#wizarding culture

[sofiadragon]

I love your hp fashion post! I have a question: what do you think is popular for teenager girls/young women to wear in the 90s? How does it differ from muggles? Would they have incorporate muggle fashion trends into their outfits? And is that a thing you would usually see younger wizards doing?

Thank you!

Ok, this requires me to sit at my PC to type. Got me out of bed and off my phone to make tea and type while I'm sick.

Obligatory link to the post in question.

Fashion is Political

Fashion in the 70's, 80's, and 90's was hugely political both in the UK and USA. Goths, punks, preps... It was an entire identity. I didn't paint my nails black, dye my brown hair with translucent red or purple highligts, and wear mesh layers just for the aesthetic, it was an entire philosophy that had political, moral, and social ideas baked into the culture those clothes represented. When I wore a yellow sundress, a hat that hid the highlights, and stripped the color from my nails to visit certain relatives it was because that was a Sundown Town and the ideas represented by the counter-culture I belonged to very well could get me hurt when walking around alone. Yes, I look entirely white (got some Japanese but so far back it doesn't show, and I'm basically French and Bulgarian) but that kind of conservatism didn't (and still doesn't) take kindly to those who support the queers, freaks, and weirdos.

And it's still true, if not quite as much as it used to be. Social cliques still dress alike, but it isn't as quietly political the same way it was then. People don't seem to associate fashion with a political statement using style as much as they use modesty and cleanliness, but it could be that I've just become Officially Old now that I've got a stripe of white in my hair. It seems a bit more on the nose these days, or more accurately on the head. I have a lovely bright red knit newsboy hat I had to stop wearing around 2016-17.

Yeah, but so what?

Fashion changes over time, so let's start with some 1970's makeovers and work our way to the 90's!

The Marauders Prequel: Kinktomato, and all the similar disclaimers, but I respectfully disagree entirely with giving Sirius, James, or any of the other marauders a Punk aesthetic. Sorry JKR, but what you have James and Sirius wear in your prequel needs a tweak. Sure, they wanted to fight against 'traditionalists' which sounds like it's punk... until you realize that the Light was the status quo before Tom came to power. The Order of the Phoenix is a vigilante group working to protect the Establishment and prevent change. Yes, realizing that while reading the 7th book hurt me in my heart too.

I have to throw JKR a bone about her recent nonsense, but she's right in the manner of a broken clock that the rebellious counter-culture going on in the Wizarding World was being backed by the Traditional Family Values set. The politics in the Wizarding World do not match up well with the real world, mostly because if you think too much about it the political aims of the Death Eaters implode. For blood purity, leader is a half-blood who hates the rich and treats the high society types with deep contempt; were not in power and had to have a guerrilla movement, members included half the House of Lords. You can't square those circles, so we get the Light Preppy types like the Marauders and the Dark Preppy types like Draco Malfoy, and then we have the punks and the goths who are the outcasts and queers that get indoctrinated into one or the other set. Don't blame me, I didn't write the books.

The Marauders should look a bit like The Monkees.

James and Sirius were not in with the queers and freaks, they did not read dark poetry in black clothing with sharp lines and heavy makeup that obscured bruises, they were Preppy Jocks and bullies picking on the outsiders. Remus Lupin might be 'one of the good people' who got wizard AIDS, but he's at best masking to fit in with a powerful social group for protection. The black leather with the rocker band t-shirts look? No, no. Put that boy in a polo shirt and chinos. Give him a cable-knit sweater or a blazer over a robe. (And many people do give these things to Professor Lupin, but I mean from the jump.) They'd all be clean-cut, perfectly groomed, and wearing light colors because their political movement is literally called The Light. Black T-shirts with a phoenix on them? No ma'am. White or yellow shirt, embroidered (or screen print to look like embroidery) phoenix. Yellow blazer jacket on top with creamy muggle trousers in a high-water boot cut to show off expensive white or tan boots. (The high-water boot cut on the trousers are muggle 1960's, but wizards lag behind on muggle trends.)

Moving on to the Dark Side

Snape's our punk, or maybe a broody goth gremlin reading poetry books. All via thrift-shop [charity shop] finds, of course. The set of upper-class future Death Eaters he eventually starts to hang out with would have started out in clean-cut expensive dark-colored robes, but might have embraced a morbid aesthetic, as we see Bellatrix wear in the movies. This would be a case of convergent evolution in a sense.

Snape dressed like that due to the poverty and muggle influences in his life, and I headcanon that he liked to visit a record shop and stim his autistic brain with niche experimental music just like I used to at that age, but the morbid and shocking aspects of Goth or Punk aesthetics parallel with Voledmort's completely unrelated skull and snake symbol inspiring trends among his more loyal followers, who are rich enough to be trend setters and social influencers.

Snape very well might have made friends with those awful boys because they liked the casual clothes he started to wear on weekends once his mum started tossing some money at him and telling him to get his own shopping done so she could get back to her crossword puzzle (or maybe he got a summer job at a bakery.) Snape chose that look because if he's styled punk (violent) or goth (morbid) the rips his father puts in his clothes when he gets tossed around are there on purpose and it's just a nice coincidence that the stains in the second-hand clothes he gets on clearance at the charity shop get hidden by the cheap black dye he uses to get that grey and black look. This way, it is not just because he can't afford better and washes both himself and his clothing in the same portable tin washtub.

This convergence was accidental, but the artfully tattered cloaks and general look of the Death Eaters in the movies is something I can get behind - minus the Victorian trousers on the men, of course. The movies make the clothes way too muggle especially for the pure-blood set! Regulus Black spent nearly a hundred galleons getting a robe made of the finest linen and fur, snipped and cut so artfully to look like it was moth-eaten and torn even though every edge is properly hemmed and trimmed with a bit of lace that merely looks like a frayed edge.

Then Voldemort got Blown up

Look, the actress has red hair and a preppy lavender top - it's too perfect a reference image for Lily Potter nee Evans in a fashion post.

The morbid aesthetic that was so popular in the late 70's doesn't just go out of fashion, it is jettisoned like the toothbrush mustache. Yeeted from a seaside cliff. Dropped in a ditch full of burning petrol. Abandoned at the side of the road in a bag. Morbid? Don't know her.

Draco Malfoy, as I earlier teased, wears the fashion of the Dark upper class. Flowing perfectly tailored robes with a rope belt. Crisp and clean lines, no jagged edges or anything to even suggest aggression. 90's pure-blood fashion is soft. For the girls, more color, but we are going to backpedal so hard nobody will ever think we were associated with that guy we don't name. Draco Malfoy's non-uniform robes are like spun clouds, opulent and decadent in beautiful pristine velvet, shining satin, and resplendent metallic embroidery. While Snape and the generation of men older than him now wear waistcoats over their robes to look proper and all buttoned up, Draco's set is all about looking sleek, clean, and comfortably ready for a dramatic breeze. I don't think there is a large difference between what boys and girls wear, the gendering is all in the accessories and embellishments. Lace for girls, metallic piping for boys.

I'm talking flowy, I'm feeling swishy, I'm saying that 'looks like a dress' was a completely fair take from Harry's perspective. Yes the above characters are female and Frieren herself wears a lot of white, but you get the idea. The Dark Lord is dead, we need a rebrand yesterday. More lighter colors even for Dark-aligned [read:Tory, Conservative] families. No evil here! Nope, nope nope.

Harry is a Self-fulfilling Prophesy in More Ways than One

Harry accidentally has a hand in this trend in his earlier years, since he is wearing Dudley's castoffs and he's incredibly famous. Baggy is in! Just relax, chill, be comfortable. Dress like you just don't care what you look like. (You know, pandemic style.) He wears jeans, and probably most of his bottoms are jeans. They are one of the most durable things any boy Dudley's age would wear, and so wouldn't be as destroyed as the rest of his wardrobe by the time Harry got his hands on it no matter how hard Duds is on the trendy fast fashion clothing Petunia buys him. Petunia, a social climber, is set on making sure her family looks like the next rung up on the social ladder after all.

Later, when we can assume Harry has bought at least one wizard outfit that isn't his school uniform if he's got enough money on hand to buy Omnoculars, he's probably taken his fashion cues from himself indirectly. He likely gets his advice from Hermione and Ron, who get their fashion sense from looking at their peers, who get their fashion sense from... the trend of super casual heavily muggle-influenced baggy clothing in mismatched colors that Harry started as a first year.

Bit harder to find male examples than female ones, but that's fashion gifs on Tumblr.

Shorter robes with jeans underneath - or knee-high socks or dhoti style trousers in blue heather fabric that look like jeans provided you have never seen jeans before in your life. Open, short robes over closed-front ones, aping an overlarge muggle jacket over a robe. Floppy shapeless clothes held on with an overlarge leather belt. Squashy hand-knit jumpers. Girls in the Lighter political side also take cues from muggle women's fashion, which is more form-fitting than traditional wixan wear and shows off the legs. In the muggle world, this is the time of the babydoll dress, slim-cut trousers/jeans, and tightly tailored suit skirts for women.

Imagine way, way, way more gold embroidery on the above dresses.

And, because I can, because it's headcanon time, 90's Indian/ Bollywood fashion influence on the Light side after James Potter is martyred because #Indian Harry Potter is real and I love him. Music, clothing, art, it is in style among those who honor James and Lily's sacrifice. Harry's green eyes looks so bright next to chestnut brown skin. He can speak to snakes because his ancestry includes a bit of naga blood, not because of the Horcrux. Petunia certainly never taught him about it, and he's confused when an especially devoted fan sends him blessings addressed to Hindu gods instead of the Christian or pagan ones he hears about more often at Hogwarts. One of the Patil twins asks him what's wrong with him expecting, from his attitude and excitement about Christmas, that he's a devout Christian who hates his dark skin. Then they monopolize some of the time he's not teaching the D.A. or in detention to Educate That Boy.

[hp-fanfic-archive]

Sleeping Dogs Lie by Lomonaaeren Pairing: Harry & Sirius, Harry/Draco Rating: M Word Count: 29k Harry has received comment after comment on his mother’s eyes during his first year at Hogwarts, but almost no one tells him he looks like his dad. When he opens the photo album Hagrid gives him at the end of the year and sees a man who looks like him standing with his parents in one picture���a man named Sirius Black—he begins to understand why.

[whinlatter]

Hi! I wanted to ask you what's your take on clothes and how wizards dress? I've been thinking about this since the 'gettin ready fot the party' scene. What's a typical wardrobe for typical wizard in te 90's? I always imagined that they just dress like muggles (or maybe the younger generations?), and i when i read the books i always had a hard time imagining them when they are trying to pass as muggles, you know? Like what, they don't understans which clothes are for a specific event? Because Harry says that he could tell thay dress a bit diffrent, like out of place. I mean, it's probably just meant to be funny, but, how isolated are they to not knowwhat muggles wear? I guess it also has to do with how they are raised, i imagine blood-supremacists (is that how it's called?) use only 'robes' (whatever that is, and, also, what's under those robes? like, a thong? do they wear muggle underwear? SO MANY QUESTIONS)

So, i was thinking about this instead of working🤠.

I liiive for that part with tonks' clothes, i even got a litlle "oh i wanna be thereeee and try everything and make everything fit with magic!"

And this how i imagine wizards dress (according to jkr) in the muggle world

ok please know that this image made me howl

thank you for the super interesting question! i have thought a bit about typical wizarding wardrobes and familiarity with muggle fashion among wizards in the 90s as a worldbuilding question in beasts. it's definitely true that wizarding familiarity with muggle dress is another one of those worldbuilding points in canon where the text is unclear and at times inconsistent. i know people have different views on how much wizarding and muggle culture interact, especially in matters of popular culture and fashion. i've heard very convincing arguments that the cultural insularity and physical remove of the wizarding community from muggles would mean most children raised in wizarding households, especially pureblood families like the weasleys, wouldn't know that much about how muggles plausibly dress, what they listen to, or what forms of media are popular (books, music, sports, even less so tv and film).

while i do agree with some aspects of this, in my approach to wizarding youth culture in the 90s, i think young witches and wizards on the left know more about muggle fashion than they do about many other aspects of muggle culture, and that interest and ability to pull off muggle fashion depends on a person's background, politics, gender (because mostly, it does all seem to be about trousers - i reckon pureblood supremacists, as you say, are in their undies most of the time), but especially generation and the politics/patterns of consumption in the time period when they were a teenager. i think your desire and ability to wear muggle clothing varies a lot if you're born in 1950 vs 1980, partly because of changing wizarding politics and the difference between growing up in peacetime vs a world at war, but partly because muggle fashion changes as a market in the second half of the twentieth century.

basically, i think these young progressive millennial wizards would wear more muggle clothing because of changes in muggle fashions/consumption that allow for greater availability and access to muggle clothing by the 1990s, as well as access to information about fashion and trends, and i think they would want to because willingness to embrace muggle fashions would be a way of showing their commitment to their own politics and forms of teenage rebellion that were distinct from those practiced by generations prior living through the first wizarding war. a longer discussion with my reasoning for this is below the cut!

so - in general, in canon, gen X wizards and older (so the youngest of them born in the 1950s thru 70s, and everyone older than that) seem to dress in muggle clothing really only as a protective measure to prevent exposure/risk breaking the statute of secrecy. when bob ogden goes to the gaunts' house in the 1920s, even as the head of a major ministry department dealing with law enforcement, he does a terrible job dressing as a muggle (the bathing suit, pls bob, i beg). if you look at all the wizards trying to dress as muggles for the world cup, it's clear that the adoption of muggle clothing, for most wizards, is a strategic, defensive move more than anything else. in PoS, mcgonagall - herself a progressive woman in her politics - disdains wizards who are celebrating the end of the first wizarding war by celebrating in the street "not even wearing muggle clothes", which she thinks is reckless and risks wizards' exposure (love when mcgonagall dresses like a muggle briefly at grimmauld place in OotP and it freaks harry out lol). there is no enthusiasm or interest in it - there's just conformity for self-preservation.

for that reason, i think you can see why those on the wizarding right in the mid-twentieth century, especially those drawn to pureblood and wizarding supremacy, would come to see dressing like a muggle as a disgrace, a sign of submission to a lesser people, in a way that would become extremely loaded in the years preceding and during the first wizarding war (1970-1981). when harry sees snape in the flashback to his first trip on the hogwarts express in the early 70s, he notices snape is already wearing his wizard robes very early on in the journey, which harry's narration supposes is because snape's happy to be out of his 'dreadful Muggle clothes' (DH). those muggle clothes were a sign both of snape's poverty but also his outsider status in muggle tinworth: special, because he's a wizard, but otherwise socially inferior to other children in every other way. snape, of course, is raised in a wizarding household with knowledge of magic but has been wearing muggle clothing to avoid detection for his entire childhood, in ways that imbue the wearing of wizarding clothes and casting off of muggle garms with great political significance. in canon, we see that the vast majority of wizards, while not death eaters or rabid pureblood supremacists, tend to be small c conservatives in their view of wizarding cultural norms and tend to think they're better than muggles even if they don't necessarily want to go out and kill them all. for that reason, they remain loyal to wizarding traditions, and continue to wear robes, partly as a symbol of their proud cultural identity as wizards, in ways that they would likely only cling to as their society moves towards open war over muggle-wizard relations (as you say, robes seem to be worn without trousers underneath, so most wizards are just wearing underwear under their robes and going about their day. slay, honestly).

so, if the right hate muggle clothes, then the willingness of gen z+ wizards to engage with and adopt aspects of muggle attire and culture might map onto a progressive political outlook and a disavowal of wizards-first ideology. but a person's politics alone doesn't mean they know how to pull off muggle clothing, and in the years of brewing tension then open war, most wouldn't bother risking their lives to be caught wearing a pair of bell bottoms. arthur weasley is the best example of this. arthur is theoretically interested in muggle clothes because he's a progressive man who disavows wizard supremacy and believes in principles of tolerance towards muggles. now, he's not good at knowing how to pair a plausible muggle outfits. this is because he still lives at a reasonable remove from wizards, he's extremely busy with a demanding job and seven children to be staying up to date with changing fashions, and at the end of the day still spends most of his week among wizards in a civil service that demands a certain level of professional conformity. but i think it's also because arthur weasley is born in 1950 and therefore spent his young adulthood trying to raise a young family during a war. arthur instead channels his politics into support for muggle protection legislation rather than in wearing muggle clothing, which he might see as a limited individual act of symbolic resistance that would put his family at risk and also cost time and money he doesn't have. (if we look at the marauders, as an example of a progressive bunch in the interim generation between arthur and arthur's children, especially someone like sirius with greater financial freedom, it's very telling that sirius shows his politics off through riding a cool muggle motorbike and sticking up muggle soft porn on his bedroom walls, but not noticeably through fashion, as far as harry's photographs show).

but if you look at arthur's children, progressive wizarding millennials, it seems like more confident familiarity with muggle fashions and culture is generally more common. i think we can include someone like tonks in this, raised in a mixed marriage household by a blood traitor and a muggleborn dad. harry says that the weasley children are better than their parents at dressing like muggles. when harry sees bill weasley he doesn't think 'this is a man who looks like he's done a bad job dressing for a muggle rock concert' he thinks 'this is a man who looks like he could be going to a rock concert'. this suggests to me a difference, say, between bill and his dad. arthur likes muggles and believes engaging with muggle culture is important, but doesn't really succeed at it, but his eldest son manages to marry both a political commitment to embracing muggle culture with an ability to dress plausibly as a muggle so much so that he's able to ape a subculture in a way his dad doesn't really try to often and has never succeeded at.

why? i think there's a few things going on. one is that the majority wizarding millennials grew up in peacetime, after the fall of voldemort, in the 1980s and 90s, where wearing muggle clothing was less likely to get you killed and more likely to symbolise an individual act of rebellion against more low-level societal norms and cultural pressures rather than against a murderer in a mask. this, plus having the time and disposable income to follow muggle fashions more closely, as well as the opportunity to access about muggle fashions and celebrity styles, has a big part to play. bill weasley has more time and ability than his dad to stay up to date about muggle clothing tastes, as do his siblings. characters who went to hogwarts in the 80s and 90s also did so at the peak of a mass print consumer culture (one that was already on an upward ascent since the 60s) that was designed to be be accessible, inexpensive and create an appetite for following trends among consumers, and that could very easily be of appeal to progressive young witches and wizards. this is why in beasts i have ginny know about the spice girls and their iconic lewks from a copy of smash hits magazine because that seemed like the kind of inexpensive and highly portable source of information about muggle culture that a muggleborn or halfblood student (or even a pureblooded student with a parent with a progressive interest in muggle clothing) would be able to take to school and pass around a dormitory. on the gender point, too - donning muggle clothes, especially the more permissive and sexy clothing of the 80s and 90s would be a great way for a rebellious young woman raised in a wizarding household - eg. tonks or ginny - to stick it to the conservative gender norms in the wizarding world.

moreover, the changes in fashion as a market in the muggle world would make a certain base style of comfortable and inexpensive muggle dress much more readily available to younger witches and wizards than ever before. for kids born in the late 70s/80s, changes in muggle clothes consumption - aka. the globalisation of mass factory production of textiles, especially garments, and the early forms of fast fashion we now recognise today - would also have an impact on the ready availability of certain basic forms of cheap muggle fashion, including the ubiquity of cheap jeans and trainers/sneakers, that emphasise comfort and ease of daily wear at a low cost point produced in such high volumes such that if you wanted a pair of jeans, you could easily get your hands on one. this would have made a plausible muggle clothing a lot more accessible (there's only so wrong you can go if you're just wearing jeans, t-shirt, a jumper, and a pair of trainers, really), and explain why the clothes harry wears in the muggle world don't seem all that different from the clothes he wears in the wizarding world (admittedly usually under his robes), or indeed that different from what ron seems to wear most of the time. passing as a muggle in 1920 with little effort - à la bob ogden - would be a lot harder than doing so in 1990.

so - yeah. that's my take! i think it's mostly about generation, but also about politics, about war and peace, a bit about gender and a lot about capitalism. i hope this helps!

[juniperpyre]

hi! this is kind of a random question but why do you think there are so many hp characters named after people in greek and roman mythology? i know the doylist (if that's the right term) reasoning behind it on jkr's end but i'm more interested in the in-universe cultural explanation of why greco-roman names seem to be popular in the british wizarding world, and seemingly regardless of class (e.g., minerva, remus, hestia, argus, dedalus, sirius, alecto)

i've thought about this!! it comes up in my whole wizarding history headcanon/analysis. if i ever do a full meta on the history i'll expand on this and cite sources, but this answer is more using the historical knowledge i already have in my brain + a bit of fact checking.

tl;dr they are trying to recall a "great past" to maintain the myth of wizard supremacy

"western culture" claims it's origins in greek and roman culture. we acknowledge mesopotamia and egpyt but really the cultural mythos places our start the greeks and romans. ofc this is an american perspective (though for the past 75 years the cultural hegemony of the "west" has been mostly dictated & maintained by "american culture"* imo) but i've spoken with friends in europe about this and i've noticed a trend.

the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was signed in 1689 and fully established in 1692. this is well into the modern era (which begins in the 1500s). before and after this statue multiple governments/states/national movements claim to be a continuation of the Roman Empire.

so, i argue that the popularity of greco-roman names comes from this same cultural mythos. if we treat pureblood supremacy as a national movement similar to the other nationalist movements happening in europe in the 1800s and 1900s we know that a national mythos will need to be created, a great past to harken back to.

we learn about witch burnings—irl these targeted midwives and non-Christians, usually Jewish ppl—and that they were ineffective. could this be the artificial creation of an enemy that is both stupid and lower than them, but powerful enough to force wizards into hiding? i think so!

this further empathizes how pureblood supremacy can be seen as a nationalist movement. so the greco-roman names are a way to connect to the great past they're trying to replicate. maybe it was always a bit more popular since so much magic still comes from greek and roman (which i also think is an example of cultural hegemony but yea that's for the history post)

*yes america has a shared culture. it's impossible for groups to not have culture,ppl think america does not have culture because of american cultural hegemony. culture does not automatically equal morally correct!

[ashersbraincell]

Being from the Slavic regions is so funny because one small inconvenience and you’re muttering/whispering rapid-fire expletives in your native language like you’re a witch/wizard/sorcerer/warlock whatever tf you wanna call it trying to hex the living fuck out of someone with the ancient tongue

[jennycalendar]

finally. the ads understand what we want

[sofiadragon]

A Malfoy Minific

One time a few generations back, the Malfoys tried to become active among muggle nobility. Reasoning that they could easily handle muggle culture with their superior wizard manners, the Lord of the manor at the time thought he could instantly double the prestige, power, and business opportunities he had to hand. He could straddle the line and hold to the letter (but not the spirit) of the law with only a bit of work and some careful redecorating of the part of the manor the muggle dignitaries would visit.

Unfortunately for that ancestor, the easy 1 galleon = £25 exchange rate that exists in modern day didn't exist back then. Before the treaty with the Goblins that established Gringotts bank as the standard currency in Europe, British wizards had minted their own coins. As with many currencies, the face value of the coin being equal or more than the value of the metal it is made from is a key component of currency stability. Once the coin is worth less than the metal people start melting them down for profit, which is why both american and european copper coins have a large nickle core today. The intricately pressed British Spark had a purchasing power of nearly 1.5 times the value of the gold it was made from, thanks to some excellent trade deals made by the Ministry of the time which were unfortunately also undercutting the market price of vegetables and grain grown on Malfoy land.

Upon his attempt to obtain muggle sterling, he instantly lost one-third of the value of his five hundred Spark investment as his coin was mistaken for decorative stars pried off some exotic work of art. The remainder of the cash was quickly spent, his efforts to ape muggle high society being derided almost to his face as the death throes of a now fallen once-great house that was at last submerged below even a middle class status.

The Malfoy family erased him from their family records, save for an entry with no detail in the private blacklist of disgraced names they do not use for their children, and never had anything more to do with the muggle world.

That is, of course, until the current Heir of the family - Draco Malfoy - discovered Instagram and the Paris Fashion Week, but that's another story.

Fact: The Malfoy family has owned the same land for 1000 years, after being granted it by William the Conqueror, for whom their founding ancestor was some sort of court mage or magical lieutenant. They expanded their holdings over time by acquiring surrounding lands from Muggles.

Fact: The Statute of Secrecy was ratified in the early 18th century, after most titles of nobility had been established.

Fact: The Malfoy family has been and continues to be wealthy and influential that entire time (rather than losing power or wealth as the social systems changed).

Headcanon Natural conclusion: The Malfoy family has a peerage, but they don't use the title because it's an embarrassing Muggle affectation that isn't relevant to Wizardkind.

[sofiadragon]

Chapters: 9/9

Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape

Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, George Weasley, Fred Weasley, Order of the Phoenix, Molly Weasley

Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Drama, Wizarding Politics (Harry Potter), Wizarding Culture (Harry Potter), Wizarding World (Harry Potter), Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Good Severus Snape, Wizarding Traditions (Harry Potter), Misguided Albus Dumbledore, Well-Meaning Albus Dumbledore, Protective Molly Weasley, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Mentor Severus Snape, Mental Health Issues, Therapy, Minor whump, Hospitalization, Recovery, Horcrux Destruction, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Goth Severus Snape, References to Drugs, Questioning Harry Potter, Gay Severus Snape, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Severus Snape, Paris (City), Harry Potter Gets Therapy

Series: Part 1 of Magic and Bluejays

Summary:

Harry Potter reacts much differently to the Dementor attack on his cousin and it causes a cascade of changes in the lives of everyone he knows. He runs away to France to escape the English Ministry's bias and gets a solicitor (lawyer) to deal with his legal issues. Part one of a book 5 re-write that can be read stand-alone.

Featuring: Snape's POV. People making decisions for Harry without talking to him about it first. The Horcrux in his head influencing Harry's mind. Professional psychologists/mind healers doing good work. Snape using cannibus.

He would not go back to Privet Drive without bringing the law. He’d lose his temper and end up in Azkaban. Even with aurors at his back, he was likely to hex dear old Tuney into next week if he had to interact with her again. The fines would be worth it.

[hp-fanfic-archive]

Living Will by Here4Ships Pairing: Gen, Severitus, Harry & Lily Rating: G Word Count: 11k When Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, Harry spots something intriguing in Gringotts. Or, my take on the 'Gringotts to the rescue' trope.

[thomascott]

Fitness 🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️

[regheart]

there's something i find particularly annoying in this fandom and it's the way purebloods are written as highly sophisticated extremely rich and straight up a rip off of regency period novels

i understand the choice of this specific portrayal, i can see it as an approximation to historical drama, where the social restrictions are compelling and are relevant to the story, and a good writer can make any concept believable and good

HOWEVER as much as the worldbuilding on wizarding costumes (and a lot of other things) is extremely inconsistent and gets progressively worse towards the later three books, the implications that i see don't point towards this version of a sophisticated performatic elite who interacts only with itself

while i tend to see the blood status in the harry potter universe as a distinction of class and not at all a distinction of race, i don't think the difference is, in practice, as marked as it is in real world contexts, mostly because of how numerically small and insulated the wizarding community is

this post is part of my personal vendetta against purebloods as charming aristocrats & what appears to be the necessity of writing each and all of them as so very well spoken and politically savvy and never-caught-dead-speaking-to-a-half-blood

for once, the sacred twenty-eight is extra canon information and is disputed IN UNIVERSE, because it was anonymously published and received backlash for the inclusion (weasley, ollivander) and exclusion (crabbe, goyle, potter) of certain names

the malfoys are the only extremely rich family we see in canon. extra canon information tells us they made money before the statute of secrecy by trading with muggles

compare that to the potters who are also very rich (there's no scale to tell us who is the richer family), but made most of their money from the invention of sleakezy in the 20th century

the blacks are also implied to be wealthy: sirius manages to live off his inheritance after buying harry an expensive broom, and he says his grandfather likely paid for an order of merlin

there's a lot to be said about the blacks (e.g. they should have at least a couple more properties other than grimmauld place), but the big picture and the similarity with the gaunts (not about the incest, stop fixating on that) suggest they were a family in decadence by the time sirius was growing up

i believe that the implication is that neither of them had a proper job, which creates a similarity with gentry, but gentry lived off rentals and while it is possible they had a country state i don't think grimmauld place was making a lot of money

lucius malfoy also didn't work and spent a portion of his time being a school counselor (and obviously not being paid for it, as it was a way to exercise his political power over the main learning institution in his community)

it's also extra canon that the nott family had equal footing with the malfoys, so we can assume that crabbe, goyle, parkinson and bulstrode were slightly beneath them, either in social standing or money, despite the later two being part of the sacred twenty-eight (or it could appear to be so because pansy and milicent are girls)

the weasleys are obviously the main example of a poor sacred twenty-eight family, as were the gaunts

the crouch family was most like rich (they could afford a house elf), but it's likely that most of that money came from mr. crouch having a high level ministry job. his family and connections were probably an advantage to getting the job, but it's possible he wouldn't be able to maintain the lifestyle without work

longbottom, prewett and macmillan are families that appear to be very traditional, but not remarkably wealthy

other working members of the sacred twenty-eight are: horace slughorn (school teacher, but it can be argued that teaching hogwarts is a prestigious position), garrick ollivander (wand maker and shop owner, but, again, the only wand maker, which holds a certain prestige in itself), mr. burke (shop owner), arthur weasley (ministry employee), frank longbottom and kingsley shacklebolt (both aurors). amycus and alecto carrow are also temporary hogwarts teachers

the blacks married out of the sacred twenty-eight many times (max, gamp, crabbe, potter)

all of these people and every single muggleborn goes to the same school, buys magical supplies at the same place, drinks from the same pubs, etc. that alone should serve as evidence that there aren't many exclusive pureblood hangouts around

the only place that seems to attract the malfoys (arguably the richest and most important pureblood family in the 90s) and not most other people, is the knockturn alley, which is hardly a high brow sophisticated spot

except for malfoy and flint, no slytherin quidditch player during the 90s is in the sacred twenty-eight, so that's hardly a criterion for making it into the team

mulciber is not a sacred twenty-eight name, they could very well be half-bloods

tom riddle and severus snape were half-blood students who formed ties with purebloods while in school and held blood supremacist views, assimilation to a certain level was possible

[marsabillions]

crazy how barty and evan were like nineteen when all that shit happened like they should have been at the club

[darkcrowprincess]

Black family thoughts:

The Black Family dressing more French like and royalty like than any other families because they are really really old. Like wizards robes like I talked before in my other post but also marie antoinettie type clothes but darker and Gothic.

[ecstarry]

im so so so tired of seeing people use james latin identity as an accessory but NEVER doing the actual research to make him even slightly accurate to ANY latin american country.

STOP USING OUR CULTURE AS A FUCKING COSTUME IN YOUR FICS. IF YOU DONT HAVE ANY LATINX FRIENDS TO HELP YOU, THERE ARE ENDLESS RESOURCES OUTSIDE OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE FOR YOU TO WRITE HIM RIGHT

[blep-23]

Fuck, I keep thinking of a Harry Potter fanfic. It’s Dudley centered, it’s more he goes back in time and corrects what he’s done cause he feels bad and turns out he’s a bit magical as well, but he’s like… disabled with it?? I forgot what it’s called but I think a future kid had it??

Anyway, Harry ends up a bit feral and absolutely obsessed with weapons and protective of Dudley.

Dudley had a wife(who died) and two children, both ended up magical. When he goes back in time he remembers all of it.