if you ever feel left out just remember that you weren’t the fifth gryffindor guy in the marauders’ dormitory
I don’t know if the timeline works even a little bit but my headcanon was always that that fifth dude was Kingsley Shacklebolt and that he immediately made a conscious decision to stay the hell away from whatever those four idiots were up to and everyone was like “Yeah, good kid, studies hard, probably gonna be Minister one day if he manages to last his entire school career without committing four murders”.
Kingley Shacklebolt is probably the best roommate ever. The reason he never gets mentioned as the fifth is because he doesn’t ask questions. The other five start disappearing all night every full moon during fifth year? He doesn’t care and doesn’t want to know. Walked in to find Sirius talking to a fucking deer in the dorm like it was James? Just keep moving and don’t make eye contact. James, Sirius and Peter leaving shit all over the floor? Combine forces with Remus to politely yet firmly remind them that we’re not living in a goddamn barn and your dirty underwear shouldn’t spend three weeks straight on the floor James.
Kingsley was, naturally, invited to the Potter-Evans wedding. The invitation was accompanied with a formal apology for the Everything, signed by the Marauders. Enclosed was a little trophy, with the plaque reading ‘best roomie ever’
It may or may not permanently live on his mantle. Kingsley Shacklebolt does not inform Harry Potter of any of this. He has enough people that knew his parents, Kingsley’s not going to make it weird. Keep moving and don’t make eye contact. Besides, he already gave copies of all his pictures of them to Hagrid to go into a photo album for Harry back in first year.
Tag: hp
how did jk manage to write ootp and not come to the conclusion that the only career w any true meaning for harry james potter was as a goddamn professor at hogwarts like how do u write the da scenes and say “nah he’d want to be a wizard cop”
#just let him dress in warm sweaters and have tea with neville in the staff room and help first years #harry james potter as hogwarts longest serving defense against the dark arts teacher fucking fight me (@batcii)
#but it would be so perfect??? #bc it would help normalize his life so much #like there would just be this generation of kids who are like #‘ugh who cares that he killed the dark lord he gAVE US HOMEWORK OVER BREAK’ #like the beginning of every year there would be the new first years who would freak out a little #but then it would calm down #and most of the students would literally forget #until like clockwork the fifth years would have their history of magic class on the second war #and they’d all show up to DADA looking a little awestruck and everyone would be extra quiet #and harry would give this kind of annoyed sigh—except it’s fake bc he TOTALLY knew this was coming #bc binns is a bro and he totally gives him a heads up every year #and harry wouldn’t have any lesson plans for the day and instead he would just sit at the front of the room and answer everyone’s questions #but otherwise everyone would just be like ‘professor potter!! i can’t get my patronus to work! help me!’ #and like they’d go home at the end of the year or for break and their parents—who ARE still starstruck by harry james potter #would pester their kids with questions#and the kids would just be like ‘merlin i don’t know?? potter’s such a huge dork you should hear him talk about proper wand movements’ #but they would all love him #and he would feel safe and normal and utterly accepted #AND I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE (via @cinematicnomad)
Not to mention it would be an ultimate Fuck You to Voldemort, who put a curse on the teaching position in the first place.
Like, Jo, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but COME ON
I already queued this but also, you do this, but still have Ginny become a famous Quidditch player. Imagine the first time Harry gets called “Ginny’s husband” before “the boy who lived” or “the chosen one.” Imagine how fucking pleased he’d be.
Imagine the first time a student comes up to him looking starry-eyed and Harry’s thinking “Oh no” because he doesn’t want to talk about Voldemort or the war but instead this little eleven year old is like “ARE YOU REALLY MARRIED TO WEASLEY FROM THE HOLLYHEAD HARPIES???!?? WHAT’S SHE LIKE?” and he’s like “oh thank god” because he could talk about Ginny all day.
Yes. Good.
Actually, all three of them should have become professors. Hermione would have become Headmistress, of course–youngest Headmistress of Hogwarts ever, and the only one willing to turn the portraits of her predecessors to the wall if they gave her too much lip about her efforts to modernize the curriculum. (She probably started as Transfiguration professor after McGonagall became Headmistress, but it wouldn’t surprise me if McGonagall was grooming her for the Headmistress job all along.)
And Ron took over as flying instructor for Professor Hooch; everyone thinks he’s an easy A because he’s so mellow and silly and hands out candy for good performances and his brother and sister sometimes visit the class to show off some of their old Quidditch moves and give away Wizard Wheezes to the best fliers, and it’s not until they talk to someone else from a different school or era that they realize that flying is actually really difficult to learn and Ron just found ways to slip all the teaching in under the fun so that they didn’t even notice. Things that seemed like silly tricks or goofy jokes turned out to be mnemonics for complex maneuvers, and of course nobody ever wanted to skip a class under his tutelage.
thisTHIS
Okay all other canon epilogues can go home, this is the best.
Please can I read this fic?
okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and
i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.
so many people on tumblr were born in the ‘90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.
it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives– for so many of us, the first books we ever loved
the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.
it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.
It changed being a children’s librarian, too. There are a LOT more fat books now.
click to make bigger!!!
THIS IS SO LONG i’ve literally included every animal in the world
once again this is based totally on science and facts i studied for 24 years at harvard
to everyone asking what the patronus guide is. this is old but remains true
It just occurred to me, as I’m going through the Harry Potter books again, that whenever Harry has visions through Voldemorts eyes that he always, every single time, distinguishes between himself and Voldemort with the mention of “a white hand held a wand which was not his own”, or something to the effect of describing Voldemorts whiteness. While I’ve always taken this as a comment on how Voldemort is inhumanly, disgustingly pale, It occurred to me that a dark-skinned Harry Potter WOULD notice the stark, shocking difference in hands every single time without fail.
Fucking here for it
I’m just imagining someone asking Harry about his dreams and being like “are you sure it just wasn’t a dream and it was you?” And Harry’s like “Yeah I’m pretty fuckin sure, I’m not white”
a muggleborn student coming to hogwarts with a thermos flask and filling it with tea in the morning so it stays hot all day and their pureblood friends are like “whoa what spell did you use for that” and they’re like “?????? it’s just a thermos???” and all the pureblood students start pointing their wands at cups and saying “THERMOS”
THERMOS
plot twist: it works, mugs suddenly start keeping tea at the perfect temperature for the caster all day. students in muggle studies start experimenting with other muggle jargon and a new generation of magic spells are born, propelling the stagnated wizard community into the technological age
*points wand at book* KINDLE!!!! *book propels itself into fireplace and bursts into flames* I FUCKED UP I FUCKED UP
I wish I knew the exact time and date that harry told snape ‘there’s no need to call me sir professor’ so that I could take a moment of silence to remember the moment each year
Judging from the context of the chapter…
We know that it’s September 2nd. I’d put it between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. (They have breakfast and then a free period. They have Snape’s class before their break, which was before their lunch.)
But in the UK first period typically only starts at 9 AM. So free period from around 9-10 AM and Snapes class from 10-11 AM I’d say.
Okay so 10am-11am every September 2nd is now an hour dedicated to remembering the most glorious piece of dialogue ever spoken by a fictional character
ok this just appeared on my blog with ample time for you all to prepare because apparently I stumbled across it months ago, and scheduled it to post on september first. executive function TRIUMPH!!!!!!!
Worth noting that tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the greatest burn in history
harry can’t duel
harry can’t duel
harry cannot duel
he only uses expelliarmus and he cannot duel
even if he’s dueling the FUCKING DARK LORD
Imagine the conversation ministry officials must be having when they see his auror application:
“He’s Harry Potter!”
“I know but that doesn’t change the fact-”
“Harry! Freaking! Potter!”
“We still need him to attend extra duelling lessons-”
“We can’t put Harry Potter in extra duelling lessons!”
“He only ever uses one spell-”
“Yeah, but he’s really good at it.”
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times. – Bruce Lee
Harry Potter, the boy who dared to ask, “why study all these other spells if I can get really good at yeeting everyone’s wands out of their hands”
willowfoot 