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.
I always laugh when somebody declares James Potter on the verge of expulsion for his pranks in fic because Malfoy was literally a Death Eater trying to kill the Headmaster and Dumbledore was like “Let’s just see if we can gently guide him away from this” I’m pretty sure the only thing that gets you expelled at Hogwarts is if you have already straight up murdered someone
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
hey i just fuckin realized, ok, dumbledore knew the curse on the DADA position was a thing, he was there when riddle cast it and anyway i feel like if you’re headmaster for fifty years or whatever you notice when every teacher you hire for a specific position has some kind of ironic tragedy ruin their shit by the end of the year, every year, for fifty years. and also dumbledore never let snape take the position cuz he wanted him to stick around. he knew what was going on!!! so ok so what i realized is dumbledore hired remus ‘actual cinnabon’ lupin anyway for the cursed DADA position that fucks your shit up in nine months or less, the year the ministry sicced dementors on hogwarts because remus’s old bff was loose from wizard jail. like. dumbledore what the fuck. ‘hey that sweet and loyal guy who can’t catch a break and got most of his life ruined serving me already– i’m gonna put him in this position of getting the rest of his life ruined. like. for reasons! haha ten points to dumbledore!’
i don’t think dumbledore was much of a chessmaster at all?? i think he was just a huge dick.
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.
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.
Fifteen years later and I just this minute learned that ‘draught’, as in Draught of Living Death, Sleeping Draught, etc. is, in fact, pronounced “draft”.
Then there’s this guy:
In our defense:
caught – cawt
taught – tawt
daughter – dawter
distraught – distrawt
draught – draft
???
laugh – laff laughter – lafter
tough – tuff
cough – coff
There is plenty of precedent for gh representing an f sound if you were paying attention.
tHeRE is plENTy of PREcEDEnt if yOu weRe PAYing aTTEntIOn
Get over yourself.
“If you were paying attention” you would know that English has been dissected for centuries and determined to be one of the hardest phonological languages in modern existence due to the fact that it’s a hodgepodge of other languages resulting in various letters/digraphs being associated with various sounds.
(See, I can be just as pretentious.)
In fact, “if you were paying attention” then you would know about The Chaos, a famous (and infamous) poem written by Charivarius.
Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation — think of Psyche! Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough — Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!*
—
So there’s no sense in acting pretentious because you could recognize a single digraph. This language is a complete clusterfoque where the standard rules don’t apply.
Ouuuu
Bringing it back to the point, draught is pronounced like draft, not drought, and I hate English.
There’s also the thing where if you learn words first by reading them, you tend to pronounce them the way they logically would be pronounced, by following the most common pronunciation rule for that set of letters, ie, Draught being mispronounced as drawt, not draft. Because there IS a word for DRAFT, and we use it in racing. And military service in war time. So why would a BEVERAGE be pronounced the same way?
So you teach yourself what must be correct because NO ONE uses the word “draught” out loud any more.
Don’t be such a snot. Surely the smarter people learned it from books since we NO LONGER SAY THAT WORD OUT LOUD.
Petition to pronounce it “drawt” anyway because language is a living entity that is dependent on usage to give it meaning and also Fuck English
Pretty much everyone I’ve ever heard use it pronounces it “drawt”, so I think we’re good. Then again I’m USian so *shrug*
Also, when USian beer companies use it with the “aft” pronunciation, they change the spelling to “draft”. So, “drawt” and “draft” are well on their way to becoming two different but similar words in USian English.
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.
just moving along like everyone else 