Thank
you so much for your kind letter of the 17th. It is always a pleasure
to hear from you. I do appreciate your waiving the rules about
familiars to allow Wednesday to bring little Homer – she dotes on
that spider, and I don’t think she could consider Hogwarts home
without his company.
We
were delighted but completely unsurprised by the children’s Sorting.
Of course Wednesday is a Ravenclaw – she has always had a brilliant
mind, and it is rather traditional for the women in our
family. Slytherin might have been a possibility, with her cleverness
and ambition, but sadly (and quietly, between friends) I must admit
the wrong sort have rather taken over that House at the moment. Death
Eaters are so vulgar. Gomez, naturally, is over the moon about
our little Harry being a fellow Gryffindor – the world does need more
dashing, brave, and reckless men. They make life so interesting for
the rest of us, don’t you agree? And I am certain he will be safe
under your care, after his rather difficult start in life, poor
child. That aunt and uncle of his are just too terribly common to
protect him adequately – I am grateful Albus saw sense and left him
with us rather than her.
I
appreciate your bringing to my attention the small difficulty between
Harry and Draco – I shall have a word with Narcissa. (Lucius is still
being terribly silly about that little peacock incident, and refuses
to speak to Gomez at all. Men can be so ridiculously proud. And they
really did look so much better in black.) Really, though, Harry was
only defending his friend. I probably should warn you that Wednesday
writes that she is teaching young Longbottom a few of her more subtle
defenses – I sincerely doubt Draco will trouble him in future if he
uses those. I assure you, none of them cause permanent damage, only
temporary discomfort, and she is well aware that they are only for
self-defense, not mere childish aggression. Addamses do not start
fights, but we do finish them, and Wednesday has always looked out
for her brothers.
At
least that little incident allowed you to see Harry’s flying skills
in time to recruit him for the Quidditch team. I think he shall be an
excellent Seeker – he was always the best at bat-spotting on summer
evenings, and then there was the time he “borrowed” Gomez’s
broom to rescue Pugsley’s pet octopus Aristotle, who had developed an
unaccountable taste for tree-climbing, but had neglected to learn how
to climb down. It was a successful rescue, even though he was mildly hampered on his descent by Aristotle clinging to his face in terror.
Please
send my apologies to Severus for that unfortunate incident in Potions
class. I should have warned him that Wednesday was experimenting
with, shall we say, some variant recipes. I am quite certain,
however, that Miss Parkinson’s hair will grow back normally, and that
the snakes are only a temporary embellishment.
My
best regards, and do drop by for tea if you ever happen to be in the
neighborhood. Thing has perfected your favorite shortbread recipe – I
do believe he has a little crush on you. Or perhaps it is merely that
you are the only visitor we have had, outside of family, who is
sensible enough to shake hands with him without flinching.
The most hilarious thing about the fact Buckbeak had a trial and lost is that later on JKR resolves the issue by having Hagrid take him in again and renaming him Witherwings. That’s literally all it took. What if in POA, Hagrid simply said, “Sorry, Buckbeak flew away.”
“There’s a hippogriff right there, Hagrid.”
“A different hipprogriff.”
“I’m… pretty sure that’s the same hipprogriff.”
“Prove it.”
no dna tests we die like scientifically underdeveloped societies
Prisoner of Azkaban continues to be the most frustrating book
Someone should have just adopted Sirius and started calling him Gerald.
Remus: Erm… this is our new order member, my… cousin Gerald. Gerald White.
“Mr. Lupin that is Sirius Black with glasses!” “Oh come now Minister, Sirius Black doesn’t wear glasses. That wouldn’t make sense.” “Well have Mr. White take off his glasses then!” “He can’t he needs them to see.”
it got better
It’s honestly a miracle to me that wizarding society doesn’t collapse every other week because like
You’ve got this world full of people who can destroy whole buildings or turn people into beetles or make vehicles fly just by waving a stick at them
And there is literally no common sense
Anywhere to be found
Voldemort would never have had anyone find out he was back if he just went around calling himself Steve
Okay, see, I thought I saved this post to comment on it but I’d like to bring up
The Minister would NEVER EVER disbelieve in Gerald White. He’d buy it hook line and sinker. The wizarding world would buy it hook line and sinker. The GOBLINS wouldn’t but wizards have been shown to be pretty blindingly clueless. Still, Gringotts would grudgingly give Sirius access to the Black fortune.
But, but, but, you know the one person
the one person
who Gerald White would drive AB-SO-LUTELY FUCKING BATSHIT?
Severus Snape.
Snape would do everything, EVERYTHING, to get people to believe that it’s Sirius. But the Order would ignore it (they accepted Sirius as Sirius before anyway) and Remus would just be so… so affronted.
‘Severus, he is my cousin.’
And Sirius would love it. He’d love the fact that Snape just hated it. He’d be the BEST DAMN GERALD WHITE EVER b/c Snape is doing everything from dropping veritaserum into his firewhisky to capturing a dementor in a box and releasing it on Sirius when he least expects it
That one causes problems for a bare minute because SHIT A DEMENTOR ATTEMPTED TO GIVE GERALD THE KISS MAYBE SNAPE IS RIGHT except Harry comes forward and is like ‘excuse me, I’ve never committed a crime and dementors are ALWAYS attacking me, I think they’re attracted to glasses’
and the magical community is like ‘shit, yeah, you’re right’
and just
Spare. Snape goes spare.
Now I’m imagining Fred and George sneaking extra Weasleys into Snape’s class manifests every year.
Annnd I wrote the thing. Sort of. It kinda got out of hand.
–
The first year they’re just Fred and George, except when occasionally they’re Gred and Forge, but it’s not too long before Snape just stops trying to tell them apart and just treats them as the joint entity “Weasley,” who happens to be in two places at once.
The next year they take turns attending first-year Potions class as Barry Weasley, the glasses-wearing Weasley cousin who missed the Sorting Ceremony because he tried to swallow three chocolate frogs at once on a bet from his twin cousins and got sick.
Snape has a choice between asking questions about Barry and punishing Fred and George for tormenting their cousin, and punishing Fred and George wins out. At this point, it’s not really that weird–the Weasleys do tend toward large families–and any excuse to give the twins detention is basically the sort of thing you could put under a box propped up with a stick on a rope and a “TOTALLY NOT A TRAP” sign to catch Severus Snape.
So he figures Barry Weasley is real. He comments on the boy’s resemblance to Fred and George, and Barry nods and says “Everyone says that. I could fool everyone but them, except eventually people figure out there’s only one of me.”
Snape doesn’t have much cause for complaint. Barry is not a difficult student (the twins are, at this point, quite happy with the joke for its own sake and so don’t risk the Barry persona on tormenting him), perhaps a bit prone to letting his mind wander (it helps that George is actually interested in Potions, and uses the second run as an opportunity to experiment), but there have been no outright disasters centered around his cauldron, which is a lot more than can be said for the twins.
The next year is Fred and George’s third year, Barry’s second year, and Ron’s first year. They don’t take Ron entirely into their confidence … but they do let on that they’ve invented a fictional “Cousin Barry” to mess with Snape a bit, in case Snape asks, but Snape doesn’t ask.
He does mention Barry Weasley to Barry’s supposed Head of House, but by pure luck he manages to do so when Minerva is sufficiently preoccupied by that late night with four first-years sneaking out after curfew, and she hears “Harry and Weasley,” and nods, and asks him something about a Gryffindor fifth-year she’s concerned about, and, well, that basically settles it.
Fred and George run into a minor difficulty in that they don’t have a free period coinciding with “Barry’s” potions class, but they get lucky enough to have History of Magic during that class, and Binns wouldn’t notice if Fred or George set the classroom on fire, much less if Fred or George is always absent.
Fred and George are at this point quite satisfied with getting “Barry” through seven years of Hogwarts without Snape realizing he’s fictional, but then at the beginning of their fourth year Snape is absent from the Sorting and the Welcome Feast and … well. Opportunity beckons.
Since Fred and George are pragmatic about which elective classes they take (they’re much more interested in independent study directed toward magical jokes and pranks), they have several free periods and it only takes a significant look between them to agree that, yes, they can absolutely handle being one more person just for Potions class.
They’re a bit more advanced at their magic now, and a bit of diluted Shrinking Potion and a Freckle Charm create Barnaby, Barry’s younger brother. There’s a minor concern with Ginny being in the same class, and more importantly, Operation Barnaby is still in the planning stages when McGonagall hands out the schedules and they realize they have Transfiguration during the requisite class period and McGonagall will definitely notice if a twin is missing.
Thus is is that Barnaby Weasley, Hufflepuff, is born.
Snape doesn’t give away anything more than a mild frown at another Weasley showing up on the class roster, but he does raise an eyebrow and inquire, “Hufflepuff?” after reading his name.
Barnaby (Fred, at the moment) turns red with the help of a Blushing Charm and looks hurt and defensive, which makes the Hufflepuffs, upset at the perceived insult to their House, accept him without question. Nobody ever asks either twin why he only shows up in Potions class; they get that it’s some long-con joke focused on Snape and they don’t interfere.
Barnaby is not quite as hopeless at Potions as Neville, but he is prone to the same wandering attention span as his brother, only more so. His potions regularly fail and occasionally explode, usually in a way that to Snape indicates carelessness with the ingredients and tells Fred or George something useful about the what happens when you do that.
The next year there are no new Weasley children, officially, but when Fred plops himself down next to George on the train and says “So what about a girl?” George knows exactly what he’s talking about.
They mix a hair-growing potion on the train, and have to hide it quickly when Draco Malfoy comes running into their compartment, frightened of the dementors.
George takes the hair potion and the shrinking potion and the pair of them use the Marauders’ Map to intercept Snape on his way to the Great Hall. Fred hides behind a pillar and casts a Duplicating Illusion Charm on himself and tries hard not to burst out laughing as George plays Nasturtium Weasley, little sister to Barry and Barnaby, who’s somehow managed to get lost on the way to the Great Hall.
Snape’s not the slightest bit pleased to be getting yet another absent-minded Weasley cousin, snarls, snaps something vaguely cutting, and leads her towards the Great Hall, intending to hand her over directly to Professor McGonagall; instead he runs into Fred and George (actually Fred and his charm double); Fred explained that they saw their cousin wandering off and went to go get her. Snape lectures the pair of them on wandering, accuses them of being up to no good, and stalks off to direct evil looks at Professor Lupin.
Which, luckily, takes up so much of his attention that he doesn’t pay attention to the Sorting. Fred and George decide the next morning, after careful consultation of multiple students’ class schedules, to put her in Hufflepuff along with Barnaby.
They strike it lucky again, in that first-year Potions only conflicts with Care of Magical Creatures, to which only one twin is going (they don’t see much point in both of them taking the same class, figuring that one of them knowing something is as good as both of them knowing it and they can teach each other more effectively than anyone else can teach them, an argument that failed to impress Professor McGonagall into letting them each out of half their classes back in first year); Hagrid won’t be expecting to see two of them.
Nasturtium Weasley, it develops, has quite a lot of bright red hair and a tendency to hyperfocus on ingredients or processes, leading to a lot of ruined potions when she keeps stirring too long or spends the whole class period shredding the shrivelfigs or gets lost examining the lobes of a dirigible plum leaf. Fred and George, taking turns being Nasturtium, are happy to spend the time just thinking through some interesting research they’ve been doing or contemplating a problem with their latest invention or just brainstorming new joke ideas until Snape appears, bellowing about melted cauldrons and the people who don’t even notice them because they’re too fascinated by the down on a downy mage-thistle.
But they’re being run just a bit ragged at it and decide that three is enough–until they wander past the Hospital Wing at just the right time to hear Snape bellowing apoplectically about Harry Potter, and Dumbledore’s more reasoned tones making light of the idea that Harry and his friends were in two places at once.
Fred and George look at each other and a light goes on.
They’ve heard about time-turners. They’ve also seen Hermione Granger run herself ragged studying textbooks for every subject available. They know how many subjects there are, and how many class periods in a week.
As one, they reach out and lightly smack each other on the head for not putting it together earlier.
Snape comes raging out the door just in time to see them and gives them detention. Fred and George scowl after him and turn and look at each other. And nod.
It’s on.
Fred “accidentally” bumps into Hermione when she’s on her way to McGonagall’s office, pretends to lose his balance, and falls hard to the floor. It gives him bruises, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for the successful theft of major, highly-regulated, top-secret magical artifacts. Hermione turns to help him, and George switches the time-turner with an elaborately crafted fake, a Confundus Charm and a Diversion Charm giving it the correct density of magical energy signature and ensuring that anyone who tries to use it will find an urgent reason to put it off. (George is super pleased with that one; it’s a time-turner, so quite naturally anyone who can use it has plenty of time to use it later.)
Next year is their sixth year, which brings enough of a drop in courses (there are definite benefits to getting only two OWLS each, though they doubt their mother would agree) that they only need to use the time-turner once, when Barry has Potions when Fred has Transfiguration and George has Herbology. They’re almost disappointed by this, until Fred gets a devastatingly diabolical grin on his face and says, “what if there were two of them?”
George’s face mirrors the grin in an instant, and he responds with his own suggestion. “Cousins.” A pause. “And they hate each other.”
And so come into being Gentian Weasley, younger sister of Barry, Barnaby, and Nasturtium Weasley, and her cousin from yet another branch of the Weasley family, Bilious Weasley the Second.
This time they give themselves some insurance, and make very good use of the time-turner, by charming Snape into seeing the new arrivals be Sorted. For a diversion they let Peeves the Poltergeist into the kitchens and assist him in creating havoc (testing out a potential product, tentatively named the Souper Swimming Pool, in the process); the amount of commotion takes three Professors to sort out, one of them Snape, and it’s surprisingly easy to hit the distracted Potions Master with the prototype of a Daydream Charm, highly modified to suit the occasion.
Once they’ve finished the time loop, they blast themselves with Aguamenti charms to make it look like they’ve just come out of the rain and sit down. Snape sees Weasley, Bilious and Weasley, Gentian be sorted into Gryffindor one right after another and summons himself a bottle of firewhiskey.
This is a mistake, as he has the keen and ignoble joy of being hungover for the worst Potions class he’s ever taught, including that one time when somebody (Potter) threw a firework into the Swelling Solution.
Gentian snickers when Snape reads Bilious’ name. Bilious calls Gentian “freckles.” Slytherin students from accross the room (the both of them are Gryffindors this time) look on in obvious amusement. Snape looks constipated. Their own supposed housemates eye them, looking confused, concerned, and generally bamboozled but none of them vocalize their curiosity.
Fred and George share a secret, gleeful smile, and escalate.
They spill things on each other: water, pigeon milk, stinksap. Gentian breaks a salamander egg on Bilious’ forehead; Bilious stabs Gentian with a knarl quill. They drop the wrong ingredients surreptitiously into each other’s potions. Bilious’ cauldron spews copious amounts of green smoke, gaining a lecture and losing five points for Gryffindor; his retaliation recreates Neville Longbottom’s disaster a few years prior and melts Gentian’s cauldron. Gentian shrieks at Bilious, Bilious dumps the whole jar of puffer-fish eggs over Gentian’s head, and Gentian launches herself at him, punching and clawing and screaming her head off.
Snape separates them with a wave of his wand and threatens them with a month’s worth of detention collecting bubotuber pus. Gentian says, “You can’t do that, I’ll tell McGonagall on you,” which neatly puts Snape off telling Professor McGonagall himself, because honestly, she probably will take issue with it. Bilious smirks loftily and sneers, “Baby. I like bubotuber pus. It smells like petrol.”
“How,” Snape asks suspiciously, “would a wizardborn young man like yourself know about petrol?” and Gentian (secretly Fred) hides a wince; their father’s particular fascination with Muggle things might be their undoing. But George recovers, saying proudly, “My dad’s an accountant.”
The Slytherins laugh. Fred catches the reference and Gentian says, “Oh, right, your dad’s the family Squib.”
Bilious grabs his cauldron and makes to empty it over her head, only to find that the contents are basically a solid baked into the cauldron’s bottom. Snape casts it away and tells them they’re more of a disaster than Neville Longbottom and deducts fifty points from Gryffindor, and they spend the walk out of the dungeons trying to convince their housemates that the points don’t actually matter that much.
Snape goes straight to McGonagall to complain, but refers to them as “Those two damned Weasleys,” and McGonagall nods and makes sympathetic faces and promises to speak to them. Fred and George get a detention with McGonagall at the same time as Gentian and Bilious have one with Snape, which makes them as happy as a time-turner can make two mischief-minded teenagers in possession thereof.
That year is a delight. They have a Triwizard Tournament to watch, a small multitude of visiting students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, many of them attractive, to interact with, and five alter egos with which to torment Professor Snape. Moreover, with the time-turner and the extra Potions classes, they’ve made significant progress on their product line and are turning a brisk business with the student body.
Snape learns quickly and the first time is also the last time he schedules Gentian and Bilious for a detention together. Fred and George take it in turns to run certain of their inventions past Flitwick and Sprout to gain back some of the points they lose in the first-year Potions class. By the time summer rolls around, Fred calculates that they’ve used the time-turner enough to have come of age and potentially erased the Trace on them.
They pay Mundungus Fletcher a galleon to come somewhere out-of-the-way with them and lend them his wand to cast a few spells. When no owls show up carrying Ministry warning letters, they head to Diagon Alley and celebrate by buying a storefront and the flat above it, and spend most of the summer there, fixing it up and getting things ready for a product launch next year. NEWTS, schmoots.
There’s of course that annoying business about Voldemort returning, and their mother decides the best way to keep them out of the Order’s business is to turn them into house-elves, but they come up with a few charms to do housework slowly by magic, and adjust the illusion spells, and put in just as much of an appearance as necessary.
Then September rolls around again, and their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is even worse than Snape and Lockheart combined, and just like that, Barry, Barnaby, Nasturtium, Gentian, and Bilious all add themselves to Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.
This largely sucks, because the DADA classes are utterly useless this year, but Fred gets the idea of substituting their alter egos and eventually themselves with illusion charms (”She doesn’t actually teach, she’ll never notice”), which makes George laugh hysterically because they’ve progressed from attending classes multiple times as different people to using doppelgangers to avoid going to class at all, and the two tactics are completely at odds with each other. But they do it.
Umbridge doesn’t notice, and pretty soon the only class they show up for is the one where second-years Bilious and Gentian are forever hurling hateful looks, creative insults, badly-aimed spells, and improvised projectiles at each other.
Umbridge starts taking points from Gryffindor off at the first “blast-ended walnut” from Gentian and assigns the first detention at Bilious’ elaborately-detailed Muggle catapult. Fred and George add a line of Magical Model Muggle Major Munitions to the product array at the soon-to-be-hatched Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, and make copious notes on how to use them as actual weaponry once Voldemort makes his appearance.
Fred writes “I must not fight in class” with Umbridge’s quill for six hours and then steals it. George listens to Fred’s description of the evening, takes one look at Fred’s hand, and breaks into Umbridge’s office and takes a generous crap on her desk. “Crude,” says Fred admiringly, “but deserved.”
The next time Barnaby has DADA, Fred goes as him in person and tests out a Skiving Snackbox. Throwing up on Umbridge is satisfying. He gets detention and writes “I will be more careful with how I am sick” some nine hundred times with a completely normal quill, charmed to write in red ink like a Muggle fountain pen, and mimes innocence when Umbridge expresses confusion at the lack of redness and swelling on his hand.
Gentian and Bilious get into a full-on wizards’ duel in their next DADA class, and aim so terribly that Umbridge gets hit more than they do. They both get detention, and Fred and George send illusions in their stead.
Next week they do it again, and Umbridge spends half the afternoon in the hospital wing, getting tentacles removed. Colin Creevey, confined to bed rest for a case of Exploding Hiccups, sneaks a picture and later trades it to the Weasley Twins for a Pygmy Puff, two Daydream Charms, and a promise to look into developing Extendable Eyes.
Umbridge goes to complain to McGonagall, who listens to the entire rant about a pair of students she’s never heard of with a reasonably straight face. Then she blandly tells Umbridge she’ll look into it, and turns back to her essay-marking.
McGonagall wanders down to the staff room the next morning and relates the whole conversation to the other teachers. Flitwick and Sprout are practically rolling on the floor by the time she finishes, but Snape is standing there looking Stupified; he makes the biggest miscalculation he’s made in years, and asks, “You mean they’re not real?”
McGonagall looks at him, calculates what all it would take for him to be asking that question, and promptly laughs herself sick.
Snape waits, looking like he might catch fire, until she recovers. “Yes, Severus. I have never heard of a Gentian Weasley, and the only Bilious Weasley I know is my age.”
Snape says, “There’s two Bilious Weas—who names these people?!”
“There’s one, Severus. I can assure you that there is no such person attending this school at this time.”
He grimaces, then tries, “I don’t suppose Ginny, Ronald, and their siblings are fictional?”
“No such luck, Severus.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them. “Fred and George.”
“Most assuredly real, Severus.”
“No, I meant–they did this. They’re responsible for this, aren’t they?”
“I would imagine so,” McGonagall says, a hint of a smile hovering about her lips.
He eyes her. “Shut up, Minerva.”
She claps a hand to her mouth to hide a giggle, and he turns and sweeps from the room.
As it turns out, he has Gentian and Bilious the next period.
Fred and George, blissfully unaware, are launching into their standard pretend fight—in this case, swordfighting with Transylvanian Lesser Pseudoporcupine quills—when Snape arrives at their table and claps a hand on their near shoulders. He’s smiling like a dragon.
“Fred. George.”
Shit.
They have a moment of sharp dismay, but it doesn’t last. They are the Weasley Twins, they’ve been fooling Snape for years with this prank, and they have money hidden in multiple places and the deed to a shop in Diagon Alley and all the official education they’ll ever need.
They turn and grin back.
“Well done, Professor,” says George. “How’d you find out?”
“Professor McGonagall told me.” His smile was a thin, sharp blade.
“No way.”
“Really?”
“How’d she know?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“I’m afraid I did, Mr. Weasley,” says McGonagall from the doorway. “Although admittedly without knowing you were pranking Professor Snape as well as Professor Umbridge; I thought I was merely sharing a very amusing anecdote with the other teachers.”
They’re drawing curious looks, though fortunately Fred-as-Gentian’s cauldron is hissing like a teakettle and drowning out the conversation; Snape snaps at them to pay attention to their cauldrons before jerking his head at his office door.
Once they’re ensconced within what Fred once called the Snape Museum of Slimy Things, and Fred and George have undone the spells and potions that make them Bilious and Gentian, McGonagall turns to Snape and says, “I forbid you to expel them, Severus.”
He’s about to respond when Fred says, “Go ahead, expel us.”
That gets them two very surprised professors. George shrugs. “Everything’s ready to go. We’ve got a shop in Diagon Alley and enough stock to fill it and enough expertise for a lifetime of success.”
Snape frowns and asks, “Do I want to know what you’re planning to sell?”
George says, “No” at the same times as Fred says, “It’s a joke shop.”
McGonagall looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Snape looks like he’s swallowed a sea cucumber. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then says, “I would have never imagined an argument that could convince me not to try to expel you, but you’ve just provided it. I will not be assisting you in selling pranks to the student body of Hogwarts on a retail level.”
George says, “Actually, we’ve been doing it since the middle of last year.”
Snape turns to McGonagall. “I quit.”
“No.”
“Hey, let Umbridge expel us,” Fred suggests. George snickers.
Snape looks at them, and then at McGonagall, and then back to the twins.
“No, you’re going to stay here,” Snape says, a look in his eyes that makes them wonder what all Umbridge has said to him. “You’re going to continue to be Gentian and Bilious—and Nasturtium and Barnaby and Barry.” He looks to McGonagall as if for confirmation, and George considers that both professors were young once, and were quite possibly as complete and utter hellions as him and Fred.
Snape smiles like a knife. “Give her hell.”
He’s never felt so much respect for a teacher before.
“Mr. Weasley?” Snape adds, almost as an afterthought, his eyes shifting from one to the other as if unsure which of them he’s addressing.
“Yessir?”
“Fifty points from Gryffindor.”
Fred and George smile at each other as they follow McGonagall into the hall.
Worth it.
They follow orders. Bilious and Gentian hit Umbridge with so many “accidental” hexes that she finally bans them from her classroom. Barnaby functions as a sort of a Patient Zero for Umbridge-itis. Barry uses his status as the quiet one to construct elaborate spells that have Umbridge’s classroom warping itself into odd shapes or growing spines out the walls or puffing up like a balloon and trapping her at the bottom. Nasturtium stands up in class one day and slams an epic poem about how teachers who don’t teach are useless and a sea sponge would do a better job of earning the salary.
Between them, they work to set up elaborate pranks and position Umbridge to catch the worst of it. After Dumbledore’s removal, Fred and George set off the best fireworks display Hogwarts has ever seen, and McGonagall gives Gryffindor one hundred points; Gentian and Bilius, usually the only ones still played in person by the Weasley twins, play Umbridge beautifully the next morning, fighting each other as usual and then turning ally, working together to attack her with flurries of squawking birds and flying, shitting replica nifflers.
When Umbridge twigs that they’re all working together she stands up in the middle of the Great Hall at dinner and demands that every Weasley in the place stand up.
Four Weasleys, all siblings, do so.
“Where are the rest of you?” she hisses to Ron, who looks clueless. Ginny cocks an eyebrow and looks to Fred and George speculatively. Umbridge turns to them and they smile like sharks.
Fred climbs up onto the table, George right on his heels. “Ladies and gentlemen, a performance by myself and my twin!”
George produces a potion, downs it, and becomes Gentian.
Fred narrates as George shifts between the various fictional cousins, ending by restoring his own appearance, putting on a pair of glasses, and becoming Barry. Snape slaps his face down into his hands. George finishes by announcing that these new appearance potions, and the fireworks, and a multitude of other products, would be available at 93 Diagon Alley, home to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
“Not so fast,” says Umbridge, holding out her wand. “The pair of you are going to be expelled—but first you are going to find out what happens to troublemakers in my school.”
“We’re not,” says George, “But let me tell you something: this is not, and will never be, your school.” He looks around at the students, at the teachers, at Snape and McGonagall standing a short distance away, and he and Fred wave their arms in a mirrored gesture to take in the whole student body, and they say, the pair of them together, “This is our school.”
The cheer from around them shakes the rafters.
Then they raise their wands and say, again in unison, “Accio brooms!”
The brooms make holes in the walls on their way in, and Fred and George mount them and soar up among the floating candles, and Fred has to cast a Sonorus Charm to make himself heard over the cheering.
“Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, number 93, Diagon Alley: Our new premises!”
And George waves to Peeves, who’s floating up there along with them, attracted by the promise of mayhem. “Give her hell from us.”
Peeves salutes, and Fred and George fly out the front door to freedom.
When they return to Hogwarts almost two years later, their time spent as the fake Weasleys serves all of Hogwarts well: the muggle munitions devices, some elaborate magical shielding, judiciously-applied daydream charms turned hallucinogenic means of luring the Death Eaters to shooting at false targets, and projectiles that created all manner of interesting effects, save the day for many people in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Fred never knows he came close to dying. George never knows he came close to losing his twin. They go back to Diagon Alley, afterwards, and as the world puts itself back together, they help people laugh.
Fred and George are out of school now, as are Barry, Barnaby, Billious, Gentian, and Nasturtium Weasley.
That should be the end of it
And then in comes Floribunda Weasley
And no one knows who she is
And then the next year there’s Reginald Weasley, followed by Horace Weasley and Hogarth Weasley (also twins)
And every year there’s one or more Weasleys, even when there are no Weasleys enrolled in Hogwarts at all
One year there’s a class where all of the other students have disappeared and only Weasleys show up in their place
That one sends two teachers fleeing into the night, screaming
And this is how Weasleys become cryptids
Everyone knows about Weasleys and has stories about Weasleys, but everyone knows they aren’t really real
And future generations of actual Weasleys find themselves in the odd position where everyone knows that Weasleys aren’t actually real, so they can get away with anything
And Fred and George have an entire wall full of detention slips under the names of various Weasleys over the years that they love to show off
They’re proudest of the ones they had nothing to do with
Ok but pueblo schools where vaquero children go and learn to read and write and tell where water’s going to be in 3 months; they’re open year round but each student only has to come for 9 months so they can still help with the cattle drive
Northwest longhouses where everyone sits together and tell stories and show carvings; the carvings move and some of them tell their own stories, the totem poles out front speak if you’re polite. Salmon come from the river and go back to the river, everyone has their preferred spell for netting salmon
The Cherokee are still in Georgia. They have a very nice clapboard school, two hundred years old, educates all the Cherokee children from all over the country and nobody else. They are very secretive about it and insist it’s actually in Oklahoma.
There’s a voodoo school in New Orleans and a Beauxbatons branch in New Orleans and a traditional African school in New Orleans and a catch-all native run school in New Orleans. They don’t acknowledge each other’s existence.
The oldest European school is in Massachusetts except that the NYC school maintains they weren’t really a school until they got their charter in 1704 and so therefore the NYC school came first. There’s a very expensive school in DC that’s not any better than the black teachers teaching healing for free on the streets
If you want muggle studies there’s nowhere better than Waterrise which has branches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, they specialize in magic that can be performed on and around muggles without detection. It is very very hippie.
The Inuit have two schools and one is located in what ought to be Russia; the Inuit also maintain their own political organisation and a wildlife refuge
The reason the Europeans insist the Massachusetts school is the only one is 1) a long running and extremely vicious political fight between them and the NYC school that resulted in two new magical species and a blanket ban on self refilling vials; as a result Massachusetts tried to run off with some of NYC’s students and the Europeans just threw up their hands and went with whoever got there first 2) every other school is very very relaxed. Not about everything but about muggles and about light vs dark magic and how hard you should try to keep magical creatures out of muggle eyes (”Statute of Secrecy? Whazzat?” a logger says, wand sticking out of his overalls, as he loses control of a yeti again)
This post is everything.
THIS is what I’d always imagined American Magic would be: the acknowledgement of the many different cultures we have, our landscape, & our history.
Not only are we populous enough to warrant more than one school, surely, it’s the American spirit to have more than one! The distance alone between coasts should warrant it; or the fact that we have provinces, islands, Alaska! And how culturally different things are depending on which coast or in which geographic quadrant you live.
I just wish Fantastic Beasts felt more relevant to America the way the HP series felt to the UK.
-There is a nation-wide ban on discussion of US politics in the schools.
-The American Minister of Magic’s way of communicating to the president that they Need To Talk is that the eagle in the seal on the carpet in the Oval Office tells him so. Using a distinctly Gilbert Gottfreid-esque voice.
-The American Ministry of Magic is under Broadway. Camouflage is nearly unnecessary there.
-The school in New Mexico is also a research facility for integration of magic and science. Their test runs of new flying vessels in the 60s were the actual UFOs.
-Whenever an American school that isn’t Ilvemorny and one of the European ones get into an argument, the Canadian schools are called upon to intervene. The last time, however, it (literally) blew up in their faces and the Canadians are seriously considering staying out of it from here on out.
-The school in New York isn’t in the city. It’s at Niagara Falls, and the entry is through the sign that explains how the Falls were created by nature. One of the dining hall’s walls is the waterfall.
-The Jewish school, however, is in New York City. The entrance is next to the Lions of the New York Public Library – the People of the Book (the actual school is on Governor’s Island). They find their choice of entrance incredibly funny.
-You know that myth about the butterflies that turn at a specific part of Lake Michigan for no reason and scientists decided it was because there was a mountain there millions of years ago? Nope. There’s a school there.
“WHY COULDN’T IT BE ‘FOLLOW THE BUTTERFLIES’”
RON WEASLEY IS UNKNOWINGLY 100% CORRECT ONCE AGAIN
Except there’d be at least three Jewish schools. Probably more like seven, because there’s the girl’s school, the boy’s school, the integrated ones (modern Orthodox, conservative, & reform), & then the one that nobody would be caught DEAD in (disagreements as to whichever one that is).
And again, Jewish wizarding summer camps.
Every single one of these sorts of posts is 100000000% better than the actual canon.
My headcanon:
Florida and Puerto Rico have a running war over which locale’s magical school is older. Florida says that it’s the one in St. Augustine (founded 1568, three years after the city itself), making it the oldest European-style school in the lower forty-eight states. Puerto Rico maintains that the magical school in San Juan was founded in 1523, which makes it the oldest European-style school in American territory. The Native-run schools in the U.S. (including the Aleut and Inuit ones in Alaska and the Pacific Islander-run school in Hawaii), Canada and Mexico all think that they’re both being ridiculous, as anything created by Natives antedates the 1500s by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The only thing everyone agrees on is that the oldest school in North America is emphatically NOT Ilvermorny (founded circa 1620).
I love all of these headcannons, and more in the other reblogs! The beautiful thing too, is that in the cannon Ilvermorny is only the single “registered Great Wizarding School of the World” – and she says specifically that there are many other wizarding schools, not just in the US but all over the world that are not listed in those “Seven Great Wizarding Schools”. Getting the title is all about politics and European regulations, but North America its self probably has its own list of “The Great Wizarding Schools of North America” which lists all of these other schools in one awesome history book! Which can totally be found in every school’s Library.
Thus these headcannons could totally be cannon, and deserve awesome blogs, fics, and rps. Canadian Wizarding School? Yes please.
Just imagine if Sirius and Remus had raised Harry, together…
-He reminds them of James and Lily so much, it helps them heal after their loss.
-Tonks being the cool vodka aunt that Remus is not really sure is a good babysitter, but who Sirius trusts fully.
– “Moony he’s turning four years!” “Yeah so what?” “WE. NEED. A. BIG.BIRTHDAY. PARTY. NOW.”
– Sirius turning into a dog to chase sneaking journalists and paparazzis away. Soon no one dares to come near because of the Lupin-Black couple’s crazy dog.
– “Why do we never see mr. Black going out with the dog?” “Oh yeah, he’s… he’s… a little scared by it. He’s scared by so many things…” (If looks could kill, Remus would have been killed by “his dog”)
-Sirius trying to cook without using magic, but failing again and again. Remus and Harry is too kind to point it out, leading to Sirius nearly burning the house down in an attempt to make some fancy food he thinks he is capable of making.
-Molly and Remus giving each other knitting tips (because of course Remus knits)
-Minerva McGonagall being equally horrified and happy by the thought of James Potter’s son raised by Sirius “I invented a spell to turn the whole gryffindor common room pink for three laughs” Black and Remus “I didn’t stop him” Lupin.
-Harry having someone who also lost someone important to them to help him managing the grief when Cedric gets killed.
-Harry being loved and supported by his dads.
-Aaaand most importantly two gay wizards showing up at Vernon Dursley’s doorstep explaining that they want Harry to meet his cousin and aunt and uncle, if that’s possible? And it’s just too much to Vernon who just sits in his chair silent the rest of the day, while Harry and Dudley plays and Petunia exchanging practical advice with Sirius and Remus.
What if instead of gilly weed Harry had showed up to the black lake challenge in muggle scuba gear like “like where’s your advanced magic now bitches? Got me a free fishing knife with this thing”
Honestly I just want an AU where Harry approached all his magical problems with muggle solutions. Nobody knows how to handle it because he’s supposed to be there learning magic but you know what, it fucking works.
Give me Harry Potter who is like fucking MacGuyver up in this shit, creating his own non-magical solutions to magical problems.
“Potter how did you get past the enchanted keys to the Sorcerer’s Stone?”
“I used a fucking net.”
“How did you get past the dragon?”
Harry shines a little red light on the wall “works on cats, why not a dragon”
“How did you get through the hedge maze?”
“Weed-b-gone, it’s like a pound. Nothing will ever grow there again”
It’s the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. The Dark Lord begins to prepare a spell to end Harry Potter’s life once and for all when….
Reblogging because this is funny and the gif is perfect.
This is how I imagine all the modern day muggleborns solve their problems, like they’re having a hard time with herbology, so they just head over to the room of requirement think “I really need a place where my damn cell phone is going to work” and the room makes it happen, then they go in, and call their gran and be like “hey can you send me like, a standard gardening kit? Thanks gran” they get it, and like all the various muggle science made things make herbology loads easier. A muggleborn kid decides they want to help Madame pomfrey in the hospital wing, and they notice she has to brew these really complex potions to help students with like, colds or allergies or whatever, they just write home and be like “hey, dad, can you send me like, 3 boxes of NyQuil and Claritin? Thanks” and then they show Madame pomfrey how the muggles fix illness.
a group of muggleborns all over the world start teaching the pure bloods at their various schools about the Internet and suddenly there are a bunch of Reddit threads called shit like r/potions and r/transfiguration where they’re all helping each other figure out how to do their homework and r/hogwartssecrets where they all start finding ways to screw with the stairs and create new secret passages and a special wizard version of ratemyprofessor pops up.
a small group of muggleborns who went home for Christmas all got those little BB-8 droids for Christmas and then used magic to make them sentient and repainted them to be unique and now there’s a bunch of witches and wizards walking around hogwarts with ball droid familiars
I suggest Harry Potter and the Methods of rationality tbh
i suggest harry potter and the methods of rationality
Ultimate security as Harry is the only one capable of opening it.
Myrtle proudly spending her time acting as a guard/lookout.
Later, Harry diligently teaching Ron, Hermione, and a few choice others, like Neville, how to mimic parseltongue so that they can open it too.
Muggleborns experiencing vicious satisfaction that they’re using this chamber as a place of education and defense, reclaiming the very space Slytherin built to rid the school of their presence.
Hermione methodically dismantling the basilisk’s corpse, covertly selling the priceless ingredients to potion masters, using the funds to continue their work – buying books and battle robes and new wands for those who can’t afford it.
(Hermione saving a portion of those ingredients for her own research, straightening in triumph when she learns what basilisk venom does to horcruxes, knowing she has vials of it hidden up in her room).
Harry reverently adding the Chamber of Secrets to the Marauder’s Map, proudly continuing his family’s work and reveling in the difference they’re making.
These students – these kids – choosing to train in a dark, horrifying place that was never meant for them. Learning spells amongst shadows, growing stronger in inches of murky water, the smell of a decomposing corpse in their noses, memories of all that had happened here haunting them. They know this is what war is really like and it helps to push them forward.
Updating this because people have brought up some REALLY GREAT plot-holes and I like trying to flesh out my AUs soooooooo…
Ginny is the one who suggests using the Chamber. Of course she is. Harry isn’t the type to think of that, but for Ginny… for Ginny the Chamber still haunts her dreams, too often, and she’s furious that a part of the castle is restricted to her – a part of her home that she wants to avoid. She suggests the Chamber, partly for the DA’s benefit, mostly for her own.
Visibility is a concern – what if someone sees them going into the girl’s restroom? They think it’s a serious issue until Ron starts laughing. No one comes near that bathroom anymore, he says. Not ever. It was barely an issue while brewing a month long polyjuice potion, Ron and Harry popping in and out to add ingredients or to stir. Now though? Now that Myrtle has stepped up her game (shrieking, flooding the room if someone unwanted comes near), now that Hogwarts is infused with rumors that Harry fought a basilisk rightin there, now that the nearby corridor still has a bloody, horrifying message that even the professors haven’t been able to erase*… well, students avoid the area like the plague.
Even if they didn’t, the House Elves help them out. Dobby did, after all, suggest the Room of Requirement before Ginny brought up the Chamber. Who better than the workers who see but are not seen to help the DA keep watch?
The castle helps too. By now it knows Harry and desperately wants to protect its students. More than once Umbridge follows a DA member, only to find the staircase moving unexpectedly, taking her in another direction entirely. Sometimes there’s even a door directly beside the lavatory – appearing out of nowhere – that students can slip inside if they feel the need…
Getting out is the other concern. At first they think to bring brooms or levitate one another out… but that’s just not practical. Then, one of the Hufflepuffs asks the obvious and yet oddly illusive question: how did Salazar get out? They start a search and by the end of the day they’ve found at least four hidden exits.
One exit leads out into the Forbidden Forest, a space that’s not nearly as terrifying as it once was. Harry speaks quietly to Firenze and secures the help of the centaurs for when they need safe passage late at night. One day they encounter a group of acromantulas… and Harry learns of Hagrid’s strict new rule – friends of Hagrid are never food, no matter how easy the prey. The students don’t realize it, but they’re slowly gaining allies. Those in the forest begin to take notice of the children who walk both bravely and respectfully through their trees.
(And one day when they’re too tired to walk back, a familiar blue car pulls up and throws open its doors. Ron cheers like a maniac. Ginny laughs and threatens to tell their dad).
Though the exists are great, it’s Hermione who realizes the Chamber’s true benefit – it lies outside of Hogwart’s apparition zone. How can it not? Godric, Helga, and Rowena didn’t know of its existence when they first made the wards. So now the DA can go with ease, they just can’t pop in from anywhere else in the castle. Which is, admittedly, perfect. Apparition lessons begin in earnest.
(And during the Battle of Hogwarts, DA members take Slytherin students by the hand – those who wouldn’t, couldn’t, fight their own families. They take them down to the Chamber and tell them to apparate out. Leave while you still can. Keep safe).
Harry realizing that parseltongue is easily imitated and coming up with an actual password that has to be spoken, one linked to a spell too. It helps that the snakes around the entrance are semi-sentient and are loyal to their new master. They know who’s meant to go down there and who’s not.
Neville joking one day that they should be learning how to use swords, considering that’s how the original battle down here was won. Harry takes it seriously. Not the swords bit, but using physical/muggle fighting techniques on wizards who are too reliant on their magic. They begin reading up on hand-to-hand combat and knives.
Harry needing to test their progress and getting a really stupid idea… but honestly, those often work out in his favor. So one sunny, Saturday morning – when everyone else is lounging outside – Harry sneaks the DA into the third floor corridor. Fluffy is gone, as is the mirror, but the rest remains, no doubt left in case Dumbledore ever had to guard something else precious. Hermione, Ron, and Harry spend the day supervising, teaching their peers how to react under pressure, think through situations, and rely on one another’s skills.
And then one day things get weird (because they always do with Harry) when he realizes that the miniature chamber the basilisk was kept in is the only part of their hideout they’d yet to explore. See, given their rarity, it’s unsurprising that wizardkind knows so little about basilisks – not that they reproduce asexually or that only a parseltongue can hatch the egg. So when Harry crawls into the chamber, and finds a strange egg-like object nestled there, that begins pulsing a soft green color in his presence, and when he basically says, “What the hell…?” out loud, and when it comes out in parseltongue because he is surrounded by snake things…well, let’s just say a few minutes later Harry crawls back out, very sheepish, a baby basilisk cooing around his neck. He laughs pretty shakily and mutters something about finding their mascot.
(And they name the beast – because of course they do – and Hermione invents a soft device to cover its eyes and feeding it is an absolute horror… but they do grow to love their ‘mascot.’ And during the Battle – when Harry is off in the forest and Hogwarts is losing badly – no one is more surprised than the Death Eaters when Ron and Hermione come tearing out of the school riding a goddamn fully grown basilisk. Hermione rips off the cover on its eyes and sets to work).
The most hilarious thing about the fact Buckbeak had a trial and lost is that later on JKR resolves the issue by having Hagrid take him in again and renaming him Witherwings. That’s literally all it took. What if in POA, Hagrid simply said, “Sorry, Buckbeak flew away.”
“There’s a hippogriff right there, Hagrid.”
“A different hipprogriff.”
“I’m… pretty sure that’s the same hipprogriff.”
“Prove it.”
no dna tests we die like scientifically underdeveloped societies
Prisoner of Azkaban continues to be the most frustrating book
Someone should have just adopted Sirius and started calling him Gerald.
Remus: Erm… this is our new order member, my… cousin Gerald. Gerald White.
“Mr. Lupin that is Sirius Black with glasses!” “Oh come now Minister, Sirius Black doesn’t wear glasses. That wouldn’t make sense.” “Well have Mr. White take off his glasses then!” “He can’t he needs them to see.”
it got better
It’s honestly a miracle to me that wizarding society doesn’t collapse every other week because like
You’ve got this world full of people who can destroy whole buildings or turn people into beetles or make vehicles fly just by waving a stick at them
And there is literally no common sense
Anywhere to be found
Voldemort would never have had anyone find out he was back if he just went around calling himself Steve
Okay, see, I thought I saved this post to comment on it but I’d like to bring up
The Minister would NEVER EVER disbelieve in Gerald White. He’d buy it hook line and sinker. The wizarding world would buy it hook line and sinker. The GOBLINS wouldn’t but wizards have been shown to be pretty blindingly clueless. Still, Gringotts would grudgingly give Sirius access to the Black fortune.
But, but, but, you know the one person
the one person
who Gerald White would drive AB-SO-LUTELY FUCKING BATSHIT?
Severus Snape.
Snape would do everything, EVERYTHING, to get people to believe that it’s Sirius. But the Order would ignore it (they accepted Sirius as Sirius before anyway) and Remus would just be so… so affronted.
‘Severus, he is my cousin.’
And Sirius would love it. He’d love the fact that Snape just hated it. He’d be the BEST DAMN GERALD WHITE EVER b/c Snape is doing everything from dropping veritaserum into his firewhisky to capturing a dementor in a box and releasing it on Sirius when he least expects it
That one causes problems for a bare minute because SHIT A DEMENTOR ATTEMPTED TO GIVE GERALD THE KISS MAYBE SNAPE IS RIGHT except Harry comes forward and is like ‘excuse me, I’ve never committed a crime and dementors are ALWAYS attacking me, I think they’re attracted to glasses’
and the magical community is like ‘shit, yeah, you’re right’
and just
Spare. Snape goes spare.
Now I’m imagining Fred and George sneaking extra Weasleys into Snape’s class manifests every year.
Annnd I wrote the thing. Sort of. It kinda got out of hand.
–
The first year they’re just Fred and George, except when occasionally they’re Gred and Forge, but it’s not too long before Snape just stops trying to tell them apart and just treats them as the joint entity “Weasley,” who happens to be in two places at once.
The next year they take turns attending first-year Potions class as Barry Weasley, the glasses-wearing Weasley cousin who missed the Sorting Ceremony because he tried to swallow three chocolate frogs at once on a bet from his twin cousins and got sick.
Snape has a choice between asking questions about Barry and punishing Fred and George for tormenting their cousin, and punishing Fred and George wins out. At this point, it’s not really that weird–the Weasleys do tend toward large families–and any excuse to give the twins detention is basically the sort of thing you could put under a box propped up with a stick on a rope and a “TOTALLY NOT A TRAP” sign to catch Severus Snape.
So he figures Barry Weasley is real. He comments on the boy’s resemblance to Fred and George, and Barry nods and says “Everyone says that. I could fool everyone but them, except eventually people figure out there’s only one of me.”
Snape doesn’t have much cause for complaint. Barry is not a difficult student (the twins are, at this point, quite happy with the joke for its own sake and so don’t risk the Barry persona on tormenting him), perhaps a bit prone to letting his mind wander (it helps that George is actually interested in Potions, and uses the second run as an opportunity to experiment), but there have been no outright disasters centered around his cauldron, which is a lot more than can be said for the twins.
The next year is Fred and George’s third year, Barry’s second year, and Ron’s first year. They don’t take Ron entirely into their confidence … but they do let on that they’ve invented a fictional “Cousin Barry” to mess with Snape a bit, in case Snape asks, but Snape doesn’t ask.
He does mention Barry Weasley to Barry’s supposed Head of House, but by pure luck he manages to do so when Minerva is sufficiently preoccupied by that late night with four first-years sneaking out after curfew, and she hears “Harry and Weasley,” and nods, and asks him something about a Gryffindor fifth-year she’s concerned about, and, well, that basically settles it.
Fred and George run into a minor difficulty in that they don’t have a free period coinciding with “Barry’s” potions class, but they get lucky enough to have History of Magic during that class, and Binns wouldn’t notice if Fred or George set the classroom on fire, much less if Fred or George is always absent.
Fred and George are at this point quite satisfied with getting “Barry” through seven years of Hogwarts without Snape realizing he’s fictional, but then at the beginning of their fourth year Snape is absent from the Sorting and the Welcome Feast and … well. Opportunity beckons.
Since Fred and George are pragmatic about which elective classes they take (they’re much more interested in independent study directed toward magical jokes and pranks), they have several free periods and it only takes a significant look between them to agree that, yes, they can absolutely handle being one more person just for Potions class.
They’re a bit more advanced at their magic now, and a bit of diluted Shrinking Potion and a Freckle Charm create Barnaby, Barry’s younger brother. There’s a minor concern with Ginny being in the same class, and more importantly, Operation Barnaby is still in the planning stages when McGonagall hands out the schedules and they realize they have Transfiguration during the requisite class period and McGonagall will definitely notice if a twin is missing.
Thus is is that Barnaby Weasley, Hufflepuff, is born.
Snape doesn’t give away anything more than a mild frown at another Weasley showing up on the class roster, but he does raise an eyebrow and inquire, “Hufflepuff?” after reading his name.
Barnaby (Fred, at the moment) turns red with the help of a Blushing Charm and looks hurt and defensive, which makes the Hufflepuffs, upset at the perceived insult to their House, accept him without question. Nobody ever asks either twin why he only shows up in Potions class; they get that it’s some long-con joke focused on Snape and they don’t interfere.
Barnaby is not quite as hopeless at Potions as Neville, but he is prone to the same wandering attention span as his brother, only more so. His potions regularly fail and occasionally explode, usually in a way that to Snape indicates carelessness with the ingredients and tells Fred or George something useful about the what happens when you do that.
The next year there are no new Weasley children, officially, but when Fred plops himself down next to George on the train and says “So what about a girl?” George knows exactly what he’s talking about.
They mix a hair-growing potion on the train, and have to hide it quickly when Draco Malfoy comes running into their compartment, frightened of the dementors.
George takes the hair potion and the shrinking potion and the pair of them use the Marauders’ Map to intercept Snape on his way to the Great Hall. Fred hides behind a pillar and casts a Duplicating Illusion Charm on himself and tries hard not to burst out laughing as George plays Nasturtium Weasley, little sister to Barry and Barnaby, who’s somehow managed to get lost on the way to the Great Hall.
Snape’s not the slightest bit pleased to be getting yet another absent-minded Weasley cousin, snarls, snaps something vaguely cutting, and leads her towards the Great Hall, intending to hand her over directly to Professor McGonagall; instead he runs into Fred and George (actually Fred and his charm double); Fred explained that they saw their cousin wandering off and went to go get her. Snape lectures the pair of them on wandering, accuses them of being up to no good, and stalks off to direct evil looks at Professor Lupin.
Which, luckily, takes up so much of his attention that he doesn’t pay attention to the Sorting. Fred and George decide the next morning, after careful consultation of multiple students’ class schedules, to put her in Hufflepuff along with Barnaby.
They strike it lucky again, in that first-year Potions only conflicts with Care of Magical Creatures, to which only one twin is going (they don’t see much point in both of them taking the same class, figuring that one of them knowing something is as good as both of them knowing it and they can teach each other more effectively than anyone else can teach them, an argument that failed to impress Professor McGonagall into letting them each out of half their classes back in first year); Hagrid won’t be expecting to see two of them.
Nasturtium Weasley, it develops, has quite a lot of bright red hair and a tendency to hyperfocus on ingredients or processes, leading to a lot of ruined potions when she keeps stirring too long or spends the whole class period shredding the shrivelfigs or gets lost examining the lobes of a dirigible plum leaf. Fred and George, taking turns being Nasturtium, are happy to spend the time just thinking through some interesting research they’ve been doing or contemplating a problem with their latest invention or just brainstorming new joke ideas until Snape appears, bellowing about melted cauldrons and the people who don’t even notice them because they’re too fascinated by the down on a downy mage-thistle.
But they’re being run just a bit ragged at it and decide that three is enough–until they wander past the Hospital Wing at just the right time to hear Snape bellowing apoplectically about Harry Potter, and Dumbledore’s more reasoned tones making light of the idea that Harry and his friends were in two places at once.
Fred and George look at each other and a light goes on.
They’ve heard about time-turners. They’ve also seen Hermione Granger run herself ragged studying textbooks for every subject available. They know how many subjects there are, and how many class periods in a week.
As one, they reach out and lightly smack each other on the head for not putting it together earlier.
Snape comes raging out the door just in time to see them and gives them detention. Fred and George scowl after him and turn and look at each other. And nod.
It’s on.
Fred “accidentally” bumps into Hermione when she’s on her way to McGonagall’s office, pretends to lose his balance, and falls hard to the floor. It gives him bruises, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for the successful theft of major, highly-regulated, top-secret magical artifacts. Hermione turns to help him, and George switches the time-turner with an elaborately crafted fake, a Confundus Charm and a Diversion Charm giving it the correct density of magical energy signature and ensuring that anyone who tries to use it will find an urgent reason to put it off. (George is super pleased with that one; it’s a time-turner, so quite naturally anyone who can use it has plenty of time to use it later.)
Next year is their sixth year, which brings enough of a drop in courses (there are definite benefits to getting only two OWLS each, though they doubt their mother would agree) that they only need to use the time-turner once, when Barry has Potions when Fred has Transfiguration and George has Herbology. They’re almost disappointed by this, until Fred gets a devastatingly diabolical grin on his face and says, “what if there were two of them?”
George’s face mirrors the grin in an instant, and he responds with his own suggestion. “Cousins.” A pause. “And they hate each other.”
And so come into being Gentian Weasley, younger sister of Barry, Barnaby, and Nasturtium Weasley, and her cousin from yet another branch of the Weasley family, Bilious Weasley the Second.
This time they give themselves some insurance, and make very good use of the time-turner, by charming Snape into seeing the new arrivals be Sorted. For a diversion they let Peeves the Poltergeist into the kitchens and assist him in creating havoc (testing out a potential product, tentatively named the Souper Swimming Pool, in the process); the amount of commotion takes three Professors to sort out, one of them Snape, and it’s surprisingly easy to hit the distracted Potions Master with the prototype of a Daydream Charm, highly modified to suit the occasion.
Once they’ve finished the time loop, they blast themselves with Aguamenti charms to make it look like they’ve just come out of the rain and sit down. Snape sees Weasley, Bilious and Weasley, Gentian be sorted into Gryffindor one right after another and summons himself a bottle of firewhiskey.
This is a mistake, as he has the keen and ignoble joy of being hungover for the worst Potions class he’s ever taught, including that one time when somebody (Potter) threw a firework into the Swelling Solution.
Gentian snickers when Snape reads Bilious’ name. Bilious calls Gentian “freckles.” Slytherin students from accross the room (the both of them are Gryffindors this time) look on in obvious amusement. Snape looks constipated. Their own supposed housemates eye them, looking confused, concerned, and generally bamboozled but none of them vocalize their curiosity.
Fred and George share a secret, gleeful smile, and escalate.
They spill things on each other: water, pigeon milk, stinksap. Gentian breaks a salamander egg on Bilious’ forehead; Bilious stabs Gentian with a knarl quill. They drop the wrong ingredients surreptitiously into each other’s potions. Bilious’ cauldron spews copious amounts of green smoke, gaining a lecture and losing five points for Gryffindor; his retaliation recreates Neville Longbottom’s disaster a few years prior and melts Gentian’s cauldron. Gentian shrieks at Bilious, Bilious dumps the whole jar of puffer-fish eggs over Gentian’s head, and Gentian launches herself at him, punching and clawing and screaming her head off.
Snape separates them with a wave of his wand and threatens them with a month’s worth of detention collecting bubotuber pus. Gentian says, “You can’t do that, I’ll tell McGonagall on you,” which neatly puts Snape off telling Professor McGonagall himself, because honestly, she probably will take issue with it. Bilious smirks loftily and sneers, “Baby. I like bubotuber pus. It smells like petrol.”
“How,” Snape asks suspiciously, “would a wizardborn young man like yourself know about petrol?” and Gentian (secretly Fred) hides a wince; their father’s particular fascination with Muggle things might be their undoing. But George recovers, saying proudly, “My dad’s an accountant.”
The Slytherins laugh. Fred catches the reference and Gentian says, “Oh, right, your dad’s the family Squib.”
Bilious grabs his cauldron and makes to empty it over her head, only to find that the contents are basically a solid baked into the cauldron’s bottom. Snape casts it away and tells them they’re more of a disaster than Neville Longbottom and deducts fifty points from Gryffindor, and they spend the walk out of the dungeons trying to convince their housemates that the points don’t actually matter that much.
Snape goes straight to McGonagall to complain, but refers to them as “Those two damned Weasleys,” and McGonagall nods and makes sympathetic faces and promises to speak to them. Fred and George get a detention with McGonagall at the same time as Gentian and Bilious have one with Snape, which makes them as happy as a time-turner can make two mischief-minded teenagers in possession thereof.
That year is a delight. They have a Triwizard Tournament to watch, a small multitude of visiting students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, many of them attractive, to interact with, and five alter egos with which to torment Professor Snape. Moreover, with the time-turner and the extra Potions classes, they’ve made significant progress on their product line and are turning a brisk business with the student body.
Snape learns quickly and the first time is also the last time he schedules Gentian and Bilious for a detention together. Fred and George take it in turns to run certain of their inventions past Flitwick and Sprout to gain back some of the points they lose in the first-year Potions class. By the time summer rolls around, Fred calculates that they’ve used the time-turner enough to have come of age and potentially erased the Trace on them.
They pay Mundungus Fletcher a galleon to come somewhere out-of-the-way with them and lend them his wand to cast a few spells. When no owls show up carrying Ministry warning letters, they head to Diagon Alley and celebrate by buying a storefront and the flat above it, and spend most of the summer there, fixing it up and getting things ready for a product launch next year. NEWTS, schmoots.
There’s of course that annoying business about Voldemort returning, and their mother decides the best way to keep them out of the Order’s business is to turn them into house-elves, but they come up with a few charms to do housework slowly by magic, and adjust the illusion spells, and put in just as much of an appearance as necessary.
Then September rolls around again, and their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is even worse than Snape and Lockheart combined, and just like that, Barry, Barnaby, Nasturtium, Gentian, and Bilious all add themselves to Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.
This largely sucks, because the DADA classes are utterly useless this year, but Fred gets the idea of substituting their alter egos and eventually themselves with illusion charms (”She doesn’t actually teach, she’ll never notice”), which makes George laugh hysterically because they’ve progressed from attending classes multiple times as different people to using doppelgangers to avoid going to class at all, and the two tactics are completely at odds with each other. But they do it.
Umbridge doesn’t notice, and pretty soon the only class they show up for is the one where second-years Bilious and Gentian are forever hurling hateful looks, creative insults, badly-aimed spells, and improvised projectiles at each other.
Umbridge starts taking points from Gryffindor off at the first “blast-ended walnut” from Gentian and assigns the first detention at Bilious’ elaborately-detailed Muggle catapult. Fred and George add a line of Magical Model Muggle Major Munitions to the product array at the soon-to-be-hatched Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, and make copious notes on how to use them as actual weaponry once Voldemort makes his appearance.
Fred writes “I must not fight in class” with Umbridge’s quill for six hours and then steals it. George listens to Fred’s description of the evening, takes one look at Fred’s hand, and breaks into Umbridge’s office and takes a generous crap on her desk. “Crude,” says Fred admiringly, “but deserved.”
The next time Barnaby has DADA, Fred goes as him in person and tests out a Skiving Snackbox. Throwing up on Umbridge is satisfying. He gets detention and writes “I will be more careful with how I am sick” some nine hundred times with a completely normal quill, charmed to write in red ink like a Muggle fountain pen, and mimes innocence when Umbridge expresses confusion at the lack of redness and swelling on his hand.
Gentian and Bilious get into a full-on wizards’ duel in their next DADA class, and aim so terribly that Umbridge gets hit more than they do. They both get detention, and Fred and George send illusions in their stead.
Next week they do it again, and Umbridge spends half the afternoon in the hospital wing, getting tentacles removed. Colin Creevey, confined to bed rest for a case of Exploding Hiccups, sneaks a picture and later trades it to the Weasley Twins for a Pygmy Puff, two Daydream Charms, and a promise to look into developing Extendable Eyes.
Umbridge goes to complain to McGonagall, who listens to the entire rant about a pair of students she’s never heard of with a reasonably straight face. Then she blandly tells Umbridge she’ll look into it, and turns back to her essay-marking.
McGonagall wanders down to the staff room the next morning and relates the whole conversation to the other teachers. Flitwick and Sprout are practically rolling on the floor by the time she finishes, but Snape is standing there looking Stupified; he makes the biggest miscalculation he’s made in years, and asks, “You mean they’re not real?”
McGonagall looks at him, calculates what all it would take for him to be asking that question, and promptly laughs herself sick.
Snape waits, looking like he might catch fire, until she recovers. “Yes, Severus. I have never heard of a Gentian Weasley, and the only Bilious Weasley I know is my age.”
Snape says, “There’s two Bilious Weas—who names these people?!”
“There’s one, Severus. I can assure you that there is no such person attending this school at this time.”
He grimaces, then tries, “I don’t suppose Ginny, Ronald, and their siblings are fictional?”
“No such luck, Severus.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them. “Fred and George.”
“Most assuredly real, Severus.”
“No, I meant–they did this. They’re responsible for this, aren’t they?”
“I would imagine so,” McGonagall says, a hint of a smile hovering about her lips.
He eyes her. “Shut up, Minerva.”
She claps a hand to her mouth to hide a giggle, and he turns and sweeps from the room.
As it turns out, he has Gentian and Bilious the next period.
Fred and George, blissfully unaware, are launching into their standard pretend fight—in this case, swordfighting with Transylvanian Lesser Pseudoporcupine quills—when Snape arrives at their table and claps a hand on their near shoulders. He’s smiling like a dragon.
“Fred. George.”
Shit.
They have a moment of sharp dismay, but it doesn’t last. They are the Weasley Twins, they’ve been fooling Snape for years with this prank, and they have money hidden in multiple places and the deed to a shop in Diagon Alley and all the official education they’ll ever need.
They turn and grin back.
“Well done, Professor,” says George. “How’d you find out?”
“Professor McGonagall told me.” His smile was a thin, sharp blade.
“No way.”
“Really?”
“How’d she know?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“I’m afraid I did, Mr. Weasley,” says McGonagall from the doorway. “Although admittedly without knowing you were pranking Professor Snape as well as Professor Umbridge; I thought I was merely sharing a very amusing anecdote with the other teachers.”
They’re drawing curious looks, though fortunately Fred-as-Gentian’s cauldron is hissing like a teakettle and drowning out the conversation; Snape snaps at them to pay attention to their cauldrons before jerking his head at his office door.
Once they’re ensconced within what Fred once called the Snape Museum of Slimy Things, and Fred and George have undone the spells and potions that make them Bilious and Gentian, McGonagall turns to Snape and says, “I forbid you to expel them, Severus.”
He’s about to respond when Fred says, “Go ahead, expel us.”
That gets them two very surprised professors. George shrugs. “Everything’s ready to go. We’ve got a shop in Diagon Alley and enough stock to fill it and enough expertise for a lifetime of success.”
Snape frowns and asks, “Do I want to know what you’re planning to sell?”
George says, “No” at the same times as Fred says, “It’s a joke shop.”
McGonagall looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Snape looks like he’s swallowed a sea cucumber. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then says, “I would have never imagined an argument that could convince me not to try to expel you, but you’ve just provided it. I will not be assisting you in selling pranks to the student body of Hogwarts on a retail level.”
George says, “Actually, we’ve been doing it since the middle of last year.”
Snape turns to McGonagall. “I quit.”
“No.”
“Hey, let Umbridge expel us,” Fred suggests. George snickers.
Snape looks at them, and then at McGonagall, and then back to the twins.
“No, you’re going to stay here,” Snape says, a look in his eyes that makes them wonder what all Umbridge has said to him. “You’re going to continue to be Gentian and Bilious—and Nasturtium and Barnaby and Barry.” He looks to McGonagall as if for confirmation, and George considers that both professors were young once, and were quite possibly as complete and utter hellions as him and Fred.
Snape smiles like a knife. “Give her hell.”
He’s never felt so much respect for a teacher before.
“Mr. Weasley?” Snape adds, almost as an afterthought, his eyes shifting from one to the other as if unsure which of them he’s addressing.
“Yessir?”
“Fifty points from Gryffindor.”
Fred and George smile at each other as they follow McGonagall into the hall.
Worth it.
They follow orders. Bilious and Gentian hit Umbridge with so many “accidental” hexes that she finally bans them from her classroom. Barnaby functions as a sort of a Patient Zero for Umbridge-itis. Barry uses his status as the quiet one to construct elaborate spells that have Umbridge’s classroom warping itself into odd shapes or growing spines out the walls or puffing up like a balloon and trapping her at the bottom. Nasturtium stands up in class one day and slams an epic poem about how teachers who don’t teach are useless and a sea sponge would do a better job of earning the salary.
Between them, they work to set up elaborate pranks and position Umbridge to catch the worst of it. After Dumbledore’s removal, Fred and George set off the best fireworks display Hogwarts has ever seen, and McGonagall gives Gryffindor one hundred points; Gentian and Bilius, usually the only ones still played in person by the Weasley twins, play Umbridge beautifully the next morning, fighting each other as usual and then turning ally, working together to attack her with flurries of squawking birds and flying, shitting replica nifflers.
When Umbridge twigs that they’re all working together she stands up in the middle of the Great Hall at dinner and demands that every Weasley in the place stand up.
Four Weasleys, all siblings, do so.
“Where are the rest of you?” she hisses to Ron, who looks clueless. Ginny cocks an eyebrow and looks to Fred and George speculatively. Umbridge turns to them and they smile like sharks.
Fred climbs up onto the table, George right on his heels. “Ladies and gentlemen, a performance by myself and my twin!”
George produces a potion, downs it, and becomes Gentian.
Fred narrates as George shifts between the various fictional cousins, ending by restoring his own appearance, putting on a pair of glasses, and becoming Barry. Snape slaps his face down into his hands. George finishes by announcing that these new appearance potions, and the fireworks, and a multitude of other products, would be available at 93 Diagon Alley, home to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
“Not so fast,” says Umbridge, holding out her wand. “The pair of you are going to be expelled—but first you are going to find out what happens to troublemakers in my school.”
“We’re not,” says George, “But let me tell you something: this is not, and will never be, your school.” He looks around at the students, at the teachers, at Snape and McGonagall standing a short distance away, and he and Fred wave their arms in a mirrored gesture to take in the whole student body, and they say, the pair of them together, “This is our school.”
The cheer from around them shakes the rafters.
Then they raise their wands and say, again in unison, “Accio brooms!”
The brooms make holes in the walls on their way in, and Fred and George mount them and soar up among the floating candles, and Fred has to cast a Sonorus Charm to make himself heard over the cheering.
“Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, number 93, Diagon Alley: Our new premises!”
And George waves to Peeves, who’s floating up there along with them, attracted by the promise of mayhem. “Give her hell from us.”
Peeves salutes, and Fred and George fly out the front door to freedom.
When they return to Hogwarts almost two years later, their time spent as the fake Weasleys serves all of Hogwarts well: the muggle munitions devices, some elaborate magical shielding, judiciously-applied daydream charms turned hallucinogenic means of luring the Death Eaters to shooting at false targets, and projectiles that created all manner of interesting effects, save the day for many people in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Fred never knows he came close to dying. George never knows he came close to losing his twin. They go back to Diagon Alley, afterwards, and as the world puts itself back together, they help people laugh.
So I was rereading Harry Potter, when I came across this and thought- what if instead of Cedric Diggory, Cassius Warrington had been chosen to compete in the Triwizard Tournament?
Imagine Dumbledore calling out the name of the Hogwarts champion and it isn’t a Gryffindor, or a Ravenclaw, or even a Hufflepuff, but it’s a Slytherin. A student from a House most people hate.
Imagine Cassius Warrington getting up, and three out of four Houses are booing at him and shouting things like “NO!” or, “We can’t have a Slytherin champion!” or demanding a retry. But he’s a Slytherin- he’s been dealing with this shit since he got sorted, so he keeps his head high and joins the other champions.
Imagine Harry trying to catch Warrington alone because he doesn’t really want to associate with Slytherins (plus Malfoy has this tendency of being around the guy ALL THE TIME since he got chosen), but at the same time he’s also fair enough not to want him to walk into the first task unprepared.
Imagine Warrington walking over to Harry a few months later, and Ron and Hermione both jump into a protective stance, wands out, but instead of attacking Harry he just tells him to stick the egg underwater. (Because Slytherins don’t forget those who helped them out).
Imagine Warrington and Harry helping each other out in the labyrinth.
Imagine Harry being devastated when Peter kills Warrington- because Voldemort doesn’t care what house they’re form, a spare is a spare.
Imagine the uproar that causes among the Slytherins, because some of their parents really are Death Eaters and they know what really happened.
Imagine Slytherins fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts and shouting “This is for Cassius!”
Imagine Harry returning with Warrington’s body, and the crowd realizes what’s happened, but Warrington’s parents don’t show up. There’s no one to mourn him, to cradle him in their arms and cry for their son. The Slytherins know why. His parents were Death Eaters, too.
Imagine Slytherins reaching out, asking for help from classmates from other houses. They’re terrified, truly terrified because the being their parents claimed would never hurt them because they’re pureblood, they realize that he does not care.
Imagine Slytherins in the 5th book sneaking off to join Dumbledore’s Army, to learn more about who Voldemort is without their parents acting as a filter.
Imagine the shock when they’re told what he’s really done.
Imagine that a few talented Slytherins went with Harry and the others into the Ministry of Magic. The others are a bit wary but they prove themselves as friends.
Imagine them being confronted by Lucius Malfoy in the the Hall of Prophecy, and when the Death Eaters descend, they know that any one of them could be their parents.
Imagine the shocked gasp of a Death Eater as they realize their own child, a pureblood, is standing defiantly with Harry Potter. They choke back a cry. They can’t let their child know that they were about to duel to the death.
Imagine a DA Slytherin facing off against their own Death Eater parent. That they make the decision to let their child defeat them, because in that moment, they realize that they love their child more than they fear Voldemort. They go down, mask unveiled, and the Slytherin kid has to be dragged from the fight before he gets killed.
Imagine Book 6 Slytherins getting more friendly and cooperative with the other houses. Two years of Voldemort terrorizing the muggle and Wizarding world, two years where their parents just up and leave some days, cringing from the pain in their arm, two years after the death of the first Slytherin pureblood, Cassius Warrington, killed by Voldemort’s right-hand man, and they’re slowly hitting the breaking point.
Imagine Slytherin kids keeping tabs on their parents, sending the information to Harry, who shares it with the Order of the Phoenix, and hoping that their parents won’t be killed.
Imagine Book 7 Slytherins low-key rebelling against the new oppressive Hogwarts staff.
Imagine the final siege on Hogwarts, where Slytherins stand proudly by their fellow houses, knowing full-well they could be fighting their own parents. Some Slytherins know their parents were in the fighting. They hope to find them first and sneak them away. Their fellow students understand. Professor McGonagall allows 7th Year Slytherin, Pansy Parkinson, to duel a death eater in her stead; her father is under that veil. She knows it.
Imagine the aftermath of the battle; every house suffered loses. Slytherin students crying over the deaths of friends they made in every house.
Imagine
a Cassius Warrington statue made in his honor, the first Slytherin to fight and die nobly with Harry Potter, the boy who lived, in the face of ultimate evil. He was a true Slytherin, and it’s in his name that Slytherin children and their families have cut all ties with the Death Eaters, denounced Voldemort, and are finally living in peace.
Imagine a story in which Harry wasn’t in love with his fellow champion’s girlfriend, but after her boyfriend’s death just hugs her so long, so hard, and says “he wanted to win for you. You should know–you should know he won, he did it for you” and gives her the best hug and shoulder he knows how to be because her parents aren’t there either and she must know why.
Imagine Harry staring over her head at everyone else until Hermione steps up–it doesn’t take long, but it takes long enough that when she does all eyes are on her as a source of motion–and says “we’re never going to forget this. They’re not going to get away with it” and the girlfriend just latches onto Hermione and everyone is in wands-out stance convinced she’s about to attack the shit out of Hermione, and then the girlfriend stares into her eyes and says “do you promise me” and Hermione just gives her this super-firm nod and says “I promise” and the girlfriend just collapses on her, sobbing.
Imagine Dumbledore trying to give some flowery speech about inter-wizard solidarity while glossing over why, because Slytherins have always been a touchy subject, and Ron gets to his feet and says “Professor, I need to say something important” and Dumbledore is so surprised he just cedes the floor, and Ron–after that awkward moment when he realizes everyone is staring at him–says he didn’t know Warrington particularly, but he knows how Warrington and Harry played. That each was always cheering on the other. Both wanted to win, but neither was willing to undercut the other by underhanded means. He finishes up saying “I think–I think it’s important everyone should know he died being what a champion should be. Because he could have abandoned Harry and instead he stood up with him to play the game the honest way, and he died for it. And–and Slytherin House should be proud, and we should all be proud, because Warrington was a good bloke.” He sits back down all flustered because he didn’t actually stand up meaning to make a speech. And then Pansy Parkinson stands up before Dumbledore can take back control of the room and says “I want to tell Weasley thank you.” And all of Slytherin House raises a glass–to Warrington, to Weasley, to Potter–and the other houses follow suit. Many years later, Wizarding scholars will say that was the moment Voldemort truly lost.
Imagine later that summer. Harry gets several owls on his birthday, all unsigned. The birds are plump and pretentious and well-cared-for. He will never know which Slytherins sent him their treasures: parchments with hexes developed by the Death Eaters; a strange locket that will only open if he whispers a special spell but that always shows him the picture he most needs to see; a page torn from a potions book that, brewed properly, will allow him extra time to summon a Patronus by giving him a few crucial seconds not just of happiness but of bliss. It doesn’t matter. Harry knows these gifts not as birthday gifts but for what they really are, and he treasures the locket and copies out the potion to send to Hermione and Mrs. Weasley, and when first summoned by the Order of the Phoenix he marches straight up to Dumbledore with the hexes and says “I can’t tell you where I got these, Professor. But they’re in use by the Death Eaters and I think you should have them.” Months later, Sirius will recognize the spell Bellatrix shoots at him, and will dive out of the way just in the nick of time.
The final battle. Everyone is there. Sirius somehow ends up herding a group of Slytherins. They all stare at him and he at them, across a centuries-old divide Voldemort has only succeeded in deepening. Then he remembers the hexes. Harry’s locket, now tucked under Sirius’ shirt because Harry’s friends are with him in this battle but most of Sirius’ are dead. The moment that happiness potion saved Remus’ life, his very soul. Snape’s final words to Harry, finally seen not as mockery but real true advice. What Harry said Voldemort said–his first words in his new form. They are kids, and they are sharing the same kind of hurt he once wouldn’t admit to, watching his mother burn his name off the family tree. “When we go in there, it’s going to be hell,” he tells the Slytherins. “Some of you are probably going to die. I might go down too, and if I do I want your best curser in the front. But I want you all to remember one thing. There are no spares.” Later retellings of the battle never fail to mention the moment a group of angry, screaming teens burst into the Great Hall, wearing their green and silver as the badge of honor it should be, shouting NO SPARES, NO SPARES at the tops of their voices in between hexes and curses and the occasional physical punch. When Hermione is present, she always interrupts the storyteller to be sure everyone knows about the moment Blaise Zabini shoved her to the floor, dropped on top of her, fired off three curses in rapid succession and said “stay alive, Granger, we need you” before jumping back to his feet and vanishing into the melee–how, for all anyone knows, those may have been his last words, and she will not let his sacrifice go unnoted.
The aftermath. Malfoy holds out a hand to Sirius, badly injured on the floor. Sirius asks how Malfoy is willing to trust him. Malfoy nods at his chest. “You’ve got my godfather’s locket,” he says, and when Sirius and Harry finally speak after the battle Harry gives his full agreement to the very first thing out of Sirius’ mouth. They give the locket to Malfoy. Sirius grits his teeth and closes his eyes and opens them and says “He probably saved my life, giving Harry that.” He doesn’t say thank you. Malfoy hears it anyway.
The school reopens under a single banner: the four Houses united. The House rivalry is reduced to just that–a competition in fun–with those deep divides slowly healing to scars, and eventually away to nothing at all.
Imagine it.
When we stand, we stand united as one
And then there would be no hope for any uprising of evil, no users of the dark arts would dare to attack. There would be no neglected Slytherins turning to a darker cause. The unity Cassius Warrington’s death caused would come to save the world, time and time again, as would-be-Voldemorts find no followers. No children will ever have to fight their parents, or family. There would always be peace.
oh christ somebody added to it and now i’m a soggy emotional wreck
I’m crying because this is what slytherins should have been and truly are
This is beautifully written and I wish it was in the books xx
This is such a fantastic read. A Slytherin triwizard champion sounds awesome.
how many muggle born kids showed up at hogwarts like, “i get you’re into magic and don’t get me wrong, magic is awesome, but please don’t try and tell me quills and inkwells make more sense than pencils. i realize you have an aesthetic going, but admit it’s that. admit it’s just for looks.”
Imagine how many muggles parents looked at the supply list and went “Parchment? Quills? INKWELLS? Fuck this we’re going to staples.”
And then imagine if the muggle parents start getting into arguments with the teachers when they start getting messages telling them their kids aren’t using the proper materials.
“Okay look we can accept working with frog livers, turning mice into fine china, and whatever the fuck ‘arithmancy’ is but we’re not going to let you shame our kids just because they choose to use a bic pen instead of this ‘ye old inkwell’ bullshit. Also. it’s called a spiral notebook and I’m not gonna make my Abby drag around five hundred feet of loose parchment just because you people have a theme going.”
Aesthetic or death
I’ve got to wonder, though, how much of the school supply list at Hogwarts is based on aesthetic and how much is based on what the Muggle world was like when wizards retreated into secrecy. Like, how many wizards who haven’t taken Muggle Studies are aware that nobody uses inkwells and quill pens anymore? And I bet the Muggle parents over the years have always just assumed “well there must be some reason for all this, it must work better with these supplies, there must be something inherently magical in parchment” and just went with it.
Give me the story of the Muggle-born witch whose parents can’t afford all the fancy school supplies, who literally cringe when they’re told about the fund for “underprivileged students” because they’re not POOR but they’ve got four other children and two of them need special care, who scrimp and save and scrape together until they can afford the school supply list even if most of it’s secondhand, but they start at the top of the list with the things that HAVE to be bought in Diagon Alley and go from there, and when they get towards the end of the list they start making do.
On September 1, in this big crowd of ickle firsties, there’s one who stands out because her robes don’t look quite right but no one can quite pinpoint why, until an older student asks her the next day and she shyly admits that her mother made them for her out of some fabric she’s had lying around for a while. She gets to her first class and sits in the back because she’s a little embarrassed and pulls out the battered secondhand textbook and her wand and everything else she needs, prepared to take notes, and everything’s going along just fine until Professor Flitwick suddenly stops in the middle of his lecture and asks what she’s doing, and she just freezes but manages to stammer out that she’s just taking notes, Professor.
Flitwick is suddenly at her side, how did he get there so quickly, and examining her cheap retractable pen and the packet of looseleaf paper in a flimsy three-ring binder where the center ring is already out of alignment, and the other Muggle-borns and half-bloods in the class are snickering because look at this loser who didn’t know you need parchment and quills for this, who ever heard of doing magic with a biro, but Flitwick is fascinated and asks if he can try one, and maybe she tells him to keep that one because she has more (even though she only has a couple more, but she can make do with pencils, and surely somebody around here will loan her a little bit of ink to refill one of her pens if she needs to, I mean, it can’t be that hard to fill up the little ink sticks inside of them, can it?) and he beams at her like she’s just given him the House Cup and goes back to teaching like nothing has happened.
And then all of her teachers are asking her about these things, and maybe a few of the other Muggle-born students tentatively help her answer them, and when McGonagall presses her she admits that her parents couldn’t afford to get her everything she needed and it was a lot cheaper to go to the shop on the corner and pick up a half-dozen packs of looseleaf and a packet of pens than it was to buy the quill and parchment and honestly, Professor, I didn’t think it would matter, and McGonagall smiles because she remembers her own father and says it doesn’t.
The next year the school supply list says only ink-based writing utensils and parchment or lined paper and a few of the more traditionalist pureblood families insist on only sending their children with quills and inkwells, but there are other students–a lot of other students–with retractables and stick pens and a couple of the older Muggle-born students come in with really nice quality fountain pens and there’s a whole black market (or at least grey market) going on with regards to the buying and selling and trading of glitter gel pens and a lot of debates over whether fine-tipped pens or the broader ones are better and there’s at least one kid who’s got one of those gigantic foot-long novelty click pens because what, you said it had to be ink-based, so what if it’s an inch thick and hot pink with Disney princesses all over it, it’s still a pen, and within a few years nobody can remember why there was such an issue with them in the first place.
Nobody has the slightest idea what to do the first time a student shows up with his grandfather’s typewriter, though.
when i heard there’s only one wizarding school in america, i laughed incredulously, and i know i’m not the only one. one school for the whole huge country? obviously brits don’t have any idea how big america is! cue derisive anecdotes about visitors who thought they could visit hollywood as a day trip from new york.
but recently something’s occurred to me: what if ilvermorny IS the only ‘wizarding school’ in america, with ‘wizarding school’ being defined as a wizard-only establishment where they teach nothing but magic?
aside from how unprepared that leaves kids for the rest of life, there just isn’t the population density to support wizard-exclusive pocket-universe enclaves anywhere but the east coast and possibly los angeles. even chicago is more spread out than that, and when it comes to mid-size cities like minneapolis and st. louis, forgeddaboudit. not even wizards would choose to live crammed cheek by jowl on quaintly crooked pedestrian-only streets when they could have a three-bedroom prairie-style on a wooded half-acre in edina.
so i’m thinking, yeah, ok, most american magicals don’t send their kids to wizard school. kids go to regular school and have wizarding clubs and retreats and summer camps instead. gives new meaning to “one time at band camp.”
the pureblood prejudice never developed in america? well, of course not, no one but the hamptons set goes even a single day without interacting with muggles. most of your friends are going to be muggles. there aren’t enough magical jobs for everyone, so most people’s coworkers will be muggles. except we wouldn’t call them muggles, of course, and certainly not ‘no-maj’ – that sounds like something that was said for a while by one particular new york jet set clique in the 1920′s and got written down in an english etiquette book as ‘what americans say’. we’d probably call them ‘mundanes’ or ‘normals’ if we called them anything at all.
the stuff about wand permits and other odd regulations makes sense for a small bureaucracy that doesn’t really understand why it can’t control things the way european magical governments do. it’s kind of a cargo cult legislation. probably most americans don’t even use a wand most of the time. european wand-focused magic might be the Done Thing among the WASP contingent, but everyone else undoubtedly knows at least something about navajo healing ritual, haitian voodoo, lakota dance magic, chinese feng-shui warding techniques, etcetera. taking away a person’s wand doesn’t take away their magic. you can’t say ‘corn pollen permit’ with a straight face and they sell chalk at the corner store.
i expect american wizards look at the hogwarts set as kind of a weird sect with weird restrictions and weird costumes. like the amish, but instead of furniture and quilts, they export clueless young men.
if I lick your brain will I gain your creativity?
i don’t know but it’s worth a try
also no one else will be able to eat it because it’s got your germs on it, which will be handy if zombies
this has always pretty much been my whole exact understanding of the hp universe
i also figured a lot of american magic is in english instead of the pseudo greek/latin British spells since, unlike British schools, most Americans never study those, so our spells are like ‘Fire’, ‘Unlock", “Magic Missile’
also american wands have gun grips or are baseball bats
when i was a kid i made a wand out of a piece of copper pipe with brass end caps, and carried it around with me for most of a year; i know a lot of kids who had walking sticks from summer camp or hiking, and pretended they were magic. hell, i bet a lot of wizard kids learn to cast with a #2 pencil, just from idly messing around.
also, spells based on superhero powers: definitely a thing.
imagine some baddie trying to AK someone and getting hit by SHAZAM in return.
american wizards learn how to do spider-man webbing out of wands the way kids learn to do that one S symbol
source: remember those dumb/racist comics ron had in his room? that’s all they got. britwizards don’t know a single spider-man
spells based on d&d too, i bet. and not nearly as much distinction between ‘dark arts’ and the rest, largely because a lot of the nonwhite arts got classified as Ebil Scary Bad by anglos, and the rest of america wasn’t having it. in louisiana, knowing the voodoo lady can raise the dead just speaks to the high quality of her marching powder.
florida wizards can use pool noodles as wands
not a single british wizard has ever returned from florida
dude florida is just one big messy cryptid zone, the ‘florida man’ phenomenon is real and ‘hold my beer’ is a very powerful spell
edit: ok, wizarding america IS silly, just not the way rowling thought
It’s a city named “onion” in the vernacular of the Miami and Illini, built on a swamp: you know it is steeped in some serious ancient native magic. And no ordinary cow started a fire bringing the whole town down in one fell swoop, come on now.
Whereas, let’s be real, the majority of magic used in Los Angeles is either a) used to alter/improve appearance as it is the city of undying vanity or b) used to bypass traffic while invisible because screw taking the 101 and the 405, honestly.
Minnesota wizarding families use old Norse pagan and church sigils, as well as some Proto Norse runic magic (the uses and varieties of which they do not share with scholars who would really like to know how to use the runes properly thank you). Hot Dish is a traditional meal at magic conclaves. Last year a nineteen year old wizard claimed he cast a spell using a cheesy breadstick from Toppers, but the claim has yet to be substantiated.
In the early 2000s every young witch chose to practice her magic by using a feather gel pen as a wand. Summer magic camps devoted entire charms classes to making your tech deck levitate and do flips. Wizarding Pokémon cards feature Pokémon that jump off the card and perform tiny battles when played.
as a minnesota bear i can inform you that our magic is equal parts scandinavian and ojibwe. our weather magic is unsurpassed. oh, we don’t use it to control the weather – that would fuck everything up so bad you don’t even know. we just know things like when to plug in the engine heater overnight, and when the tornado sirens are for realsies.
snow golems: totally a thing. plow truck patronuses are not unheard-of.
whatever lives in lake superior, you do not mess with it. it’s nothing so friendly as homicidal merfolk. the lake itself is alive, and she has weird moods. all the other 9999 lakes, we can calm with the swirl of a canoe paddle, but gitchigumi you leave the hell alone. when she kicks up you apologize and gtfo. all magic can do is give you fair warning.
the edmund fitzgerald didn’t have a water witch on board. bad idea, guys.
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