the whole yule ball thing in goblet of fire was so dumb and heteronormative
ok but real talk i am in full support of harry just asking ron to the dance with him and being each others “date” and having that be an ok thing instead of asking and then ignoring the poor patil twins who deserved better than that also i would have killed to see a yule ball scene where hermione’s talking with krum and turns around and sees her two best friends trying to do the tango (ron has a rose in his mouth and everything) and fucking tearing up the dance floor
“So,” Harry says. “I need a date to the Yule Ball.”
“Like. A mandatory date?”
“A mandatory date.”
“That’s kinda messed up.”
“Yeah. Any ideas?”
Ron rubs his chin. “Cho didn’t work out, then.”
“Nope. She’s with Cedric.”
“Right, right.” He’s stroking an imaginary beard now. “And Hermione is going with some mystery guy.”
Both boys scowl in unison.
Then, slowly, they turn to look at each other.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Harry asks.
“If you’re thinking we go to the ball together, then yes,” Ron affirms.
Harry has his game face on. So does Ron. “Let’s do this.” They shake on it.
Ron suddenly frowns.
“What?”
“My dress robes are hideous. You think…”
“I can buy—”
“What? No! I mean, isn’t Parvati Patil really good at clothing charms?”
“Oh yeah,” Harry realizes. “She wears those cool dresses on the weekends sometimes—uh, saris? Or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, but she and her sister make them. I heard Lavender talking to her about it. They make loads of their own clothes, think it’s fun or whatever.”
Harry makes a face. “Girls.” He’s mended enough of Dudley’s old clothes to know sewing is not fun. Girls are weird.
“Girls,” Ron agrees.
“…it’s a really good thing we’re going together.”
“Seconded.”
——and that’s how Harry and Ron befriend Lavender Brown and the Patil sisters. The three are actually pretty alright, for girls. (Hermione doesn’t count, clearly, as she’s their best friend.) It takes a while to fix Ron’s robes into something resembling modern fashion, but by then Dean Thomas has Had Enough of Their Dithering and makes the two of them wear three-piece muggle suits under their robes (which also took some creative charmwork, and the jackets were a total loss, but it came out better than the robes overall). Lavender is entirely taken with the idea and the two spend a good few hours discussing fashion.
Harry and Ron are Not Touching That.
Naturally, the two lord the anonymity of their dates over Hermione just like she’s taken to doing to the two of them, and it morphs into a great circle of fun, no hard feelings anywhere by the time the Ball comes around, and basically the whole of Gryffindor (plus Padma of Ravenclaw) is in on one side or the other.
Fred and George have decided it’s a great idea and have invited Lee Jordan to go with the two of them. Not to be outdone, Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet are bringing Katie Bell. Rumor has it that Oliver Wood is bringing quidditch gear. Which piece of gear he’s bringing, broom, quaffle, bludger, or goal hoop (don’t ask) is a hot topic of debate.
(He actually ends up bringing a whole host of underclassmen and spends the whole night giving out piggyback rides, dad-dances with them standing on his feet, and lessons about the magic used to decorate the hall, alongside Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater, because they gave him the puppy eyes and he is Weak to the puppy eyes.)
——and when Hermione sees Harry and Ron come into the antechamber for champions, she hits them both on the arm for laughing at her all this time. They exchange compliments, and the boys show off their suits and Ron’s modified robes. Then she asks the real question, namely:
“Which of you will be dancing which part?”
and the two just kind of go quiet and stare first at each other, because they hadn’t even thought of that, and then back at Hermione with big pleading eyes begging for help.
McGonagall, amused but on a tight schedule, chivvies the champions and their dates out before Hermione can say more than a joking, “This is what you get for keeping it a secret from me! Do, hahaha, do the tango or something!”
Harry and Ron exchange smirks and all Hermione can bring herself to do is smother giggles in Viktor’s shoulder and conjure them a few roses.
She should’ve known better than to think that the end of it. They drag her into no few ridiculous three-way dances before the night is up. It’s a good night, and they share the next bleary morning with the rest of the dorm, as a big, wild, Gryffindor family.
——and that is how Harry Potter and Ron Weasley made the front page of the Daily Prophet, in muggle suits (vests but no jackets, sleeves rolled up) with roses in their mouths, aggressively doing the tango. The photographer has captured Harry dipping the significantly-taller Ron and waggling his eyebrows suggestively before they both lose their balance and collapse in a tangle of adolescent limbs, laughing like loons.
BOYS IN LOVE? the headline asks.
——certain people are getting really, really sick of people commenting on Harry’s love life.
——"BEST FRIENDS FOREVER" Harry, Ron, and Hermione are quoted later in an exclusive interview with Rita Skeeter, massive grins on their photographed faces, and joy in their hearts.
fun story I first became obsessed with the harry potter series and hermione in particular in yr 3 of primary school and I decided I wanted to be like hermione in every way so I started reading *lots* and working super hard in school, got a reputation for bookishness and being the smart kid that I kept up into high school and lol here I am graduating in a few weeks from Cambridge all bc I adored this clever bookworm in a children’s book series and absorbed her into my personality as a child like ???
basically long story short female role models in kids media are EVERYTHING
Something that really bothers me about people’s hatred towards Ron is that unless you grew up really poor you have no idea what it’s like and how much it affects you. Especially if you grow up poor surrounded by rich friends. The jealousy seriously eats you alive and the way Ron acted was perfectly understandable.
Over twenty years later, I’ll still never forget the day one of my classmates told me to just ask my parents for more money, as though I was literally too thick to work out the obvious solution. Because in her world, it was that simple. Or the day my teacher gave me an ‘are you even trying for a believable lie’? look when I had to tell him my parents couldn’t afford to send me on a low-cost excursion. Or how for an entire school year, I had to wear a school uniform skirt so small it left angry marks on my waist every day, because my mother begged me to make it last just one more year. The day everyone thought it was hilarious to ruin my pencil case, and even more hilarious that I was so upset and claimed that my parents would be furious with me – LOL, that silly girl! They’ll just buy her a new one, it’s not that difficult! (Spoiler, they couldn’t and it was). And yeah, I had my fair share of second-hand underwear too, like another character who grew up in poverty. The utter shock I felt when I realized other families not only had air conditioning, but also used it regularly… the jealousy I felt when everyone else had nice formal wear and I had whatever my parents could manage to get… the list goes on and on. And that’s on top of a bunch of other struggles and disadvantages I had.
But to hear Ron critics talk, he was the worst person alive if he ever even dared to want nice things for himself instead of just nobly being happy other people had them. ‘Why is everything I own rubbish?’ is not a permissible attitude, not even for a moment.
I see a lot of people making fun/disapproving of how Ron is always stuffing his face with food and it INFURIATES ME.
When you grow up fucking poor you learn to take advantage of free food when you have it.
Asshats.
Also does anyone realize the sheer fortitude Ron had to have to invite Harry over to his house!?
I could not invite my better off friends over to my house because things were literally falling apart inside of it and my family didn’t have the means to fix it and it ate me up inside to not be able to have my best friend over to my house when I spent the better half of my teenage life sleeping over at her house because my parents and I didn’t want her to see how rundown the inside of our home was.
Ron was so nervous about what Harry would say about his house and was embrassed by the state of it but he saw Harry needed somewhere to stay and he opened up his home to him. People who have always been well off wouldn’t understand the magnitude of that action.
Ron is a damn treasure and anyone who hates him because of his jealousy can’t understand the deeper meaning behind it.
harry potter, surprising literally everyone, retires from being an auror to make ceramics in a cottage in the hills. “i don’t know,” the boy who lived said in a statement. “becoming a potter just seemed right, you know?”
I’ve been on this site for how long and I am in shock it took this long for a potter joke
Do you ever think about how when Ron’s wand broke 2nd year, just using spell-o-tape wasn’t enough to fix it. It kept backfiring in ways that were really bad, like making himself eat slugs, or kinda just. being defective in general.
Hagrid’s wand was snapped his 3rd year. But he still uses it, disguised as an umbrella. And it works.
Like we know Ollivander didn’t fix it, since he was surprised to hear Hagrid had the pieces. Not to mention since Hagrid was expelled, it would be extremely illegal to fix it. Hogwarts works as a groundskeeper, and lives in a one room wooden hut that he made himself. He’s not going to have the money to ribe someone to fix it, and then there’s also the fact that because of his heritage, even if he could bribe someone to fix it, they probably wouldn’t. And sure, Dumbledore probably knows that Hagrid fixed his wand, there’s a certain level of deniability there. He wouldn’t have actually gotten involved with the wand mending process. Especially when Hagrid was just accused of killing a student.
So that means Hagrid would have put his wand back together himself.
The 3rd year transfiguration examination was to turn a teapot into a tortoise. Only inanimate objects into animals. Part of the reason animagi are so rare is because they’re human to animal transformations. The first time we meet Hagrid, he gives Dudley a tail, and correctly animates the boat he and Harry are on. Silently.
Harry and co. didn’t even attempt to learn silent casting until 6th year. Anything Hagrid learned after 3rd year would have been self taught.
Hagrid is one powerful wizard and holy shit combined with his resistance to magic with his giant heritage forget McGonagall holy shit Hagrid is terrifying
No wonder sixteen-year-old Voldemort was intimidated enough by thirteen-year-old Hagrid to pick him as the one to frame for murder.