in any friend group i always get really into figuring out which person is the glue that holds ‘em together y’know?? ‘cause there’s usually a person like that.

and i used to think it was remus for the marauders in two senses. his lycanthropy is the genesis of their animagus transformations and therefore he’s the reason they’re A Pack (for those uninitiated into the full world of marauders tropes, The Pack is one. and it’s important 2 me), but also. remus has uncommon kindness, and thoughtfulness, and i firmly believe that the others saw that and valued it. so remus as the glue made sense.

i’ve never thought it was sirius or peter — sirius is sort of a tornado in his own right y’know, too big and too loud and a complete raging disaster. he doesn’t bring people together so much as he brings them in. and peter, peter couldn’t hold anyone together. in the end, peter couldn’t hold himself together.

i can still make a compelling argument for remus, but really, really, i believe it’s james.

i think about what remus says in deathly hallows all the time, that he would have considered it the height of dishonor to mistrust a friend. james, young, brave, brilliant, bright james. james would never do wrong by a friend, and at their heart that’s what the marauders are about: sticking by your friends, no matter how hellacious or miserable the road becomes. james had faith.

i think the animagus transformation was james’s idea. i think that for james, thinking about remus suffering like that tore him up inside and drove him to tears late at night and made him ache deeper than he knew he could. james was the one who stopped The Prank, and there’s no doubt in my mind that his first thought was of remus — what would happen to remus if one of them made a stupid mistake. james is the one sirius turns to when he runs away. james is the one who would do anything, anything, anything for a friend.

james was their backbone. their strongest point, their unshakable, impossibly stubborn friend. james directed them all towards the kind of friendship he felt so naturally, and in the chaos of the war, it’s james who never falters once.

some moments last forever (but some flare out with love, love, love)

[ao3]

The Hogwarts Express rumbles its way, as it always has, through thick green countryside on its return to King’s Cross station in London. The customary end-of-year happenings commence: sticky first-years have gotten their grubby fingerprints upon the glass of the compartment doors; older, wiser students lounge comfortably on cushioned seats as they play lazy games of Gobstones; darker, quieter compartments house pairings of significant others keen on one last rousing snog before going two months without licking the face of their beloved. The singular anomaly of the final return journey of the year is this: Compartment J is silent.

Compartment J has not known a peaceful journey to or from Hogwarts Castle since June 1971. The autumn journey of the same year marked the beginning of seven years’ worth of rough treatment, uninhibited noisemaking, and general abuse for the compartment. For the hours and miles it took for the train to pull in at Hogsmeade station, the compartment housed four eleven-year-old boys, and it has housed them every trip since. Its seats’ cushions bear stains from experimental charms gone wrong, splotched on one of its walls is an unpleasant greenish splotch that refuses to fade, and four sets of clumsy initials dig into the wood of its windowsill. The carvers of these letters began their final trip with their usual rambunctious vigor, but there was a tightness to it, a pointed not-acknowledgment of the finality. Now, with one hour left before the train pulls into the station, they sit – for the first time in seven years – quietly.

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nonbinary sirius

sirius just. sirius seems like he wouldn’t care about masculinity?? i dont’ think he’d have any use for it. like we all know sirius is described as good-looking like 800 times but like, because of the aristocratic background and everything, i always read him as more beautiful than handsome. high cheekbones and long eyelashes and nice lips and just. pretty. and i think he’d like that, that he’d like the fact that he’s pretty.

the pureblood wizarding world is so traditional, like i talked the other day about the fact that i think sirius’s family would pressure him to eventually get married and have children. i can see that traditionalism playing very easily into ideas about gender, too. i think sirius’s family would expect him to eventually become an Upstanding Pureblood Man, that ideas about masculinity would be very deeply engrained in those expectations.

and i think that, along with all the other ideology he so despises, would strike him as complete bullshit. sirius wants to be who he is and do what’s right for him, to ride motorcycles and kiss dudes and ramble around with his best friends. sirius intentinoally distances himself from everything his parents stand for in favor of what feels genuine and right to him, and i can very easily see that translating to his gender identity.

idk i don’t think he’d have the time or energy to devote to caring about being a Masculine Guy (TM) and i can see him feeling very “meh” about gender in general?? i just. i can see him thinking about it and deciding that this black-or-white, one-or-the-other binary is just useless to him and not helpful in terms of how he presents himself or how he identifies.

agender sirius, demiguy sirius, demigirl sirius… nonbinary sirius. .

marauders + snapchat

when you come out as queer this weird thing happens even among people who are generally supportive and react well. it’s almost subconscious really, but something about the dynamic of your friendship changes. people of your gender (or of the gender they perceive you as) sort of. shrink back. there are fewer hugs and more self-consciousness and more careful distance, and sometimes you wind up feeling like you’re some kind of invader in their space. it’s not fun.

you anticipate this every time. i do, anyway. and to avoid the awkwardness you act around it before it even begins. you initiate the distance, you reduce the physicality so they don’t have to. it’s apologetic: “i’m sorry about all this. i’ll be quiet about it, at least.”

i think sirius would do that, at first, around james. hang back on purpose, touch him less, stop roughhousing and wrestling, stop the hundreds of little habits he’s developed: no more arms slung around shoulders, no more sprawling out on his bed. because sure james reacted fine when he came out but somewhere deep down, he’s still scared that he’ll do something wrong and violate some boy code and james will turn away. so sirius self-polices, makes sure james will never have to do that, makes sure he’ll never do something wrong and lose him.

and of course james notices, because james notices everything about sirius. and he worries that he said or did something wrong, and that eats him up inside because he loves sirius and he knows that, no matter how light he might play it, none of this has been easy for him. but he asks remus because remus has a certain subtler insight into people, and remus guesses and james liked it better when he thought that it was him messing up. because sirius can Always trust james and james can’t stand the idea that sirius doesn’t know that, that he’d think twice.

so james goes out of his way to initiate wrestling matches and to tickle sirius when he’s not expecting it and to fall asleep on the couch with him during the summer; james looks for a thousand different ways to nail it into sirius’s head: “i’m here for you. nothing’s ever going to get rid of me.”

and none of it is ever said. there are no late night Deep Talks or halmark momets. there’s just james, bullheaded and persistent and the most stubborn person alive, and because it’s james, sirius Gets it. and it’s fine. they’re dumb gamboling boys who laugh too loud and love too much, and it’s fine.

sirius black is so easy to love when you first meet him when you’re just seeing the joyous bright brilliant boy with his mischief and his pranks and his marauding, he’s all charm and smooth wit and he loves so much and so deeply and once he loves you he will do anything for you, he would without hesitation die for anything and anyone he loves. he loves hard and fierce and he doesn’t know how to stop himself. he thrives on attention and laughter and he’s very good at coaxing both of those things out of people so sirius is very easy to like at first glance.

but the ugly side to sirius is that he hates just as intensely as he loves and there’s nothing beautiful about it. he can be merciless and sharp and needlessly cruel, and he doesn’t always need a good reason. he’s easily bored and not particularly bothered by tormenting people for his own amusement. he thrives on attention. he gets swallowed by darkness and restlessness and he doesn’t know how to hide it, doesn’t know or try to avoid making everyone else feel the same way. he’s reckless, and immature, and he can’t — doesn’t want to — control himself.

sirius can be awful and it takes a while to understand that, the duality of intense affection and intense cruelty within him, but once you do he’s hard to love. it’s hard to love somebody like that. but his great redeeming quality is the flipside to the worst parts of him: as consumed as he can be by hatred, he’s affected equally by love. he’s brave and determined and he will do anything for people he loves.

sirius doesn’t know how to exist in shades of grey so maybe he’s hard to love but ultimately loving him is worth it because as awful as he can be, he can be just as good. and i think, more often than not, he wants to be good.

i have a lot of thoughts about remus lupin + religion but i can’t organize them very well right now. idk remus is the only character i interpret as definitely being religious and y’know you can talk for days about how religion works in the hp verse and how wizards view the relationship between magic and religion and how that’s dealt with and so on, but aside from all of that i do think remus would practice some form of christianity.

and there’s a lot of complicated reasons for it in my head but above all i think that remus would be drawn to the promise of salvation. because remus is so ashamed of so many things about himself and he constantly deals with intense regret and self-loathing and when i read remus sometimes i see someone who can’t find any good in himself. i think that remus would seek salvation y’know that he’d seek the promise of forgiveness for who he is because he strongly believes that what he is is wrong and he wants a way to someday be right.

and i think that the ritual and routine of practicing religion would appeal to remus because ritual is constant and provides this stability that feels incredibly good to have when your life is in turmoil, and remus definitely felt that his life was chaotic.

yeah i just. i feel strongly about remus + faith.

hagrid is in-between in so many ways y’know, he’s half-human half-giant, he’s sort of metaphorically half-wizard after his wand has been snapped, he’s in-between masculinity and femininity (!! will talk abt this in a sec), and like his actual literal position in the school places him between the castle and the forest, acting as a guardian

which is one of hagrid’s key roles in the series, being a guardian — for the school, for its students, for dumbledore, and for harry. for harry hagrid offers this presence that he doesn’t get from anyone else in his life; he isn’t quite a father figure and he isn’t quite a mentor but hagrid is the most loyal, most honest friend you can ever have. like god hagrid IS loyalty and he is stability and he is earth and warmth and kindness, and it is SO IMPORTANT to me that hagrid is the first contact harry has (consciously) with the magical world, after a decade of abuse and neglect his first brush with this new place is hagrid who is literally the most protective most wonderful friend in the world and i just. love hagrid. and god hagrid carrying harry through the forest because he carried him into the magical world and then he’s carrying him out of it and yeah just kill me ok

and!! the other day i was talking to peyton about hagrid + gender and how he’s a great exploration of gender and gender roles. (for the purposes of this conversation just assume traditional ideas of what masculinity & femininity mean.) like he is overwhelmingly masculine in appearance with his size and his great beard and booming voice, but in his actions hagrid is extremely traditionally feminine — hagrid knits and has people over for tea and cries easily and he refers to himself as “mummy” in reference to norbert!! hagrid is very feminine and he’s also very unashamed of it and i just. i just get really emotional about hagrid + gender & also genderfluid hagrid [heart eyes emoji]. also note the fact that hagrid can work with fully-grown unicorns, creatures that normally would only trust a woman.

AND HAGRID + INTELLIGENCE through the whole series people call hagrid dumb because he isn’t academic and because of his speech and appearance but hagrid isn’t dumb, hagrid just has non-academic intelligence which is SO important to me. hagrid works with dangerous animals and has their explicit respect, hagrid is extremely good at /emotional/ intelligence, he always knows when somebody is upset and he knows how to care for them (maternal hagrid!). hagrid’s plenty smart but the kinds of intelligence he possesses require you to rexamine what “smart” means and that’s. wonderful. 

RUBEUS HAGRID

bi harry because he was clearly enamored by cedric’s looks and repeatedly mentioned just how good looking sirius was and he’s never really looked at a person by their gender anyway