Just like Slughorn, Albus Dumbledore collects people. Only, instead of focusing on those with influence, he looks to the outcasts.
The expelled half-giant. The young werewolf. The repentant Death Eater.
He protects them and gives them a second chance. All he asks in return is their loyalty.
And, if on occasion he requests that they undertake a certain task, invoking their debt of gratitude – well, that is no more than he is owed.
He once thought to add a certain disowned Black to his collection, but quickly realised his mistake.
Sirius is not an outcast, but a rebel. He knowingly chose his path, and chooses what price he is willing to pay for it. He refuses to be used.
So Albus Dumbledore abandons him.
Who gave you the RIGHT?
Dumbledore knows Sirius’s loyalty lies with Harry instead of him, and he has no use for someone who is not willing to follow his orders without question.
Ooooohoo if there’s ever a post that fits my aesthetic…
okay but then where does Harry himself fit into this collection? Is he an outcast because he is “the Boy Who Lived”?
Nooonono, my friend, that’s what makes this post so beautiful. Because it fits the meta I’ve been trying to get people to accept for years.
Harry was an outcast due to a childhood filled with abuse and neglect.
Vernon made him an outcast by dismissing his claims of magic, berating him, locking him in a CLOSET and putting bars on his window, and let’s face it, even though her editor made her cut it out, Jo intended for there to be physical abuse.
Petunia made him an outcast by enabling and contributing to this abuse, as well as making Harry do dozens of chores while doting on Dudley.
Dudley made him an outcast by bullying him and threatening any students at school who wanted to be his friends.
And the rest of the wizarding world made him an outcast when they bullied him for being an outsider.
Harry James Potter became an outcast the moment he was placed with The Dursleys.
And who put him there in the first place?
I’m here for this Anti-Dumbledore discussion.
This makes even more sense when you consider why Dumbledore deliberately made Harry an outcast.
Think about it What would Harry have been like if he had grown up in the wizarding world? Or, to put it another way, what would Harry have been like if he had grown up in a world where magic was the norm?
He would have taken magic for granted. He would have been less likely (especially as he got older) to view Dumbledore as a wise mentor and more likely to see him as flawed and capable of bad decisions. He would have seen both the world and Dumbledore as ordinary, with their good points and bad points.
But Dumbledore didn’t need a well-adjusted boy who took magic and the magical world for granted. He needed a child who would love the magical world unstintingly, even irrationally, because it was a haven from neglect and abuse. Even more, he needed a child who feared this world becoming evil and who therefore would not question someone that he saw as the ultimate authority, especially if he believed that obeying that authority would keep the world safe.
Even if obedience meant his own death.
Dumbledore wanted a martyr who would die for the wizarding world, because he believed that Voldemort could not die until Harry did. Which was why he left Harry with the Dursleys and let them neglect and emotionally abuse him for the next ten years.
“If only he had died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it
happened. Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to
save someone he loved… He envied even his parents’ deaths now. This
cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind
of bravery.”
if helga hufflepuff isn’t ur favorite founder then ur wrong because when all the other founders were like ‘i’ll teach the smart ones’ and ‘i’ll teach the aristocratic ones’ and ‘i’ll teach the ones who r willing to fight bears with their teeth’ helga was just like ‘fuck that i’ll teach anybody who wants to learn’ and thats how u do education
harry potter, surprising literally everyone, retires from being an auror to make ceramics in a cottage in the hills. “i don’t know,” the boy who lived said in a statement. “becoming a potter just seemed right, you know?”
I’ve been on this site for how long and I am in shock it took this long for a potter joke
i draw and make pottery but ive never drawn somebody doing pottery so this was fun and i fully support this even if its just a joke lol
i think the thing with harry potter – why it’s so loved, why it’s so derided, all by people who grew up reading the books – is just that. a lot of the people on sites like this who are reading it and critiquing it and analysing it are people who were kids reading these books, and grew up reading them. (mostly because we’re a large age demographic on these sorts of social media) i know i was four or five when i read them for the first time; i think they might have been the first novels i read independently like that. and i loved them! of course i did, i was four or five, and already an up-and-coming urban fantasy fan. they were full of magic, and kids who were sort of like me, and i loved them.
of course, i’m not four or five now. and neither are any of the people who grew up with the books when they were released. we’re all in our late teens and twenties, and when we look back, we’re looking back with an adult’s critical eye.
because when you’re nine years old, as i was when half-blood prince came out, or eleven, as i was when deathly hallows was released, the idea of harry going into the cave with dumbledore, or snape’s past with lily, don’t seem all that bad. after all, harry’s sixteen, and that’s way old – and snape’s past totally absolves him of any wrongdoing, right? it’s so romantic
and then we got older, and we read that series we’d loved when we’re kids, but we’re older and more critical. we look at it as adults, and see where it’s lacking. how there’s maybe five people of colour in harry’s year, how the only lgbt+ character was revealed to be so outside the books and it was never mentioned inside them, how messed up it is that harry did all this stuff and lived through so much when he was just a kid. even silly stuff – holes in the worldbuilding, little details that make no sense when you look at them twice.
now i’m twenty one and wondering why dumbledore couldn’t have put more adult wizards on harry’s case to help and protect him; why jk rowling imagines a world that seems to be white and straight and cis in its makeup. because i’m older, i understand these things a little more. and i can critique them, because why not? all media is flawed, in some way or other.
but at the same time, i’m still that four or five year old reading these books for the first time and imagining myself with harry, ron, and hermione. having magical adventures in a land far more interesting than mine.
and i think that’s what i, personally, got from harry potter. it inspired me to write my own stories, the kind of stories i want to see. and on its flaws and failings, i want to build my own worlds, building on the things that annoyed me about the worldbuilding to make my own thing.
and it’s gonna be flawed, too. in different ways. but if i can make one person feel the way i felt, sitting up past my bedtime devouring philosopher’s stone like a starving person at a banquet, it’ll all be worth it.
a Not Happy thought: the “you look so much like your father"s die off as harry gets older. by the time he’s thirty, he begins to miss it.
Implying both that people who remember James Potter are dead and that James Potter did not get to be old.
Harry Potter ran a hand through his hair, staring at his reflection in the lift doors. Was it him or was it beginning to thin?
Ginny used to tease him about it, when he nervously ran his hands over it out of old habits, saying he’d rub himself bald. She didn’t tease him about it now, though, which might mean it was actually happening.
He sighed; how old his reflection had gotten. The years passed and he knew that well enough, but each reflective surface still came at a bit of a shock.
He remembered the first time he looked in a regular mirror and saw his father staring out. Not approximations of his father, not the oft-comment of “you look just like James” from some adult, but actually looked in the mirror and saw the same man he knew from photographs.
And he remembered when he looked in the mirror and his father was gone and he was back to approximations. Looking like James Potter never had a chance to.
It was a morbid way of counting birthdays. This year I’m older than my father got to be. This year older than Remus and Snape. This year older than Sirius. In a few years he would be older than Alastor Moody.
No one ever said he looked like his father anymore.
The doors opened onto the floor for The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. The Department had two settings: chaos when some magical mishap had to be brought in to be dealt with, and silence when everyone was off tackling the mishap in person. Today was the latter but that was fine. It was James’ turn on desk duty, which was the reason he’d come down, brown bags in hand. It was the only time he could ever seem to wrangle his oldest son for lunch.
Only when he got to the desk, a young witch – a child who hardly looked old enough to be at Hogwarts much less to have graduated from it – smiled up at him.
“Mr. Potter! I have a message for you from your son. They had a catastrophe that really needed his expertise so he had to go.”
Harry gave a small smile. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Just started last month.”
“Ah. First thing you should know is to never believe James Potter, especially when it comes to desk duty. He’ll do anything to get out of desk duty.”
She gave a smile you would give to an elderly relative doling out advice. “I will remember that next time.”
Oh well, if he was playing the role already, might as well commit. “And don’t let him push you around or beg off. He’ll always have a good reason but you’ve earned your field time like anyone else. And since I brought it down, you can have his lunch.”
That got a laugh as she took the bag. “Thank you. You’re welcome to join me…?”
He waved her off. “No, no, I have paperwork to deal with anyway. But thank you.”
He was about to turn back when she spoke.
“Y’know, it’s remarkable. I would’ve known who you were from a mile off.”
Harry raised an indulgent eyebrow. Four decades had dimmed people’s immediate recognition of him as The-Boy-Who-Lived, especially among the younger crowd, but it was hardly an uncommon occurrence. Still, he acted as if he didn’t know what she meant. “Oh?”
“Oh yes. You look so much like James.”
Time seemed to stop after her words. He didn’t breathe or blink, everything paused in a moment of both newness and familiarity.
Then it was done but the weight of his shoulders had eased a little bit and he gave a brief but genuine smile. Then he laughed. “Don’t say that to him; he’d be mortified.”
“I’ll remember that if he tries to put me on desk duty again then,” she teased.
Harry chuckled and waved and got back on the lift. When the doors closed and he saw himself again, he decided it didn’t really matter much if his hair was thinning. He could do with less of it anyway.
this is lovely
That went somewhere far happier than I expected it to go, whew!
just moving along like everyone else 