Sometimes when I’m sad I like to imagine what would happen in a crossover universe between Discworld and Harry Potter, and what Granny Weatherwax would make of their style of magic.
But then I think about more important things, like what would have happened if Granny Weatherwax ever met Albus Dumbledore, and I can’t help but feel a whole lot of shit could have been avoided if he’d had a good clip round the ear and a strong talking to about the whole “my hands are tied” bullshit that enabled years of abuse and suffering at the hands of adults in a position of authority over young, vulnerable people.
Like oh, this spell requires the bond of blood to keep him safe, all right. So that just means we’re not going to hold these adults accountable for their torment and abuse? I think the entire fuck not, Albus.
Snape is a double agent who is actually working for the greater good. All right, but that doesn’t stop him from being an absolute fucking shit weasel who shouldn’t be around children until he learns to control himself and works out his issues in a safe and sane manner, what the fuck, Albus.
You have an entire school system that ascribes to ideas of inherent morality when in fact this is a thing that needs to be taught? Well no wonder there’s one house in particular that keeps going off the rails, you keep telling them they’re evil. Tell people something for long enough they’ll start to believe you. There’s nothing wrong with being selfish and cunning, sometimes that’s what it takes to survive. Teach them how to use those traits for good. As strength. My land, my home, my people (not my daughter, you bitch) how dare you try to hurt them. Teach them, Albus, you have to bloody teach them and realize that evil isn’t born. It’s made. In a thousand small deplorable ways. And it starts with treating people like things and I cannot be having with this.
Of course there’s also the other flipside to this thought process, which is imagining Gytha “Nanny” Ogg shouting “watcher Molly” as she thumps Bellatrix Lestrange on the back of the head with a cauldron, and drops her like a fucking stone. Later they’ll sit together and grieve, later there will be time to pick up the pieces and mourn. But for now there are things to fight for, people to keep alive. And people to keep from doing what they shouldn’t ever have to do, so you find a way to do it for them, by hook, crook or blunt force trauma.
And because my head wont let go of this thought:
“You always was a right little miss,” she said, taking a puff from her pipe and resettling her weight with a hefty bounce as the younger witch struggled to get out from under Nanny’s considerable girth. “Giving yourself airs and graces and such. Pretending you was too good to scrub a pot. Well, let me tell you something, Mistress Lestrange, you ain’t fit for nothing no more except maybe a noose. And if I had my way that might be the end of it. But we don’t do things like that no more, we don’t rule by blood.”
“Then you’re weak,” Lestrange shot back, still struggling to claw her way free. “A weak, old woman with nothing left but tricks up your fat sleeve.”
Nanny puffed in silence for a few more moments, then reached up her sleeve. “And your wand, dearie. Walnut is it? With a dragon heartstring core? Very nice, painting it black was a bit much, but you always were fond of your dramatics.”
She pulled out her own wand, holding it out under Bellatrix’s nose, whose face went cross eyed and then wide with panic.
“You know, I’ve only ever heard of Priori Incantatem,” she said, puffing on the end of her pipe until the pit glowed cherry red then white hot and she exhaled smoke like a dragon, “but I wasn’t about to risk it, not in front of all those kiddies. But I reckon now might be a good time…”
Also, for your consideration. Feegles.
“Haul yoo, aye yoo, the great big ugly gangly scunner wi-oot a nose. Can yesew? Well stitch this.”
Harry watched in consternation as Voldemort staggered back, dropped to the ground like a ton of bricks and lay still.
“That’s it?” he demanded, lowering his wand. “That’s all you had to do?”
Rob
Anybody, perched on his shoulder, looked up at the young wizard out the
corner of the eye, which was to say he looked him in the nostrils.
“Weell,”
he said, gesturing towards the chaos that had been unleashed as the
full force of the Nac Mac Feegle was unleashed upon the band of Death
Eaters, primarily by running up the inside of their trousers. “That’s
the thing about the lads. Once they’ve decided tae dae something, they
dae it good and hard.”
“But you just headbutted him!”
“Aye, weill,” Rob said, feeling as though the lad wasn’t quite grasping the practicality of the situation, “he might be a bloody great dark bigjob wizard, but he cannae cast a spell wi-oot a heid.”
Ok but the one I want to see is Dolores Umbridge vs Munstrum Ridcully, becuase that would be the Petty Academic Slapfight of doom.
Because Ridcully, for all his faults, probably understands that the actual learning of magic relies on a certain degree of both freedom and madness and sometimes explosions.
And Umbridge would crawl right up his skin with her concept of a “Defense Against The Dark Arts” Course, and in the middle of a lecture on recent runes, would go on a “tangent” on the history of various dark wizards and the means by which they were defeated and here Why Don’t We Have A Practical Outside, The Weather Is Nice (The weather is not nice. It’s Scotland. In Late November.) But everyone is really curious to see the old man actually take his wand out for once, only to discover that that’s not a wand at all, that’s a Burleigh & Stronginthearm and they’re all going to pass it around and whoever shoots the weathervane off the top of Ravenclaw tower gets 50 points. Hannah Abbot puts a bolt through Umbridge’s window, taking out a kitten plate and gets 100 points.
Fred and George turn the third floor corridor into a Swamp and Umbridge is pleased to hear Ridcully bellowing at the Weasley boys about “BLOODY INSONSIDERATE, NEVER HAVE I EVER MET SUCH WRETCHEDLY-” but the second she’s around the corner it changes to “-brilliant young men, how much is this setup you have here? That potions-master could do with some aggravated moisturizing. Speaking of moisturizing, what would it take to get you two gentlemen to work on the faculty baths? Disgustingly substandard, nowhere to put your nail trimmings-”
Ridcully would like the students there too, I think. Especially the Slytherins, because he’s perfectly aware how important being a cunning bastard and willing to get your hands dirty or bloody if needed is, especially in the world of Magical Academia. They’re socially intelligent and disenchanted with the system, not Evil, Albus. The Malfoy boy would be a lot less trouble if he had something to do besides practicing subject’s he’s bored with. Fratricide, perhaps. I’m kidding Albus! (he’s only sort of kidding. Maybe not murder. Just turn him into a toad and keep him as a familair in a bowl on the mantlepiece.)
He’d be so mad about the Chamber of secrets though. Potter! A Basilisk! Why didn’t you bring the head back up it’d be magnificent hanging over the great hall. Oh I see. Well why didn’t you go BACK? Perfectly good potion ingredients going to waste, doesn’t that brooding mop of a potions master teach you anything about looti- er, collecting spell components?
I forgot I wrote this haha, and I’m glad @gallusrostromegalus made it better.
Okay but feagles and house elves tho
Obeyin’ the hag is one thing, but any hag that’d that inna worth the title
(Dobby takes it up first, under his breath: “no lords and no masters”)
Havelock Vetenari is not a man to “Go Spare”, and certainly not without good cause but that shambling mountain of paperwork and prejudice they call “The Ministry Of Magic” is several thousand good reasons. He doesn’t even WANT to take over this disaster but he can’t rest so long as it continues to exist.
But. He’s better than that. Why waste time in pointless rage when there are things he can actually do to fix this?
“Mr. Lipvig.” He says, conversationally. “Did you know that the currency conversion rates haven’t changed since Gringotts was founded? Seventeen silver sickles to a gold galleon since the 1100’s”
He doesn’t really need to say anything else. Moist blinks a few times, then gradually begins to vibrate as every instinct he possess is called to the forefront.
“They’re just down the street if you wanted to see their facilities-”
Moist’s chair actually spins with the force of his rapid departure.“
“A clever plan..because if Harry here and his friend Ron hadn’t discovered this book, why–Ginny Weasley might have taken all the blame. No one would ever have been able to prove she hadn’t acted of her own free will…and imagine…what might have happened then…The Weasleys are one of our most prominent pure-blood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter was discovered attacking and killing Muggle-borns…”
It brings me SO MUCH joy that the plot of Chamber of Secrets basically happens because Lucius is terrified out of his mind of Arthur and Molly Weasley and their SEVeN kids who were all raised to hold the line in case anyone tried to start a genocidal regime again. They are so powerful and so dangerous to any attempted rise to power from the Death Eaters, and Lucius feels the need to try and marginalize and demonize them in order to decrease the threat they pose.
And boy was he right to be concerned, they are…unstoppable. Each and every one of them. You thought it was impressive that it took five Death Eaters to kill their uncles? Try having a couple Weasleys illegally on the airwaves, one destroying Voldemort’s Horcruxes, one protesting at Hogwarts, one running loose in the government, one housing escaped prisoners, and one getting foreign support!! More children than they can afford? Try more children than you can effectively stop!!
And then when they ALL show up to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts? What a trip for Lucius Malfoy! Hey bigots! Would you like to pick an opponent based on which Quidditch position they excel at, or do you wanna roll the dice and go with one of the brothers who got 12 OWLs? Those are your only two options because Weasleys are EVERYWHERE and the weak link is NO ONE. The fear that must have been in his heart when one or two of them was around every corner of the school taking down his DE pals…is so amazing to think about. Glorious. Iconic. Every Weasley has red hair, freckles, and a drive to destroy the concept of blood purity at all cost!!
The Weasleys are not always nice or right, but they are GOOD and they believe in standing up for what is good, and when evil is around they SHOW UP to fight it. No questions asked. And evil is so scared of them, so worried about what they can do, that it resorts to desperately weaponizing a little girl to try and stop them.
THIS IS AMAZING!!!! GO, WEASLEYS!!!
The thing I love about Arthur Weasley is his function as a foil to Lucius. The Weasleys are dirt poor and Arthur’s job is a joke, but he’s widely respected to the point that the governers mention that finding his daughter in the chamber is the last straw. Not a pureblood student.One that’s related to Arthur. He’s well connected enough to get them into the Minister’s box at the Quidditch world cup. I forget which book it is, but at one point he gets an entire fleet of enchanted cars to take the kids to King Cross station to catch the train. This is all through sheer personal influence; everything the Malfoys achieve is through bribery. Lucius should fear the Weasleys.
Arthur Weasley runs on fairy tale power; he does favors for people, because he’s kind, and they do favors for him in turn.
…hey Harry Potter fans, we’re all in agreement that Dumbledore brought the Philosopher’s Stone to Hogwarts in Harry’s first year as a test to see whether Voldemort was paying attention and what sort of state he was in, now that Dumbledore’s chosen champion was old enough to hold a wand, right?
Like, Harry learns what magic is and it’s time to start moving towards the full and final destruction of Tom Riddle Junior, so Dumbledore has a chat with his long-time alchemy friend who’s been keeping this thing safe for literally six centuries straight, and ‘borrows’ the easiest source of immortality he can find as bait for a trap to lure Voldemort out into the open so Dumbledore can get the lay of the land to prep for the next seven years. This is canon, right?
Yes, this is canon. In none of the other books is the climactic array of trials set up as a video-game dungeon perfectly tailored to the skillsets of three specific children. Hermione and Ron are drafted into this war quickly.
Draco gets so much shit for trying to kill Dumbledore but honestly who wouldn’t
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.
yknow the more jk rowlings world falls apart in america (race relations, international history, population, etc) the more i like to think that america just straight up doesnt have the statute of secrecy. european countries are falling over themselves hiding magic but come to georgia and theres a drunk redneck wizard wingardium leviosa-ing the shit out of a tractor to the delight of his drunk redneck muggle buddies in a walmart parking lot.
wizard on muggle violence is prevented by virtue of there being like a 50/50 chance that muggle is packing heat. muggle on wizard violence is prevented by knowing that wizard can give you boils spelling LIL BITCH on your forehead if you try to start something.
america is the weird redheaded stepchild of the magic world.
im not gonna stop reblogging this until this is the next Hot Fanon
english muggles come back to england and suspicious wizards meet them at the airport.
‘did you witness any strange or inexplicable acts while you were in america?’ they demand.
the english muggles just laugh in their dumb fucking faces. mate, it’s america.
what’s the difference between a werewolf and an animagus?
english wizard: *two hour lecture on legal history*
american wizard: six beers
@jumpingjacktrash congrats ive read hundreds of comments on this dumpster fire of a headcanon and yours is the best
thank you my patronus is a monster truck
I have reblogged this I don’t even fucking know how many times but I still completely lose it every time I see the words “My Patronus is a monster truck” because that is the most AMERICAN thing I’ve ever seen in 29 years of being ‘merican.
Variant: What with the International Statute of Secrecy being an international law, the American magical community suffered quite a bit at the hands of forcible attempts to make everyone conform to it, until anti-seclusionist magical forces got their hands on the sort of magics being used to hide the wizarding world from nonmagical society, and hid themselves and their communities from the magical government and its institutions.
That’s why Ilvermorny is “the only American wizarding school.” That’s why the American magical population feels like something the size of the British one pasted on something a couple orders of magnitude bigger. That’s why Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is so white. That’s why nonmagical people have a persistent quiet willingness to believe in magic just enough to allow for the possibility of its existence, and fill their stories with it, and readily interact with the idea of it. It’s an elaborate homegrown smokescreen to hide hundreds of integrated magical communities from the magical community that demands magical communities keep themselves secret.
The forces behind the International Statute of Secrecy made themselves such an absolute nuisance that some 95% of the magical population of America stole their hide-from-the-muggles spells and locked them out of knowledge of their existence.
The International Wizarding Community: “You are now forbidden to let any nonmagical people know you exist.”
Six Gazillion American Wizarding Communities: *Jedi mind trick hand motions* “Fuck you, we don’t exist. Nothing to see here.”
The International Wizarding Community: “Looks like the problem’s been solved, I guess. Pip pip cheerio.”
Six Gazillion American Wizarding Communities And Their Muggle Friends: “OK I’mma cast Engorgio on my tires and invent Monster Trucking, hold my beer.”
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.
there are many things i love about harry potter. the changeling narrative (there’s an unseen and enchanted world folded around the visible, and it’s been waiting for you to step over that threshold and take up the place that was always yours), wonderful characters, intricate plotting, the breadth and depth of detail, the twists and wit and imagination, its abiding belief in love and hope and sacrifice.
(and one of the best allegories for depression i’ve ever read—a tattered hungry ghoul with no face, only a mouth that feeds on every good thing you can feel or remember until you’re cold and hollow and despairing.)
but after seven books showing how the complacency and secrecy and prejudice and schisms and stagnation and corruption and ignorance of the wizarding world allowed Voldemort to rise to power not once but twice, the idea that the bereaved and war-scarred children who bore the burden of another generation’s mistakes and hatreds would want a return to the status quo seemed like a betrayal. i hated that ending. i’m still bitter about it.
it’s strange—i can’t think of another fictional universe so at odds with itself. the world JKR shows us is insular, isolated; it looks down upon and shuns those who are different or “inferior” (Muggles, squibs, goblins); it never experiments or innovates or interrogates its own magic; it asks so few questions of the world. and yet in this story the best thing you can be is a seeker: the narrative is full of puzzles and puns and secrets and codes and mazes and dreams and unseen doorways and passages; hidden things running alongside or underneath; arcana and riddles in the margins, wonders to be found by the reach of your mind.
it’s a world that’s pathologically traditional and leery of change: it lacks diversity, reveres ancient things and old ways, uses antiquated technology and spells in Latin, and is steeped in nostalgia for a bygone postwar Britain that was no utopia. and yet the books themselves are about the process of growing up and questioning received wisdom: learning that adults are fallible, adults can be cruel and hateful and manipulative and weak, authority is often malevolent and deceitful, paternalism and “the greater good” are corrupt, the old ways should be overthrown. it promised so much; then seemed to surrender, back down.
harry potter has, on the one hand, a love of wonder and curiosity and knowledge and stories hidden within stories; and on the other, a streak of weird and anarchic humour, of unpredictability and absurdism and surprise. all that i love about it comes from that. so i still feel deep fondness toward the books—but i’m more interested in how its readers can take what it offers and dream in the gaps and redraw its geographies and invent other magics and cut out what’s rotten and mend what’s broken and give voice to the things that were voiceless, and find better, braver conclusions.
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.
I WANT TO DRAW ALL OF THIS
I want to draw all of this as a mini comic so badly
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
anyways hermione is a cutthroat bitch and her demonizing divination is due to the fact that she literally #cannot with emotional forms of magic. quidditch? which requires an emotional partnership of trust with the broom? nope. divination? which requires an emotional openness and willingness to forego logical conclusion at the whims of fate? are u fuckin kidding me. patronuses? which require not just technical skill but also a deep connection with your own emotional core? uhhhhh we’ll just let harry handle that one.
movie!hermione, w/ her advanced emotional intelligence and absolute willingness to meet each and every emotional need the boys have, should have of course been good at emotional magics like divination. shes fucking superwoman. but book!hermione? who destroyed a girls face without mercy because she ratted out the DA? who erased her parents memories so she could fight in a war? who solved dumbledores’ mysteries using ancient runes, an art that is practically the math of magic? book!hermione will destroy you and she will do it armed with the cold hard facts and the cold hard facts alone. book!hermione doesn’t give a shit. instead of getting a regular pet, book!hermione was drawn to a magical cat who is self-serving and intellectual and helped her gather clues rather than serving as an emotional companion. i mean fck.
full offense but hermione is so hardcore and logic-driven and she literally could give a SHIT about ur feelings
I was gonna counter this with the fact she gave the boys emotional advice on their love lives, but even then she did it in a very cold, logical way. “Cho is feeling x because y therefore you should have done z.”
just moving along like everyone else 