*does nothing for 3 days straight* today is a “me” day, i deserve it, i need to relax

When in doubt, go to the library!

August 19, 2018

“You’ll be okay, Harry.You’re a great wizard.”

Imagine twelve year old Harry not even knowing how awful his childhood with Dursleys had been until he gets to the Burrow.

Imagine him seeing Percy asleep with a book on his lap, and being baffled that a kid might feel comfortable enough in his own home to be so vulnerable in the living room. 

Imagine Molly coming up to the attic to say goodnight to Ron and Harry, and Harry glancing at Ron when he hears her footsteps, trying to figure out what they had done wrong that day.

Imagine him asking George who does all the house chores, and thinking it’s a joke when George answers, “we all do.” 

Imagine Ginny pestering Arthur with questions over the Daily Prophet, and Harry trying to shoot her warning looks to stop it! but then Mr. Weasley looks up and patiently answers every single one. 

Imagine Bill popping in for a visit one evening and Harry being floored when Bill stops to chat with him. 

Imagine Fred chasing after Harry in the yard, playfighting, but Harry actually begins to run for real fear of being hurt. 

Imagine Molly burning something on the stove my accident and tossing it, imagine Harry mentioning to Ron, offhandedly, “she could’ve given that one to me, it’s what I eat at home when I mess up dinner” and not knowing why Ron is horrified.

Imagine Harry seeing what a normal, functioning family looks like, and realizing the absence of love in his own life. 

“What Harry found most unusual about life at Ron’s, however, wasn’t the talking mirror or the clanging ghoul: It was the fact that everyone there seemed to like him.” – Chamber of Secrets

happy 525th deathday to nearly headless nick!

tbh the only evidence i need that harry’s a gryffindor is the fact that he kept going back to the forbidden forest after voldemort tried to kill him, aragog tried to eat him, lupin turned into a wolf and attacked him, the dementors tried to kiss him, barty crouch was murdered and turned into a bone, umbridge was kidnapped by centaurs,, boy had to die in that forest before he stopped going back

we have no evidence he stopped

Harry Potter and Ron Weasley

Bromance

✖ Ginevra ✖

Luna lent her the earrings (read into that what you will), and the choker is inspired by @blvnk-art, who made me love Ginny far more than I ever thought I could.

Ref.

Inktober. Day 4. Hermione Granger

ok real talk, the whole “half-blood prince” explanation was sort of glossed over in the film but it was fucking incredible basically what happened was harry was pissing around with the half-blood prince book and hermione was like “HRRRMM IDK ABOUT THIS” and not just because he was excelling but because she thought it was dodgy and harry was like “yeah whatever hermione fuck you” and carried on using it

anyways hermione was trying to find out who wrote it and she was like “okay but.. why do we keep referring to the author as a ‘him’ like… it could be a girl…” and everybody was all “shut up hermione its half-blood PRINCE” anyways eventually after some digging she found reference to a witch called “eileen prince” who used to go to hogwarts and she was like “aha so it COULD be a woman!” and again everybody just brushed her off

eventually after harry found out it was snape he was like HOLY FUCK and later when talking to hermione about it she said that actually while she was still wrong she made the best guess - after doing a bit more digging, she found out that “Eileen Prince” was actually snape’s mother, and he used the name “The Half-Blood Prince” to refer specifically to his wizarding heritage (because his father was a muggle)

like???? that was such a cool reveal that never made it into the movies and i feel obliged to tell those who have only watched the films

Friendly reminder that:

- Sirius never got to know the truth about his brother

- James and Lily both lost their parents before they were 20

- James died thinking that Lily and Harry will survive

- Sirius found James’ dead body when he entered the Potter’s house

- Sirius could have defeated Peter if he wasn’t already half insane because of what he just saw

- Sirius relived this moment every time the Dementores came to close to him

- Remus went to the funeral alone

- Remus probably begged Dumbledore to give Harry to him

- Harry grew up thinking that no one loved him

- Remus was alone every fullmoon for the next twelve years

- Sirius could have escaped from Askaban earlier, but stayed because he blamed himself for what happened

- Peter was the only of the marauders to be there on Harry’s first day of school

- Peter spent more time with Harry than the other marauders

- Remus most likely heared about everything that happened between Harry and Quirrell and in the chamber of secrets and was scared to death

- Dumbledore most likely hired Remus after Sirius escaped

- Sirius was not dead when he felt through the veil

- Remus died thinking that his wife and baby were safe

- Tonks found Remus’ dead body before she died

i don’t know why “always” became the standard harry potter reference when “until the very end” is literally! in the dedicATION! of the 7th book!!! it truly boggles the mind!

i can’t believe friday, september 1, 2017, is nineteen years later. the last scene in the harry potter books.

this is it.

to be honest fred and george weasley were fucking incredible wizards and innovators. to set up the kind of operation they were running while 16/17 years old is nothing short of genius, not to mention the work and high-level magic that went into their products

tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”

it’s also possible he was acting off of the lessons he learned in the abusive dursley household. that’s why he does a lot of his so-called “hero complex” shit. he takes a lot of personal responsibility for other people bc he learned growing up that “no one’s here for you, no one will help you, you will not catch any breaks”. he helps bc if he didn’t, who would? certainly not the dursleys, and that’s what he grew up with.

he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts, bc he’s learned that authority figures are no help and will only make things worse. he takes situations at face value bc he’s never seen other options in his life, he’s never HAD other options in his life. speaking very personally, that was a serious marker of abuse that i saw in myself - i never thought abt escape, or what i could do to improve my situation, bc i didn’t even see that as an option. the options were survive or don’t, deal w it or don’t, acclimate or implode.

maybe he wasn’t thinking abt what DUMBLEDORE would do, what anyone at hogwarts would do. maybe he was acting off what he knew the dursleys (his main authority figures) would do. the dursleys would let the girl drown. and harry was there, and harry could do something, and so harry did. he took personal responsibility for fleur’s sister’s safety bc all his life he’s learned that authority figures cannot be trusted to do so.

people characterize these aspects of harry as a “hero complex” or a “stupid nobility” or a “lack of common sense”, but i don’t agree with that. i can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.

it’s called “complex ptsd” and if you get out of the abusive situation before you’re old enough to understand how fucked up it was, like Harry did, you don’t end up with the classic flashbacks so much, just atypical behavior patterns and a high risk of other shit. That’s why Harry is so fucked up by everything that Umbridge does, it’s because he’s being retraumatized in his safe space.

Seriously, the Dursleys would have not only let her drown, they would have let her drown so they could blame Harry for it afterwards. (Although the loudest “Potter, too busy winning to care about anyone else” voice in his head would probably be Snape’s.)

Incidentally this is even more clear in the first and second books, to me. Because Harry DID go to adults and say someone’s trying to steal the stone, and what did the adults do? Did they say, yes, we know, we’re taking precautions, real, good protective measures? Noooo. Did they say, thank you, we’ll look into it, even? Noooo. They said, don’t be silly, it’s not your concern, nothing to see here, little boy, run along and do your schoolwork.

And they said this to a boy whose entire life experience has never involved an adult that can be depended on. And they lied, lied about their own knowledge, said “that’s silly” when they know “that’s true.” And they were too convincing: since he as well knew the truth, what they ended up convincing him was that they didn’t know. And it fit right in with his expectations. Adults, whether actively malicious (the Dursleys, Snape) or well-meaning but oblivious (Mrs. Figg, Harry’s primary-school teachers, the other Hogwarts teachers), can’t be depended on. If anything’s got to be done, Harry and his friends have got to do it himself.

Second book, same thing—they’re headed for the teacher’s lounge to tell the teachers it’s a basilisk, and overhear the teachers saying that Ginny Weasley’s been taken by the monster, and they need to close Hogwarts, and their only plan to rescue Ginny is to send Gilderoy Lockhart—knowing full well he’s a fraud, a coward, and no match for a Cornish pixie, let alone a basilisk. Once again, the adults are flat-out useless and if anyone is going to save Ginny, it’s gotta be Harry and Ron. 

Notably, this is after another ball-drop on the part of the adults: when Harry’s been framed for underage magic and locked up in his room and starved by people who have every intention of keeping him out of Hogwarts forever, it’s other kids, Ron, Fred, and George, who go rescue him, and when the adults find out, one of them punishes and scolds and the other is only interested in how his car worked.

In book three, we meet a couple of adults that are competent, helpful, and willing to listen—Sirius and Remus—and the other adults come in and the end result is, one’s fired and the other has to go on the run lest he have his soul sucked out by dementors. Dumbledore does listen and give them the necessary hints, but it’s Harry, and Hermione this time, who have to do the work.

And then in Order of the Phoenix, in comes the smothering bullshit about how he’s too young to be in the Order and needs to leave everything to the grownups, after the grownups have dropped the ball four years running and are batting zero on the trust-and-listening factor—no wonder he threw a tantrum, I would’ve thrown a tantrum, he was fucking entitled to one.

“he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts… it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.” - @gaelissfelin

…this.  Harry sees people as: a. him and people he trusts, b. people to be evaded, and c. people in need of help.  When he gets backed into a corner (Voldemort inside his head, heading down the trapdoor alone, off to the DoM alone, into the Forest alone), the circle of people he trusts shrinks down from the DA/OotP, to the Trio, to just himself.  Harry never wants to be a hero or gets off on it, he’s just a person who’s suffered from the bystander effect and doesn’t want to be a bystander himself.

…that’s what it is, why it’s useful, I think.  It’s not a hero complex, it’s an anti-bystander complex.  Sometimes it only takes one person standing up.