise for Peter to attend a public school, thus he was homeschooled by a private tutor. His grandmother tried to teach Peter Korean, but he didn’t like how the language set him apart from the people around him, the sneers of “speak english”. He resisted her lessons. Then, shortly after his ninth birthday, she died.

Home became an empty apartment, the steady whir and ping of the microwave, and an extensive library of DVDs. This was before Netflix, before Peter discovered piracy. He devoured anything science fiction, favouring fantasy over realism. The further the narrative from his own experiences, the better. When the world felt small, he lost himself in infinite space through films such as Star Wars, Thor, Prometheus, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. If Peter is a filmophile, it’s only because circumstances required it. With his father working constantly, his mother on the other side of a rainbow, free-spirited and free from the burden of parenting, Peter was alone and bored.

At eleven, Peter was contemplating attending public school for the first time. Now that he was older, he could control his powers well enough to attend lessons with ordinary preteens. But he was afraid. And contemptuous. He wanted to be with people of his kind. What were the odds he’d find any children of gods at some piss-poor high school in the outskirts of London? Then a letter arrived inviting him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Peter’s powers had masked his other magical abilities. It took Professor McGonagall a total of four attempts to explain to Peter that it wasn’t his mother that had given him this magic; that sometimes it passed to children of muggles for no reason at all. It was a mediocre answer to a question he would be ducking and diving for years to follow: why do you have magic?

Peter already had one foot out the door by the time September 1st drew near. There was nothing he wanted more than to leave home and start something new, embarking into the great unknown. He was sorted into Ravenclaw, and no one was more surprised than Peter when he learned the house was typically known for the intelligence and wisdom of its members. But the hat had recognised Peter’s creativity, and his individuality, having experienced a solitary childhood (though this was a quality Peter would later shed.) Lessons began, and Peter began to fear he’d be friendless for all seven years at the school. Then he fell into a trio of Gryffindors, Sirius Black, James Potter, and Remus Lupin.

Their friendship was instant for Peter, though calling people your friends and actually being friends are two different things, and the latter took somewhat longer. Peter came to see himself as the rock of the group, a role many credited to James. The thing about rocks is no one really pays attention to them or realises they’re there. They’re part of the scenery, and in their friendship group, so was Peter. For all his illusions, the colours and light he could conjure up, Peter was overlooked. Was it racism? If he was in the muggle world, he’d say probably, but racism worked differently in the world of magic. His blood then. Being muggleborn, his ignorance about the wizarding world made him look like a fool time and time again. Or maybe there was something about Peter himself, his personality--always saying the wrong things, not being athletic or clever or funny enough--that repelled people’s attention.

It shouldn’t have bothered Peter--and it didn’t, not until the Marauders left Hogwarts and people stopped treating him like one of the group, as if they expected him to drop off and slip away, out of their orbit. No one outside the Marauders asked what Peter planned to do after Hogwarts--it could hardly be as spectacular as James or Sirius’ plans, after all. When he joined the Order, people didn’t remark on his courage or self-sacrifice as they did with the others. In their eyes, Peter wasn’t being brave; he was just following along like he always did.

Peter wasn’t the wix he wanted to be, and he didn’t know how to be that person. It’s easier to change your friends than to change yourself. There’s no hiding from old friends. They know too much about who you used to be. Peter has found this to be useful, blinding the Marauders to who he has become. One death eater at a time, Peter has worked to redefine himself. No longer a cowering little thing always trailing after James, Sirius, and Remus, not that that was ever true; it isn’t following if the friendship is mutual. Perhaps it makes him a coward, concealing his betrayal with a false smile, lies, and illusions. Better a coward than dead--that’s the only smart choice. What use are you to anyone if you’re nothing but a rotting corpse?

His motives? Curiosity. Boredom. To prove that he could. To prove he could be clever too, infiltrate the Death Eaters and be their undoing. He tells himself it was all for a good cause. He had an in; he would use it, then betray the Death Eaters to his real friends in the Order. Only now he’s gone too far. He never wants James, Sirius and Remus to know what he’s done. They’d never want anything to do with him ever again. Strategy was never his strength. Illusions, deception: those were his strengths. But it was a mistake thinking he could ever outsmart the Death Eaters. The person he deceived most of all was himself. Now he’s in too deep. There are people he cares about on both sides. Peter is split in two, fractured. He is the wix who plays with light, but he can hardly see it for all the darkness in his life.

Present:

If it wasn’t for his mother, Iris, Peter never would have stepped one foot into Death Eater meetings, unless it was for his public humiliation followed by a swift execution. There’s still time for that, of course, but so far having a godly parent has spared him, opening doors to the darker side of magical Britain. Peter’s mother might be a lesser goddess, but she’s a goddess all the same. Not human, but more, better, and by extension, so is Peter. Not everyone agrees, meaning Peter must watch his tongue should he desire to keep it, but for the most part being a child of a god makes up for the fact he hasn’t a single wix in his family line.

But Iris has appeared in Peter’s life even less than his father. It feels odd putting so much emphasis on his relation to a woman he barely knows, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Another person who doesn’t see him. The years have made Peter a follower, but can anyone blame him? His own mother doesn’t want to spend time with him. Such an injury leaves its mark on a person. Peter gravitates toward people, the good and the deplorable, among them and yet always apart. He knows what it’s like to walk alone. He’s done it before. Left in silence, it’s hard to keep stuff out, all his fears and anxieties and regrets. So he seeks noise, anything to drown out the silence and give Peter a break from himself. But if Peter is a sheep, he’s a sheep with teeth. A follower that marches to the beat of his own quiet drum.

Parentage aside, Peter is useful. Disarm him of his wand and he can still hurt you, conjuring an illusion of the face of a lost loved one, or forcing his victims to watch as their limbs appear to be ripped from their bodies. It’s far tidier than actually doing the deed, and since the pain isn’t physical, it keeps their victims alert, shaken just the right amount that they talk. Peter doesn’t play the role of torturer often, only when other Death Eaters wish to test him. And when it’s done, it’s difficult for Peter to return to the life he shares with the Marauders and the Order. They all talk about courage and morals as if death could somehow be made meaningful if they hurl themselves at it with their cause in their hearts. But only alive can you change the world. There’s no action in death. It takes you out of the equation, no longer a player in the games of life and war. It’s what Peter fears most--not belonging, and not being included; having no impact on the world or his friends whatsoever--and he’ll do anything to avoid it coming to pass.

#* | bio | *#* | about | *

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ariadnedionysia · 8 years ago

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fandom meme : hit me up !

I was tagged by @flintvane and am genuinely embarrassed that i didn’t see this before now omg i’m so sorry babe

I’m tagging @sherlock-and-other-things , @girlwhowasntthere , @deinonychus-1 , @frodobagginsess , and @sherlokiofpigfarts ! and anyone else who would like to do this meme!!

putting it under the read more bc it’s hilariously long sO

1. YOUR CURRENT OTP(S)/OT3(S)/OTX(S)

oh gosh i have a bunch so i’m going to try and limit myself but pythacarus ( always ), gwen / leon and gwaine / percival from merlin, foggy / matt from daredevil ( i don’t watch daredevil anymore but i just watched the defenders so they’re on my mind ), jane / michael from jane the virgin, tom / sybil from downton abbey will always be a fave, dean / seamus, lavender / parvati, harry / ginny, and remus / sirius from the harry potter series, and then caleb / ben and robert / abe from TURN are my final two

2. A PAIRING YOU INITIALLY DIDN’T CONSIDER BUT SOMEONE CHANGED YOUR MIND (BONUS POINTS: WHO WAS THAT PERSON).

i’d never considered korinna / heptarian until @girlwhowasntthere mentioned them and now i actually really love the ship i’d never thought about it before

3. A PAIRING YOU USED TO LOVE, BUT IT ALL FELL APART FOR YOU.

oh god. um. you know i used to watch reign and i was a really big fan of mary and francis, whom i still love don’t get me wrong, but they took mary on a really uncomfortable plotline for me in i think the second season that was unnecessary and clearly purely for //drama// and i just couldn’t quite get over them doing that and what it did to the ship it just made me uncomfortable with them and with watching the show altogether

4. HAVE YOU ADDED ANYTHING CRACKY/HILARIOUS TO YOUR FANDOM, IF SO, WHAT.

i don’t know if this counts but i did the emily watches atlantis series? i don’t know if that counts but i think they’re funny so i’m putting it on the list?

5. WHAT’S THE LONGEST YOU’VE EVER BEEN IN A FANDOM

harry potter. i’m super proud to be a part of that fandom and i’ve been in it since the first book came out so that’s definitely the fandom i’ve been in the longest.

6. DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST OTP, IF SO WHO WAS IN IT.

i’m trying to think and it might’ve been richard / kahlan from legend of the seeker ( the show, not the books, i never actually read the books oops ), though i’m not sure.

7. NAME A FANDOM YOU DIDN’T CARE/THINK ABOUT UNTIL YOU SAW IT ALL OVER TUMBLR.

copying @flintvane ‘s answer and saying black sails !

8. SAY SOMETHING GENUINELY NICE ABOUT A CHARACTER WHO ISN’T ONE OF YOUR FAVES (CHARS YOU’RE NEUTRAL ON ARE FAIR GAME, AS ARE CHARS YOU DISLIKE)

oh god. there are a bunch i have things to say about and i can’t decide bUT i’m gonna go with petra from jane the virgin. i used to really hate her at the beginning of the series, i thought she was horrible and i just couldn’t stand her, but as the series has continued she’s really become this amazing and realistically flawed woman that i just want to see happy. i wouldn’t say she’s my fave, but i do want to see her happy.

9. NAME THREE THINGS YOU WISH YOU SAW MORE OR IN YOUR MAIN FANDOM (OR A FANDOM OF CHOICE)

i’m gonna say atlantis for this one sO

1. another season. i mean come on, guys. come on.

2. more pythacarus, we just got the one kiss ( which was amazing a+++ ) but that was pretty much it, i know they’re not the main focus of the show, but i do love them dearly and would’ve loved to have seen more

3. where the hell are the rest of the argonauts and why did jason not go back for them i need that reunion like. two years ago. pls.

10. CHOOSE A SONG AT RANDOM, WHICH SHIP OR CHARACTER DOES IT REMIND YOU OF

i just put my itunes on shuffle and “oceans” by seafret was the first song to come on, and it reminds me of ariadne / jason

11. A PAIRING YOU SHIP THAT YOU DON’T THINK ANYONE ELSE SHIPS

gwen / leon from merlin. i know merthur is the Big Ship of merlin, i don’t really see many other ships there except that one. but i think a lot about gwen being pretty much abandoned by everyone she loves / loved after arthur dies, since gwaine and arthur and elyan and morgana are all dead and merlin just decided to peace tf out, but the last shot we have of her is with leon and her being a queen on her own and bringing peace to albion, etc etc, and i just think. i mean. they said they were childhood friends somewhere back in i think season two, and they were really the two people besides gaius that knew arthur the longest, and i just think that after arthur died, they would’ve been each other’s main supports, and eventually, they could’ve ended up together. this is unnecessarily long but i just have a lot of feelings about them okay and i don’t know anyone else that ships them so they’re my ship for this wOO

12. YOUR MOST SCANDALOUS HEADCANON FOR YOUR CURRENT OTP(S)/OT3(S)/OTX(S)

i don’t think i really have any scandalous headcanons?? i’m very boring with my ships haha sorry, all my headcanons are angst or fluff

13. DO YOU HAVE ANY HARD AND FAST HEADCANONS THAT YOU WILL DIE DEFENDING, ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL (GENDER IDENTITY, SEXUAL OR ROMANTIC ORIENTATION, EXTENDED FAMILY, SEXUAL PREFERENCES LIKE TOP/BOTTOM/SWITCH, RELATIONSHIP WITH POETRY, SERIOUSLY ANYTHING)

pretty much any poc harry potter hcs i will defend to the death, bisexual remus lupin, myka and hg wells in warehouse 13 dated at some point, bisexual harry potter, remus / tonks was unnecessary. i liked them and everything, but i didn’t really see the point of downgrading such an amazing woman like tonks to the Love Interest. she deserved better. even remus lupin knew that. danny in the defenders needs to say “i’m the immortal iron fist” less pls and thank. putting caleb and ben ( show: TURN ) with women ( that we never actually got to see ) at the end of the show was weird. bisexual musketeers. there aren’t enough lesbians in any shows m/m ships are easier to ship since there actually are some, but f/f ships are too rare and that’s a Problem. more women friendships, i’m super tired of the women being nasty to each other bc they like the same guy or whatever. peter pettigrew had a snape/lily -esque love for sirius, which is why he turned in the potters, so sirius would think remus was the secret keeper and have no one to turn to except peter. james potter grew up and evolved, pls don’t compare him to snape. neville longbottom is pure and must be protected. luna’s family can just be whimsical!! you don’t need a Dark and Edgy reason behind it, they can just be wonky and happy and weird!! every single nickname in the harry potter series is fckin hiLARIOUS. ginny weasley deserved better than she got in the movies, they did her a massive injustice.

14. 5 FAVORITE CHARACTERS FROM 5 DIFFERENT FANDOMS

1. ariadne ( i adore pythagoras but i’m gonna go with ariadne bc reasons ), atlantis

2. constance, the musketeers

3. cosima, orphan black

4. ginny, harry potter series ( /quietly pushes movie!ginny into a corner book!ginny for life )

5. ben talmidge, TURN

15. 3 OTPS FROM 3 DIFFERENT FANDOMS

i’m gonna put ones that i didn’t put in the first question :

1. nomi / amanita ( sense8 )

2. korinna / ariadne ( atlantis )

3. luna / ginny ( harry potter series )

16. 5 FAVORITE SHIPS

THESE ARE SUCH HARD QUESTIONS OH MY GOD i’m going to try and put ones i haven’t mentioned before all of my ships that i’ve mentioned are favorites though okay

1. captain james / molly ( our girl )

2. fleur / tonks ( harry potter )

3. hernando / lito ( sense8 )

4. athelstan / ragnar ( vikings )

5. sirius / peter ( harry potter )

17. JUST RAMBLE ABOUT SOMETHING FAN-RELATED, GO GO GO (PROMPTS OPTIONAL BUT ENCOURAGED)

i came late into the atlantis fandom, so i didn’t get much of a chance to be there before the series was over, but i remember seeing it all over my dash before season two came out, it was like the day before the second season started, and i was like. i gotta check this series out. so i watched the first episode of the first season, and proceeded to marathon the entire first season so i could start the second season with you lovely people in the atlantis fandom, and honestly, i’ve never been part of a better, happier, drama-free fandom. i love it so much and i love all of you so much and this is slightly cheesy but i just think everyone in the fandom is amazing.

other things. um. okay well this is sort of fan-related, but i’ve met the most amazing group of people through my group, @orderfromchaos-rp. it’s such a talented and fantastic group of incredible writers, and i just love all of them to pieces, i’ve never had such an amazing rp experience.

i’m hardcore worried about johnny depp and jude law playing against each other in fbawtft. i’m not a fan of jude law for this role and i actively, adamantly hate johnny depp, so i’m honestly worried that’s going to ruin that ship for me.

i’m super excited about being a part of all the fandoms i’m in, honestly, i don’t totally know what to do for this part of this meme so i’m just ranting but i’m seriously hoping i can be in a fandom that doesn’t have its show cancelled soon after i enter it, because being longterm fandom buddies with new material sounds amazing and i would love to be a part of something like that again, i’m not really active in many fandoms rn and i wanna change that, so hmu with any suggestions for things i should watch!!!!

#emily answers stuff #fandom memes #this was so hard but so amazing to do!!!#flintvane #emily yells about stuff

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ravens-and-writings · 8 years ago

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Harry Potter Tag Game

I was tagged by @phoenixfaelicis for this.

Your Hogwarts house? Ravenclaw with a side of Slytherin... I do identify more with the Ravenclaws though ;)

How did you first discover/became a fan of Harry Potter? I got the first books of the series for Christmas after I had turned 11 and that’s how I discovered Harry Potter.

Favorite Characters? Hermione, Ginny, Lupin. And lately Luna has come into those ranks a swell.

How many times have you re-read and/or re-watched the series? Read the books twice (once in German, once in English), watched the movies so often I can’t remember a definite count...

Favorite/Least favorite HP book? It’s been a while but I love reading The Pilosopher’s Stone wherethe entire universe gets introduced. But Order of the Phoenix was tough to read... so much awful teenage whining and hormones xD

Favorite/Least favorite HP movie? Deathly Hallows Part I is my favourite of the eight... I usually skip the Philosopher’s Stone though.

Favorite Marauder? Can’t really decide between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black.

Favorite next gen character? I haven’t read/heard/seen The Cursed Child yet, so I can’t answer that.

Character you would bring back to life? Can I say Tom Riddle’s mother? Because it might be possible all of that shit would not have happened if she hadn’t died and left Tom in the care of his Muggle father. Otherwise... Fred Weasley, so the Weasley family can be a happy one again. Lupin and Tonks would probably be next in line... they deserve more time with one another (and their son!)

If you could place the Harry Potter characters in another fantasy world (book/movie/TV show) what would it be? I’d kinda like to see Albus Dumbledore trying to outmove everyone else in the Game for the Iron Throne of Westeros... Actual magic would be quite useful in that world, don’t you think?

If you could place any character from another story (book/movie/TV show) into HP, who would it be? I’d love to see BBC Sherlock Holmes in that universe... he’d probably study he heck out of magic and its workings. Or get a new additction to Felix Felicis or something. Both are quite likely.

Favorite scene from the books? Uh, it’s been such a long time tbh.

Favorite scene from the movies? Don’t make me choose please.

Thoughts on Cursed Child? Haven’t read/heard/seen it yet, so no thoughts from me. Sorry.

Thoughts on Fantastic Beasts? Yes. More of that please. Could we have the next movie out this year already? I think it’s no secret that I have a crush on Newt Scamander and Tina Goldstein. Some (admittedly minor?) details may not exactly add up in the movie but that doesn’t stop me from enjoy the heck out of it.

Favorite fan made things to come from the series? (Like fan art, fan fiction, AVPM, etc.) All of the above? Which reminds me... I should probably go and watch AVPM again.

One thing you wish hadn’t been left out of the movies? Harry’s snark... and while we’re at it: book!Ginny in general.

Do you have any favorite memories associated with the series? Not sure if it’s a favourite but it’s the only one coming to mind right now: My first ever visit to a cinema was to see the first Harry Potter movie back in 2001.

I tag: @deviousdiggy, @kemara24, @shannsleeve (but feel free to ignore ^^)

#Harry Potter Tag Game #ask meme #raven answers

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funface2 · 6 years ago

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10 Hilarious Teen Wolf Memes Only True Fans Will Understand – Screen Rant

The hit MTV supernatural teen drama Teen Wolf may have concluded its run almost two years ago now in September of 2017, but the love for this show will seemingly never die. This surprisingly heartfelt and well written series had pretty much everything anyone would ever ask for in a supernatural horror series about a bunch of high school students, and although no one would have expected it when the show first began it seems safe to say that it will permanently rank up there with the top TV shows in the genre.

RELATED: Teen Wolf: 10 Things You Never Knew About Stiles Stilinski

People who are super fans of a certain TV show, book series, or film can demonstrate that fan love in a lot of different and creative ways. Some fans write fanfiction, some of them edit videos, some of them create graphics, and some of them make their favorite thing into a hilarious meme. So like the many TV shows that came before it, practically every moment in Teen Wolf has been made into a meme, and here are 10 of the funniest.

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10 The Most Special Boy

So I guess being possessed by the Nogitsune doesn’t count? It’s actually ironic that Stiles is the only member of the Teen Wolf squad who isn’t a supernatural creature (at least not permanently), because while he is obviously a complete goofball he also happens to be the person on Teen Wolf who seems to have the best grasp on how to actually handle supernatural situations. Scott McCall’s pack is unfortunately almost always behind the curve when it comes to figuring out what’s happening or how to handle it, but Stiles is usually the first to figure things out and always seems to be a little bit ahead of the pack.

9 Or We’re Just That Person

Okay, so sometimes the worst idea is really the worst idea, but sometimes the worst idea also winds up being the best idea, know what I’m saying? And there’s a reason why Stiles is one of the few human survivors in a supernatural world populated by beings with extraordinary knowledge and power.

RELATED: Teen Wolf: 10 Things You Never Knew About Allison Argent

If you can’t do something smart, do something stupid, and Stiles’ willingness to be a little off the wall has probably saved his behind as well as the behinds of Scott and the rest of the pack more times than any of them would like to admit.

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8 You’re Not You When You’re Hungry

Scott is really such a good mom sometimes, it’s not that hard to believe that he would constantly have snacks on hand to satisfy the needs of one of his many inept children. You’re not you when you’re hungry, and everyone knows that Stiles is 100% the type of person who completely loses his mind when he’s hungry, thirsty, or uncomfortable in any other way anyone can imagine. This method of coping with stress would probably lead to some awkward situations in Teen Wolf though, like just imagine if Derek was crying over his deceased family and someone just told him to cheer up and handed him a candy bar.

7 The Problem Child

Okay, so here’s a conspiracy theory for all of the Teen Wolf fans out there. Derek speculated that the Nogitsune may have possessed Stiles because Stiles is someone who low key wields a lot of power in the world. However there could have been another obvious upside to choosing Stiles, and that is that Stiles is pretty much screwing everything up on a constant basis anyway. The Nogitsune feeds on chaos, and Stiles creating chaos is not the kind of thing that would draw a lot of people’s attention unless he started killing people or burning buildings down or something.

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6 There’s No Stopping Bad Taste

Real talk, if someone doesn’t like Teen Wolf it’s because they haven’t seen Teen Wolf. It’s really easy to write the show off if you’re unfamiliar with it, because no one looks at MTV and thinks wow, I bet they’d have some really killer scripted supernatural dramas on air.

RELATED: 10 Things That Make No Sense In Teen Wolf

Plus there’s the obvious Michael J. Fox movie inspiration. Teen Wolf the movie is awesome, but it shares very little in common with the TV Teen Wolf. So if anyone ever says that Teen Wolf is lame and you see someone else in the room make this face, then you know they’re legitimate fans of the show.

5 You Can’t Keep Love Contained

When your friends say that you should stop talking about Teen Wolf, do you understand what that means? It means you need to find new friends. If you love something then you shouldn’t have to hide it or keep it inside, and if the people around you don’t understand your passion then you just need to find people who feel passionate about the same thing! Plus, pretty much anyone who ever watched Teen Wolf would understand that the twists and turns of this show are the kind of thing that you just have to talk about with someone else sometimes.

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4 It Wasn’t Supposed To Hurt This Much

Teen Wolf follows in the same kind of tradition as a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You start the show off and think it’s going to be a kind of cutesy teen supernatural show with high schoolers trying to cope with normal teenage life in addition to some magical shenanigans. And you think well gee, these characters are adorable and this show is actually pretty well written and I’m surprisingly invested in everything that’s happening and then BOOM your heart has been ripped out of your chest and you feel like a part of you died with your fave character and you’re just wondering how that even happened in the first place.

3 Pick Your Poison

That’s it. That’s the show. Most people who watch a show like to imagine themselves existing in that show at some point, or they have a particular character that they can deeply relate to. But anyone who has watched Teen Wolf but hasn’t picked out their particular character avatar has memes like these to make the job easier.

RELATED: Teen Wolf: Supernatural Beings Ranked From Least To Most Powerful

Each character has obviously been summed up in ten bullet points or less, and if anyone sees a bit of themselves in these lists of characteristics then they will finally know for certain if they’re a Styles Bilinski, a Lium Dumbar, or perhaps a Moolia Cake.

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2 Peak Athleticism

Surely some of the people reading this are the freaks of nature who actually manage to look fabulous while partaking in strenuous activity, however if you’re more of a Stiles than an Isaac then have no fear or shame. It’s completely normal to look awful when you feel awful or when you’re doing something awful, and make no mistake, running is unequivocally an awful activity. And on the plus side, even most people who look like a wreck after exercising will still look slightly better than Stiles does here, exhaustion is a normal look but Stiles looks like he just got nailed in the right eye with a ping pong ball or something.

1 Uno Reverse Card

Poor, poor Derek Hale. Legend has it he smiled once. But that was presumably when he was like two years old and not yet capable of rational thought or human emotions. A Teen Wolf and Harry Potter crossover would certainly be a sight to behold, but if Derek existed in the world of Harry Potter then Sirius Black would not have been the first wrongly convicted crazy man to escape from Azkaban prison. The dementors love Azkaban because there is so much energy for them to feed off of, but at this point Derek is an empty vessel, every positive emotion has already been sucked out of him.

NEXT: Teen Wolf Characters Sorted Into Hogwarts Houses

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Bài viết 10 Hilarious Teen Wolf Memes Only True Fans Will Understand – Screen Rant đã xuất hiện đầu tiên vào ngày Funface.

from Funface https://funface.net/funny-memes/10-hilarious-teen-wolf-memes-only-true-fans-will-understand-screen-rant/

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

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The Second Task

"You said you'd already worked out that egg clue!" said Hermione indignantly. "Keep your voice down!" said Harry crossly. "I just need to - sort of fine-tune it, all right?" He, Ron, and Hermione were sitting at the very back of the Charms class with a table to themselves. They were supposed to be practicing the opposite of the Summoning Charm today - the Banishing Charm. Owing to the potential for nasty accidents when objects kept flying across the room. Professor Flitwick had given each student a stack of cushions on which to practice, the theory being that these wouldn't hurt anyone if they went off target. It was a good theory, but it wasn't working very well. Neville's aim was so poor that he kept accidentally sending much heavier things flying across the room - Professor Flitwick, for instance. "Just forget the egg for a minute, all right?" Harry hissed as Professor Flitwick went whizzing resignedly past them, landing on top of a large cabinet. "I'm trying to tell you about Snape and Moody...." This class was an ideal cover for a private conversation, as everyone was having far too much fun to pay them any attention. Harry had been recounting his adventures of the previous night in whispered installments for the last half hour. "Snape said Moody's searched his office as well?" Ron whispered, his eyes alight with interest as he Banished a cushion with a sweep of his wand (it soared into the air and knocked Parvati's hat off). "What...d'you reckon Moody's here to keep an eye on Snape as well as Karkaroff?" "Well, I dunno if that's what Dumbledore asked him to do, but he's definitely doing it," said Harry, waving his wand without paying much attention, so that his cushion did an odd sort of belly flop off the desk. "Moody said Dumbledore only lets Snape stay here because he's giving him a second chance or something...." "What?" said Ron, his eyes widening, his next cushion spinning high into the air, ricocheting off the chandelier, and dropping heavily onto Flitwick's desk. "Harry...maybe Moody thinks Snape put your name in the Goblet of Fire!" "Oh Ron," said Hermione, shaking her head sceptically, "we thought Snape was trying to kill Harry before, and it turned out he was saving Harry's life, remember?" She Banished a cushion and it flew across the room and landed in the box they were all supposed to be aiming at. Harry looked at Hermione, thinking...it was true that Snape had saved his life once, but the odd thing was, Snape definitely loathed him, just as he'd loathed Harry's father when they had been at school together. Snape loved taking points from Harry, and had certainly never missed an opportunity to give him punishments, or even to suggest that he should be suspended from the school. "I don't care what Moody says," Hermione went on. "Dumbledore's not stupid. He was right to trust Hagrid and Professor Lupin, even though loads of people wouldn't have given them jobs, so why shouldn't he be right about Snape, even if Snape is a bit -" "- evil," said Ron promptly. "Come on, Hermione, why are all these Dark wizard catchers searching his office, then?" "Why has Mr. Crouch been pretending to be ill?" said Hermione, ignoring Ron. "Its a bit funny, isn't it, that he cant manage to come to the Yule Ball, but he can get up here in the middle of the night when he wants to?" "You just don't like Crouch because of that elf, Winky," said Ron, sending a cushion soaring into the window. "You just want to think Snape's up to something," said Hermione, sending her cushion zooming neatly into the box. "I just want to know what Snape did with his first chance, if he's on his second one," said Harry grimly, and his cushion, to his very great surprise, flew straight across the room and landed neatly on top of Hermione's. Obedient to Sirius's wish of hearing about anything odd at Hogwarts, Harry sent him a letter by brown owl that night, explaining all about Mr. Crouch breaking into Snape's office, and Moody and Snape's conversation. Then Harry turned his attention in earnest to the most urgent problem facing him: how to survive underwater for an hour on the twenty-fourth of February. Ron quite liked the idea of using the Summoning Charm again - Harry had explained about Aqua-Lungs, and Ron couldn't see why Harry shouldn't Summon one from the nearest Muggle town. Hermione squashed this plan by pointing out that, in the unlikely event that Harry managed to learn how to operate an Aqua-Lung within the set limit of an hour, he was sure to be disqualified for breaking the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy - it was too much to hope that no Muggles would spot an Aqua-Lung zooming across the countryside to Hogwarts. "Of course, the ideal solution would be for you to Transfigure yourself into a submarine or something," Hermione said. "If only we'd done human Transfiguration already! But I don't think we start that until sixth year, and it can go badly wrong if you don't know what you're doing...." "Yeah, I don't fancy walking around with a periscope sticking out of my head," said Harry. "I s'pose I could always attack someone in front of Moody; he might do it for me...." "I don't think he'd let you choose what you wanted to be turned into, though," said Hermione seriously. "No, I think your best chance is some sort of charm." So Harry, thinking that he would soon have had enough of the library to last him a lifetime, buried himself once more among the dusty volumes, looking for any spell that might enable a human to survive without oxygen. However, though he, Ron, and Hermione searched through their lunchtimes, evenings, and whole weekends - though Harry asked Professor McGonagall for a note of permission to use the Restricted Section, and even asked the irritable, vulture-like librarian. Madam Pince, for help - they found nothing whatsoever that would enable Harry to spend an hour underwater and live to tell the tale. Familiar flutterings of panic were starting to disturb Harry now, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate in class again. The lake, which Harry had always taken for granted as just another feature of the grounds, drew his eyes whenever he was near a classroom window, a great, iron-gray mass of chilly water, whose dark and icy depths were starting to seem as distant as the moon. Just as it had before he faced the Horntail, time was slipping away as though somebody had bewitched the clocks to go extra-fast. There was a week to go before February the twenty-fourth (there was still time)...there were five days to go (he was bound to find something soon)...three days to go (please let me find something...please)... With two days left. Harry started to go off food again. The only good thing about breakfast on Monday was the return of the brown owl he had sent to Sirius. He pulled off the parchment, unrolled it, and saw the shortest letter Sirius had ever written to him. Send date of next Hogsmeade weekend by return owl. Harry turned the parchment over and looked at the back, hoping to see something else, but it was blank. "Weekend after next," whispered Hermione, who had read the note over Harry's shoulder. "Here - take my quill and send this owl back straight away." Harry scribbled the dates down on the back of Sirius's letter, tied it onto the brown owl's leg, and watched it take flight again. What had he expected? Advice on how to survive underwater? He had been so intent on telling Sirius all about Snape and Moody he had completely forgotten to mention the egg's clue. "What's he want to know about the next Hogsmeade weekend for?" said Ron. "Dunno," said Harry dully. The momentary happiness that had flared inside him at the sight of the owl had died. "Come on...Care of Magical Creatures." Whether Hagrid was trying to make up for the Blast-Ended Skrewts, or because there were now only two skrewts left, or because he was trying to prove he could do anything that Professor Grubbly-Plank could. Harry didnt know, but Hagrid had been continuing her lessons on unicorns ever since he'd returned to work. It turned out that Hagrid knew quite as much about unicorns as he did about monsters, though it was clear that he found their lack of poisonous fangs disappointing. Today he had managed to capture two unicorn foals. Unlike full-grown unicorns, they were pure gold. Parvati and Lavender went into transports of delight at the sight of them, and even Pansy Parkinson had to work hard to conceal how much she liked them. "Easier ter spot than the adults," Hagrid told the class. "They turn silver when they're abou' two years old, an' they grow horns at aroun four. Don' go pure white till they're full grown, 'round about seven. They're a bit more trustin' when they're babies...don' mind boys so much....C'mon, move in a bit, yeh can pat 'em if yeh want...give 'em a few o' these sugar lumps.... "You okay. Harry?" Hagrid muttered, moving aside slightly, while most of the others swarmed around the baby unicorns. "Yeah," said Harry. "Jus' nervous, eh?" said Hagrid. "Bit," said Harry. "Harry," said Hagrid, clapping a massive hand on his shoulder, so that Harry's knees buckled under its weight, "I'd've bin worried before I saw yeh take on tha Horntail, but I know now yeh can do anythin' yeh set yer mind ter. I'm not worried at all. Yeh're goin ter be fine. Got yer clue worked out, haven' yeh?" Harry nodded, but even as he did so, an insane urge to confess that he didn't have any idea how to survive at the bottom of the lake for an hour came over him. He looked up at Hagrid - perhaps he had to go into the lake sometimes, to deal with the creatures in it? He looked after everything else on the grounds, after all - "Yeh're goin' ter win," Hagrid growled, patting Harry's shoulder again, so that Harry actually felt himself sink a couple of inches into the soft ground. "I know it. I can feel it. Yeh're goin' ter win, Harry." Harry just couldn't bring himself to wipe the happy, confident smile off Hagrid's face. Pretending he was interested in the young unicorns, he forced a smile in return, and moved forward to pat them with the others. By the evening before the second task. Harry felt as though he were trapped in a nightmare. He was fully aware that even if, by some miracle, he managed to find a suitable spell, he'd have a real job mastering it overnight. How could he have let this happen? Why hadn't he got to work on the egg's clue sooner? Why had he ever let his mind wander in class - what if a teacher had once mentioned how to breathe underwater? He sat with Hermione and Ron in the library as the sun set outside, tearing feverishly through page after page of spells, hidden from one another by the massive piles of books on the desk in front of each of them. Harry's heart gave a huge leap every time he saw the word "water" on a page, but more often than not it was merely "Take two pints of water, half a pound of shredded mandrake leaves, and a newt..." "I don't reckon it can be done," said Ron's voice flatly from the other side of the table. "There's nothing. Nothing. Closest was that thing to dry up puddles and ponds, that Drought Charm, but that was nowhere near powerful enough to drain the lake." "There must be something," Hermione muttered, moving a candle closer to her. Her eyes were so tired she was poring over the tiny print of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes with her nose about an inch from the page. "They'd never have set a task that was undoable." "They have," said Ron. "Harry, just go down to the lake tomorrow, right, stick your head in, yell at the merpeople to give back whatever they've nicked, and see if they chuck it out. Best you can do, mate." "There's a way of doing it!" Hermione said crossly. "There just has to be!" She seemed to be taking the library's lack of useful information on the subject as a personal insult; it had never failed her before. "I know what I should have done," said Harry, resting, face-down, on Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts. "I should've learned to be an Animagus like Sirius." An Animagus was a wizard who could transform into an animal. "Yeah, you could've turned into a goldfish any time you wanted!" said Ron. "Or a frog," yawned Harry. He was exhausted. "It takes years to become an Animagus, and then you have to register yourself and everything," said Hermione vaguely, now squinting down the index of Weird Wizarding Dilemmas and Their Solutions. "Professor McGonagall told us, remember...you've got to register yourself with the Improper Use of Magic Office...what animal you become, and your markings, so you can't abuse it..." "...Hermione, I was joking," said Harry wearily. "I know I haven't got a chance of turning into a frog by tomorrow morning...." "Oh this is no use," Hermione said, snapping shut Weird Wizarding Dilemmas. "Who on earth wants to make their nose hair grow into ringlets?" "I wouldn't mind," said Fred Weasley's voice. "Be a talking point, wouldn't it?" Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked up. Fred and George had just emerged from behind some bookshelves. "What're you two doing here?" Ron asked. "Looking for you," said George. "McGonagall wants you, Ron. And you, Hermione." "Why?" said Hermione, looking surprised. "Dunno...she was looking a bit grim, though," said Fred. "We're supposed to take you down to her office," said George. Ron and Hermione stared at Harry, who felt his stomach drop. Was Professor McGonagall about to tell Ron and Hermione off? Perhaps she'd noticed how much they were helping him, when he ought to be working out how to do the task alone? "We'll meet you back in the common room," Hermione told Harry as she got up to go with Ron - both of them looked very anxious. "Bring as many of these books as you can, okay?" "Right," said Harry uneasily. By eight o'clock. Madam Pince had extinguished all the lamps and came to chivvy Harry out of the library. Staggering under the weight of as many books as he could carry, Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room, pulled a table into a corner, and continued to search. There was nothing in Madcap Magic for Wacky Warlocks...nothing in A Guide to Medieval Sorcery...not one mention of underwater exploits in An Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Charms, or in Dreadful Denizens of the Deep, or Powers You Never Knew You Had and What to Do with Them Now You've Wised Up. Crookshanks crawled into Harry's lap and curled up, purring deeply. The common room emptied slowly around Harry. People kept wishing him luck for the next morning in cheery, confident voices like Hagrid's, all of them apparently convinced that he was about to pull off another stunning performance like the one he had managed in the first task. Harry couldn't answer them, he just nodded, feeling as though there were a golfball stuck in his throat. By ten to midnight, he was alone in the room with Crookshanks. He had searched all the remaining books, and Ron and Hermione had not come back. It's over, he told himself. You can't do it. You'll just have to go down to the lake in the morning and tell the judges.... He imagined himself explaining that he couldn't do the task. He pictured Bagman's look of round-eyed surprise, Karkaroffs satisfied, yellow-toothed smile. He could almost hear Fleur Delacour saying "I knew it...'e is too young, 'e is only a little boy." He saw Malfoy flashing his POTTER STINKS badge at the front of the crowd, saw Hagrid's crestfallen, disbelieving face.... Forgetting that Crookshanks was on his lap. Harry stood up very suddenly; Crookshanks hissed angrily as he landed on the floor, gave Harry a disgusted look, and stalked away with his bottlebrush tail in the air, but Harry was already hurrying up the spiral staircase to his dormitory....He would grab the Invisibility Cloak and go back to the library, he'd stay there all night if he had to.... "Lumos," Harry whispered fifteen minutes later as he opened the library door. Wand tip alight, he crept along the bookshelves, pulling down more books - books of hexes and charms, books on merpeople and water monsters, books on famous witches and wizards, on magical inventions, on anything at all that might include one passing reference to underwater survival. He carried them over to a table, then set to work, searching them by the narrow beam of his wand, occasionally checking his watch.... One in the morning...two in the morning...the only way he could keep going was to tell himself, over and over again, next book...in the next one...the next one... The mermaid in the painting in the prefects' bathroom was laughing. Harry was bobbing like a cork in bubbly water next to her rock, while she held his Firebolt over his head. "Come and get it!" she giggled maliciously. "Come on, jump!" "I can't," Harry panted, snatching at the Firebolt, and struggling not to sink. "Give it to me!" But she just poked him painfully in the side with the end of the broomstick, laughing at him. "That hurts - get off - ouch -" "Harry Potter must wake up, sir!" "Stop poking me -" "Dobby must poke Harry Potter, sir, he must wake up!" Harry opened his eyes. He was still in the library; the Invisibility Cloak had slipped off his head as he'd slept, and the side of his face was stuck to the pages of Where There's a Wand, There's a Way. He sat up, straightening his glasses, blinking in the bright daylight. "Harry Potter needs to hurry!" squeaked Dobby. "The second task starts in ten minutes, and Harry Potter -" "Ten minutes?" Harry croaked. "Ten - ten minutes?" He looked down at his watch. Dobby was right. It was twenty past nine. A large, dead weight seemed to fall through Harry's chest into his stomach. "Hurry, Harry Potter!" squeaked Dobby, plucking at Harry's sleeve. "You is supposed to be down by the lake with the other champions, sir!" "It's too late, Dobby," Harry said hopelessly. "I'm not doing the task, I don't know how -" "Harry Potter will do the task!" squeaked the elf. "Dobby knew Harry had not found the right book, so Dobby did it for him!" "What?" said Harry. "But you don't know what the second task is -" "Dobby knows, sir! Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy -" "Find my what?" "- and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!" "What's a Wheezy?" "Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy-Wheezy who is giving Dobby his sweater!" Dobby plucked at the shrunken maroon sweater he was now wearing over his shorts. "What?" Harry gasped. "They've got...they've got Ron?" "The thing Harry Potter will miss most, sir!" squeaked Dobby. "'But past an hour-'" "- 'the prospect's black,'" Harry recited, staring, horror-struck, at the elf. "'Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.' Dobby - what've I got to do?" "You has to eat this, sir!" squeaked the elf, and he put his hand in the pocket of his shorts and drew out a ball of what looked like slimy, grayish-green rat tails. "Right before you go into the lake, sir - gillyweed!" "What's it do?" said Harry, staring at the gillyweed. "It will make Harry Potter breathe underwater, sir!" "Dobby," said Harry frantically, "listen - are you sure about this?" He couldn't quite forget that the last time Dobby had tried to "help" him, he had ended up with no bones in his right arm. "Dobby is quite sure, sir!" said the elf earnestly. "Dobby hears things, sir, he is a house-elf, he goes all over the castle as he lights the fires and mops the floors. Dobby heard Professor McGonagall and Professor Moody in the staffroom, talking about the next task....Dobby cannot let Harry Potter lose his Wheezy!" Harry's doubts vanished. Jumping to his feet he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak, stuffed it into his bag, grabbed the gillyweed, and put it into his pocket, then tore out of the library with Dobby at his heels. "Dobby is supposed to be in the kitchens, sir!" Dobby squealed as they burst into the corridor. "Dobby will be missed - good luck, Harry Potter, sir, good luck!" "See you later, Dobby!" Harry shouted, and he sprinted along the corridor and down the stairs, three at a time. The entrance hall contained a few last-minute stragglers, all leaving the Great Hall after breakfast and heading through the double oak doors to watch the second task. They stared as Harry flashed past, sending Colin and Dennis Creevey flying as he leapt down the stone steps and out onto the bright, chilly grounds. As he pounded down the lawn he saw that the seats that had encircled the dragons' enclosure in November were now ranged along the opposite bank, rising in stands that were packed to the bursting point and reflected in the lake below. The excited babble of the crowd echoed strangely across the water as Harry ran flat-out around the other side of the lake toward the judges, who were sitting at another gold-draped table at the water's edge. Cedric, Fleur, and Krum were beside the judges' table, watching Harry sprint toward them. "I'm...here..." Harry panted, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleur's robes. "Where have you been?" said a bossy, disapproving voice. "The task's about to start!" Harry looked around. Percy Weasley was sitting at the judges' table - Mr. Crouch had failed to turn up again. "Now, now, Percy!" said Ludo Bagman, who was looking intensely relieved to see Harry. "Let him catch his breath!" Dumbledore smiled at Harry, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime didn't look at all pleased to see him....It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had thought he wasn't going to turn up. Harry bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath; he had a stitch in his side that felt as though he had a knife between his ribs, but there was no time to get rid of it; Ludo Bagman was now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet. Harry was on the very end of the line, next to Krum, who was wearing swimming trunks and was holding his wand ready. "All right. Harry?" Bagman whispered as he moved Harry a few feet farther away from Krum. "Know what you're going to do?" "Yeah," Harry panted, massaging his ribs. Bagman gave Harry's shoulder a quick squeeze and returned to the judges' table; he pointed his wand at his throat as he had done at the World Cup, said, "Sonorus!" and his voice boomed out across the dark water toward the stands. "Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One...two...three!" The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause; without looking to see what the other champions were doing, Harry pulled off his shoes and socks, pulled the handful of gillyweed out of his pocket, stuffed it into his mouth, and waded out into the lake. It was so cold he felt the skin on his legs searing as though this were fire, not icy water. His sodden robes weighed him down as he walked in deeper; now the water was over his knees, and his rapidly numbing feet were slipping over silt and flat, slimy stones. He was chewing the gillyweed as hard and fast as he could; it felt unpleasantly slimy and rubbery, like octopus tentacles. Waist-deep in the freezing water he stopped, swallowed, and waited for something to happen. He could hear laughter in the crowd and knew he must look stupid, walking into the lake without showing any sign of magical power. The part of him that was still dry was covered in goose pimples; half immersed in the icy water, a cruel breeze lifting his hair, Harry started to shiver violently. He avoided looking at the stands; the laughter was becoming louder, and there were catcalls and jeering from the Slytherins.... Then, quite suddenly, Harry felt as though an invisible pillow had been pressed over his mouth and nose. He tried to draw breath, but it made his head spin; his lungs were empty, and he suddenly felt a piercing pain on either side of his neck - Harry clapped his hands around his throat and felt two large slits just below his ears, flapping in the cold air....He had gills. Without pausing to think, he did the only thing that made sense - he flung himself forward into the water. The first gulp of icy lake water felt like the breath of life. His head had stopped spinning; he took another great gulp of water and felt it pass smoothly through his gills, sending oxygen back to his brain. He stretched out his hands in front of him and stared at them. They looked green and ghostly under the water, and they had become webbed. He twisted around and looked at his bare feet - they had become elongated and the toes were webbed too: It looked as though he had sprouted flippers. The water didn't feel icy anymore either...on the contrary, he felt pleasantly cool and very light....Harry struck out once more, marveling at how far and fast his flipper-like feet propelled him through the vater, and noticing how clearly he could see, and how he no longer seemed to need to blink. He had soon swum so far into the lake that he could no longer see the bottom. He flipped over and dived into its depths. Silence pressed upon his ears as he soared over a strange, dark, foggy landscape. He could only see ten feet around him, so that as he sped throuugh the water new scenes seemed to loom suddenly out of the incoming darkness: forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. He swam deeper and deeper, out toward the middle of the lake, his eyes wide, staring through the eerily gray-lit water around him to the shadow beyond, where the water became opaque. Small fish flickered past him like silver darts. Once or twice he thought he saw something larger moving ahead of him, but when he got nearer, he discovered it to be nothing but a large, blackened log, or a dense clump of weed. There was no sign of any of the other champions, merpeople, Ron - nor, thankfully, the giant squid. Light green weed stretched ahead of him as far as he could see, two feet deep, like a meadow of very overgrown grass. Harry was staring unblinkingly ahead of him, trying to discern shapes through the gloom...and then, without warning, something grabbed hold of his ankle. Harry twisted his body around and saw a grindylow, a small, horned water demon, poking out of the weed, its long fingers clutched tightly around Harry's leg, its pointed fangs bared - Harry stuck his webbed hand quickly inside his robes and fumbled for his wand. By the time he had grasped it, two more grindylows had risen out of the weed, had seized handfuls of Harry's robes, and were attempting to drag him down. "Relashio!" Harry shouted, except that no sound came out....A large bubble issued from his mouth, and his wand, instead of sending sparks at the grindylows, pelted them with what seemed to be a jet of boiling water, for where it struck them, angry red patches appeared on their green skin. Harry pulled his ankle out of the grindylows grip and swam, as fast as he could, occasionally sending more jets of hot water over his shoulder at random; every now and then he felt one of the grindylows snatch at his foot again, and he kicked out, hard; finally, he felt his foot connect with a horned skull, and looking back, saw the dazed grindylow floating away, cross-eyed, while its fellows shook their fists at Harry and sank back into the weed. Harry slowed down a little, slipped his wand back inside his robes, and looked around, listening again. He turned full circle in the water, the silence pressing harder than ever against his eardrums. He knew he must be even deeper in the lake now, but nothing was moving but the rippling weed. "How are you getting on?" Harry thought he was having a heart attack. He whipped around and saw Moaning Myrtle floating hazily in front of him, gazing at him through her thick, pearly glasses. "Myrtle!" Harry tried to shout - but once again, nothing came out of his mouth but a very large bubble. Moaning Myrtle actually giggled. "You want to try over there!" she said, pointing. "I won't come with you....I don't like them much, they always chase me when I get too close...." Harry gave her the thumbs-up to show his thanks and set off once more, careful to swim a bit higher over the weed to avoid any more grindylows that might be lurking there. He swam on for what felt like at least twenty minutes. He was passing over vast expanses of black mud now, which swirled murkily as he disturbed the water. Then, at long last, he heard a snatch of haunting mersong. "An hour long you'll have to look, And to recover what we took..." Harry swam faster and soon saw a large rock emerge out of the muddy water ahead. It had paintings of merpeople on it; they were carrying spears and chasing what looked like the giant squid. Harry swam on past the rock, following the mersong. "...your time's half gone, so tarry not Lest what you seek stays here to rot...." A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loomed suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Here and there at the dark windows, Harry saw faces...faces that bore no resemblance at all to the painting of the mermaid in the prefects' bathroom.... The merpeople had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They leered at Harry as he swam past; one or two of them emerged from their caves to watch him better, their powerful, silver fish tails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands. Harry sped on, staring around, and soon the dwellings became more numerous; there were gardens of weed around some of them, and he even saw a pet grindylow tied to a stake outside one door. Merpeople were emerging on all sides now, watching him eagerly, pointing at his webbed hands and gills, talking behind their hands to one another. Harry sped around a corner and a very strange sight met his eyes. A whole crowd of merpeople was floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like a mer-version of a village square. A choir of merpeople was singing in the middle, calling the champions toward them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Four people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson. Ron was tied between Hermione and Cho Chang. There was also a girl who looked no older than eight, whose clouds of silvery hair made Harry feel sure that she was Fleur Delacour's sister. All four of them appeared to be in a very deep sleep. Their heads were lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles kept issuing from their mouths. Harry sped toward the hostages, half expecting the merpeople to lower their spears and charge at him, but they did nothing. The ropes of weed tying the hostages to the statue were thick, slimy, and very strong. For a fleeting second he thought of the knife Sirius had bought him for Christmas - locked in his trunk in the castle a quarter of a mile away, no use to him whatsoever. He looked around. Many of the merpeople surrounding them were carrying spears. He swam swiftly toward a seven-foot-tall merman with a long green beard and a choker of shark fangs and tried to mime a request to borrow the spear. The merman laughed and shook his head. "We do not help," he said in a harsh, croaky voice. "Come ON!" Harry said fiercely (but only bubbles issued from his mouth), and he tried to pull the spear away from the merman, but the merman yanked it back, still shaking his head and laughing. Harry swirled around, staring about. Something sharp...anything... There were rocks littering the lake bottom. He dived and snatched up a particularly jagged one and returned to the statue. He began to hack at the ropes binding Ron, and after several minutes' hard work, they broke apart. Ron floated, unconscious, a few inches above the lake bottom, drifting a little in the ebb of the water. Harry looked around. There was no sign of any of the other champions. What were they playing at? Why didn't they hurry up? He turned back to Hermione, raised the jagged rock, and began to hack at her bindings too - At once, several pairs of strong gray hands seized him. Half a dozen mermen were pulling him away from Hermione, shaking their green-haired heads, and laughing. "You take your own hostage," one of them said to him. "Leave the others..." "No way!" said Harry furiously - but only two large bubbles came out. Your task is to retrieve your own friend...leave the others..." She's my friend too!" Harry yelled, gesturing toward Hermione, an enormous silver bubble emerging soundlessly from his lips. "And I don't want them to die either!" Cho's head was on Hermione's shoulder; the small silver-haired girl was ghostly green and pale. Harry struggled to fight off the mermen, but they laughed harder than ever, holding him back. Harry looked wildly around. Where were the other champions? Would he have time to take Ron to the surface and come back down for Hermione and the others? Would he be able to find them again? He looked down at his watch to see how much time was left - it had stopped working. But then the merpeople around him pointed excitedly over his head. Harry looked up and saw Cedric swimming toward them. There was an enormous bubble around his head, which made his features look oddly wide and stretched. "Got lost!" he mouthed, looking panic-stricken. "Fleur and Krum're coming now!" Feeling enormously relieved, Harry watched Cedric pull a knife out of his pocket and cut Cho free. He pulled her upward and out of sight. Harry looked around, waiting. Where were Fleur and Krum? Time was getting short, and according to the song, the hostages would be lost after an hour.... The merpeople started screeching animatedly. Those holding Harry loosened their grip, staring behind them. Harry turned and saw something monstrous cutting through the water toward them: a human body in swimming trunks with the head of a shark....It was Krum. He appeared to have transfigured himself - but badly. The shark-man swam straight to Hermione and began snapping and biting at her ropes; the trouble was that Krum's new teeth were positioned very awkwardly for biting anything smaller than a dolphin, and Harry was quite sure that if Krum wasn't careful, he was going to rip Hermione in half. Darting forward. Harry hit Krum hard on the shoulder and held up the jagged stone. Krum seized it and began to cut Hermione free. Within seconds, he had done it; he grabbed Hermione around the waist, and without a backward glance, began to rise rapidly with her toward the surface. Now what? Harry thought desperately. If he could be sure that Fleur was coming....But still no sign. There was nothing to be done except... He snatched up the stone, which Krum had dropped, but the mermen now closed in around Ron and the little girl, shaking their heads at him. Harry pulled out his wand. "Get out of the way!" Only bubbles flew out of his mouth, but he had the distinct impression that the mermen had understood him, because they suddenly stopped laughing. Their yellowish eyes were fixed upon Harry's wand, and they looked scared. There might be a lot more of them than there were of him, but Harry could tell, by the looks on their faces, that they knew no more magic than the giant squid did. "You've got until three!" Harry shouted; a great stream of bubbles burst from him, but he held up three fingers to make sure they got the message. "One..." (he put down a finger) "two..."(he put down a second one) - They scattered. Harry darted forward and began to hack at the ropes binding the small girl to the statue, and at last she was free. He seized the little girl around the waist, grabbed the neck of Ron's robes, and kicked off from the bottom. It was very slow work. He could no longer use his webbed hands to propel himself forward; he worked his flippers furiously, but Ron and Fleur's sister were like potato-filled sacks dragging him back down....He fixed his eyes skyward, though he knew he must still be very deep, the water above him was so dark.... Merpeople were rising with him. He could see them swirling around him with ease, watching him struggle through the water....Would they pull him back down to the depths when the time was up? Did they perhaps eat humans? Harry's legs were seizing up with the effort to keep swimming; his shoulders were aching horribly with the effort of dragging Ron and the girl... He was drawing breath with extreme difficulty. He could feel pain on the sides of his neck again...he was becoming very aware of how wet the water was in his mouth...yet the darkness was definitely thinning now...he could see daylight above him.... He kicked hard with his flippers and discovered that they were nothing more than feet...water was flooding through his mouth into his lungs...he was starting to feel dizzy, but he knew light and air were only ten feet above him...he had to get there...he had to... Harry kicked his legs so hard and fast it felt as though his muscles were screaming in protest; his very brain felt waterlogged, he couldn't breathe, he needed oxygen, he had to keep going, he could not stop - And then he felt his head break the surface of the lake; wonderful, cold, clear air was making his wet face sting; he gulped it down, feeling as though he had never breathed properly before, and, panting, pulled Ron and the little girl up with him. All around him, wild, green-haired heads were emerging out of the water with him, but they were smiling at him. The crowd in the stands was making a great deal of noise; shouting and screaming, they all seemed to be on their feet; Harry had the impression they thought that Ron and the little girl might be dead, but they were wrong...both of them had opened their eyes; the girl looked scared and confused, but Ron merely expelled a great spout of water, blinked in the bright light, turned to Harry, and said, "Wet, this, isn't it?" Then he spotted Fleur's sister. "What did you bring her for?" "Fleur didn't turn up, I couldn't leave her," Harry panted. "Harry, you prat," said Ron, "you didn't take that song thing seriously, did you? Dumbledore wouldn't have let any of us drown!" "The song said -" "It was only to make sure you got back inside the time limit!" said Ron. "I hope you didn't waste time down there acting the hero!" Harry felt both stupid and annoyed. It was all very well for Ron; he'd been asleep, he hadn't felt how eerie it was down in the lake, surrounded by spear-carrying merpeople who'd looked more than capable of murder. "C'mon," Harry said shortly, "help me with her, I don't think she can swim very well." They pulled Fleur's sister through the water, back toward the bank where the judges stood watching, twenty merpeople accompanying them like a guard of honor, singing their horrible screechy songs. Harry could see Madam Pomfrey fussing over Hermione, Krum, Cedric, and Cho, all of whom were wrapped in thick blankets. Dumbledore and Ludo Bagman stood beaming at Harry and Ron from the bank as they swam nearer, but Percy, who looked very white and somehow much younger than usual, came splashing out to meet them. Meanwhile Madame Maxime was trying to restrain Fleur Delacour, who was quite hysterical, fighting tooth and nail to return to the water. "Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Is she alive? Is she 'urt?" "She's fine!" Harry tried to tell her, but he was so exhausted he could hardly talk, let alone shout. Percy seized Ron and was dragging him back to the bank ("Gerroff, Percy, I'm all right!"); Dumbledore and Bagman were pulling Harry upright; Fleur had broken free of Madame Maxime and was hugging her sister. "It was ze grindylows...zey attacked me...oh Gabrielle, I thought...I thought..." "Come here, you," said Madam Pomfrey. She seized Harry and pulled him over to Hermione and the others, wrapped him so tightly in a blanket that he felt as though he were in a straitjacket, and forced a measure of very hot potion down his throat. Steam gushed out of his ears. "Harry, well done!" Hermione cried. "You did it, you found out how all by yourself!" "Well -" said Harry. He would have told her about Dobby, but he had just noticed Karkaroff watching him. He was the only judge who had not left the table; the only judge not showing signs of pleasure and relief that Harry, Ron, and Fleur's sister had got back safely. "Yeah, that's right," said Harry, raising his voice slightly so that Karkaroff could hear him. "You haff a water beetle in your hair, Herm-own-ninny," said Krum. Harry had the impression that Krum was drawing her attention back onto himself; perhaps to remind her that he had just rescued her from the lake, but Hermione brushed away the beetle impatiently and said, "You're well outside the time limit, though, Harry....Did it take you ages to find us?" "No...I found you okay...." Harry's feeling of stupidity was growing. Now he was out of the water, it seemed perfectly clear that Dumbledores safety precautions wouldn't have permitted the death of a hostage just because their champion hadn't turned up. Why hadn't he just grabbed Ron and gone? He would have been first back....Cedric and Krum hadn't wasted time worrying about anyone else; they hadn't taken the mersong seriously.... Dumbledore was crouching at the water's edge, deep in conversation with what seemed to be the chief merperson, a particularly wild and ferocious-looking female. He was making the same sort of screechy noises that the merpeople made when they were above water; clearly, Dumbledore could speak Mermish. Finally he straightened up, turned to his fellow judges, and said, "A conference before we give the marks, I think." The judges went into a huddle. Madam Pomfrey had gone to rescue Ron from Percy's clutches; she led him over to Harry and the others, gave him a blanket and some Pepperup Potion, then went to fetch Fleur and her sister. Fleur had many cuts on her face and arms and her robes were torn, but she didn't seem to care, nor would she allow Madam Pomfrey to clean them. "Look after Gabrielle," she told her, and then she turned to Harry. "You saved 'er," she said breathlessly. "Even though she was not your 'ostage." "Yeah," said Harry, who was now heartily wishing he'd left all three girls tied to the statue. Fleur bent down, kissed Harry twice on each cheek (he felt his face burn and wouldn't have been surprised if steam was coming out of his ears again), then said to Ron, "And you too-you 'elped -" "Yeah," said Ron, looking extremely hopeful, "yeah, a bit -" Fleur swooped down on him too and kissed him. Hermione looked simply furious, but just then, Ludo Bagman's magically magnified voice boomed out beside them, making them all jump, and causing the crowd in the stands to go very quiet. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision. Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each of the champions, as follows.... "Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points." Applause from the stands. "I deserved zero," said Fleur throatily, shaking her magnificent head. "Cedric Diggory, who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was first to return with his hostage, though he returned one minute outside the time limit of an hour." Enormous cheers from the Hufflepuffs in the crowd; Harry saw Cho give Cedric a glowing look. "We therefore award him forty-seven points." Harry's heart sank. If Cedric had been outside the time limit, he most certainly had been. "Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points." Karkaroff clapped particularly hard, looking very superior. "Harry Potter used gillyweed to great effect," Bagman continued. "He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, the Merchieftainess informs us that Mr. Potter was first to reach the hostages, and that the delay in his return was due to his determination to return all hostages to safety, not merely his own." Ron and Hermione both gave Harry half-exasperated, half-commiserating looks. "Most of the judges," and here, Bagman gave Karkaroff a very nasty look, "feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However...Mr. Potter's score is forty-five points." Harry's stomach leapt - he was now tying for first place with Cedric. Ron and Hermione, caught by surprise, stared at Harry, then laughed and started applauding hard with the rest of the crowd. "There you go. Harry!" Ron shouted over the noise. "You weren't being thick after all - you were showing moral fiber!" Fleur was clapping very hard too, but Krum didn't look happy at all. He attempted to engage Hermione in conversation again, but she was too busy cheering Harry to listen. "The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June," continued Bagman. "The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions." It was over. Harry thought dazedly, as Madam Pomfrey began herding the champions and hostages back to the castle to get into dry clothes...it was over, he had got through...he didn't have to worry about anything now until June the twenty-fourth.... Next time he was in Hogsmeade, Harry decided as he walked back up the stone steps into the castle, he was going to buy Dobby a pair of socks for every day of the year.

#GobletofFire #HarryPotter

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