what if the boy who lived was the girl who lived? scruffy tomboy harriet “call me Harry” potter, getting extra rubbish from the Dursleys both from being a girl and being the wrong kind of girl
and absolutely nothing in the entire 7-book series changes except for pronouns. because girls can be brave and imperfect and angry and sulky and loud just like boys can.
(except a girl harry would room with Hermione Granger and the Patil twins instead of Ron and Sean, but that’s literally the only thing I can think of that might change)
absolutely nothing whatsoever changes with regards to Ginny. except that in addition to “why doesn’t Harry notice me as more than a chum,” she grumbles, “why hasn’t Harry managed to realize that CHO IS STRAIGHT”
IF this becomes a popular text post, this is how I want to be remembered
i couldnt help it
changing dorms would change a lot actually. :
(aka i express howo much i love this post through comic s)
i’m totally down with this post
except
“but Harriet would room with Hermione Granger and the Patil twins instead of Ron and Sean”
who the fuck is sean
obviously dean and seamus. combined into one. one whole sean.
350. Muggleborn hufflepuffs panicking when they don’t know the answers to their care of magical creatures exam so they end up writing an essay about hobbits
And the pure blood examiners who go mental trying to find out more about this previously undiscovered species… showing up at Hogwarts to ask v serious questions™.
The Hufflepuff looks uber panicked until across the way a snarky Ravenclaw pipes up “oh yeah, I’ve heard of those. Hungry little fiends, very good at sneaking” and the whole muggleborn populace just joins in bc why not.
There’s a gryffindor sitting on the stairs next to his slytherin buddy (they made friends on the train and would not be separated) nudging each other and trying not to laugh while a very solemn faced first year tells this fascinated scholar about the Hobbit who lives in the field behind her house and has a fat pony called Buttercup.
The Professors can’t help… McGonnagall just holds out a hand and Flitwick surreptitious passes her a flask.
But it gets worse. (Or better, I suppose.)
One of the examiners, skeptical as all get out, asks about Hobbit Culture – because they’re obviously civilized creatures, they must have some kind of culture, right? And of course, the inherent coziness and warmth of Hobbit Culture is in every Hufflepuff’s DNA, so there’s a giant crowd of excited hufflepuffs (and a few aforementioned snarky Ravenclaws) telling the examiners everything about Hobbit Culture. Ah, yes. Breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper; parties, politics, pipeweed, peacefulness.
And in Hobbiton, you can’t mention peacefulness without mentioning the Primary Purveyor of Peacelessness himself:
Gandalf the Grey. Mithrandir. Tharkun. Greyhame. Et cetera.
And things get strange from there.
“Who’s Gandalf?” Oh, he’s a wizard.
“A wizard? Who? Never heard of any wizard named Gandalf.”
(At this point, the hufflepuff that started all this is starting to squirm uncomfortably.)
“What did this… Gandalf do, that the Hobbits hate him so much?” one examiner asks suspiciously.
The answer, as a bookish Slytherin fourth-year says into the silence, is as follows:
“In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.”
And the Slytherin proceeds to recite – from memory, mind you! – the entire first chapter of The Hobbit, as spellbound first-years crowd around and the examiners’ Dictaquills feverishly scribble down every word. They can hardly believe their ears. A wizard? Talked to hobbits? Fascinating! How has nobody heard of this?
When the Slytherin stops, everyone groans. Even the examiners, who came here to simply investigate a possibly-Confounded student and their baffling essay, are dismayed. “You clearly know this… hobbit tale well,” one examiner says skeptically. “Surely there are records of this event? Hobbits are quite civilized people, I suppose.”
Yes. You suppose. (Everyone tries to hide their snickers. Some succeed more than others.)
The Slytherin smiles faintly, and from their bag they pull a thick, battered book the size of a paving stone, bound in red leather.
“This,” they say reverently, “is a copy of the Hobbit world’s records of the Great War of the Ring – as translated and published by the great historian John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.”
The examiners go batshit insane.
(So do some of the less subtle students. This is comedy gold.)
They snatch the book – actually a Muggle book, a copy of the complete illustrated Tolkien legendarium, containing The Hobbit AND all three Lord of the Rings books AND The Silmarillion – from the Slytherin’s hands and zip back to the Ministry to pore over it.
(Of course, this Slytherin has been regaling the common room with tales from that book for well over a year now – holding them under the illusion that All Of The Events In This Story Are True And These Records Are Real. They ripped out the copyright pages and spelled the typed text to look like handwritten letters. Slytherins are nothing if not resourceful.)
But the Ministry.
Oh, the poor, misguided Ministry. (Specifically the Department of Mysteries and the Department of Magical History. Poor, poor them.)
Because what did they find in this book?
Evidence of a massive war fought over the destruction of a bloody HORCRUX!
Nobody knew it existed! Nobody knew it happened! Pureblood historians are tearing out their hair, trying to figure out who was Gandalf, and where is Gondor, and did our house-elves use to look like Legolas and his kin, and why the bloody hell do all our calculations tell us that Mount Vesuvius was Mount Doom but Osgiliath is somewhere in Spain??
Eventually they decide that Gandalf was Merlin and Aragorn was King Arthur, and all of this is just a retelling of Merlin’s life, but from the point of view of one of these Hobbit creatures. Who live in holes in the ground, but are very good at hiding, and do not like having thirteen dwarves and a wizard suddenly tramping over their property.
(This gets back to Hogwarts. Everyone falls over laughing. Gandalf? As Merlin? Unbelievable.)
(Though these days, instead of saying “Merlin’s pants!” or “By Merlin!”, one might hear “Gandalf’s hat!” or “Gandalf’s staff!” or “Gandalf’s saggy left…”
Well. You see.)
The Ministry is halfway to getting The Lord of the Rings summarized and put into a history textbook when Fudge accidentally tells the Prime Minister about their “marvelous discovery, old chap, can you believe it! Five thousand years of history that nobody knew of, all written down and preserved by Hobbits!”
“Hobbits?”
“Yes, Hobbits!”
“Hobbits.”
“I believe I already said that -”
“You idiot!” the Prime Minister sputters, though in much more colorful language. “That’s a Muggle tale! Tolkien is a bloody national treasure! Someone’s been having you on!”
So they scrap the history books and cancel the expeditions into Vesuvius to find remains of a forge. The pureblood half of the Wizarding World never finds out about Hobbits, and the One Ring, and Gollum, and Gondor and Rohan and Rivendell and Lothlorien, of Smaug and Laketown – of noble tales of friendship and love, of glowing swords and giant spiders, sword and bow and axe against the greatest evil of our time.
“Muggles are bloody clever, I say,” McGonnagall mutters to Flitwick, over great cups full of whiskey. “If Muggles can trick the Ministry into believing that hobbits are real, then mark my words, they’ll find a way to sue the whole wizarding world for copyright infringement.”
It comes for her, as it came for her husband, so many years ago. It comes for her, as it came for her Headmaster, the price of his ambition. It comes for her, as it came for far too many of her friends and students, in one war then another.
Death comes for her.
Minerva McGonagall Looks at Death, and raises an eyebrow.
Death pauses, then nods and backs away. “We’ll call this number three then, shall we?”
She smiles as she turns back to her paperwork. There is a reason her animagus form is a cat.
Single best thing ever in my life have I ever read about my one true babe Minnie.
a Not Happy thought: the “you look so much like your father"s die off as harry gets older. by the time he’s thirty, he begins to miss it.
Implying both that people who remember James Potter are dead and that James Potter did not get to be old.
Harry Potter ran a hand through his hair, staring at his reflection in the lift doors. Was it him or was it beginning to thin?
Ginny used to tease him about it, when he nervously ran his hands over it out of old habits, saying he’d rub himself bald. She didn’t tease him about it now, though, which might mean it was actually happening.
He sighed; how old his reflection had gotten. The years passed and he knew that well enough, but each reflective surface still came at a bit of a shock.
He remembered the first time he looked in a regular mirror and saw his father staring out. Not approximations of his father, not the oft-comment of “you look just like James” from some adult, but actually looked in the mirror and saw the same man he knew from photographs.
And he remembered when he looked in the mirror and his father was gone and he was back to approximations. Looking like James Potter never had a chance to.
It was a morbid way of counting birthdays. This year I’m older than my father got to be. This year older than Remus and Snape. This year older than Sirius. In a few years he would be older than Alastor Moody.
No one ever said he looked like his father anymore.
The doors opened onto the floor for The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. The Department had two settings: chaos when some magical mishap had to be brought in to be dealt with, and silence when everyone was off tackling the mishap in person. Today was the latter but that was fine. It was James’ turn on desk duty, which was the reason he’d come down, brown bags in hand. It was the only time he could ever seem to wrangle his oldest son for lunch.
Only when he got to the desk, a young witch – a child who hardly looked old enough to be at Hogwarts much less to have graduated from it – smiled up at him.
“Mr. Potter! I have a message for you from your son. They had a catastrophe that really needed his expertise so he had to go.”
Harry gave a small smile. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Just started last month.”
“Ah. First thing you should know is to never believe James Potter, especially when it comes to desk duty. He’ll do anything to get out of desk duty.”
She gave a smile you would give to an elderly relative doling out advice. “I will remember that next time.”
Oh well, if he was playing the role already, might as well commit. “And don’t let him push you around or beg off. He’ll always have a good reason but you’ve earned your field time like anyone else. And since I brought it down, you can have his lunch.”
That got a laugh as she took the bag. “Thank you. You’re welcome to join me…?”
He waved her off. “No, no, I have paperwork to deal with anyway. But thank you.”
He was about to turn back when she spoke.
“Y’know, it’s remarkable. I would’ve known who you were from a mile off.”
Harry raised an indulgent eyebrow. Four decades had dimmed people’s immediate recognition of him as The-Boy-Who-Lived, especially among the younger crowd, but it was hardly an uncommon occurrence. Still, he acted as if he didn’t know what she meant. “Oh?”
“Oh yes. You look so much like James.”
Time seemed to stop after her words. He didn’t breathe or blink, everything paused in a moment of both newness and familiarity.
Then it was done but the weight of his shoulders had eased a little bit and he gave a brief but genuine smile. Then he laughed. “Don’t say that to him; he’d be mortified.”
“I’ll remember that if he tries to put me on desk duty again then,” she teased.
Harry chuckled and waved and got back on the lift. When the doors closed and he saw himself again, he decided it didn’t really matter much if his hair was thinning. He could do with less of it anyway.
this is lovely
That went somewhere far happier than I expected it to go, whew!
so proud to be part of a generation where your hogwarts house counts as a vaild part of your personality description
i ache for the fact that pjo didn’t get the right media treatment; the fact that this was my harry potter and almost no one else knew about it… like, i would LOVE to see people post which cabin they’d be in and why and how they’re “waiting for their satyr to come find them” and b&n selling CHB merch and seeing tons of kids wearing orange t-shirts and clay bead necklaces and being able to smile at them as you pass, ask which god is their parent, tell them yours. or even more posts on tumblr like the house ones, like “that’s an ares kid,” or “there you have in order, a hades, a zeus, and a poseidon” or “hermes child” meaning the same thing as “chaotic neutral.” i feel like there’s so much i’ve missed out on. like, ugh.
ok so Ron says he doesn’t like spiders because when he was 3 the twins turned his teddy bear into a spider right? the twins are only 2 years older than Ron, which means they were FIVE YEARS OLD when they did this and I’m just??????? like they were five and they didn’t even have WANDS and they managed to deliberately turn a bear into a spider???? even if they managed to steal a wand from their siblings or parents that’s a really tricky bit of transfiguration and at age five most kids are just doing uncontrolled magic….. like TBH in my opinion Fred and George had more innate talent than the trio combined but they just wanted to chill and do pranks and I respect tf out of that
They INVENTED enough charms and potions to open an entire shop dedicated to them when they were still in their teens. They were quite possibly the most talented young wizards of their time, and instead of using their incredible abilities for good or for evil, they used them for jokes. True chaotic neutral.
willowfoot 