Marguerite Bennett's Blog, page 306
June 7, 2016
the-butt-prince-ike:
I was supposed to draw this right after my...
I was supposed to draw this right after my return from Desucon when the topic was current but I forgot.
Facts from the 2014 UK Editions of Harry Potter
Before the Hogwarts Express, some young wizards and witches made their way to Hogwarts on broomsticks and in enchanted carriages
There are other fractional platforms at King’s Cross station. Try 7 1/2 for a trip to wizard-only villages in Europe.
It took five and a half minutes for the Sorting Hat to decide whether to place Minerva McGonagall in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw
Several Hogwarts students have caused mayhem at King’s Cross by dropping suitcases full of newt spleens or biting spellbooks all over the Muggle Station.
Peeves the poltergeist caused a three-day evacuation of Hogwarts in 1876 after escaping a trap set for him armed with several dangerous weapons.
The one exception to the general magical aversion to Muggle technology is cars. Even the Ministry of Magic owns a fleet, modified with various useful charms.
Many wizards were unhappy with the invention of the Muggle-like Knight Bus, and refused to use it when it first hit the streets.
Headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts can teach their magical portrait to act and behave exactly like themselves.
Sir Cadogan’s most famous encounter was with the Wyvern of Wye, a dragon-like creature, whom he accidentally killed with his broken wand.
Only one non-magical person has ever managed to get as far as the Hogwarts Sorting Hat before being exposed as a Squib.
Of the Eleven wizarding schools in the world, the African school of Uagadou is the only one to select pupils by Dream Messenger, leaving a token in the child’s hand whilst they sleep.
The 1809 Quidditch World Cup final turned into a human versus tree battle when one of the players managed to jinx an entire forest to attack the stadium.
The Hufflepuff ghost, the Fat Friar, was executed after senior churchman became suspicious of his ability to cure the pox by poking peasants with a stick.
Every year St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries treats at least one injury caused by homemade Floo powder.
Before she became a teacher at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall used to work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic.
Part of the process of becoming an Animagus requires you to carry a leaf from a Mandrake in your mouth for an entire month.
A Dark wizard called Raczidian was devoured by maggots that appeared from his wand when he unsuccessfully attempted to cast the Patronus Charm.
Any part of a person’s body can be added to the Polyjuice Potion to allow the consumer to take their form, including hair, toenail clippings, dandruff or worse…
Remus Lupin’s father, Lyall, was a world-renowned authority on magical creatures like poltergeists and Boggarts.
It took 167 Memory Charms and the largest mass Concelment Charm ever performed in Britain to modify a muggle steam engine and create the Hogwarts Express.
Students from the Russian Wizarding school, Koldovstoretz, play a version of Quidditch where they fly on entire, uprooted trees instead of broomsticks.Yes, these are all canon. Thought I’d type it up to have it as a text reference. Enjoyyy.
I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE FACTS!
(n.b. naturally, remus lupin’s dad was also called “wolf.” nothing like tempting fate for two generations in a row, huh?)
ugh okay but now i want a squib who did make it through hogwarts;
a squib who spent her childhood pretending to magically start accidental fires with the lighter up her sleeve; who got her bemused little sister to grow her hair long overnight after a bad trim; a squib who shook all through shopping at diagon alley and who was so relieved that her parents were almost suspicious when they said that there wasn’t enough money that year to get her a new wand from ollivander’s— she’d have to take great-aunt jenny’s hand-me-down, eight and a half inches of oak and unicorn hair;
a squib who made it to platform 9 3/4, who made friends with some shy kid in the back of the express, who made it across the lake and up the stairs and through the great hall doors and by the great long tables and onto the wobbly old stool—
until the hat drops over her eyes
well what do we have here?
she’s got a forged hogwarts letter with penmanship that’s perfect down to the ink splatter; she’s got a complicated string of owls, only half of them forged, from parents to administration to ministry that’s so complicated her name ended up on the first year roll call anyway. she’s got ten arguments, four pleas, and one smothered threat on the tip of her mental tongue for why the house that comes out of this hat’s brim better not be squib
she’s got a lighter up her sleeve and an eight and a half inch wand in her belt that will never, ever work for her.
well, says the hat, better be slytherin then
she finds the room of requirement in her second week, because she has always been a hallway-pacer, her head always ringing with i want i want i need i need i will do this. the room of requirement gives her books of muggle magic tricks, sleight of hand, chemical ways to turn ‘water’ into ‘wine.’
she bribes another first-year slytherin to wingardium leviosa her feathers in flitwick’s class. her shy friend from the train, a hufflepuff and a muggleborn, buys her a new lighter for christmas without being asked. when a gryffindor finds her scrubbing at tears in the back of the library and guesses what’s the matter (he’s seen her classwork), she tells him the story, tells him what it’s like to be denied a whole world because they think different means broken— she expects him to tattle, but instead the gryff transfigures her needles for the rest of her academic career; and she whispers hints to him when his black thumb keeps making him fail herbology.
(the first thing she’d said, when she realized he’d guessed her secret, had been ‘you should’ve been in ravenclaw’ and he had looked at her gravely until she apologized)
the room of requirement gives her books and books on potions, arithmancy, herbology— these things are not about magic. these things are not about power that lives in your bones. she knows power, knows the way sparks fly from her little sister’s wand when they take her to ollivanders, knows the way it flicks under her quill when she practices mcgonagall’s signature and sends home disciplinary letters to the parents of every student who ever bullied her friend from the train.
she waters nightshade and re-pots mandrakes, can tell poisonous mushrooms from magical (…also poisonous) ones by a glance. she drops in just the right amount of unicorn horn powder in potions class (.025 g more than the instructions suggest) and when making sleeping draught stirs for half a stir extra.
this is about power that you make.
she studies and invents, schemes and lies and excels. she holds potions tutoring in the slytherin common room when her friend from the train suggests it, then moves it to the room of requirement after it gets too large and someone stains the green-and-silver upholstery. (her arithmancy sessions are much less well attended).
she keeps her lighter, her little packets of carefully measured powder, her jokeshop tricks up her sleeve—she keeps the names of people who she can trust, who she can call on for distraction, for help, for a needed lie on the tip of her tongue—she keeps her gryffindor’s heavy wand and quick wit close at hand; keeps her hufflepuff’s steady patience closer; keeps her own bright improvisations at her fingertips.
her bemused little sister ends up in ravenclaw, and they all eat at the hufflepuff table for breakfast because (she says) slytherins weren’t meant to follow rules and because (her sister says) how stupid is this seating thing and because (her shy friend says) didn’t you hear the hat? helga said she’d take them all, so hold your tongue, macmillian, scoot over, and pass my friends here the hashbrowns.
when she graduates, she heads for the ministry. she has plans, and she has brave, smart, true, cunning friends to back her up.
power should never be something born into your bones.
lettersfromtitan, this has you all over it.
finallyfrontiered:
sociallysnapjodie:
egobus:
boyfriend requirements:
is a feminist
not a...
boyfriend requirements:
is a feminist
not a racist
dances (not necessarily well)
is a cutie
is not a murderer
likes puppiesyes cause obviously if someone is not a feminist they are obviously scum (sarcasm)
Isn’t that guy
June 6, 2016
what do you make of house elves being better off left slaves because they wanted to be? it made me feel weird that there was a species MEANT to be slaves.
but that’s not canon at all.
a lot of people believed this throughout the series, including sympathetic and wise characters like Hagrid, but they were wrong. Rowling lets good people be wrong and doesn’t chastise them in the text for it. She doesn’t bother spoon feeding readers social justice, but the message that “even good people can condone awful things” is one of the strongest themes of the story. the house elf situation is a perfect example of why you can’t just read the surface text of Harry Potter and assume the author is speaking through the characters when they say slaves love being slaves and change the subject.
like, look at hermione’s SJW phase. the surface read on that? she tried to fix something that wasn’t broken, and she failed hilariously and gave up because nobody cared, even the elves.
except no. she was right about house elves. ideologically, she was seeing something Wizard culture was blind to, and she was 100% right.
but in her SJW phase, she wanted to fix this enormous and culturally accepted horror by trying to force the house elves to make choices that conformed to her notion of what was best for them.
she tried to free elves without their consent, she lectured them about their situation from her position of almost total ignorance, she ignored their wishes at every turn, and she tried to control their liberation and make it be on her terms, and it didn’t work. time and again, no one listened. humans didn’t really mind having slaves, it turns out, and because the house elves she met had never known anything but a world where their lot is servitude, why should they give a fuck about a 14 year old human child’s notion of social justice? she expected the world to change on the strength of her moral outrage, and she failed utterly
this storyline was not meant to impart the message that Hermione was wrong all along. it was meant to represent the vast chasm between meaning well and doing well. even very clever, kind people fuck up a whole lot, and there’s no one cleverer or more kind than Hermione Granger to demonstrate this point.
of course the house elves don’t want to be freed! they’d been abused, degraded and indoctrinated to see “freedom” as a threat. being good at servitude is the only value they’ve ever been permitted to hold since birth! a choice between this familiar, unhappy servitude and the shame of being cast out into the world with no skills, no friends, and no support system is not a choice most people could ever make.
Hermione was instructing victims to stop being victimized on her say-so, and she was offended when they didn’t jump at the chance to throw out what little safety they could count on in life in favor of a freedom that was basically meaningless to them.
She didn’t learn some shitty moral lesson about how house elves are better off as slaves. she learned that paternalism and a massive savior complex are terrible reasons to start a movement. she learned that putting the burden of changing systematic injustice on the oppressed and superimposing your own cultural beliefs on them with no regard for their own feelings is insulting and degrading.
she learned that absolutely everyone will tell you to fuck off if you pull condescending SJW shit on them, even if it’s in their best interests to do what you want them to do.
and Hermione took this lesson with her when she finished school. she became a House Elf advocate within the Ministry. She used her influence and power to enter the system and stop the fuckery from the human side instead of telling slaves to stop being so slavey and being annoyed when they stayed oppressed.
you think a genius like Hermione Granger couldn’t figure out with a little bit of experience that systemic change has to come from within the ranks of the powerful? man, not even.
kateordie:
Here I am with Kieron Gillen at the None More Goth...
Here I am with Kieron Gillen at the None More Goth panel at ECCC, as I recite the Gashlycrumb Tinies from memory in front of several hundred people.
(Thank you to Hyla for the recording!)
SO CUTE
psl:
hmsindecision:
Men who slam doors and furniture are making sure you hear how much they want...
psl:
Men who slam doors and furniture are making sure you hear how much they want to hit you.
pay attention to the seeds of domestic violence. please. you really deserve better
grizzlyhills:
flightcub:
interretialia:
life-of-a-latin-student:
ratwithoutwings:
i’m so...
i’m so upset
I just realized that the reason ghosts say Boo! is because it’s a latin verb
they’re literally saying ‘I alarm/I am alarming/I do alarm!!
I can’t
present active boō, present infinitive boāre, perfect active boāvī, supine boātum
Recte!
if it comes from the latin word, they’re actually saying “I’M YELLING!” which is even cuter
do they speak latin because it’s a dead language
Marguerite Bennett's Blog
- Marguerite Bennett's profile
- 366 followers
