#psychology hermione

[fanfictiondramione]

You were born bluer than a butterfly Beautiful and so deprived of oxygen Colder than your father's eyes He never learned to sympathize with anyone

I don't blame you But I can't change you Don't hate you But we can't save you

You were born reaching for your mother's hands Victim of your father's plans to rule the world Too afraid to step outside Paranoid and petrified of what you've heard

(But they could say the same 'bout me)

[Blue by Billie Eilish]

[dramioneasks]

Paradise Lost by ArtGirl - E, 19 chapters - Draco Malfoy lived a charmed life before the war even with all the strict rules and customs his father set for him. His fall from the only life he’d ever known began when he took the Dark Mark. By the end of the war Draco lost everything; his mother, his name, and his freedom. After spending a year in Azkaban, Draco returns to Hogwarts to finish out his eighth year as mandated by the Wizengamot and he is far from the same person he was before the war. As he navigates his eighth year and struggles to recover from the horrors he’s survived, Draco finds that he isn’t the only one tormented by the past. When Hermione Granger strikes up a strange friendship with him, together they embark on a journey to find peace in a world that in some ways feels like they no longer belong in. Along the way, Draco finds new friends, family, and love in the most unexpected of places.

Paradise Regained by ArtGirl - E, WIP - After finishing his court mandated eighth year at Hogwarts, Draco becomes a consultant for the DMLE to help bring down a group that is trying to pick up where the Death Eaters left off at the end of the war. Following a series of kidnappings, murders, and a trail of very dark magic, Draco and the DMLE find themselves in a race against time to bring these people to justice before it’s too late. Along the way, Draco continues to build his new family, finds new friends in unexpected places, and explores his bond with Hermione that may be more than what it seems while on a path to claim a name he can truly be proud of.

[mustelidsinlove]

Inside by onebedtorulethemall on AO3

Something is wrong with Draco Malfoy.

“'My parents. The Dark Lord. Seeing you hurt.' The three things which, in the algebra of his life, placed him underground next to her."

Art: Edward Gorey, Illustration from The West Wing, 1963

[austenpoppy]

Nightfall: at dusk - Prologue: Night monsters

Ao3 link: Nightfall : at dusk - Chapter 1 - Austenpoppy - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

Fanfiction.net link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14301937/1/Nightfall-At-Dusk

Summary:

2001. Ron and Harry are working hard at the Auror Academy to become full-fledged Aurors, while Hermione is trying to find her place in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and Ginny is training with the Holyhead Harpies. Everybody is trying to overcome what happened in the war to focus on building a better future, and life seems easier than it has ever been. However, darkness is looming on the horizon as Muggleborn and Half-Blood wizards and witches disappear before being found out weeks later, their dead bodies having been experimented upon. Meanwhile, Ron has more and more trouble dealing with the aftermath of what happened with the locket...

I can't believe I'm actually starting to post this. This is going to be the first fanfiction I publish, but it is a gigantic project that I have started years ago, when I was barely out of high school - and it's very close to my heart. It all began in a rather boring geography class in 2017 (I'm sorry, Mr. D, I can't say I care about mussel culture in Thailand) where I had let my imagination wander, doing one of my favourite hobbies: inventing stories with one of my favourite characters of all time (in case that was not clear, I'm talking about Ron). I was thinking about one scene from one of my favourite childhood movies (the fantastic "Azur and Asmar" by Michel Ocelot) and I was replacing the characters from the animation film with Harry and Ron, imagining how they could have ended up in that situation and what could happen after.

The entire universe of Nightfall was born from this one scene alone.

If you start this journey with me, my fellow Internet friend, this is going to be a long, very long ride. The story is so huge I divided it into three parts, each of which have their own "arcs" so to speak. The good thing is that I know exactly where I'm going, and I can assure you that considering there are already six years of work put into this project I am not likely to ever abandon it. You should rather feel sorry for my dear friend and beta Vivithefolle who not only had to hear me talk about this project for years, but also had to read some chapters in complete disorder, with some notes from me to explain the context or background information. Thank you so much, Vivi, you motivated me to write at a time you were my only reader and I had this crazy idea I would write all the chapters before publishing them (no this did not work out, but no one can accuse me of being impatient... six freaking years of work...).

However I want to be clear and honest to my potential readers: this is not going to be a happy-go-lucky story by any stretch of the imagination. I am going to write about mature and sometimes very dark subjects, even though if you know me, you may have guessed I rather like humour and am not really fond of cynical and hopeless works. I, however, am a sadist, as you will have the displeasure to discover once you see how I treat Ron (I'm joking, I'm joking...or am I ?). I don't want to say too much, but let's just say people who came here for a feel-good story without any angst will be thoroughly disappointed.

As a side note, I consider this work to be canon-compliant, given that I only consider the seven original books as canon and take what J. K. Rowling wrote on Pottermore with a grain of salt; but "Nightfall" is not my headcanon of what happened after the war either. Consider it more like an evil twin of my actual headcanon.

Now let me introduce you to the world of "Nightfall", or the story that has been living rent free in my head nearly everyday for the past few years. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it, and I'm proud and extremely touched to present you with my first published fanfiction (I also feel very self-conscious, but I guess that was to be expected).

Disclaimer: All characters and events depicted in the original book series belong to J.K. Rowling. Most unfortunately.

Trigger warnings for this chapter: graphic depictions of violence, disturbing imagery

(See the end of the work for more notes).

Prologue : Night monsters

Sunday 7th January, 2001 - 2 am.

It was a very cold night. Thaddeus gripped the pants of his cloak tighter against himself, trying to warm himself up as best as he could. As he exhaled loudly, his breath came out in a silvery steam before disappearing. His lips were chapped, and he could feel the cracks on them that would probably end up bleeding.

He found himself thinking wistfully of the warm bed in which his wife was waiting for him at home. Images of himself with his head going deep into his soft pillow, pulling back his fluffy blankets over his body, and kissing Magdalene goodnight before going to sleep with a contented smile on his face flooded his mind. He fidgeted, feeling irritation slowly rising inside him. How long would he have to wait?

Magdalene was certainly trying to fight off sleep until he came back, though she was most likely too groggy to last long – Calder, who had turned three in November, was in his oppositional phase and was exhausting them both. Thaddeus had been in the Auror Task Force for more than twenty years, and Magdalene had been his wife for well over fifteen years now, but she still worried almost as much as she did back when they started dating.

She worried even more those days considering what had been happening lately. Eight wizards and witches had vanished in the last month and a half in mysterious circumstances;  two of them had ended up dead, their corpses dropped in random places all over the United Kingdom. And to top it off, all of the missing people had either been Muggleborn or Half-Blood, something that the media had been quick to point out.

Of course, worried whispers had emerged ever since Fidvi Khokhar, the second victim, had disappeared, and those whispers had grown louder and louder every time another person had gone missing. A collective shiver had taken over the wizarding community, that was paralyzed with fear at the idea that somehow, You-Know-Who had managed to come back from the dead yet again.

About two weeks earlier, when Conri Hartnett's body had been found five hundred miles away from the place he had last been seen, stupor had seized Aurors and civils alike. Of course, everyone had felt very sorry for his family, though nobody had ever doubted that the former Unspeakable had been killed - there was even a strange relief that had gone hand in hand with the discovery of the corpse, since victims of Death Eater who had disappeared were very rarely found.

Yet, despite this small relief, horror and fright had quickly made their way into everybody's hearts at the knowledge that Hartnett's body had been experimented upon. Thaddeus had not seen the body himself, and photographs of the corpse had been forbidden despite outcries from scoops-hungry journalists, but he had heard other Aurors shiver while recounting the tale in the common room.

The picture those Aurors had painted was the kind that you only saw in the most terrible nightmares. Hartnett's fingers, hands, arms, legs and foot had apparently disappeared, replaced instead with translucid tentacles reminiscent of a jellyfish. Meanwhile, his head had taken up a more cubic-shaped form, while his hair had completely fallen off. Furthermore, the rest of his body had been covered with a bad rash. The Aurors who were at the crime scene had said you could barely make out the place the human body ended and the jellyfish started, as if the two were one and the same.

Really Thaddeus couldn't imagine much more terrible fate. The Auror department had not even allowed Hartnett's family to see the body, let alone get it back for a proper funeral. As of now the scientific team was still trying to figure out what had happened to Hartnett exactly. So far the only things they were sure about were that the kind of jellyfish Hartnett had been merged with was a species of the family Oceaniidae, and that dark magic had been involved in the twisted process of Transfiguration.

Two days after Hartnett, another body had been found in Cardiff. This one, too, had been awfully disfigured. After a bit of investigation, it had turned out to be Donovan Kovalenko, a British Ukrainian citizen who had worked as a secretary in the Ukrainian embassy until his disappearance, and the last person to have disappeared.

Unlike Bartnett, he had not been blended with a jellyfish, but with a bowhead whale. His face had been completely unrecognizable, and it was only because of a very specific birthmark that the scientific team had been able to identify the body.

Just like with Bartnett, Kovalenko's transfigured corpse had been found very far away from the place he had last been seen, since the Ukrainian embassy was based in London. What was more, he had also been found in a completely different region than Bartnett, whose body had been discovered in a little town in Scotland, Tobermory.

All in all, Thaddeus thought with a shudder, there was something really dark going on, but no one could tell whether this was the work of a serial killer, of Pureblood fanatics, of a human trafficking ring, or something else entirely.

Thaddeus didn't think Magdalene had any reason to fret today, though. If the situation he'd been required to deal with had been dangerous, he wouldn't be hanging around waiting for the Hit wizard on duty to come and let him know what was going on. It was probably some kind of drunk wizard who'd destroyed public property thinking Trolls were attacking him. Two months ago he'd arrested a man who had been bothering a neighbourhood in London, believing himself to be Celestina Warbeck. The fella had sung all night with a croaky falsetto voice that seemed immune to the most powerful Silencios.

Merlin, he hated being the reserve Auror at night, but he needed the extra money.

Just as his mind was going to go down a rather dark route he was nonetheless accustomed to, he noticed a familiar figure coming right toward him, looking grim. He couldn't help but raise his eyebrows in surprise.

"Harvey?" he asked as they showed each other their Auror badges and checked each other's identity. "What're you doing here?"

"Nasty business, Thaddeus", Harvey replied sombrely, shaking his head, while Thaddeus followed him. "A young witch who was on her way home after a party stumbled upon the body of Lucinda Backstreet. Lynn's team is already on the crime scene."

Immediately, Thaddeus felt his shoulders slump, and his heart constricted. It was going to be a long night. Magdalene's eyes would give up the fight against sleep well before he would be able to go home, and the first thing he would do when he did go back to his house wouldn't be to kiss his children or wife but take a huge glass of Firewhisky.

Lucinda Backstreet was one of the eight people who had disappeared in the last weeks. A young girl from Bristol, enthusiastic and passionate about the protection of magical animals. One day she had left her home to go to the weekly meeting of her club dedicated to the defense of the rights of magical creatures, and then nobody had ever seen her again. Her disappearance had really caused a stir nationwide. Not only was she the youngest victim, but her father, Cyneric Backstreet, was a well-known businessman who had made a fortune selling transportable strongboxes that were charmed to repel most common spells.

Walking toward her corpse reminded Thaddeus as to why some days he thought that he should find another job.

Neither Harvey nor he were speaking, and the only sounds that could be heard were that of their boots on gravel. After a few minutes spent in silence, they finally approached the crime scene. Thaddeus noticed that a few members of the scientific team were already there, looking for evidence and preparing the body for transport, including the Team Leader of the scientific team herself, Auror Lynn Oliver. Thaddeus gave a nod in her direction, which she answered grimly.

Thaddeus looked around for familiar faces, and he saw Monica and Griffiths acknowledge his presence with a small wave, though they quickly got back to what they were doing, both of their faces incredibly serious.

When Thaddeus finally laid eyes on Lucinda's body, he felt himself repress a gag and he had to quickly avert his eyes. The young girl was spread out on the pavement, her face turned toward the starry night. Her expression would give Thaddeus nightmares for months. Her mouth was contorted in pain, her cheeks were tear-stained, and her glassy eyes were wide open in terror, telling a story of terrible suffering.

Though her face and chest had remained human, her stretched-out arms had been turned into something else, just like the previous victims. This time, as far as Thaddeus could tell, the monsters responsible for the murders had tried to turn Lucinda into some sort of part-Phoenix creature. While the shape of her arms was visible, they had been saddled with very big wings, covered in those unmistakable red feathers typical of Phoenixes. Some of them had seemingly burnt, as they had turned black and were emitting a dark smoke that Thaddeus instinctively backed away from.

Lucinda's hands were still present, but her fingers had elongated, and were contracted, as if she had had a seizure. Her legs, too, had been partially Transfigured. Thaddeus could see feathers coming out from under her pants, that had clearly been buttoned up hastily, and her feet had been turned into sharp talons, onto which no shoe could be put, though her shoes had still been put beside her body.

"I can't believe I'll have to be the one who'll tell Cyneric Backstreet that his daughter is dead, and that her death was clearly not a quick, painless one", sighed Harvey next to Thaddeus.

"Is that why you arrived at the crime scene before me?" Thaddeus asked, his voice laced with sympathy as he looked up at Harvey. "The emergency code for the missing persons' case?"

"Yeah, I was the one from my squad on duty tonight", Harvey replied, his breath turning into vapor as he exhaled. "The witness fortunately remembered it, and I received the signal thirty minutes ago. Right now Gallaway is taking her deposition."

Harvey jutted his chin toward a young woman, who couldn't be older than twenty-five and was in a clear state of great agitation. She was standing a few feet away from the crime scene, and was talking to a black-haired Auror in uniform that Thaddeus had only met a few times.

Thaddeus crouched down to look at Lucinda. He could not imagine the horrors she must have been through, and he shuddered as he thought of her father, who had openly wept in the Aurors' Office when he had been told there were few chances that Lucinda was alive after the first two bodies had been found.

As a father himself, Thaddeus could barely bear to think about that happening to his own children. Lucinda's face was so youthful that it was just plain wrong to imagine her doing anything other than laughing with her friends, complaining that she had too much homework, or giving animated speeches about endangered species.

Feeling dejected, Thaddeus turned his face toward Harvey and declared quietly: "Poor girl. She wasn't even seventeen."

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He was stuck on a chair in the tent and felt dirty. He looked down at his hands. He had been so sure he had cleaned them several times before, yet they looked filthy, dusty - all those adjectives finishing with a - y that applied to him because he was such a terrible person.

"Nothing will ever wipe your hands off your betrayal. It's too late. But has there been a time when you were at their level? Has there ever been a time when you were worth their brightness? No, and you know it. You're a dark creature, Ron Weasley, with even darker and hideous thoughts. I have seen your heart, and it is black. You have tried to keep your jealousy and your mediocrity hidden, you have tried to ignore the calls of your inner nature, but hear me out - you have failed."

"Do you see them? They are outside, in the sun, in the light. They shine very brightly, don't they, Ron? Their skins glow, their eyes sparkle, their smiles warm up everything around them. Do you see how much happier the world seems to be with them in it? Birds sing again, flowers are blooming, and Harry Potter and Hermione Granger are the stars the sky was waiting for."

“You are in the dark, and you will remain in the dark. You are seated in dust because you are nothing more than dust yourself. Actually, to be perfectly honest, your surroundings were welcoming and comfortable until you showed up and sat down in this chair. Crazy how you spoil everything around you. See, here, the tissue the tent is made of is quickly falling into pieces. Your mere presence is enough to destroy what is around you... Unless the objects you are surrounded by somehow feel how evil you are, and they'd rather turn to dust than stay with you any longer. Choose which hypothesis you prefer."

"Aaaah, they're coming your way. I will never understand why they decided to keep you with them, despite your darkness. But I will never understand real kindness either, so I will drop the subject. It was your redemption, Ronald. They were your redemption. You could have atoned for your sins. You could have let them crush you so they would climb higher and finally reach the sky where they belong. You could have done something useful for a change. Yet you spoiled your only opportunity. You spoiled everything, as usual."

"Now you're not even worthy enough to be a footboard for them to climb. You are just dust on their shoes. Dust, dust, dust. They will be so happy to wipe this dirt off their shoes. Even coming near you dampens their spirits. Their smiles are less warm, their eyes are less bright, their skins a lot paler. So are you going to spoil them, Ronald, like you did with the tent, or will they finally beat you and turn you into dust? Given how furious they look, I bet it's the latter."

He felt cold. Harry and Hermione were looking at him with a freezing glare and a scornful snarl at their lips. He shivered. And swallowed. He knew he had fucked everything up. He knew he deserved their anger and more. He just didn't want them to be upset over this, over him and his stupidity. And if he was honest with himself, it was also terrifying to be on the receiving end of their hatred.

"Listen", he choked, "I-I can't say how sorry I am, because no word will ever be enough. I am also...I am also so happy that you accepted to take me back to help you. I promise I won't be a bother. Don't mind me. I'll just do what you need me to do and disappear from your lives forever after if-if that's what you want. Please don't throw me out !"

But Harry and Hermione were not listening to him. Their freezing glare had turned into a flaming and scalding hot look and they were burning him. He was very hot. He was sweating. He felt drops falling on his face. The locket was weighing on his chest. It was so heavy. It hurt. He felt like he was melting.

He looked down at his hands again. He was actually melting. The skin of his fingers was going brown and was softening; small drops began to fall on the floor of the tent. Ploc, Ploc. They were forming a puddle and it looked like mud. In fact, he was sure it was mud. He wanted to yell, but he couldn't. His face was already melting, joining the puddle on the floor.

Ron woke up with a start and sat up, gasping for air. It had been a nightmare. Just a fucking nightmare. He ran a hand across his face, shivering from head to toe, and felt wetness on his cheeks. Fuck it, he had once again been crying in his sleep. It was the fourth time in seven days. Even as a child Ron hadn't been that much of a wuss, even though George liked to remind him that he'd kept taking refuge into one of his brothers' beds (or Ginny's) whenever he was scared, and that until he was eight.

It wouldn't matter as much if he had been crying for anything else. Not that he preferred the other nightmares, mind you, but he just felt pathetic for turning into a sobbing mess all because he'd been too weak to resist an effing necklace. Harry was particularly affected by Dementors. Nothing less than Bellatrix Lestrange could make Hermione truly terrified. Ginny, who had been possessed by a diary, didn't flinch at the mere presence of a book.

But him ? Ron could already imagine George making grand gestures wherever he went: "Alas, my dear Sirs, gentlemen, thou shall make place for the delicate Ronniekins in his worn-out PJs, for he fainted when the dreaded locket came into his dainty view. Please bring the smelling salts while we're fanning his pasty white and freckled face and he's letting out little whines of distress. He's the king of wimps, thou see, and he can't bear the sight of lockets, less he be crying like a famished baby !"

Yeah. George'd be the kind of asshole who'd offer him a pacifier if he knew what kind of nightmares was making Ron cry in his sleep.

Ron looked down at his hands, the real ones this time. Goddammit, they were still shaking. Bloody frickity freakering fuck, he thought as he closed his eyes in frustration, why did he have no control over his own body? Why did he have to act like he was a ninety-something-old buffer who needed help to take a piss?

Why did he have to ask himself stupid questions that nobody would answer?

Even though the bedroom was completely silent at this hour of the night, Ron could still hear his heart thumping madly in his ears, and despite himself he couldn't help but feel like the locket was still whistling behind him, making his skin crawl. Sweat was running down his back and had already soaked his armpits, and yet for some reason he was cold, goosebumps erupting all over his flesh.

And he still had this impression of someone hissing near him, and the room was closing on him, and his pyjama top was glued to his skin, and he didn't like the way the sheets were trapping his legs, preventing him from moving... Unable to bear the situation any longer and feeling like he was suffocating, Ron yanked the sheets off his part of the bed and got up quickly, before pulling his sticky pyjama top over his head and throwing it on the ground.

He took his wand and started walking toward the door, though he couldn't help himself and stopped to throw a glance at Hermione once he was in the doorframe. She was sleeping peacefully, her wild brown curls framing her head like some kind of fairy tale princess. The moonlight was lighting up her beautiful face, and she had a contented smile that almost made him want to go back to bed to kiss it.

Leaving the bedroom, Ron crossed the corridor and went into the small kitchen of the flat, and immediately put water into the kettle to make himself tea. He cast a heating charm on the kettle, took his favourite mug, and put a teabag in it. Waiting for the water to boil, he put his outstretched arms on the counter and sighed, his head lowered toward the sink.

It was the third time in a week that he'd had a nightmare about the locket. It wasn't surprising per say, because it was January and it was always around this time of the year that Ron had the most vivid nightmares in regard to the locket, but it still sucked. Especially because it'd been three years already, and some part of Ron had - foolishly - hoped that the nightmares and his locket-related terror would have subsided by now.

But nope, he mused as he stared at the happy light brown dog on the mug running around and chasing a butterfly. He still had dreams in which he could feel the heavy weight of the locket on his chest, preventing him from breathing. In which he was trapped in an endless stream of dark thoughts echoed by the locket's whispers, reminding him of all the times he had felt worthless. In which he kept leaving the tent as Harry's scornful stares and Hermione's cries followed him even after he woke up.

At the same time, he knew the nightmares were the last thing he deserved for ever having walked out on Harry and Hermione. He'd never been good enough for them in the first place, but deserting them when they needed him most was irredeemable, something that the locket, whether it be through his nightmares or flashes, kept reminding him of.

At this moment a whistling sound made Ron's heart do a somersault before he realized that it was only the kettle boiling. He poured the hot water into his mug, added two and a half sugar cubes to his drink, steeped the teabags in the water, and as he adopted the same waiting position as before his thoughts went back to the place he had among his two best friends.

He was thankful Harry and Hermione still wanted him in their lives, and somehow he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, when they'd wake up and realize he'd been nothing but a cock-up all this time. Truth be told, part of Ron had to pinch himself every morning when he was reminded that Hermione wanted to be with him, of all people, and that he got to be an Auror Trainee with Harry, who still thought Ron had his back.

So he'd keep trying to enjoy every moment while it lasted. It was not always easy, because every little thing seemed to remind him of a memory in which he'd fucked up or that showed how insignificant he was. Yet Ron had learned to cast the memories aside in order to focus on more important things, like his family, Harry, Hermione, his other friends, or his studies. The hardest part in all this was to not let his useless feelings get in the way of things.

Ron could say with some pride that he'd grown way better at dismissing his gross feelings of jealousy and insecurity compared to when he was a teenager. Sure, sometimes he slipped up because he was still a moron, he pondered as he turned a spoon inside his mug. But all in all, so far he had managed to keep his selfish desires in check - mostly.

He kept making efforts to show others, and more particularly Harry and Hermione, that he had changed. For that he needed to make sure they didn't notice he still had the same old feelings, or at least he needed to let them know that those feelings would never be a burden to them again. Of course sometimes they couldn't help but notice a few things, like this time Ron had casually let slip that he thought Hermione often favoured Harry over him and it had ended up in a huge row with Hermione as she yelled he was just being a possessive jealous sod trying to stifle her. Or this time he had jokingly told Harry he was Mum's favourite and Harry, disturbed, had replied that however important Mrs. Weasley was in his life, she was not his mother. Harry had been weird for days after that, all because of Ron, his stupid mouth and his stupid brain.

That was the reason why he made sure no one knew the extent of the mess he had in his head. While he had never been a great liar, he tried not to be too specific if someone asked him what was wrong, he tried to take their attention away from whatever face he was making, he tried to dismiss his reactions whenever they were related to this pathetic sticky, stinky magma of insecurity inside him.

And it was somewhat working, but for how long would it last?

Right as his mood was turning as bitter as the tea he had brewed, considering he had let the teabag steep for more than ten minutes, he heard footsteps coming in his direction. He didn't bother to take his wand or even turn around. Ron would recognize Hermione's light but determined steps anywhere.

She entered the kitchen and stopped in the hallway for a few seconds, before walking toward him and enveloping him from behind. Even though she had wrapped a warm nightgown around her, her hands were still cold on his chest. Yet he didn't mind. The contact of her skin on his, the touch of her curls and cheek on his back made everything better, and despite himself he closed his eyes for a brief instant, savouring the moment.

"A nightmare again ?" she asked in a low voice.

"Yeah..." Ron admitted with a sigh. "I didn't want to wake you up, but I needed to get up."

"It's okay", Hermione replied in a reassuring tone. "But I'm starting to get worried. You've had many nightmares in the last three weeks and haven't been able to sleep properly even though you have exams coming up. Perhaps you should see a healer to get a Sleeping potion ?" she added anxiously.

"Not until I really have to", he retorted firmly. "We've already had far too many problems with Sleeping potions, I don't want to risk it. Besides, I'd have to tell the Auror Academy's specialist Healer about it and I'd like to avoid it if I can."

"I know", Hermione sighed. "I'm just worried about you. You always seem to get so stressed out before your exams at the Auror Academy, even worse than I've ever been at Hogwarts. I wished you would stop doubting yourself so much."

Ron did not reply, but he squeezed Hermione's hands that were still clasped on his chest, right next to his heart. It was strange how the people around him seemed to know him so well while at the same time not knowing anything about the exact reasons that were making him upset.

"What can I say ?" He finally acknowledged after a few moments of silence, though he hoped his tone appeared casual. "You can't change old habits with a wave of your wand. I guess it's hard for me to think I won't fuck up somewhere. But you shouldn't worry about me", he added gently. Go back to sleep."

"I woke up because you were not beside me in the bed, I'm not going back in there without you", she retorted assertively.

"I'm gonna lose the debate if I try to argue, won't I ?" Ron snorted.

"Of course you would lose, I'm more stubborn than you", she said confidently, and Ron could feel that she was sporting a small smile.

"Even if that were true, which remains to be seen, that's nothing to boast about, Miss Granger", he tutted in a fake formal voice. "I've been told that I'm more stubborn than a brooding mule having been raised by Harry, so imagine what could be worse than that... Apart from Harry himself, of course."

Ron felt Hermione shake behind him as she laughed heartily. He could not help but feel a surge of pride at having made her laugh after having made her worry for no good reason. Being able to make Hermione laugh as much as possible was one of his goals in life, and the sound of her laughter was one of the things he cherished most.

"I love you", she said fondly, as if it was the only logical answer to his antics.

At that, Ron turned around, and it was his turn to envelop Hermione in his arms, her smaller body fitting perfectly with his own. He kissed the top of her head, her brown curls tickling his face, before putting his chin on top of the mass of her unruly hair.

"I love you too", he whispered, and he hoped she could not detect how emotional he was.

He was glad that she could not see his face in the dark kitchen that was only lit up by the moonbeams that went through the main window. If she had, she would have seen in his eyes, of which Hermione always said they could never lie, the one thing that kept playing on a loop in his head but that was stuck in his throat.

I don't deserve you.

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Notes:

I suppose I should add a bit of information concerning my own vision of the Wizarding World that may seem surprising in future chapters:

1. I rather like to think the wizarding community is not small. I consider that there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions of wizards and witches in the United Kingdom, scattered in many different cities and villages.

2. For the same reason, I do not think Hogwarts is the sole magical school of the entire United Kingdom. It is the most reputed one, but I imagine there are thousands of smaller schools everywhere, allowing for people who do not want their children to go to a boarding school to learn magic and to learn how to control their powers nonetheless.

3. Only old wizards and witches actually dress in robes the way one would picture a typical wizard robe. I have my own ideas of what wizarding fashion is.

[prettyy-psyche]

Introduction

Hello Everyone! My name is Kitty. I am creating this blog to showcase little days in my life. I would like for this blog to be a sort of diary, but to also let people feel less lonely.

I am going to primarily post:

Life

Study Motivation

Self wellness and care

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A Lil bit about Moi...

pink <3

Virgo

born in Okinawa, Japan

INFJ

20

Psych Student (Bachelor's of Science)

Learning French

[forestdeath1]

People say that Sirius never realised how offensive his words were until James or Remus said it to him.

I personally disagree with this take. I think, Sirius was very aware of how offensive his words and actions were. James didn't realise, but Sirius did.

Sirius finds people's sore spots and deliberately hits them. This is not James's "morally orientated" and rather impersonal bullying, this is a deliberate way of humiliating people Sirius doesn't particularly respect. People want to believe Sirius "didn't realise" what he was doing because it's easier to love Sirius and justify their Wolfstar that way, but Sirius always understood what he was doing, unlike James. Sirius probably rarely crossed the line beyond psychological bullying, but didn't stop James from physical bullying – he found it fun. But he himself hardly participated in physical aggression, although he obviously could have, being magically and physically gifted. It seems Sirius had drawn the line for himself.

Sirius wasn’t a little stupid boy, he matured very early, he had a very good understanding of boundaries and was always very aware of where he and James were crossing those boundaries.

“Bad luck, Prongs,” said Sirius briskly.

Sirius knew about James's crush on Lily and found it even funny that she rejected him. Because Sirius understood that James often crossed the line, and Lily’s reaction was quite fair.

‘What is it with her?’ said James, trying and failing to look as though this was a throwaway question of no real importance to him. 

‘Reading between the lines, I’d say she thinks you’re a bit conceited, mate,’ said Sirius.

While James played the splendid knight in shining armor, Sirius found it all amusing. Because it was fun for him. And no one told him he was doing anything wrong, he already knew it. Remus mostly stayed quiet, sometimes making them “feel ashamed", haha. He's just much more socially anxious than Sirius, he doesn't like being "unliked." Sirius has zero social anxiety, he didn't care whether people loved him or not (besides, James loved him, what else did he need? Right, nothing).

And I think Sirius truly only respected James. Someone who Sirius truly respects, he never hurt. The moment when Sirius "hurts" Harry in book five is a pretty harsh moment, because Sirius loses respect for Harry for a brief moment because Harry turns out to be different from James. But then Sirius shows a new and even stronger respect for Harry. It's a good moment. This moment allowed Sirius to grow in his relationship with Harry.

And it's obvious Sirius respected Lily by fifth year. And after Azkaban, he "learned" to respect others (he reacted pretty gently in his argument with Molly), but his arrogance still showed sometimes (ie, he rudely cut off Hermione, not letting her finish her thought).

Anyway, what had changed with age wasn't that Sirius had realised that his words and actions were offensive. He always knew that. And he had shown even after Azkaban how cruel he could be to those he didn't respect. The only thing that changed was that Sirius started respecting random people more, instead of sitting around like a shiny royal arse.

But there is a NUANCE here. Sirius most likely always treated girls with respect by default. Idk why I just feel it :D With Hermione, they just didn't see eye to eye.

[frm9pm]

Ghost Tom idea

Half baked idea for fun don’t take me too seriously please :’P

This idea comes from the game mechanic of HPMA where when you use AvadaKedavra 4 times in a row, Voldemort appears. There is an alternate skin for this attack that puts Tom Riddle instead of Voldie. I couldn’t find HD versions of this skin so I thought it was child Tom Riddle following the character around, which I thought was very funny.

Anyways my thinking is Harry has been an auror for about 9 years or so and in that time he became so jaded by the ministry and how corrupted the system is. Even though he swore never to use the killing curse after the war, after a hostage situation gone bad, he allows himself to use AK when the situation is dire enough. No one says anything because he’s Harry Potter and doing his job. It doesn’t become an issue until his 4th AK when a child Tom Riddle starts following him around. Tom isn’t shy and constantly talks, which drives Harry fucking insane. Nobody else can see Tom but Harry. After confiding in Hermione and Ron, they’re convinced it’s a curse of some kind and make him go to a dark arts specialist.

The Dark Arts specialist is of course, Draco Malfoy. After days of testing Draco figures it’s not a curse but all psychological. Cue questionable therapy ethics, Draco not a therapist but using the techniques his muggle therapist does for him to try and help Harry out. (Or maybe there is a bit of dark magic in there idk)

The point of the story is to highlight the parallels between Harry and Tom(and Draco?) Obviously nothing Tom did is excused, but Harry understands things arent B/W. It allows for Harry to understand Draco better too

Draco is allowed the dark arts specialist role because the aurors thought he would immediately slip up and they could send him back to Azkaban. He has a trace imposed on him to make sure he doesn’t do anything shady. This is embarassing for Draco, so he has embraced the muggle method of doing things manually, so that the aurors have no ammunition to make fun of him.

Obviously I’m not a writer and don’t know where to go with this x’) I was just very tickled with the initial idea of a baby Tom Riddle ghost and tried to expand.

[obsidianpen]

What's so great about Harrymort, anyway? This ship basically consists of Stockholm syndrome, power inequality, and abuse. The same can be applied to Tomione but I understand that last one and I even started to appreciate this ship a lot. Hermione is the character most similar to Tom, if she had the ambition that Tom had, she could have become something similar to Voldemort in canon. But beyond that, Hermione is someone Tom/V could respect and have as an ally. She is someone who would be able to rule alongside him, and everyone would benefit from that, since she is fair and good. Also if Tom/V had her by his side, he would be a more stable version than the one in canon. So.. I understand why you like this ship so much but.. the more I think about Harrymort the more I feel disgusted. Harry is not a character that people respect and fear, he is just Harry. Just that. Some random boy. There's nothing special about him, and if it weren't for the horcrux he would already be dead since chapter 1 of the books. Tom/V is a prodigy, one of the most powerful wizards in the books, he wouldn't be interested in someone so ordinary. But let's say yes, that Tom/V is interested in Harry precisely because he is common and average, since they have a similar background - This is difficult to happen, V is not an empathetic character but let's pretend so - and because of the horcrux, of course it's because of the horcrux, that's the only reason, the only thing that makes Harry stand out among the others -not even that came from him lol so sad- If our hypothetical scenario happened, Harry would be a toy for Tom /V -he already is- "ah, but the fun is in how much Harry fights, he was going to fight, that's what he is" oh yes, this argument is the favorite of the Tomarymort fans, huh? He wouldn't be able to fight forever, this character has been in fight or flight mode since the beginning, he'll get tired eventually, V would be able to break him, and do you think V is the type to keep things broken? I don't think so. My point is Tomarymort is a ship that explores abuse, toxic and destructive relationships, physical and psychological torture, Stockholm syndrome etc. And that's fine if you like it but I think we can all agree that this ship and love should NEVER be put in the same sentence . Because love and respect would never exist between these two characters. No matter how good the writer is, some things just don't work. Just become them ooc, that's what happens most lol

Preface: I’m breaking this one down point by point, and then I am never responding to anything similar ever again. I will also not be posting anonymous responses to this. I hate being the middle man for a tumblr shipping war, so I’m not going to participate in that. If you want to respond, you can leave a comment or reblog it into your own page. 💖

What's so great about Harrymort, anyway? 

The drama, the intensity, the wrongness, the clashing of opposites, the most extreme version of enemies to lovers…

This ship basically consists of Stockholm syndrome, power inequality, and abuse. 

In some fics sure, yeah. But these are all really interesting - terrible, yes, but super interesting to dive into. There is a reason people like to read/watch psychological thrillers, horror, etc. I don’t feel like I should have to explain this very massive, common human drive, so I won’t. Go google it!

The same can be applied to Tomione but I understand that last one and I even started to appreciate this ship a lot. 

Cool, you like these things too! And you’re completely allowed to prefer Hermione to Harry. Whatever you want to read.

Hermione is the character most similar to Tom, if she had the ambition that Tom had, she could have become something similar to Voldemort in canon. 

Strong disagree here - she did have that ambition imo, she just… wasn’t evil, and she became Minister of Magic in canon, so. Pretty ambitious and somewhat similar, just in the legal, ‘good’ way.

But beyond that, Hermione is someone Tom/V could respect and have as an ally. 

Mm, no, she was a muggleborn, so in canon, a LOT of major shifts would have needed to happen for her to simply not be killed, or maybe tortured a hunch for fun, first, before eventually… being killed.

She is someone who would be able to rule alongside him, and everyone would benefit from that, since she is fair and good. 

Again, LOTS of things would have had to happen in canon for this to be even remotely possible. Unless you’re imagining some kind of AU where Tom Riddle is the same age as the trio, and they grow up together and can therefore influence each other on more equal footing…? But that’s Tom, not canon Voldemort, and you started this referencing Voldemort.

Also if Tom/V had her by his side, he would be a more stable version than the one in canon. 

Uh, would he? Assuming we’ve jumped over the impossible canon hurdles to get Hermione by Lord Voldemort’s side, by the time Hermione is even in the magical world, he’s been a bodiless spirit with a shredded soul for years. It would be a tall order for Hermione - or anyone - to make him more stable. I like arguing that Harry could sort of manage this in canon because of the horcrux connection, but that’s me making things up that are FAR from canon, and Hermione doesn’t have this. 

So.. I understand why you like this ship so much but.. the more I think about Harrymort the more I feel disgusted. 

Cool, your feelings are valid! You should probably stop thinking about Harrymort for your mental health. You can block tags/keywords/etc on tumblr so that you see less of it.

Harry is not a character that people respect and fear, he is just Harry. Just that. Some random boy. There's nothing special about him, and if it weren't for the horcrux he would already be dead since chapter 1 of the books. 

Well, that’s not true, imo. Harry was the best at Defensive Magic, he was an amazing flier, he is brave and bold and puts his life on the line for others without question - even people who don’t deserve it and who tried to harm him, like Draco. Those are all extraordinary traits that maybe some people make the mistake of ignoring and underestimating. 

Tom/V is a prodigy, one of the most powerful wizards in the books, he wouldn't be interested in someone so ordinary. 

If not for the horcrux, maybe not. But also, maybe. We don’t know what Harry would have been like if he grew up with a normal happy healthy family. Maybe he would have thrived in many ways, and he would have gleaned some interest. But even without that, see above comment to take note of some of Harry’s traits that he has despite growing up in an abusive home. Voldemort said himself that he values bravery. 

But let's say yes, that Tom/V is interested in Harry precisely because he is common and average, since they have a similar background - This is difficult to happen, V is not an empathetic character but let's pretend so - and because of the horcrux, of course it's because of the horcrux, that's the only reason, the only thing that makes Harry stand out among the others -not even that came from him lol so sad- If our hypothetical scenario happened, Harry would be a toy for Tom /V -he already is- "ah, but the fun is in how much Harry fights, he was going to fight, that's what he is" oh yes, this argument is the favorite of the Tomarymort fans, huh? He wouldn't be able to fight forever, this character has been in fight or flight mode since the beginning, he'll get tired eventually, V would be able to break him, and do you think V is the type to keep things broken? I don't think so. 

None of this logic adds up to me. How can you say all this about Harry and not apply it to pretty much everyone else, including Hermione? Voldemort WAS far from empathetic. Canonically. And yeah, sure, no one would be able to fight forever. But if anyone has a fire that would last an infuriatingly long time, I’d argue that it would be Harry. 

My point is Tomarymort is a ship that explores abuse, toxic and destructive relationships, physical and psychological torture, Stockholm syndrome etc. And that's fine if you like it but I think we can all agree that this ship and love should NEVER be put in the same sentence . 

Obviously this depends on what the story is. If it’s a story that explores all those former themes, then it’s probably not a lovey dovey romance anyway. But there are definitely stories that don’t have all those dark subjects, and if someone wants to write a platonic romance where the word love shows up between these two, more power to them! But you don’t get to say everyone in the world can never do a single thing in their fiction. People can write whatever they want! And you get to decide not to read it! Everyone wins.

Because love and respect would never exist between these two characters. No matter how good the writer is, some things just don't work. Just become them ooc, that's what happens most lol

I feel sorry for you. Where is your sense of curiosity, open-mindedness? Maybe you could never write these things convincingly, but some people are more talented than you (don’t take this too personally; no matter how good we are, there are always people more talented than us). It’s okay to not like things and to avoid them based on your comfort level/interest/etc etc, but just because you’re not looking doesn’t mean that such amazing jaw-dropping works that make you believe in the unbelievable aren’t out there.

💖

[omniluci-estumbra]

Me? Posting a Late Mermay piece? More likely than you think 🧜‍♀️

The song “Rises the Moon” by liana Flores is what I picture Hermione’s siren song to sound like

Draco’s POV: back and isolated for his 8th year he suddenly wants to sleep all the time but gets no rest because he feels like something is watching him through his window into the lake. Everytime he sits up in bed to try to catch it though there’s nothing there. He has stranger and stranger nightmares of drowning filled with an eerie song and starts to wake up with his clothes soaked higher and higher up his body each morning. He thinks he’s finally going mad (genre: psychological thriller a la black swan)

Hermione’s POV: she found a forbidden mertext on how to sing a siren song and also luckily discovered a cute sad looking human boy to try it out on. Hopefully they can be good friends and she can prove to everyone that knowledge doesn’t need to be hidden away if wielded with good intentions 😌 they’re all just being silly about why this is “bad for the humans attending the school next to their lake” because the cute blonde boy clearly likes her or he wouldn’t respond so strongly to her song (genre: rom-com to drama)

[saintsenara]

If Voldemort had repented and felt remorse like Harry offered him, what exactly would have happened to him? Would his soul have been healed and he forgiven? I mean, I’m pretty sure he would definitely be thrown into Azkaban for life, but would he be normal again? Like, no longer that bald, no-nose snake face creep and his soul intact.

thank you very much for the ask, @hollyparker! i can think of no question more suitable for this season of allhallowtide.

canon is clear that genuine remorse would have resulted in the fissures in voldemort's soul being healed:

"Isn't there any way of putting yourself back together?" Ron asked. "Yes," said Hermione with a hollow smile, "but it would be excruciatingly painful." "Why? How do you do it?" asked Harry.  "Remorse," said Hermione. "You've got to really feel what you've done. There's a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can't see Voldemort attempting it somehow, can you?"

so, the only thing necessary to trigger the healing of the soul is the feeling of remorse. there's no need to perform any sort of public penance, nor even to actually say out loud that you're sorry. you just need to be sorry, and the slate of your soul is wiped clean.

[that is - as we'll come to below - your salvation is achieved by faith alone, rather than by works and rituals...]

so yes, voldemort would be forgiven. but only in the theological - rather than the psychological, social, or legal - sense of the word.

his victims wouldn't suddenly be expected to be fine with him, his slate wouldn't be wiped clean in the eyes of the wizarding legal system, and he would still be expected to be punished for what he'd done. if he survives putting his soul back together, instead of dying on the spot, he's definitely looking at life in azkaban - if not a capital sentence - and he'd deserve it. and if he dies, he's still going to be remembered as an evil man, rather than the history of his crimes being erased by his deathbed repentance. he would simply rot in azkaban and/or die with an intact soul.

but what about with an intact appearance?

canon doesn't ever discuss what would happen to voldemort's body if he healed his soul, and either option - that his appearance would revert or that it wouldn't - is justifiable. but my view is certainly that healing his soul would trigger the transformation of his appearance.

[i don't have a preference on whether this means he would revert to the body he had when he first split his soul - that is, his appearance would be as it was when he was sixteen - or if he'd be his canonical age, just with a human face. either makes one hell of a premise for a fic.]

voldemort's physical degradation is directly caused by making horcruxes - right down to the very first time he splits his soul - and it accelerates as he goes beyond the norms of even this darkest of magic. the version of him which visits hepzibah smith - who has made two horcruxes: the diary and the ring - is very thin, very pale, and heavily implied to look quite sickly, and he also has a red gleam in his eyes. the version who comes to see dumbledore for a job interview - who has made four or five horcruxes: the diary, the ring, the cup, the diadem, and possibly the locket - is unnaturally pale, has skin which looks like melted wax, has eyes which are starting to look permanently bloodshot, and [much to harry's disappointment] is no longer good-looking. creating harry - rather than his resurrection ritual - is what seems to cause his looks to degrade further, since the voldemort of philosopher's stone is described facially in identical ways to the voldemort of goblet of fire, although the creation of nagini probably makes these features even more horrifying.

as a narrative device, voldemort's physical changes has an enormous amount in common with the gradual disfigurement of the portrait in the picture of dorian gray.

in both texts, damage visited upon the soul - and, indeed, damage visited upon the soul in pursuit of immortality - is visited upon the face [although in dorian's case, this damage is confined to the portrait, while his flesh-and-blood self lives behind a mask of false youth and beauty]. at the end of the novel, dorian - horrified at the portrait's appearance - resolves to mend his ways, but only does so half-heartedly [by deciding that not seducing a woman he feels nothing for is enough to cancel out murder and driving two people to suicide], which causes no change to the portrait. in a fit of rage, he destroys the portrait rather than attempting true repentance. this kills him, and when his body is discovered his appearance is the monstrous one of the painting. that is, he - like voldemort - finally has to wear the damage to his soul on his face.

from which we can reasonably suppose that the impact of true repentance on the soul would reflect similarly on the face. voldemort being returned to his former humanity - then - would be the proof [since, as we've seen, he wouldn't need to prove his remorse through works or words] that his repentance was genuine and he had - again, only in the theological sense of the word - been forgiven.

but he's still going to be thrown in azkaban, or hurled through the veil, or die on the spot even if he's pretty again. it doesn't change anything about what he's done on earth.

what it changes is his experience in the afterlife.

the text approaches the possibility of voldemort's remorse very interestingly. by which i mean, it presents it not just as a purgative act, but as a quasi-baptismal one.

the wizarding world canonically has two stable spheres of existence - life and afterlife. there's no suggestion in canon that this afterlife attaches a moral price to admission - that is, it doesn't seem to function as [the christian] heaven, and nor does there seem to be an in-universe version of [the christian] hell - but it does require something: an intact soul.

in between these two spheres is a liminal space - the theshold between life and death which appears to harry as king's cross. this threshold exists so that the newly dead [those who aren't harry, whose experience is unique, at least] can make a choice - to move on to the afterlife or to return to the sphere of the living as a ghost.

there's some implication in canon that it takes some people longer to accept the need to move on to the afterlife than others - and so there's some sense of the threshold serving a similar purpose to purgatory, and serving as an intermediate space in which an intact soul sheds all the baggage it's carried with it from life before it settles happily into death.

but in voldemort's case, it represents something very different... limbo.

and, specifically, the limbo of infants.

this term refers to the permanent - rather than liminal - sphere in which the souls of unbaptised babies linger, unable - since they've never been cleansed of original sin via baptism, but also haven't committed any sins of their own [since, y'know, they're babies] - either to access heaven or to be condemned to hell.

within the metaphysics of canon, then, voldemort's mutilation of his soul has a similar impact to the state of unbaptism. it prevents him from moving across the threshold between life and death, thus causing him to get stuck forever - in a baby-like form! - in the liminal space of king's cross.

and this is fascinating.

as deathly hallows reaches its climax, the themes and tropes the doylist narrative draws upon are overtly christian. harry freely chooses to die for the salvation of the world, rises again from the dead, and then protects anyone who believes in him from coming to harm at voldemort's hands with the supernatural force of his love. numerous other characters have arcs in the final book which have similarly christian overtones - lily as the virgin mary [who crushes the serpent's head, before her son defeats him entirely], dumbledore as john the baptist [who teaches and guides harry-as-christ, but is subordinate to him in greatness], and ron as st peter [who abandons harry-as-christ and then returns to him].

but - crucially - its christian tropes are not simply christian. they are protestant.

and voldemort - as much as his christian-literature archetype is satan [hence all the snake imagery] - is approached by the text, especially when it comes to the text's treatment of his horcruxes, with christian allegories which are catholic.

the horcruxes are relics, and his belief that they - rather than faith in the power of love as the text understands it - will save him is delusional. jkr has heavily implied in several interviews that they are created via a cannibalistic ritual - which calls to mind the doctrine of transubstantiation in the catholic eucharist. there are seven of them, just as there are seven sacraments in the catholic church, since voldemort believes seven to be the most powerful magical number - something he's wrong about, since the seven-fold power of his horcruxes is nothing in the face of harry's faith in the trinity of the hallows. and his clinging to them condemns him to a post-death state which calls the limbo of infants - which, while not official catholic doctrine, is a hypothetical concept only catholic theology entertains; all mainstream protestant and orthodox denominations reject it entirely - to mind.

it's a really interesting example of what both the doylist and watsonian texts believe him to have transgressed through the creation of horcruxes.

because, of course, he's not condemned to limbo for the sin of murder, he's condemned to it because he puts his faith in something other than faith [or love] alone.

[vivithefolle]

Hi Vivi! I'd like to ask something as a Ron fan. How abusive is Ron really in book six? He gave Hermione the silent treatment, and when I decided to research about the silent treatment I found it's a form of psychological abuse???? WHAT??? I love him so much but he literally disgusts me in this book, making girls cry, and what he did to Hermione isn't exactly forgivable. The more I think about it the less I like him which is a shame, because I would defend him with my life but the hbp makes it IMPOSSIBLE for me to feel sympathy for him. And it kinda icks me how hermione keeps crying over a boy who might not even be worthy her tears. Jkr clearly wants to villainize him in some way and make us hate him and think he's gross and unworthy. And unfortunately, that bitch succeeds by ruining his arc

Okay okay, valid. Somewhat.

Because. Really. Remember.

Who's the one who later *extends* the silent treatment?

I'm sure you've read some asshole basher's take on HBP!Ron and yeah it's certainly not his proudest book. But know who else is an absolute dickface who's not worthy of Ron's tears in that book?

Hermione.

Hermione and her "spared Ron one look of disdain". Hermione and her treating Ron coldly when he reacts to Lavender being nice to him (while Hermione withholds attention from him deliberately, WHICH IS ABUSIVE BEHAVIOUR but Rowling justifies with "oh but that's how girls are like tee hee"). Hermione and her "golden bullets", Harry and his "yeah Ron you may have just gotten assaulted but shouldn't YOU apologize to Hermione cause yknow it's basically your fault if she's an unhinged violent asshole who thinks she's allowed to hurt you as a form of retribution?". Hermione and her "I like really good Quidditch players". Hermione and, when Ron *immediately* tries to talk to her once he sees her upon returning from Christmas, her blatantly ignoring Ron and keeping the silent treatment going UNTIL RON'S BIRTHDAY IN MARCH. RON KEPT THE SILENT TREATMENT GOING FOR LIKE ~3 WEEKS, HERMIONE KEPT IT UP FOR MONTHS.

You see, the book keeps crowing that Ron is immature and stupid and isn't Hermione just so out of his league and so much better than him, isn't it such a tragedy that such a good girl cries over such an unworthy boy?

But then you remember the actual events, you remember the stuff that Hermione actually did and that Rowling treats as though it's just desserts for Ron or "girl stuff", you remember that Rowling talks at length about all that Ron fucks up and how he's sooo mean and horrible for making girls cry waaah... but then remember. Remember Hermione's actions, remember how Hermione treats Ron as though he belongs to her, how she consciously withholds affection from him to control him and once he subverts that control? She consciously, deliberately, physically attacks him. Then starts months of silent treatment that only end when Ron ALMOST FUCKING DIES.

At every turn, she proves worse than Ron ever is - Ron accidentally harmed Demelza, Hermione deliberately harmed Ron; Ron did the silent treatment a bit, Hermione prolonged it even as Ron tried to reconnect; only thing she didn't do is make Ron cry and that's because Ron isn't allowed to express hurt by crying because he's a boy, but she definitely hurt him just like he hurt her, and perhaps even worse because she deliberately targeted his insecurities.

And remember, Hermione is supposed to be "the mature one". "She who is out of Ron's league". The sacred all-knowing brilliant girl who is so nice and loving and only the worthy may wield, or something.

This is the behaviour of our "mature above all" goddess? Ron's behaviour, except worse because she does it for longer and with full intent? If Ron's behaviour in HBP makes him unworthy of Hermione, then what does Hermione's behaviour in HBP make her? I think, perhaps, it makes her unworthy of being considered someone Ron should "prove" worthy of.

In short: whatever Ron does in HBP, Hermione does, and worse. It's just that Rowling deliberately puts more emphasis on Ron's behaviour so you will think he's bad, and "softens" Hermione's bullshit with "oh but she's a girl, she's emotional, and it's really just Ron's fault she acted like an abusive dick :/" which in my language we call victim blaming and sexist double-standards.

Ron gets ruined by Rowling. And Hermione? Hermione is Rowling's idea of a perfect girl. A bossy, controlling nightmare who can make your "best friend" think it's YOUR fault she hit you. A dickhead who weaponizes her tears as a shield to deflect any form of criticism, an actual child who can't reflect on her behaviour for shit and will always make it everyone else's problem, a tantrum-throwing brat who for all her supposed "intelligence" has nothing to show for it but grades that don't mean shit in an actual job.

If Ron isn't "worthy" of this, then I'm happy for him. Indeed it feels more like Hermione, despite Rowling's intent, is less of a prize and more of a curse.

[dramioneasks]

Growing Sideways - CatchCathWriting - E, 21 chapters - After escaping to France after the Wizarding War, Hermione Granger finds herself back on British soil with no direction in life. As she finds her way, old dramas haunt her and Hermione Granger soldiers on as she has always done, until she breaks down. As she rebuilds herself, she finds support from the most unlikely of people. And she can't keep her eyes off of Draco Malfoy as they work together to try and close his Auror case that has been open for too long.

[littlesparklight]

What are the specific sources that say Helen went willingly with Paris? Was discussing with a friend but all I could remember was Sappho fragment 16? Ty!!

Let me start with a quote from the preface to Ruby Blondell's Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation:

"Though her [Helen's] departure is typically referred to as an "abduction", none of our sources claims that Paris took Helen by force against her will. Her complicity is essential to her story."

I could, in short, give you almost any and all sources possible, anon! Even the late sources like Dictys and Dares include mutual attraction and desire, even when Helen is, actually forcibly taken. And sure, some might protest about Aphrodite's (implied, usually) forcible meddling in Helen's psychology, but that is never what we really see and that is, secondly, not really how personal responsibility, even in the face of potential/actual divine interference, works. (In that case you'd have to absolve Zeus of a lot of his escapades.)

Anyway, I'll try to give you a selection, vaguely arranged in chronological order.

The Iliad - I could pick several different lines from here, and they'd all be from Helen herself. Sure, if one's interpretation is that she is not honest about what she's saying, you might not agree, but I'm going to insist on allowing Helen the agency she is claiming for herself. So, here, from Helen's conversation with Priam in Book 3:

"Honored are you to me, dear father in law, and revered, and would that evil death had pleased me at that time when I followed your son here, abandoning [...]" (trans. Caroline Alexander)

Elsewhere Helen uses "I went". But for this the pertinent thing is that "had pleased me" because the clear implication is that what pleased her back then was Paris, not death.

The Kypria; fragmentary, here's a quote from Proclus' summary: "Aphrodite brings Helen and Alexandros together. After their intercourse, they load up a great many valuables and sail away by night."

That "brings [them] together" isn't a language of force in the terminology used, and it's clearly both Helen and Paris who takes the valuables, not Paris alone. In fact, lets compare a directly comparable sentence from the (much) later Bibliotheke, Epitome 3.3: "Alexander persuaded Helen to go off with him. And she abandoned Hermione, then nine years old, and putting most of the property on board, she set sail with him by night."

'Persuasion', 'she abandoned', '[she] put most of the property on board', 'she set sail'. You see the point here. Helen is not baggage that Paris has picked up like an inanimate object and left with, no matter what its will. She is doing things.

You already mentioned Sappho 16 yourself, so let's turn to her contemporary Alkaios, fr. 283 (taking the translation of the quote of this from Blondell's book): "... and [Eros?] excited in her breast, the heart of Argive Helen; and driven mad by the Trojan man, the host-deceiver, she followed him over the sea in his ship."

The rest basically reiterates these opening lines, and you can see some of the similarity to Sappho 16, but Alkaios is a lot more condemnatory. Of Helen and Paris both.

Euripides next. Iphigenia in Aulis: "[...]and he, finding Menelaus gone from home, carried Helen off, in mutual desire, to his steading on Ida." (Agamemnon speaking.) and "[...]that Hellas might exact vengeance on the one who had fled her home to wed a foreigner." (The chorus speaking.) Trojan Women: "Their captain too, whom men call wise, has lost for what he hated most what most he prized, yielding to his brother for a woman's sake—and she was willing and not taken by force—the joy he had of his own children in his home." (Kassandra speaking.) I'm not going to quote all of Hecuba's speech in the agon against Helen, but her whole argument is that Helen went willingly... and some of Helen's own arguments are less to deny this idea of mutual desire/having left willingly and more to say Aphrodite is impossible to resist (but then we have to absolve Zeus, for Helen uses his vulnerability to Aphrodite as her thrust for as to why she should be excused).

Herodotus in his Histories is another that speak of abduction out of one side of the mouth and implies something far more willingly/mutual with the other (from 2.115):

"gave wings to and were gone with her"; the phrase really is that, quite literally, and I haven't been able to find anything that actually discusses this. (Another translations goes with "did stir her to desire" which, while that isn't what the text literally says, does, like, get the idea of something mutual happening/the usual focus on Helen's desire for Paris across to us better.)

And for something a little later, Gorgias' Encomium of Helen: like Blondell points out in her book, Gorgias' suggestion of actual force/violence as a potential factor in Helen leaving Sparta is quite singular. (In fact, all of his arguments turns into force/violence against Helen and make her basically an object who doesn't so much have no agency as no will or personhood that might react independently at all.)

And Ovid's Heroides certainly has Helen inviting Paris' attentions, even if she does so in a circuitous manner, circling up on saying "yes, come here, now that Menelaos has left".

Anyway, I could probably have gone on, but there's a couple sources, at least!

And I'd like to point out that whether one wants to insist that Aphrodite's potential direct influence means any "willingness" of Helen's is meaningless or not, there's a whole galaxy between "Helen went off with literally no thought to what this would cause or to her daughter and Menelaos and her family, and didn't care about the consequences/intentionally meant to cause all this destruction to both sides" and "she cares about this, and is/will be conflicted over it, yet is also attracted to and leaves with Paris".

Like, just because she wasn't violently kidnapped against her will, and was/is actually attracted to Paris (which she is still in the Iliad! That is part of the point of her confrontation with Aphrodite!) and so on, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of nuances (as the Iliad itself shows) that can be put into Helen being attracted to Paris and leaving willingly in some manner.

[toorumlk]

oh that’s so interesting so you’d recommend reading these books as a young adult? Cause i’ve been wanting to get into them but have been putting it off because i was afraid they were too targeted towards kids you know

i really would!

i think reading the books as an adult, where you already have an understanding of how systems of power, class and human psychology work, will give you a better appreciation for the character work being done in the books, especially behind the adult/grown-up characters (namely the weasleys, the dumbledores (both albus and abe), snape, hagrid, sirius, lupin, tonks, voldemort/tom riddle!!!!, the crouches, the list goes on)

the series grows from kid-lit to young adult but i think you’ll find that even the earlier books won’t insult the intelligence of older readers. something that really pleasantly surprised me about hp is that it has always employed naturalistic dialogue which is my favourite kind to read.

I think the first time i came across this was in Philospher’s Stone when harry’s trying to pay a delivery owl for the first time and hagrid sleepily grumbled like “pay him. he wants payin' fer deliverin' the paper. look in the pockets." and i remember so vividly getting the impression of like oh! that’s a sleepy grown man! who’s lived a whole life! i don’t know it’s hard to describe but he felt like a real character/person you know.

hp is inarguably a children to YA story from the perspective of school aged children. however you’ll always get the feeling that they’re inhabiting a world run by adults, competent or not, flaws and warts and all. and there are machinations at play that harry, ron and hermione are not privy to nor do they have any control over them. some things (most things) are a lot bigger than what the kid’s we witness the story through can comprehend and grasp and i reaallly appreciated the books for it.

[crackishincorrecthp]

Voldemort, to Harry: I've got a Weasley kid here and the Malfoy kid. They're both arguing on who you're going to save Harry: And? I don't fucking care, keep them Voldemort: Voldemort: Is this some reverse psychology thing? Harry: No, I'm just pissed off with both of them. Keep them. Voldemort: No, I actually was just about to ask you where we can meet so I can give them both back to you 'cause they're giving me a giant headache, how do you even deal with them?! Harry: Honestly? I don't, I just walk away when they start arguing on who comes first in my life, boyfriend or best friend, and take Hermione, my real best friend let's be honest, with me and we drink a lot of firewhisky

[hollowed-theory-hall]

you know, i’ve never really understood or given any thought as to why ootp had always been my favourite book of the franchise even as i was entering adulthood. but now, i can admit that harry’s inner turmoil and anxiety and staggering sense of hopelessness spoke to me in a way no other book had.

as a kid, i kept wondering why, just why i can understand so perfectly, why every stretch of page used for character analysis made so much sense to me, kept me focused and hungry to know more about how he dealt with everything.

but now i can clearly see that ootp is, in my opinion obviously, the most emotionally charged of the books for harry. it’s raw, it’s painful and it’s really fucking overlooked — his psychological and physical trauma, the loneliness, the anger.

which brings me to my two slightly related questions. how do you think the rest of the series would’ve played out from this moment of the timeline forward if:

sirius wouldn’t have died in the ministry raid, nor afterwards;

harry would’ve somehow found out about dumbledore’s schemes, gotten the whole picture of the man himself and just how much he has influenced his life.

OotP is indeed incredibly emotionally charged, and I love it. Just started reading it again cause I felt like it. Harry's anger in this book is *chef's kiss* I love Harry's anger with a passion and OotP is feeding me so well.

Now, for your questions:

1. If Sirius didn't die

Well, I think this potentially changes either everything or very little depends how you choose to write it. I think I wrote about this already a bit about it but I can't seem to find the post now...

Anyway, it really depends. Like, you could make it change basically nothing:

Like, the summers left for Harry might be a bit better if Sirius has cause to argue for Harry to come to live with him, if not, then Harry still stays less time at the Dursleys overall. Slughorn would still teach and so would Snape in sixth year, but Sirius would be free to help the Order more since he was exonerated by the ministry between books 5 and 6.

6th year would go down more or less the same except Sirius would tend to take Harry's suspicions about Malfoy and Snape more seriously. Whether that causes one of them to do something rash depends on the writer.

Dumbledore would still die at the end of the year though (because he's still picking up the ring) and book 7 would start more or less at the same point. Except Sirius would now be with the trio throughout the Horcrux hunt. So, there potentially won't be camping in the woods bit! Yay!

But, like, it doesn't change much. Especially because Harry didn't tell Ron and Hermione he was going to walk to his death so they wouldn't stop him, he isn't going to tell Sirius either. They might track down the Horcruxes quicker or slower, again, depending on the writer.

You can also choose to change everything and have Sirius as the DADA teacher in 6th year and have Dumbledore drag Harry to get the memory from Slughorn another way. Like, with most what-if scenarios, it's kinda up to the writer's interpretation.

2. Harry figures out everything

I don't think this changes much. I mean, in book 7 Harry has this very realisation. Hermione keeps insisting Dumbledore did care about him, but Harry doesn't really believe it. Harry never fully trusted Dumbledore and was never Dumbledore's man and in book 7 he does lose his faith in Dumbledore:

Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger plan; Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now. He had never questioned that his own assumption: that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now h saw that his life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to him, and obediently he had continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life! How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not me a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort. And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his end, because he had taken trouble to get to know him, hadn’t he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it. The images of Fred, Lupin, and Tonks lying dead in the Great Hall forced their way back into his mind’s eye, and for a moment he could hardly breathe: Death was impatient. . . .

(DH)

And Harry never would've ducked out becouse that's who he is. Depending on when he found out and under what circumstances, he might be angry, betrayed, sure. He might shout at Dumbledore like after Sirius' death in OotP, he might get depressed, he might lash out at everyone, but when the moment comes, Harry would always choose to walk to his death if he feels that is the only chance to defeat Voldemort.

Sirius, Ron, and Hermione would be the ones to argue against this more than Harry would. They would be the ones screaming at Dumbledore while Harry traps himself in his own mind, processing his own imminent demise. Just like the trio reacted in first year when Harry told Ron and Hermione Dumbledore planned for him to face Quirrelmort:

“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you your father’s cloak and everything?” “Well, ” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say that’s terrible — you could have been killed.” “No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could….” “Yeah, Dumbledore’s off his rocker, all right,” said Ron proudly.

(PS)

Harry accepts it as something that needed to be done. That he was the person meant to face Voldemort because Voldemort is his responsibility. His burden to bear. Harry doesn't really care for his own life as much as he cares for others' lives. It's Ron and Hermione who are horrified and call Dumbledore insane on Harry's behalf. With the bigger plan leading to Harry's, it would be the same. Harry would accept it as what needs to happen and Ron and Hermione (and Sirius if he's there) are going to be the ones trying desperately to find another way.

Harry is going to be betrayed or angry, yes, but he would go along with the plan if he thinks it's what's best for everyone because it's who Harry is.