talk to me about molly wrapping harry gently in her arms after the battle and kissing his temple and telling him ‘you will always have a home with us’
talk to me about arthur noticing when harry gets too quiet and distracting him by asking him if he’d like to help rebuild sirius’s motorbike
talk to me about bill seeing the warning signs that harry’s been triggered into an anxiety attack and grasping his arm and telling him to ‘breathe, harry, it’s okay, you’re safe’ and sitting with him until he’s calm
talk to me about george growing even closer to harry because suddenly he understands so much better and he realizes that this kid knows, too, what it’s like to feel so fucking alone
about ron keeping track of how much harry’s eating so on the days when harry can only manage to push food around his plate ron makes sure to ply him with tea all day and asks his mum to make one of harry’s favorites for supper
about charlie getting fed up with the reporters who mob harry everywhere he goes and grabbing a camera from a bloke who will not stop snapping pictures and chucking it in a fountain
percy fidgeting awkwardly, not quite able to meet harry’s eyes, and apologising for that letter he knows ron told him about
hermione making harry look her straight in the eye and telling him it’s okay not to be okay, and harry not knowing whether to be grateful or annoyed because he suspects that she’s actually been researching whatever the hell’s happening to him
ginny letting harry have his space but also knowing when to insert herself right into that space so he can’t shut down and push everyone away because she’ll be damned if he thinks she’s going to put up with that
luna finding him at one of the many parties he’s expected to attend and asking him ‘do you suppose you’d rather be here or stuck on the bottom of the hogwarts lake surrounded by extraordinarily aggressive plimpies?’ in such a solemn voice that harry can’t help but laugh
mcgonagall taking note of the circles under harry’s eyes when he stops by the school and suggesting a visit to the hospital wing before he leaves so madame pomfrey can give him something to help him sleep
hagrid inviting harry over for tea and just letting his boy sit outside in silence, fang’s head on his knee, as hagrid works in his vegetable garden
neville asking harry if it would maybe be okay if he comes along with him to see teddy some time so during the next visit they end up sitting on the floor in andromeda’s lounge on a cloudy afternoon, these three orphans, playing pretend with stuffed animals shaped like wolves and dogs and lions
kingsley kicking harry out of the ministry for the night because ‘for christ’s sake, harry, you’ve been here for twenty-two hours and molly’s owled me TWICE now GO HOME and get some rest or i will personally throw your “chosen” arse over my shoulder and toss you into the floo’
talk to me about people taking care of harry and helping him manage his ptsd
Imagine if Dudley did have a magical child though.
He and Harry haven’t spoken since ‘I don’t think you’re a waste of space’ and he’s matured enough to realise his parents were not good to Harry, especially since the birth of his own little girls because God forbid anything happened to him and they were treated like Harry was.
On Daisy Dursley’s eleventh birthday theres a knock on the door and his wife, Anita, just stares and he feels his stomach drop because the stern lady on the doorstep is wearing a cloak and pointed hat.
They listen to the woman – Professor McGonagall – explain and Anita is surprised but receptive, Daisy is excited and Dudley is terrified of what this means.
It’s a surprise to his wife and little girl when at the end of her explanation, while Daisy’s flicking through a book with moving pictures and Anita peers over her shoulder, Dudley blurts out ‘it’s safe now then? Your world?’
Professor Mcgonagall gives a wry smile and assures him that the magical world is indeed safe. It dawns on him that she was expecting this, that she’d perhaps researched him and was aware of his relation to Harry.
He then admits to Anita and Daisy that his cousin is a wizard, before turning to the Professor and asking if she by chance knows a Harry Potter. Looking amused, professor Mcgonagall acknowledges that she does.
’D’you know where he lives?’
That does surprise her a bit, and she tells him that yes, she knows and that though Daisy’s acceptance into the school has been confidential up until this point, Harry would likely not mind a visitor if he wanted a word.
Daisy begs to come along and he relents eventually, bringing Anita and their youngest, Poppy, along.
All four of them stand on the doorstep of a modest house that Dudley would call nice if there weren’t squat little creatures snickering and running around the front garden.
The door is opened by a slouching boy with turquoise hair who arches a purple eyebrow at them. He yells over his shoulder for someone named Ginny and steps back to let them in, and, when he notices Daisy staring at his hair, he smirks and a second later it’s bubblegum pink.
Daisy squeals in delight and Dudley is still trying to get his head around that when young girl and boy around Daisy’s age with bright red hair and thick brown curls respectively, hurtle down the corridor.
‘Teddy you promised you’d practice the sloth grip roll with us!’ The girl yells in an accusatory tone.
A woman with hair the same shade of flaming red as the little girl appears with what Dudley recognises as a wand in her hand as the boy with blue hair flashes a grin at them before chasing the two younger children outside to a shout of ‘No higher than the treetops Teddy!’
Harry is much like Dudley remembers him, lanky with a pointed face, straight nose and mess of untameable black hair. It’s awkward, but, apparently forewarned, Harry greets him pleasantly and introduces his wife before Ginny goes outside to reign in a gaggle of children he assumes aren’t all Harry’s.
A woman with thick, bushy hair pulled into a messy bun with a wand stuck in it smiles and makes an effort to talk to Anita. She’s not too strange, he thinks, and reassures them that her parents were just as baffled when they found out she was a witch.
‘Why don’t you take Daisy outside to see the broomsticks, Al?’ Harry suggests to Daisy’s obvious delight and Dudley swears Harry’s trying not to laugh.
By the end of the visit Dudley is more informed about the wizarding world than he ever thought he would or wanted to be. Daisy, with a bruise on her forehead and scraped knees, because despite both his and Harry’s warning she hadn’t been able to resist trying to fly, is bouncing off the walls because ‘daddy how could you not tell us?!’
They visit Harry’s a lot over summer and Daisy befriends Lily Luna Potter and Hugo Weasley. Dudley doesn’t feel up to the trip to Diagon Alley but regrets his decision to not go when Daisy comes back with two owls, ‘uncle Harry bought the second one for me! So you can write without having to wait for me to send my owl!’
Petunia Dursley faints when she finds out, and Vernon spends a good half hour cursing and brandishing things aimlessly before retreating to his shed.
Dudley being introduced to what he calls ‘all those bloody gingers’ some of whom are only just on the right side of civil to him (one cheerfully introduces himself as someone who once visited his childhood home in a flying car and asks if he’s going to need to do the same for Daisy or will she be allowed to attend without punishment).
Daisy is shocked to find out Harry’s famous, and finds out as much as she can about him during her first term, which she relays to an increasingly guilty feeling Dudley, who’s gradually coming around to the idea.
It’s not as bad as his parents made out it was. He’s learned to understand Daisy’s ramblings about her subjects and spells and is proud of her achievements at school. He’s met a handful of witches and wizards through Harry and the world that he’s always been told is terrible doesn’t seem too bad anymore, after all, how could it with his little girl in it? He is prepared come excitable little Poppy’s eleventh birthday, for her to join her sister at Hogwarts instead of standing jealously on the platform as she leaves.
Poppy Dursley never gets a letter.
I TRUSTED YOU
No, but imagine. Three generations later, this family FINALLY gets the one wizard kid/one Muggle kid thing right. Poppy is never made to feel less, even though she’s disappointed. Daisy is never made to feel like a freak. Poppy is accepted by Harry’s kids, they play with her and she doesn’t need magic to play wizard chess or toss gnomes and Teddy takes her flying sometimes (she becomes a hell of a Quidditch referee and strategist with Ginny’s help, though she never plays).
Anita and Dudley talk to Poppy about what she’d like to do for school and she goes to a prestigious Muggle school, and as it turns out she becomes really, really good at tech and coding. She takes lots of time off to visit Daisy at Hogwarts where she becomes a favorite of McGonagall (so many clever questions). Eventually she meets Luna and spends most of a summer with her, following Crumple-Horned Snorkacks with the help of some trackers Poppy built to work around magic. Everyone is terribly impressed, and although Poppy tries to be blasé about it, she’s actually really proud.
And soon enough Daisy is graduating and working at the Ministry in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office with Arthur Weasley, who has been working on loosening some of the legislation, and when Poppy graduates she has a marvelous idea. She and Daisy open a shop in Diagon Ally for all these Muggle technologies that Poppy has fixed to work around and with magic. Dursley’s Muggle Magic, they call it.
And suddenly wizards are running around with iPhones and Kindles (Hermione made a digital copy of Hogwarts, a History RIGHT AWAY) and everyone is catching up on decades of video games and a century of movies. Scorpius Malfoy has an Apple Watch. And it’s all thanks the Poppy Dursley, the Muggle.
@the Star Wars fandom: I’d like to throw my two cents in on the whole “Leia was never even tempted by the Dark Side” trend that is seemingly going on right now. Firstly, yes, I understand the joke–gosh darn those whiny Skywalker boys, the girls are so tough and strong (and they are, they absolutely are, don’t get me wrong). But…all the same, guys, I just can’t see it that way. This girl wasn’t just tempted by the Dark Side, she flirted with it on like a daily basis for probably years (both before and after she knew what it was). I mean:
Leia Organa burns with anger. She was horribly, incalculably hurt, more than once, and one of the ways she coped with that was by being angry. (In fact, Carrie herself has described Leia as such, and as having played Leia as such–as a very wounded and broken girl who is incredibly, incredibly angry.) And as we know, according to the Jedi:
“Fear leads to anger Anger leads to hate Hate leads to suffering”
But that doesn’t make Leia any the weaker for it. In fact, I would even say that it goes to show just how strong she was. Because yes she was hurt. (She was hurt so, so badly, so many times.) She had every right to be angry, and hurting–and she did. She was angry. She did hurt. And it would have been so, so easy for her to give into the temptation of the Dark Side through that. Because of that. Because there are so very, very many kinds of temptation–and honestly, with Leia’s anger being such an integral part of her and part of her main coping mechanism, I personally can’t see Leia not being tempted by the Dark Side for years–since before she even knew it was truly a Thing, let alone that it had a name. Because oh, how easy it would have been for her anger to consume her–for her rage and her hatred to supplant all else, until she was nothing but a driving force of nature, a wildfire bound in human flesh that burned all in her path.
But you know what? She didn’t fall. Despite everything, Leia Organa did not fall. And that, to me, shows an incredible strength–one that supercedes even a claim that she was never tempted. (Because to me, saying that she was never tempted strips her of the fury of her wrath, the burning of her pain, the blazing of her power. Because to me that says she wasn’t wounded in the very soul by what happened to Alderaan, to her mind beneath Vader’s probe, to her heart again and again–and she was. Oh, she was. Because to me, taking away Leia’s anger and the rawness of her hurt means taking away what made her such a real character, a real woman, a real survivor.)
Ironically enough, it was love that brought her back from that possible path, just as it brought Vader back from the brink. Because I would eat my left shoe if it wasn’t Luke and Han, Chewie, Threepio and Artoo who kept her grounded, kept her here, gave her something other than anger and fear and hatred and revenge to live for.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents on the matter,
Thank you, Seren. I wish I could find the article now, but there was a good write-up on women being allowed to be portrayed as monsters rather than the virtuous heroine or the victim. We all have a dark side, a dangerous streak. To deny that women have the capacity for evil is to deny that they are fully human.
Leia Organa has indeed flirted with the dark side. She is still fighting the good fight when we see her in TFA but I don’t think that her inner battle is over and her victories have not come easily. Leia has straddled the line between dark and light a few times, but ultimately clawed her way back to the light before she could be consumed by the darkness. Let’s giver her credit for struggling against her demons, rather than treating her as an empty, innately good character.
When Leia speaks of Snoke’s influence over Ben, you can see on her face that she has empathy for her son. She was disgusted with Vader, she didn’t want to understand him, but she has walked a long road with Ben and the appalling things he does do not shock her, she gets it.
This is a woman who has done a lot of growing in order to overcome her darker tendencies and it is a battle that she must engage in daily.
Everyone please sit down and be schooled by Seren. Girl knows her Leia meta.
I’m barely awake. But hang on.
What if this is why she’s General, not Jedi?
Did Luke say he was scared to teach her because of her anger?
Or?
Did she look Luke in the eye and ask him not to teach her, because she knows herself and knows her own rage and sees the Dark Side and doesn’t quite know if she can truly trust herself with that kind of power?
Posted on
“Your generation would probably ‘livetweet’ the apocalypse” you say, and you laugh
You mean it as an insult, and I understand,
Or you don’t
because the word lies awkwardly on you tongue, stumbles as it leaves your lips, air quotes visible
You meant it as an insult, so you don’t understand, when I look into your eyes and say “Yes”
Because we would.
It would be our duty, as citizens on this earth
to document it’s end the best way we know
and if that means a second by second update
of the world going up in flames, or down in rain, or crushed under the feet of invading monsters
so be it.
It would mean a second by second update of
“I love you”
“I’m scared”
“Are you all right?”
“Stay close”
“Be brave”
It would mean a second by second update of the humanity’s connection with one another,
Proof of empathy, love, and friendship between people who may have never met in the flesh.
So don’t throw the word ‘Livetweet’ at me like a dagger, meant to tear at my ‘teenage superiority’
Because if the citizens of Pompeii, before they were consumed by fire,
had a chance to tell their friends and family throughout Rome
“I love you”
“I’m scared”
“Don’t forget me”
Don’t you think they’d have taken the chance?
Sometimes it hurts when people scorn internet cultre (via herrsassyfras)
Dr. Cho was eager to know if Thor was going to the party not because he’s hot Thor the Asgardian demigod, but because he’s Thor, boyfriend of Dr. Jane freaking Foster.
