#sugarsnapspiels

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i need to know what u think about jily

hi....... the only way that jily interests me is A) when they try so so hard to make things work for years but ultimately decide they need to go their separate ways or B) when one or both of them dies, like in canon but also esp. when lily kills james and maybe harry too <33

in this essay, i will discuss option A but if you want there is MUCH to discuss for option B........

for me. jily is like. james who is in love with the idealised version of lily that he created when he was like eleven and decided that she was going to be the love of his life and they were going to have their happily ever after forever and ever amen. the lily he loves is one he made up over years of pining and one that ultimately does not exist. lily, similarly, isn't so much in love with james but with what he represents and what that means for her. he's what everyone expects, a good, well-off man who can provide and care for her and who has been loudly declaring his love for her for years. he's something solid and the inevitable next step in her life and their relationship is a kind of wartime whirlwind spurred on by the feeling that maybe they're running out of time (they are) and by the fact that as far as everyone is concerned, they're perfect for each other.

i think a lot about them during those long months in hiding, just them and baby harry and the realisation that maybe they don't actually know each other all that well or have anything to say to each other or all that much in common. they've never really spent a lot of time one-on-one before. i imagine those months as very quiet and very lonely and filled with a lot of revelations about their relationship that they tell themselves they'll deal w when the war is over. obvs in canon that never happens.

in a non-canon context, i think they're both incredibly stubborn, and convinced that they're right for each other and this is the life they want, and, without the isolation that arose from their specific war-time circumstances, it would take them a long time to realise that their marriage is built on the foundation of fundamentally failing to understand and see each other for who they are. and even when they do realise this, it takes a long time for either of them to do anything about it bc, like i said, stubborn, but also. terrified of what it means if the one thing that's always felt certain and inevitable, is falling to pieces around them. they're scared of those uncharted waters, and also a little embarrassed, and also entirely horrified at what's become of them. they're clinging to the broken pieces of the façade that was their relationship.

i think this is also a very internal thing, in terms of like each of them internally, but also mainly in terms of the breakdown of their marriage mostly taking place behind closed doors, in their house, where it's just the two of them (and baby harry) and there's no one to perform in front of. and they argue and they cry and they try to hold things together and eventually they both come to the realisation that they can't do it anymore, no matter how scary and unknown whatever comes next is, and quietly go through the process of a divorce. their relationship begins with bright swirling colours and loud glittering celebration and a kind of manufactured joy and ends with a messy kind of honesty, and closure even if i kinda think they'll never fully understand each other, and horror & guilt & anger & fear about the time wasted and the times to come...... so.........

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peter pettigrew

mil @static-radio-ao3 and i have been doing some deep thinking about our dear pete.......

primarily, we decided that he grew up w a lot of siblings, in a middle class family who lived on a farmhouse in the countryside with a wood nearby that they all spent a lot of time exploring. constant muddy wellies and scabbed knees from climbing trees and splashing about in the stream. the chaos of a busy house that's filled w love. think nanny mcphee, swallows and amazons, lost boys vibes

peter is the second oldest. and he's basically a mischievous little woodland sprite. like he's incredibly cherubic-looking and generally thought to be a ‘lovely, polite young man’, old ladies loooove to pinch his cheeks, but he's got this glint in his eye that's just a little too sharp, his laughter a little too mean, his pranks a little too cruel. and he's always up to one trick or another, plotting some mischief with one of his siblings.

when he gets to hogwarts and meets the other marauders, he's the one with that trickster experience, like actually who would the others have been pranking before hogwarts yk...... so i like to think that maybe pete was the one who set them off on their mischief and mayhem path, bc he loves having co-conspirators when he plays his silly little tricks on people. (also mil and i've decided that he and peeves got along swimmingly, and that pete was the one to convince the marauders to go into the forbidden forest the first time, and that he was very good at finding hidden corridors and rooms x)

but. at the end of the day. our peter is always more loyal to himself than to anyone else. he enjoys being a part of a group, and really it's all he's ever known (w his siblings, and then the marauders, and then later the death eaters) but when all is said and done, he's always going to put himself first and do what would best serve him.

and we don't think his betrayal of his friends was some huge premeditated thing. it's this kinda spur of the moment, whimsical, childlike impulsivity. and he sees a chance to get in w this new group - a group that's clearly powerful, and let's face it defo winning the war at that point - and be a part of Something and prove a point and Show Them All and he doesn't really fully think through what his actions mean....... which ofc leaves so much beautiful, interesting room for regret!!!!!

like. telling voldemort the potter's address is such an abstract kind of thing. he's not the one physically murdering them. so i think the realisation of what's he's done and what he's lost wouldn't really sink in until after he's cut off a finger and framed sirius and run away to live as a rat. direct quote from mil bc i think it's perfect: he comes down from the high of having won and he doesn't quite know what he's won but he doesn't have anyone to tell, anyone who will pat him on the back and ruffle his hair.

stage w no audience. yk the vibe. he’s won, he's proved Something, but there's nobody left to celebrate w him. he's lost something incredibly vital to him, the best years of his life. he hasn't got a Group anymore... and that's ultimately a part of why he eventually goes to bring voldemort back bc that's the only group he has left after everything. even if mil and i decided that at least one of his siblings should still be alive :)

also, before he brings back voldemort, his stay w the weasleys. a very similar vibe to the pettigrew household growing up and peter chooses to stay there w them for twelve years. bc it's comfortable and painful and maybe a form of denial or punishment or desperate longing for something that has long slipped away.......

anyway, i've only known him for two days but he is infinitely precious to me :))

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good evening to all sybarty understanders

they’re the only two people left in the world. they’re the saaaame but the opposite. haunted and alone and clinging desperately to their identities bc it’s all that they have left. they both struggle w their control over their own mind - for sybill, this fight is w interior forces in her visions and the way they blur the lines of reality. and for barty, obvs exterior forces ie. the imperius & the dementors etc etc - and this means they can understand each other in a way that no one else really can. it’s specific and purposeful - interactions that remind them of the fact that they are in control of themselves and their environments, that they are real and present (bonus level of fuckery w barty wearing moody’s body btw. all he has is his mind in a way that sybill doesn’t quite ever have her’s…..). they’re grounding each other and unravelling each other and also i cannot stress enough that they are the Only Ones Left. they’re familiarity but also a stark reminder of everything that’s changed, everything they’ve lost. two people that probs should have died a long time ago and sybill is miserable, and guilt-ridden, and wishes she had died and barty is angry, and vengeful, and staying alive out of spite but the important thing is that they are alive. and that they’re alive together….. until they’re not (barty dies xoxox sybill is alone again xoxoxox)

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bellacissy - the summer after andy leaves

it’s both bella and cissy sneaking into andy’s bed after she’s gone. it’s the room already being stripped bare by their parents, now a guest room that they’ll never use, like andy never even existed. it’s clinging to memories of the three of them tangled up in that same bed, giggling together late at night, andy kissing them both goodnight, a silly, innocent, sisterly routine.

it’s the only traces of andy that they can find being in each other.

they’re desperately trying to fill the gap that andy left behind, the barrier she always was between them - both physically between them on the bed when they were little and in terms of her being the middle sister. she was always between them, balancing them, and without her things just swing wildly into extremes. the oldest and the youngest sister become just the older and the younger sister. the innocent pecks on the lips become something much more than that.

trying to fill the void that andy left by pulling each other closer than ever before, and to them they don’t see it as weird, it’s just like . comfort. they just miss their sister and want her back and don’t know how to express that. bella wants to take care of cissy and be her protector and try to make sure that she won’t leave like andy did. cissy wants the comfort and to be looked after and bella looks so much like andy that, in the middle of the night, when she can feel bella, maybe she can pretend that andy’s still there.

and it’s only for this one summer, in the immediate aftermath of andy leaving, and they never speak about it or tell anyone. it’s insular and intimate and they never even consider that there might be something weird about it. and maybe in public they’re more distant than usual bc they haven’t got andy to tether them together, to be the bridge between them, but in private, at night, in andy’s bed, where they can allow themselves to miss andy, even if they still don’t speak about it, they have this brief, intense, desperate, miserable, twisted closeness that transgresses the boundary that had always been between them when andy was there, when they were sisters like they were supposed to be, the three of them.

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Can you yap about ritawalburga

hello yes i certainly can!! okay this is all still pretty fresh from the womb and stems from a vision i scribbled down in my notes app a few nights ago when i didn’t have wifi and therefore couldn’t text jen, but it ties in w my mission to make grimmauld place more Fucked Up (can’t remember if i’ve ever spoken about said mission before but. it’s fairly self-explanatory… i want that place haunted and semi-sentient and hungry)

so. basically. we’re post-first war. regulus is dead. sirius is in azkaban (and also disowned so as good as dead, really). orion is deathly ill and then later dead. and it’s just walburga and kreacher living in that big old house.

and grimmauld place is angry.

the wards in grimmauld place have been fed by the blood and the magic and the Presence of centuries of head of houses. lords of the noble and most ancient house of black. and walburga has failed them. sure, she provided the house w an heir and a spare, she did her duty, but then she lost both of them, she Failed. and now there's no heir. no spare. no lord bc orion is dying dying dead. no future for the house of black and grimmauld place is angry and dying and collapsing in on itself, shadows wrapping themselves around walburga's neck and squeezing, filling every crevice with despair and rot etc etc etc

and in canon... one could argue... that walburga's portrait, permanently fixed to the wall in the entrance hall, bigger than any of the other portraits, is her way of trying to assert some control over the house. she can be angry and bitter and hungry too. she is a part of the house too. a part of the legacy of the blacks.

in this au however, there's rita. tenacious reporter going to great lengths to get the scoop on the mystery surrounding orion's illness - he died at 50, he's a wizard, he should've lived a lot longer and it's unusual for illnesses to be incurable in the wizarding world. and she's nasty and determined and she shows up at grimmauld place again and again and again. she tries to ask for an invite to tea, tries to break in, tries to sneak through some sort of crack in her animagus form, tries to spy from outside through windows; she tries all sorts. grimmauld knows, obviously, and is incredibly hostile.

eventually, she asks again if she might visit walburga, and she says yes, because she's lonely or bored or curious or perhaps because she wants to spite the house. they have tea. they talk about nothing for half an hour or so. rita asks if she can visit again. walburga says yes. because rita is interesting and company and she pushes back against the things walburga says in a way that she never gets from kreacher (and she misses that pushback, which left the house with sirius, with orion. not w reg obvs lol). and the house hates it but walburga is angry and bitter and hungry too and she keeps letting rita back in. over and over and over again and they talk and they drink tea and the house is rotting around them, bearing down upon them w it's misery and it's fury, but rita is a spark of life. and maybe she kindles a bit of a fire in the ashes of the hearth. and maybe walburga likes her.

and maybe one day rita says why don't we go somewhere else for a change, and walburga (who hasn't left the house at all in years) says okay. and so she leaves and never comes back.

then, i was texting jen about this, obviously, and she said.... what if the house just completely crumbles when she walks out which is sooooooo sexy. like it just collapses in on itself. slumps down into a lifeless heap until sirius crosses the threshold again later. we also spoke about this ritawalburga happening in the context of the bellareg marriage au which makes me crazy and i would be happy to scream about if anyone wanted. but yes this is my ritawalburga.

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circus au

brought to you by @quillkiller and i's shared board & text messages, and building on this post

it's all overwhelming glitz and glamour and bright, hot lights that dazzle the audience so they don't realise that there's something Not Quite Right about all of it. they don't realise that the ringmaster is slightly sinisterly Alive, his smiles too wide, his skin too smooth, plasticky and fake and uncanny. they don't realise that the performers have all signed their souls away, the life being slowly sucked out of them even as they stay looking the same age they did when they joined. they're walking corpses, uncomfortably gradually decaying, falling to pieces. unnaturally bendy and eerie on stage but gaunt and rotting when not under the spotlight. eventually they will just be bones (if the circus had lasted that long). tom offers the circus performers everything they've ever wanted, draws them in with his charm and manipulations and endless promises that he twists into nightmares. it's a living purgatory for everyone there (w the exception of the rosier twins who're there On Purpose and walk in w their eyes wide open), endlessly reliving what would be their deaths, or their sins and worst mistakes, in their circus acts. it all burns down in a fire that reg starts.......

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Black brothers incest ?

let's get into it gang. i like them most when its a mostly unrequited reg pining after sirius thing. it's sirius yk. obviously reg has a crush on him, and obvs its an incredibly complicated messy crush where he wants to be him and to be protected by him and to kill him and to just have him near always, and obvs at the end of the day he achieves exactly none of those things lol. it also importantly ties in to the whole heir and spare and reg having to step into sirius' role thing.

jen and i have talked a little about this before (obviously) and i think we decided that sirius would maybe do things like teaching reg how to kiss and give head or to wank etc etc but it would mean a lot less to him than it would to reg. like reg thinks its a Thing, that sirius actually wants him and is in love with him bc of some of the things they've done growing up but for sirius it's just like. it doesn't mean that at all. like it's just brotherly lmao. or like. he doesn't quite understand where to draw that line in a brotherly relationship growing up but for him it's never been more than just like. trying to help reg and make him happy and maybe things getting all tangled up during those long summers at grimmauld together. i think they'd both grow up not really knowing what the issue w incest might be, like their parents are fucking cousins, they're no strangers to incest, but w sirius he grows out of it kinda and learns how fucked up it is and gets an array of normal, much healthier relationships.

reg on the other hand never really gets that. and it all gets twisted up in resentment and hatred and yearning and the like. esp if we consider this in conjunction to barty. which jen and i have discussed frequently and which drives me fucking insane. so. take barty, devotional man of all time, he's giving himself up in his entirety to reg, he just wants to give reg everything he wants and he knows that reg misses his brother more than anything. barty doesn't entirely understand familial relationships after his fucked up ones and he defo doesn't understand siblings at all and he's fucking reg and trying to give him what he wants and he's offering 'you can pretend that i'm sirius if you want' !!!!!!! <- makes me insane!!!!!!!!!!

now, we were discussing this before we had the blackcest chats so initially for us reg was like. horrified by this suggestion, completely appalled, and even now perhaps he'd still be appalled, bc really how could barty presume to fill sirius' shoes or try to insert himself into the relationship between the black brothers, even if sirius is entirely absent at that point and they almost certainly never had actual sex like that. there'd also be a whole That was Private thing, and reg wouldn't want anyone really to be a part of it. but maybe there's also a sense of desperate desperate longing and maybe if barty asked enough he would give in and shut his eyes and imagine it, in a kind of horrible self-hating miserable agony thing.

we also spoke about a horrible barty/sirius one night stand where they're both super duper drunk and maybe barty offers the same thing to sirius, bc he thinks that's just how brothers work (oh btw this is in the context of the rosier twins and like pre-bartyrosiers asw) and sirius just brushes it off as a fucked-up joke and doesn't even really think twice about it, like he would never even think about actually fucking reg. for him it was more of just a messy naive clumsy product of his upbringing that he's very ashamed about for years afterwards and actively tries to never think about again.

anyway, moral of the story, i don't like Properly ship them, but i think there's something to be said for them. i think all sibling relationships can be made incestuous if you think about it hard enough (joking! but......) and i think that incest between the black brothers could do compelling things to the arc that they already have w sirius leaving

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am i. am i hearing u right. scamandercest?? elaborate pls id love to know more

yes you are indeed hearing me right!!!!! and i would absolutely love to elaborate!!!!!

i think it's a classic case of 'the implications are there', particularly in the third fantastic beasts film. but i like to think that they grew up in a big kinda farm-style household out in the country. a small, cosy cottage with a lot of land surrounding it, just the two of them and their parents and an array of creatures. i like to think that newt spent a lot of time running around and crawling under bushes and wading through the pond looking for said creatures and theseus spent a lot of time running after him and teaching him how to climb trees safely and helping him w his various projects.

i think with their age gap. that theseus is very much an Older Brother, but also that newt has always had a lot of independence. like i think that when theseus goes to hogwarts, newt obvs misses him loads but he has his creatures and he isn't all that lonely even if he's mostly alone. but when newt goes to hogwarts (once theseus has already graduated), theseus HATES IT SO MUCH. SO SO MUCH. even if he's like. fully an adult now and starting his auror training and maybe moving out of the cottage, he always comes back and stays during newt's holidays. he can't stand being in that place when newt's not there but he equally can't stand not being there when newt IS there.

i also think, however, that the main incestuous stuff happens when they're much older. i talked a bit (blathered on somewhat derangedly) the other day about them and leta in the summer after newt and leta's graduation, having an awkward threesome. i think that's the first time anything like physically incestuous happens. and i've since learnt!! that newt actually did go into the ministry for a bit after hogwarts and jen and i were just saying that it was probs the calmest time of theseus' life. like he can have both the people he loves (newt&leta) close to him and safe and i think during this time they all basically live together in that cottage (idk what i want to happen to their parents... will have to ponder them more at some point) but there's a lot of kinda fumbling, not-really-a-relationship but they're all very much in love mess going on there. and they're happy. and it's easy but not forever bc in the end newt can't do it!!!!

he can't stand the bureaucracy of it all. he must be freeeeee. and he's always wanted to travelll and he gets this chance to write 'fantastic beasts' and he takes it and he goes and theseus is trying to hold onto himmm but he'd never try and stop him from going bc he wants newt happy as much as he wants him safe and near. so then there's the separation. and things are strained. and theseus wants him to come home so bad. and he and leta move out of the cottage too. and they get engaged. and newt is meant to be best man. and it's all very tense and they're all a little bit miserable. and then it (the incest) all Properly Kicks Off after leta dies. bc they have no one else left!!!!!!!!!

they have no one else left!!!!!! and theseus has given up on trying to get newt to join the ministry again but he's still determined to protect his younger brother and like. the third film. the entirety of the third film is craaaaazy actually. theseus literally follows newt everywhere and does whatever newt asks him to do, and it's not no-questions-asked bc he's asking questions the whole time but there's never any question about whether or not he would do it. pretty much the only time he's not trailing around after newt is when he gets fucking kidnapped. and then newt comes to SAVE HIM!!! and there's no question about that either. like obviously newt goes to save him. and they hold hands and jen and i screamed. anyway. it's obvious (to me) that they're basically living in each other's pockets. they're both slightly miserable and grieving but they're doing it together and they have each other and they love each other so much and they're sooooo brothers but they're also sooooooo fucking and it makes me insane!!!!!!!!!!

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wait kara i must know more about your new thoughts on The Article

okay so i struggle a lot with the common conceptions of The Article, which is that rita publishes an article either about the fact that bella took the dark mark/is a death eater or revealing a whole bunch of black family secrets (<- not saying there's anything wrong w these! i've used them myself in fics before! keep on keeping on etc etc!) and i'm not gonna go into all the whys and wherefores of my opinions on why i take issue w them bc i started typing it out and there's Too Many lol...

but i will say that something fundamental to my quillkiller is the inevitability of the double betrayal and the disjunction between them that stops them from understanding how what they've done could be considered betrayal. like, i think that their betrayals happened around the same time, and that either one could've happened first and it wouldn't make a difference, and that neither of them were trying to hurt the other with what they did (<- this makes them more tragic and more interesting. to me.)

bellatrix getting the dark mark isn't an attempt to cause rita pain, it just so happens that that's a moral line that rita will not cross and cannot forgive. rita writing her article isn't a malicious attack on bella herself, it's just what she does, following the story, chasing the next big scoop, and betraying bella's trust is not her intention. afterwards, neither of them understand why what they did is so unforgiveable (i go into this more in this post).... for this to be the case, the article has to be something different and its irked me for so long but i finally had an epiphany today.....

rita writes her article about rodolphus. about how he was caught torturing muggleborns or 'exposing' him as a death eater (<- the nuances of this are somewhat wrapped up in my opinions about the other article hcs that i'm not going into here lmao). this works as a compelling betrayal to me bc it draws bella and rodo's marriage into the conversation. i think quillkiller continue on more or less as usual after bella gets married, rodolphus is never an obstacle to their relationship in that way. it was a secret before and it remains a secret after. however, this leads rita to believe that rodolphus doesn't matter to bella, which is where she's mistaken, bc of things i've discussed before about that marriage. it's arranged, it's about duty and appearances and partnership, even if neither of them love or even really like each other. for bella, rodolphus is her husband, and that does mean something. it means he's family and an attack on his name and reputation is an attack on her too. and bella cannot forgive that and rita doesn't understand why...

and in some ways, esp if this betrayal happens post bella's betrayal, rita even thinks that her article is protecting bella. bc, the way she sees it, if bella gets caught, she can let rodolphus take the fall, she can claim he forced her into it, and people would probably believe it bc rodo is a Man and she's just a poor powerless woman... although again this isn't taking bella's loyalty to her family and to the dark lord into account bc obvs she would never agree to any sort of plan like that - it would be a betrayal, and she would never betray anyone to whom she was loyal like that. (and rita doesn't get this bc she doesn't really understand Loyalty in that way, she would always put herself first in a situation like that)

it's like. for both of them, their perceived betrayals are something so completely separate from their relationship that both of them are left somewhat at a loss as to how it all fell apart so completely. for bella, the dark lord is separate from rita, in the same way that, for rita, her work is separate from bella - and both of them want the other to be happy for them and proud of their success in these other parts of their lives and can't understand the horror and the anger and the hurt that they instead receive as a reaction. and i think this all ties together much more neatly for me when the article is about rodolphus. it just works better, sue me!!

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what’s that i hear you say ? ‘oh kara, will you please ramble to me about rodolphus lestrange' ?

well... i suppose i could.... if you insist...

to me, rodolphus is outwardly just your run-of-the-mill pureblood heir. he's the spitting image of his father, he's been raised to replace him and ultimately he’ll do it without complaining bc it's his Right. he's the lestrange heir and everything that entails in terms of like. authority and capability and stoicism and just generally having power and wielding it comfortably (and also being a raging blood supremacist xoxo)

and to me the lestranges are very Normal in terms of pureblood aristocracy (and oh i could go into rabastan too, he's the classic like no-responsibilities spare to me, in an ideal world he'd be on one endless Grand Tour, gadding about europe all byronesque, quaffing wine from skulls and swimming nude in the venetian canals. but these are thoughts for another day), like they don’t really have so much of that beautiful inherent crazy that there is in the blacks, or the rosiers or carrows for example.

but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a deeply unpleasant individual, to me he’s very like. surly. like he can do the whole polite charming high society act, maintaining alliances or whatever, but the majority of the time he spends at balls and galas and things is just brooding over a glass of firewhiskey. and he’s like tall, well-built, imposing, and probs glowering into the middle distance so he’s really not very approachable

he’s smart. he’s a skilled duellist. he takes himself very seriously. his involvement with the dark arts is a mixture of family expectation, academic interest, and the desire for some kind of outlet. bc i think also he’s very angry a lot of the time - angry about his responsibilities, and having to interact w the other purebloods, and at his brother, and at his wife (and i could talk forever about bella & rodo’s relationship i’ve been buzzing with thoughts about them recently) and he’s never once dealt w any emotion in a healthy way, he’s very careful about always being imperturbable in public, so he channels those like. violent thoughts into, initially, testing out curses on animals and things, and then, when he joins the death eaters (and also probs even before that), on the people that he views as animals (muggleborns. and i hope it’s clear that this isn’t a view i endorse i just like exploring his character)

when you stiff upper lip so hard that you have to join a terrorist organisation just so you don’t explode from pent-up rage….. happens to the best of us……. anyway i reckon he’s one of the earlier people to join the death eaters, once tom came back to england, bc he’s very convinced of his superiority over muggleborns and he’s got the skills, the social standing, and the violent urges to make tom want him on board. i think that he joined before bella did even and she then joined through him but that’s a different can of worms.

he’s up there w the most loyal and the most trusted death eaters bc he takes it almost as seriously as he takes his role as heir. he’s powerful and he’s ambitious and he’s really fucking angry. he’s got an intense competitive nemesis situation going on with antonin dolohov (they also fuck. i have a lot to say about them. i’ve been concocting lore recently). he doesn’t denounce the dark lord after halloween 1981, he spends the rest of his life in and out of azkaban, consumed by The Cause.

he can never complete his duty as the lord lestrange. like i think his dad died fairly young so rod is the lord for a solid ten/fifteen years before his first arrest but even then, he and bella don’t have kids, there’s no lestrange heir, and he never even succeeds in getting rabastan to marry someone. he doesn’t secure the family legacy, him and his brother are the last of their line, he’s essentially failed in the task that he was born and raised to fulfil, but by that point he’s resigned himself to it. i think he flounders a little after his first escape from azkaban when he obvs can’t really publicly be an aristocrat anymore, bc he’s lost the central purpose of his life, but then he just doubles back down on his little killing torturing bigotry side hustle.

he’s loyal to the dark lord even after his death (both deaths) to the extent of going to azkaban for him (three times) bc he’s leaned into that outlet, that release for his anger (which by that point would’ve changed targets somewhat), so much that it’s become the core of his existence. he is. i feel. a bit of a poster boy for the death eaters. and i think he’s neat.

bosh. thank you for your time 🙏

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quillkiller headcanons?

HELLO!! thank you so so soooo kindly for this ask im kissing you rn bc there’s nothing i love more than talking about my darling angels

so here goes…

- bellatrix calling rita baby!! BELLATRIX!! CALLING!! RITA!! BABY!!!! this one is actually canon to me and it’s something that can be sooo beautiful and special and AAAAAA

- in a similar vein, rita calls bella darling… this one is less near to my heart but i still think it happens in literally every fic ive ever written lol

- okay this one’s a big one: rita is worse than bella at the start!! she’s offputting and more than a little stalkerish and hurts people for basically no reason and not a single soul likes her bc she’s AWFUL! and the only person who likes her is bellatrix who thinks she’s the most perfect person to have ever walked the earth, the best thing to ever happen to her even if their relationship is actively making her worse…. like i think rita doesn’t really have many morals when they meet whereas bellatrix is like. still trying to be good. i think at the start she wants to be good… and then that turns into wanting to be good for rita which is a slightly different thing that nonetheless drives me insane… but then also there are external factors and what not and she gradually loses sight of this etc etc and it ends w rita coming face to face w a line that she wouldn’t cross, a line that bella has crossed and that’s the point of no return for them in many ways (the dark mark)

- referring back to the last one again, when i say rita hurts people for no reason, to her there is always a reason, i think she cares a lot about the justification of all her actions even if it’s petty or a little irrational and ridiculous… like i think there’s always some logic that makes sense maybe only to her behind her actions and that’s why bella getting the dark mark is so unforgivable bc there’s no world in which she’d be able to somehow justify genocide even if she doesn’t actually care about the war at all

- bella on the other hand is the loyalest dog that has ever walked the earth and that’s why rita’s articles are unforgivable to her (this is the hc that rita writes an article about bella/the black family/whatever… i always think this comes just after bella gets the dark mark so rita justifies the 'betrayal' w the fact that bella betrayed her first) bc she just can’t forgive or even really fathom how rita would betray her like that bc she never would've done the same bc she's loyal to her very marrow and would've remained so even if her and rita were sworn enemies

- interesting to me also that if rita had been the one to get the dark mark (not that i think this would ever ever happen. but hypothetically) bellatrix would absolutely have followed her into being a death eater and everything. and if bella had been the one to write the article, i reckon rita would’ve probably forgiven it, probably even respected it a little…. so like even tho the two of them are so similar in many ways there’s this fundamental irreconcilable difference between them that leads to them falling apart no matter how desperately they try to cling onto each other :(

- a lot of people are like oh, they’re so toxic! but jen @quillkiller and i were talking about this the other day (most of these are things i’ve talked about w jen lmao and it wouldn’t be a post about quillkiller without jen being involved somehow… no one understands me and them like she does) and really, i think that removes a lot of the nuance, and i HATE when nuance is removed, bc i think that sure, to anyone else their relationship would seem toxic and unhealthy or whatever but for them it’s probably the healthiest thing they could have, probably the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them, i just think there’s SO much love

- so much love and sooo much romance, like to me it’s so incredibly romantic that the two of them have like allowed themselves to be shaped by the other, let someone so wholly into their soul that it’s unlikely they’ll ever be without them again, and then as it inevitably starts to fall apart the two of them are clinging by their fingertips to the edge of the cliff, just such sheer desperation as they try to make it work and complete devastation when it turns out they can’t…. like. that’s love to me. drives me crazy

- and that’s another thing!! they’re haunted by each other for the rest of their lives!! constant perpetual unending haunting, there’s no escape, there’s that fine line between love and hate and even if the feelings are all complicated now, it’s the sense that they’re SO intertwined that even though they’re apart and they don’t know what they would do if they actually saw each other face to face again, they can still see each other in everything. EVERYTHING.

- and it’s worse for rita imo (in terms of the haunting i mean) bc bella’s in azkaban, out of sight but never out of mind, and then she’s back and it’s horrible but then she’s dead and that’s even more horrible and rita carries that ghost around with her for the rest of her life, probably the only person who could still say she loved bellatrix by the time she died, even if they hadn’t spoken in decades… bellatrix is in every word she ever writes and every plan she ever makes and every single part of her life in some way. she lives in a flat that bellatrix has never been to but she’s still there in every corner of every room

anyway i could go on but ive just clocked how long this has gotten lol…. hope this is satisfactory <3

[sugarsnappeases]

kara i wanna know allllll about your reg. tell me EVERYTHING <3

so obvs canonically pretty much the only thing we know about reg is his betrayal of voldemort and the cause etc etc so i like to centre that in most of my thoughts about him……

he joins the death eaters bc he’s a loser w a freakish voldemort obsession who has like three friends and bc he’s lonely and he hates sirius and he wants to spite him by joining the group to which he’s so opposed. he wants to prove sirius wrong and prove himself right and i believe wholeheartedly that, even if he was influenced somewhat by the way he was raised and by the circles he runs in, he joined the death eaters completely of his own volition!!! i’m passionate about this!!! i think it destroys the nuance of his character to say that he was forced to join or that he joined w the intention to betray them all along or whatever . to me, he was fucking gagging to be a death eater and he’s so smug when he’s allowed in. i picture him ranting to barty and evan about ‘the great honour that has been bestowed upon him’ whilst lovingly stroking his dark mark

anyway, then he gets scared. he’s just a boy!!! and he realises he’s in too deep when it’s far too late… to me he just can’t stand the violence of the death eaters. like he’s a blood purist and further than that thinks he personally is superior to pretty much everyone else, on account of his black blood, but he hates that he has to get his hands dirty in order to see his idealised vision of the world (sans mudbloods and blood-traitors) realised…. he’s soft and weak and squeamish and lonely and always so so miserable at all times as a rule. he also tries to hide how scared he is by being a massive bitch. classic.

then he realises that tom has a horcrux (and imo he would figure this out fairly easily after the kreacher thing, bc he’s smart but also bc tom read about them in a book in the HOGWARTS LIBRARY!! so it’s not much of a stretch to say that the same book and probs further, more detailed books would be in the library at grimmauld, likewise in most of the darker pureblood family libraries…. this is another thing i’m passionate about. horcruxes aren’t this big secret. nobody makes them bc nobody’s a fucking idiot like tom is. they’re also warned off properly by their rents. tom doesn’t have this…. ANYWAY) he realises tom has a horcrux and that the guy he’s idolised and basically sold his soul to is fucking bonkers (shameless self promo - i write a bit about this realisation in the regulus letter in my fic ‘where can i put it down?’…. makes me crazy) and he’s scared and alone and he wants out and he does the one brave thing of his life in dying…..

and he doesn’t think it’s a brave thing. he tells himself that sirius was a coward for running away and betraying them and specifically him. he tells himself he’s being brave, braver and better than sirius, when he’s like sticking it out, joining the death eaters, following the role prescribed to him, so when he decides he’s gonna go to the cave it’s like giving up, it’s being a coward, its admitting to himself that he’s never been better than sirius no matter how much he want or tries to be, it’s betraying the cause and everything he’s stood for but he HAS to do it. for sirius and for kreacher and for himself and for the chance that maybe he’s not past saving. he spends his whole life trying to be good but in the sense of behaving and then his death, his first (and last) real rebellion, is the only time that he actively attempts to be good in terms of a moral act even if it has nothing to do w a renouncement of blood purity. and i don’t think he fully realises that when he does it bc it’s all so tangled up in other things. and i’m not saying that he’s like morally reprehensible the rest of the time (he’s just a boyyyy) but the majority of his active choices have been kinda bad ones up to this point even if he’s been like . passively good . and also literally just a child. an angsty teen if you will

his life is marked by inaction and bad decisions and his final act is kinda the antithesis of this and it’s tragic bc he’s not ever going to survive it. and sirius is never gonna know. it makes me miserable. does any of this even make sense lmaooo basically he’s a loser and he misses his brother and he’s so lonely and he loves sirius so much even as he hates him and he’s quiet and he wants so desperately to be a good death eater bc this is everything he’s ever wanted but he just can’t in the end!!! he’s just a boy!!! a boy who would nurse birds with broken wings back to health and cry when they flew away, a boy who would hold his brother’s hand and hang on every word he says and exist almost entirely in sirius’ shadow until said shadow is suddenly gone and he’s left reeling, a boy who’s so so soft and gentle but who hides it all behind layers of barbs and cold remarks, a boy who is desperately desperately sad and scared and GOD I LOVE HIM……

[sugarsnappeases]

re: lesbian tomlily, guys i’ve had a vision.

lily who, instead of marrying james, goes completely off-piste and moves to knockturn alley after graduation. she has some sort of crisis, realises that she can do whatever she wants rather than what everyone else has projected onto her, yk the drill. she works in one of the shops there - maybe with some sort of crazy vampire boss, that could be so sexy - and starts to delve into the dark arts and blood magic and necromancy and the like……

eventually she meets this mysterious older woman - tom riddle - who also works in knockturn alley, in borgin & burke’s, has apparently worked there for years and years. lily is Intrigued by her. alongside that, while hunting down some sort of rare illegal ingredient, lily also comes across lord voldemort, the shadowy leader of the wizarding black market. no one knows who they are, their real name, where they came from, but voldemort basically runs knockturn alley - ruthless and efficient. and tom is Intrigued by lily, starts trying to seek her out, ‘bumps into’ her all the time, both as tom and as voldemort, and obvs at some point lily figures out the whole secret identity shtick etc etc

anyway they fall into this super messy situationship vibe where they’re both fascinated with each other but at the same time, a little threatened - bc lily is determined and smart enough to become skilled quickly, to rival tom’s power. and they send each other horrible little presents like reanimated rotting animal corpses (a kind of ‘look at what i can do’ vibe) and all sorts of traps and poisons and things (like tests, ‘see if you can survive this one!’) and rare books (bc the other will appreciate they knowledge and be able to have an intelligent conversation about it) and maybe they do rituals together and kill a few people together, yk the vibe. and like, as far as necromancy goes, i feel like the ultimate goal is to bring someone Properly back to life?? so they’re both racing each other to do that and trying to sabotage each other and i’m not entirely sure how it ends but i’m sure it’s both disastrous and incredibly sexy. maybe they both die xxxxx

[sugarsnappeases]

GIVE US QUILLKILLER THOUGHTS!!!!!!

i would be delighted to!!! i’ll try to say things we (@quillkiller and i, we’re conjoined) haven’t said before lol…. please be warned. this post got LONG (lots more under the cut)

so for me the general trajectory of the quillkiller relationship is devotion -> betrayal -> haunting (and the devotion and haunting are sort of synonymous, no? different shapes of the same undying love) so i’ll try to follow that trajectory in this post too

so. Devotion. we’ve said before that a big part of bella’s character is her need to devote herself to something. she’s a follower at her core, and before she meets voldemort, she finds this in rita. rita who’s mean and nasty and genuinely believes she deserves to be worshipped (major god complex). bella who wants to worship her, wants to give her everything, wants to give herself up to rita like an offering, a sacrifice.

and it digs deep into the both of them, this devotion, claws its way into the marrow of their bones until they can’t let each other go. they’re in different hogwarts houses and come from what feels like different worlds but bella’s sneaking into the ravenclaw common room at night, they’re passing notes in class, exchanging looks in the great hall, meeting up in secret nooks and crannies. bella is getting married but rita is the journalist at the wedding, kissing her before she walks down the aisle, sneaking off to fuck in one of the side rooms later. bella sending patronuses like ‘come over’ or just showing up at rita’s flat, clinging onto each other even when they know they probably shouldn’t and that it can’t last and that it’ll have to end at some point, taking as much of each other as they can get bc they know that it can’t be forever and they didn’t even think it would last this long… i imagine them waking up together like this:

and the thing is!! there’s so much love. so so so much love. like even w bella married and everything, that’s never an issue at all. they’re happy, they have fun and they make each other laugh and they love each other so so much and so so well even if they both think that’s it’s ultimately gonna fall apart. and that brings us to Betrayal.

it’s the idea that both of them are selfish and obsessive and cruel but before they’d always been all of these things together. but bc they are these things and bc they’re always pushing each other and challenging each other and making each other more, they’re always, inevitably, gonna cross a line that the other cannot. for rita, this is her article, and for bella, this is her dark mark.

and to me, their respective betrayals happen kinda concurrently, like either one of them could happen first, but they don’t fully fall apart until both of them have happened bc, for example, if the article happened first, bella wouldn’t forgive rita (it’s disloyalty and bella can’t understand or forgive it bc she’s unendingly loyal <- another core bella trait) but bc of the disconnect there, the way they both can’t quite understand how unforgivable what they’ve done is to the other, i don’t think rita would necessarily see a huge issue. like they’ve fought before and it hasn’t been final and if rita called, bella would still show up, ofc she would. and vice versa. if the dark mark debacle happened first, rita can’t forgive her for that (bc no matter how morally reprehensible she is, rita can’t justify or support genocide and doesn’t understand how bella thinks she could), but if bella called, rita would go.

that’s them one betrayal in ^^ (i.e. rita post bella’s mark showing up at lestrange manor bc bella called. or bella post rita’s article showing up at rita’s flat bc she called). and they need both the betrayals to happen to be fully over (and obvs both the betrayals are inevitable bc of who they are and the circumstances they find themselves in even if they’re trying so hard to cling onto each other). i think by the time of both the betrayals, they’re already hanging on by a thread - hanging on so so tight, don’t get me wrong, but things are already falling to pieces, they just haven’t noticed yet, or haven’t let themselves notice yet.

it’s been building and building bc they both want everything, they want to have their cake and eat it too, selfish and hungry and wanting, that eventually they cross they line and it all falls down. they lose their ‘one good thing’ (<- bella says this about rita), they lose the woman that they still love, the only woman they ever have and ever will love, bc they just kept pushing for more:

and it’s both of their faults but they blame each other and hate each other and love each other just the same and they don’t realise that the closest they ever were to everything they ever wanted was when they were together. until later. thus. the Haunting.

and i have a lot of visual aids (quotes) for this part lol. this spans the rest of their lives, and i tend to mostly consider it from rita’s pov bc she’s not in azkaban and a lot more mentally present and also lives a lot longer so i think it’s more tragic for her (bella is also very much tragic but i will say that by the end of her time in azkaban, she’s really not much more than a shell of herself and she would’ve had most of her happy memories (a large part of which are w rita) sapped from her by the dementors and therefore it’s hard to say how much capacity she would’ve had for being haunted, being as, in and of herself, she would’ve been little more than a ghost x)

we’re gonna kinda gloss over everything here bc i have lots to say and this is already so so long but i have quotes that refer to a) rita’s general existence after the break up:

(obvs we're referring to her articles here. and just everything she writes in general. and everything she does. and everything she is.)

b) rita after bella breaks out of azkaban in 1996, and she sees her on the cover of the daily prophet:

and c) basically just rita for the rest of her life. forever. til the day she dies (this quote makes me a little insane...... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!):

IT IS MY KNIFE AND MY HEART TOO!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! anyway i'm gonna stop talking here bc i've rambled on for far far too long (although i have more to say if anyone wants... i'll always have more to say about them i think) but for now!! i'll love you and leave you with a few links to posts/fics that i think vaguely encapsulate our quillkiller conception (and by that i mean reccing jen's fics and a couple other things i've said):

life-changing fic 1 (rita writing bellatrix's obituary) | thing i wrote (unsent letter from r to b after azkaban break-out) | life-changing fic 2 (bella visiting rita post-azkaban break-out) | thing i wrote (another kinda quillkiller thesis...) | life-changing microfic (nsfw, that good old bellatrix black devotion)

[sugarsnappeases]

lucissa

except it’s genderbent narcissa (inspired by this post zar made that’s had me climbing walls) AND both of them are trans women <3

been losing my mind about this all day…… secret relationship when they’re both closeted, and they don’t tell each other either. two hopeless romantics thinking they’ve found their grand sweeping doomed love. romeo and juliet but both of them think they’re juliet. swan lake but both of them think they’re odette. but then! the plot thickens! narcissa, as the third born ‘son’, the spare’s spare, has a lot more freedom and agency over her life and eventually, she transitions… this obvs comes with its own problems and now she has to be Married and its a whole thing w the blacks. but there’s lucius, who loves her, who’s been seeing her in secret for years, who can now see her publicly bc she’s a woman, and who has the agency to choose who to marry as the sole malfoy heir - the solution to all of narcissa’s problems! maybe their love isn’t doomed! and so, naturally, lucius marries her… but!! altho lucius can choose a bride, she is her parent’s only son, their legacy, and she doesn’t have the freedom to do what narcissa did and transition too. and ohhhh how the resentment builds. watching narcissa being the woman that lucius so desperately wants to be, knowing that they’ve experienced such similar things but still not speaking about it, the jealousy and hatred and self-loathing that gradually encroaches on their love, on their happiness, on their neat, tidy solution that maybe was neither neat nor tidy in the first place. bc narcissa is fighting with herself too… fighting w her twisted obsession w (genderbent!) bellatrix, and being a Better Son than him, and being more powerful, and more worthy of being heir, and basically just Being him except she NEVER CAN be him bc she’s never been a son in the first place and it makes her resent lucius too for being the ‘man’ version of her and being the malfoy head of house and being able to bear that….. and they end up entirely miserable and angry and lonely and they never!! talk!! about any of this!!!!! ever!!!! yay!!!!!

[sugarsnappeases]

kara i NEED you to discuss option b. because i’m thinking about the lighthouse fic againnnnn

LANE!!!!! i would absolutely loooove to discuss option b and especially lighthouse fic........ god i love lighthouse fic. if anyone is unaware and curious, this is the basic premise, i'm gonna talk here about the way jily works in this au :))))))

so. it's a very classic set-up for them. james is very rich and very handsome and very charming, the son of an earl or a baron, a blue-blooded aristocrat. lily is the daughter of a miner, no standing to speak of, brash and rosy-cheeked and definitely not a suitable match for the heir to the potter family. they meet, somehow, the details are unimportant, and james falls head over heels and decides that she will be his wife. at first, lily's like well. no. bc she doesn't know him and she doesn't want to be a lady and have to deal with all the snobbery and judgement. but james is charming, and persistent, and everyone tells her how great it would be for her family and for her if she married him so eventually she decides that yes, maybe she will.

this is obvs a big shift for lily bc now suddenly she's no longer just the miner's daughter, she's the lord's daughter-in-law, she's nobility, she's pulled into a completely different social sphere with different expectations and a shit ton of social niceties and pernickety rules that she has to adhere to. but she decided to marry him and she likewise decides that, now she has, she's going to be best wife the local gossip circles have ever seen - partly out of spite bc they bitched about her 'shameful, lowly background' or whatever but also partly bc this is her life now, the role that she has chosen to play.

so she throws herself into it. she learns all the stupid rules. she embroiders instead of sewing, and she gives the servants instructions instead of just lighting the fire or doing whatever it is herself, and she follows the latest fashions coming in from france, and she settles in. and she loses a big part of herself. a few years pass, and the only ones who still gossip about her are the old ladies that everyone calls crazy, and she's got most of the local aristocracy wrapped around her little finger, and she's convinced herself that this is where she belongs. and she's a dutiful wife with a doting husband who she loves deeply and they have a beautiful baby boy and everything is exactly as it should be....

and then lily goes off to oversee the setting up of the new potter family summer house on the island. james and harry are due to follow her there in two months time but for now it's just her and some of the servants. and she's away from that idyll of family life, and away from her circle of aristocrat's wives that she spends her time with. she's away from all the rules and expectations that she had painstakingly learnt, and following them even when there's no one there to see her starts to grate, it's like a blindfold being removed or something bc she suddenly feels like such a stranger in her own life, picking out colours for the wallpaper like who am i? (zoolander looking at his reflection style x)

and this is where the whole sybillily plot begins so i won't go too deep into this bc i've already been talking for far too long oh my god and they haven't even died yet, but anyway she basically shrugs off the role of the aristocrat's wife and finds that brash, rosy-cheeked girl again as she falls in love with sybill. most of the time during those two months, james and harry are farrr from her mind, but occasionally a servant will come across her staring into a newly-built, unlit fireplace, james' last letter in her hand, cheeks stained with tears, and assume she's just missing them, rather than that she's being overcome by a bone-deep sense of impending doom mixed with some guilt about the fact that she doesn't even feel properly guilty bc she's just so disconnected from that whole life now. it doesn't feel quite real.

and it still doesn't feel real when she gets the news that they've died, that james and harry have drowned, just off the coast of the island, on a boat coming to meet her. what feels real is the way that sybill has shut herself away from her. i think there's again guilt about not feeling more guilty. guilt, like i said another time, about the fact that, before the shipwreck, she had wished they didn't exist and now they're not in her life anymore but they're more present than ever bc they're coming between her and sybill in a way that they probably wouldn't have done even if they had made it to the island and she can't help thinking that they died wrong.

there's a kind of irrational anger about the way that she would never have met sybill if it weren't for james, if it weren't for the potter summer house on the island, and the kind of horrible cyclicality in how her and sybill's relationship started and ended because of james. and more irrational anger at j&h for making sybill feel guilty for not being in the lighthouse. and the things she feels are all about what's happened to her and sybill rather than like, her husband and son dying. the tears she sheds are all for her and sybill, grieving that relationship rather than her marriage or motherhood. maybe she's a bit like 'i could've told them not to come, i should've told them not to come' but it would all be bc of what that would mean for her and sybill if they hadn't. if that makes any sense. what i think i'm trying to say is that the whole jily part of lily's life in this fic is kinda eclipsed by the major impact that sybill has on her, like she kinda shakes it off like a bad dream and ignores the fact that the island and sybill, despite how real it feels, isn't her real life at all. i imagine her entirely dry-eyed when she's like identifying their dead bodies or whatever, but like full-on sobbing, weeping, falling to pieces as sybill continues to refuse to let her in to the lighthouse.

anyway oh my god i'm so sorry this is so absurdly long!!!!!! i am physically incapable of shutting the fuck up!!!!!!! whoops!!!!!!!!