okay but imagine that james wasn’t in the house that halloween. he was talking to dumbledore or out to get groceries or anything that has him out of the house. so lily is home alone but she still sacrifices herself for her son, so the curse still rebounds and hits voldemort and “kills” him. so harry is still the boy who lived, but james is alive.
and of course it’s awful. it’s a terrible moment, burying lily. james is devestated and has no idea how he’s going to raise harry alone. he has to testify that peter betrayed the order, because he’s alive to pass on the knowledge that peter was his secret keeper, not sirius. sirius doesn’t go to prison because he’s too busy helping james cope with lily’s death to go after peter, and peter’s already faked his death by the time he can leave james.
remus and sirius move in with james to help take care of harry, because he swears he can’t do it on his own. remus doesn’t have to focus on rent and food money because james tells him he’s family, so he can focus on a job he actually enjoys such as editing or writing, something freelance so he can take full moons off and no one will wonder why.
sirius refuses to get any job beside full time babysitter, curls up as padfoot and keeps harry warm and safe, especially when the boy gets older and starts having nightmares about what happened to his mom.
harry is raised in the wizarding world, with the most protective family of anyone he’s ever met, and invites ron and hermione over to his house during the summer and somehow padfoot always gets them into some sort of trouble.
when harry goes through hardships at hogwarts, he always has his dad to turn to. james would stroke his hair back from his forehead and kiss his son’s scar and remind him, “your mother was the most brilliant witch there ever was and she’s watching over you, so you’ll never have to worry.”
even when pettigrew comes back and revives voldemort, james is on the quidditch pitch the minute harry comes back with the cup and cedric’s dead body, remus and sirius right behind him and swearing he’ll destroy anyone who doesn’t take his son seriously.
the fight at the ministry harry’s fifth year, james would remind sirius to keep focused, remind him not to get overwhelmed with adrenaline and to focus, and would watch not just harry’s back but his best friends’ too. when he sees sirius too focused on making fun to notice bellatrix amazing a curse straight at him, he dives in front of it to push sirius out of the way and ends up in St. Mungo’s after the fight, a little bruised and battered but with promises that he’ll heal and a sheepish apology from Padfoot in the former of an old, drool covered chew toy.
when harry disappears seventh year, he and james keep in contact with the magical mirrors that belonged to sirius and james paces the kitchen every evening, listening to potterwatch and shrugging off Sirius’ shoulder on his hand telling him that their boy will be okay because he’s incredibly smart and incredibly brave and honestly mate how’d you make such an amazing boy?
and then the fight at hogwarts happens. remus and sirius have each other’s backs and james just wants to find harry. he does, a little too late, being carried out of the woods in hagrid’s arms. he breaks down and drops to his knees and remus and sirius look at each other and think, “there is no way we can fix him after this.”
but then harry is back and voldemort is dead and james’ face is tear stained and they’re all worn out and bruised but their family is alive and sirius, a little hesitantly, offers, “…so who wants ice cream?”
“listen… harry’s in trouble, and we could tell mum and dad, but I reckon we should just steal the flying car and go kidnap him in his muggle neighborhood, even though I’m 12 and you’re both 14 and this is a crime and the three of us cant drive”
“excellent”
This is bullshit.
Nobody in Harry’s life – no ADULT – ever did anything about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Dursleys. Nobody did anything when they were told he was being starved, that there were bars on the windows, that they. Albus Fucking Dumbledore didn’t do anything about it.
Nobody in canon, or JKR herself in interviews or on Pottermore, even uses the word “abuse”. It’s all about how “the Durlseys treated him badly”. Nobody says abuse.
What Ron, Fred, and George did was nothing short of heroic. That they needed to do it is an indictment of every adult in Harry’s life, magical and non-magical alike.
@deadcatwithaflamethrower Need some back-up here because I’m hitting that point of “I want to set something on fire.”
I thought you did a pretty good job, actually. Even when adults are told about the conditions Harry was found in (literally IMPRISONED: remember, folks, the Dursleys were not going to let him go back to Hogwarts in book 2) nobody does anything. Nobody acts on the fact that a family literally imprisoned a child.
Someone I used to follow on LJ/DW was literally imprisoned by their parent. Nobody ever did anything. No one would believe them when they told other adults. No one wanted to believe it.
This shit happens and adults do nothing because it might interfere with their worldview that everything is just fuckin’ peachy…or someone in *power* that they respect/fear has told them not to interfere for the good of some cause/reason or another. That is one of the most terrifyingly realistic aspects of JKR’s books, but it’s glossed over by everyone who doesn’t believe that could ever possibly happen in real life.
And hey: there is more than one way to imprison someone.
(Aside from the fact that my mother locked the door and literally stood in front of it in an attempt to keep me from leaving the house once. Afterwards she pretended it had never happened.)
JK is actually on record (a radio interview, I think, but don’t quote me) as saying she doesn’t think the way Harry was treated by the Dursley’s was abuse.
That was the moment I lost all respect for her.
I do not care that she donated millions to charity, I care that she clearly thinks starvation and swinging a frying pan at a child’s head is an okay thing to do. That it’s okay to put bars on a child’s window to keep them in, and bolts the door shut.
@jabberwockypie Now I feel like setting something on fire too. *passes the chocolate and marshmallows*
Just … *SCREAMING* So. Much. Screaming and FIRE.
See, when I learn things like this, I also become somewhat Concerned about the person’s children. (Jude Watson has a daughter and considering the Jedi Apprentice stuff, I’m ALSO worried there.)
Do I think JKR would lock her kids in their rooms with bars on the window? Probably not, but if you’re not willing to admit that withholding food and is abuse, if you’re not willing to address emotional abuse and gaslighting AT ALL, trying to make a child hate themselves (like with what the Dursleys do with magic). I’m extremely concerned about what you think appropriate parenting looks like.
Frankly I also think it’s extremely irresponsible when your intended audience consists of children and teenagers. At some point somebody needs to say “This thing that happened to this character was wrong”. Because children who are being abused? we don’t KNOW. Or we don’t necessarily process it that way. It’s “not that bad” or it’s “It’s not like they’re beating me.” and every time it gets worse (the time my mother gave me a black eye), you move the goalposts of Not That Bad “It’s not like it’s ALL THE TIME”.
so. if two people who wrote and illustrated a Famous Harry Potter Fanfiction, if those two people wanted to auction off a new chapter of that Famous Harry Potter Fanfiction and give the proceeds to a progressive charity of the winner’s choice, how would – what would the best way to go about that be? I mean, would we literally put it on ebay? What’s the procedure? One of those two people REALLY wants to draw an illustration or two of a couple of harry potter characters making out while stepping on a fascist, and would love to be able to do so AND send money to the ACLU.
All this and more #bonuscontent could be yours in SHOEBOX PROJECT II: 2 SHOE 2 BOXIOUS, coming soon on PATREON
recently discovered photograph of Lily Evans, who is Jewish, punching an unknown minion of Voldemort
Merry Christmas !! I hope you all have a great holiday weather you celebrte Christmas or not, it has been an amazing year and i want to thank everyone who follows me and those who inspire me for making it such a good one !!! Thank you <3xxx
What if, when Petunia Dursley found a little boy on her front doorstep, she took him in? Not into the cupboard under the stairs, not into a twisted childhood of tarnished worth and neglect—what if she took him in?
Petunia was jealous, selfish and vicious. We will not pretend she wasn’t. She looked at that boy on her doorstep and thought about her Dudders, barely a month older than this boy. She looked at his eyes and her stomach turned over and over. (Severus Snape saved Harry’s life for his eyes. Let’s have Petunia save it despite them).
Let’s tell a story where Petunia Dursley found a baby boy on her doorstep and hated his eyes—she hated them. She took him in and fed him and changed him and got him his shots, and she hated his eyes up until the day she looked at the boy and saw her nephew, not her sister’s shadow. When Harry was two and Vernon Dursley bought Dudley a toy car and Harry a fast food meal with a toy with parts he could choke on Petunia packed her things and got a divorce.
Harry grew up small and skinny, with knobbly knees and the unruly hair he got from his father. He got cornered behind the dumpsters and in the restrooms, got blood on the jumpers Petunia had found, half-price, at the hand-me-down store. He was still chosen last for sports. But Dudley got blood on his sweaters, too, the ones Petunia had found at the hand-me-down store, half price, because that was all a single mother working two secretary jobs could afford for her two boys, even with Vernon’s grudging child support.
They beat Harry for being small and they laughed at Dudley for being big, and slow, and dumb. Students jeered at him and teachers called Dudley out in class, smirked over his backwards letters.
Harry helped him with his homework, snapped out razored wit in classrooms when bullies decided to make Dudley the butt of anything; Harry cornered Dudley in their tiny cramped kitchen and called him smart, and clever, and ‘better ‘n all those jerks anyway’ on the days Dudley believed it least.
Dudley walked Harry to school and back, to his advanced classes and past the dumpsters, and grinned, big and slow and not dumb at all, at anyone who tried to mess with them.
But was that how Petunia got the news? Her husband complained about owls and staring cats all day long and in the morning Petunia found a little tyke on her doorsep. This was how the wizarding world chose to give the awful news to Lily Potter’s big sister: a letter, tucked in beside a baby boy with her sister’s eyes.
There were no Potters left. Petunia was the one who had to arrange the funeral. She had them both buried in Godric’s Hollow. Lily had chosen her world and Petunia wouldn’t steal her from it, not even in death. The wizarding world had gotten her sister killed; they could stand in that cold little wizard town and mourn by the old stone.
(Petunia would curl up with a big mug of hot tea and a little bit of vodka, when her boys were safely asleep, and toast her sister’s vanished ghost. Her nephew called her ‘Tune’ not ‘Tuney,’ and it only broke her heart some days.
Before Harry was even three, she would look at his green eyes tracking a flight of geese or blinking mischieviously back at her and she would not think ‘you have your mother’s eyes.’
A wise old man had left a little boy on her doorstep with her sister’s eyes. Petunia raised a young man who had eyes of his very own).
Petunia snapped and burnt the eggs at breakfast. She worked too hard and knew all the neighbors’ worst secrets. Her bedtime stories didn’t quite teach the morals growing boys ought to learn: be suspicious, be wary; someone is probably out to get you. You owe no one your kindness. Knowledge is power and let no one know you have it. If you get can get away with it, then the rule is probably meant for breaking.
Harry grew up loved. Petunia still ran when the letters came. This was her nephew, and this world, this letter, these eyes, had killed her sister. When Hagrid came and knocked down the door of some poor roadside motel, Petunia stood in front of both her boys, shaking. When Hagrid offered Harry a squashed birthday cake with big, kind, clumsy hands, he reminded Harry more than anything of his cousin.
His aunt was still shaking but Harry, eleven years and eight minutes old, decided that any world that had people like his big cousin in it couldn’t be all bad. “I want to go,” Harry told his aunt and he promised to come home.
Emma and Daniel sleeping between takes of Deathly Hallows part 1
People who are close to me know, they so know, that there were days when it was decidedly unglamorous. And I was so tired, I would fall asleep anywhere. They’ll never be released, but the onset photographer has pictures of me falling asleep everywhere. Like on chairs, on the floor, in the middle of a set, all curled up.
Like a cat…There were times when crew members didn’t know where to find me, but they knew I’d be curled up in a ball somewhere.
– Emma Watson
this looks like a pretty painting or something
Honestly, this might be one of my favorite candids of them
knitting in the dark 