IN CASE IT WASNT OBVIOUS!!!! - Blog Posts

I had.... the weirdest nightmare(????) I've ever had??????

Ok so like

I was in a sophomore/junior high school class

And we were learning math (I FUCKING LOVE NUMBERS)

And the teacher was all like Today!! We're learning a new topic!!!! Cross Multiplication!!!! And everyone was so confused all like

What's multiplication?????? And so I, being the massive fucking buzzkill nerd I am, ask the teacher Oh! When do we learn Calculus? (In my school ppl usually start pre-calc junior/senior year) And everyone in the class stared at me like I was some kind of extraplanar freak

And then the teacher kinda softly whispered In college.... And then I started crying

And I woke up right after I started crying

Math 😔

Fun fact: This movement is exactly the same as one of my happy stims. I see a character do it, I have to copy it, or else I get a bad feeling in my body. I am literally doing it as I write this.

Lil happy boy ⭐️

An Alternative to Blood Based Protection

...because Lily’s Sacrifice-Protection relying on biological relation in a story about escaping to a magical world and finding a home there is narratively WRONG.

Let’s instead posit that it is based a) on Harry’s assignment of the term “home” and b) how well loved and protected he is there. But how would that impact how the story works? For a good chunk of the books, surprisingly little actually. It could also explain some phenomena we see in regards to the Protection (i.e. burning Quirrelmort, but not the Diary).

pre-Hogwarts:

Harry calls Privet Drive home out of a lack of alternatives

Petunia has complicated feelings for her sister and her nephew. They do contain a touch of love, but just not enough to outweigh everything else

ergo: Protection present and surviving but so very veeeeery weak

that’s why it can’t do anything against the part of Tom Riddle hotglued to Harry’s soul despite Vault-of-mould being the designated ENEMY#1 for the Protection

First Year:

Harry latches onto Hogwarts fast and hard, but it’s not really his because it belongs to every child in the magical world

so “home” is split between Hogwarts and Privet Drive

Ron and Hermione’s selfless friendship weighs in and in combination with Hogwarts’ semi-status, the Protection can burn Quirrel

not without damage to Harry though (the attempt to burn the hurcrux

Second Year:

Hogwarts’ student population turns against Harry and Hermione in particular is threatened

so Hogwarts is essentially catapulted out of the “home” category

the Protection can’t do anything against the Diary (despite it taking Harry’s consciousness to an old memory, which BLOODY HELL)

Third and fourth Year:

nothing much changes

Harry has five glorious minutes of hope for a new home, but then Sirius’ innocence gets denied again and there goes that escape

the Protection is powerless against Pettigrew taking blood from Harry and has to abandon those precious drops. It can either stick to the drops OR Harry and that’s just not a choice

but that’s semi-alright, the twin wand cores come through for Harry

So up to the summer before fifth year, most everything stays the same. The Protection is extremely weak at this point and that’s part of why the dementors can so easily locate and attack Harry.

Harry gets picked up from Privet Drive and brought to Grimmauld Place. And there he finally gets to hug Sirius. And maybe, just maybe, in the moment Sirius hugs him back does he think “So this is what coming home feels like”.

Because home doesn’t have to be a place. Home can just as well be a person. And Sirius had expressed his desire to give Harry both a place to stay in which he is wanted and a person to do the wanting. Not only Harry close, but also safe and healthy and happy. And he had followed that up for over a year of letters and firecalls and a willing ear and good advice despite the mortal danger he faced to do so.

So in that moment Sirius irrefutably becomes Harry’s home. AND BOY HOWDY DOES HE LOVE AND CARE FOR HIM.

Lily’s Protection goes from barely warm ashes to raging fiendfyre in a heartbeat. Which is atrocious news for the horcrux nestled next to Harry’s soul. It is ENEMY#1 and Right There.

Harry feels a short twinge and then like he just dropped a Quaffle he’d been lugging around behind his eyes.