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there is absolutely no reason hogwarts couldn’t’ve been founded as a monastic school for the education of the clergy, with two houses for women and two for men, except that the hp fandom is full of bitter atheists and people who don’t know shit about paganism & religious history

eighthdoctor

@ofloveandmedea said: please talk about this headcanon it sounds Fascinating and you always have such good sources

and also @saphura

well since you asked so nicely

here’s two things that i don’t think fanfic writers understand about pre-enlightenment europe:

first, there is zero evidence that paganism continued to exist as a practiced faith in western europe after about 900 CE. there is more evidence for demons. (reading on this, among other things) if you want to make the case that with the statute of secrecy, wizards erased all evidence of their existence as your justification for pagan wizards, that’s fine, but you’re then left with the question of where the stories about witches came from.

second, there was no way for a non-christian organization to function. period. it didn’t happen. jewish groups, especially pre-1492, were very small and very quiet; islamic groups kept out of christian europe; there were no other options. if you were a guild, if you were a school, if you were a group of any form, if you were a government–you were christian. it was explicit. there wasn’t even a conception of how to organize without invoking christianity.

so when, in or about 950, hogwarts was founded, it had to be founded in a christian framework. there’s a big, huge, gigantic problem though: in 950, education happened one-on-one, through tutors or apprenticeships. the only, only institution educating in a group format was the church.

why? because clergy came from all classes, because clergy were required to be (at least partially) literate, and because the majority of the population (in some places and eras, from any demographic) was not literate. religious institutions were the only places collecting significant numbers of children and giving them an education.

there were two forms of this: cathedral schools, which produced priests, and monastic schools, which produced monks and nuns. (some reading)

couple of reasons why hogwarts would be monastic and not a cathedral:

the boring, the reasonable, hogwarts isn’t anywhere near anything that would be a cathedral, but monasteries were all over the place and the more remote, the better

priests were all male, which makes two of the founders difficult to explain

scotland was more connected to the irish monastic form of christianity than the mainland european bishop focused christianity

so. if you’re going to create a school in 950 in scotland that accepts students from all backgrounds with the goal of educating them, the most reasonable framework for this is the monastic school.

(monastic schools were also notoriously apolitical, which would go a long way to explaining some things in the books…)

but wait! you say. what about christianity and magic?

i’m so glad you asked. medieval catholicism didn’t actually have a problem with harry potter magic, as long as it was dressed up in the appropriate forms.

quote from holy feast and holy fast by caroline walker bynum:

By 1500, indeed, the model of the female saint, expressed both in popular veneration and in official canonizations, was in many ways the mirror image of society’s notion of the witch. Each was thought to be possessed, whether by God or by Satan; each seemed able to read the minds and hearts of others with uncanny shrewdness; each was suspected of flying through the air, whether in saintly levitation or biolocation, or in a witches’ Sabbath.

in other words, it’s not the things that people do that make them witches: it’s their relationship (or not) to God and the Church. things that we today would call magic–healing people by touching them, or saying incantations; turning one bread into many; transporting from place to place–all of these turn up in hagiographies of saints as miracles that they performed.

(complicating matters is that they did have a conception between good and bad witches, it’s just that all were damned. so you have good witches, who are doing good things, and bad witches, who are doing bad things, and saints, who are doing good things, and the quality of the thing…well it does matter, but it matters less than the position of the person doing it)

additionally, throughout the middle ages, you see records of people definitely doing magic which is contemporaneously acknowledged as magic who are…not getting burned as witches. the big easy example here is court alchemists & astrologers, who were all over the place telling the future and/or making things blow up and only really getting into trouble when their patrons did. (some reading)

there were also tumblr’s favorite women, the herbalist or local midwife (or, equally common, the wealthy widow). the line between “medicine” and “magic” was not all that well formed: if you knew that certain herbs with certain prayers would keep someone alive, who was to say that it was the herbs vs the prayers that did the heavy lifting? later there was a clear(er) distinction, but even then, the association of midwifery with witchcraft is not new and it is not unfounded. (more reading)

so there’s a deep, deep split here. because on the one hand, yes, people were (irregularly, but routinely) tortured and (less commonly) executed for witchcraft (under a variety of names). but on the other hand, people were socially rewarded for practicing magic within accepted forms, and while sometimes this was because the source of the magic was seen as different, sometimes it was not.

in this context, then, in this understanding that some people could (and did) work magic without being evil, in this society where education was the province of a very, very select group of people who were also (what a coincidence!) more likely to be workers of magic, in this situation that j.k. rowling seems to have absolutely no idea of–

hogwarts was a monastic school to produce good catholic magical monks and nuns.

(some more readings i didn’t have an excuse to share earlier: link (on merlin), link (on anglo-saxons), link (on things witches did), link (on what the witch hunters thought they were hunting and why))

eighthdoctor

and because i know you’re all wondering: hogwarts founder headcanons

helga hufflepuff is first and easiest, because helga is a midwife. you want an abortion? she can help with that. curse an ex-boyfriend? great! heal your child? she’s got that too. lost a cow? totally something she can help with. helga is a good christian, yes, and goes to church regularly, but it doesn’t occur to her for a while that some form of organized education might be helpful. she has her apprentices, and she grew up with tales about those who wanted too much, too badly, who didn’t think of the cost, and who did a deal with the devil as a result. but she thinks of this as the consequence of what she gets to do, which is putter around in her garden and make sure the crops come in on time. when they start talking about a monastic school, about a place to educate nuns in a little different way, a way that’s a little closer to god, she starts thinking about how to putter a little bigger and what that might mean.

salazar slytherin is the court alchemist. he came running north after an experiment went wrong (did it blow up? a little. was anyone hurt? not badly), looking for somewhere to go and someone to protect him–and this isn’t unusual, everyone has patrons and, and wizards don’t survive long without someone to explain to the church why these wizards are fine, thanks–and he finds that the local monasteries have more young children, young magical children than he’s used to, and he goes–oh. he is also 115% the reason why divination is a subject, because he is very good at explaining to people why their zodiac means they should leave their entire fortune to this brand new monastery, and he never, ever forgets that he has to rely on others, that his safety depends on people who secretly, deeply think he is a heretic, that he’s taking and educating and perverting their children, and that if they wanted to he and all his would die.

rowena ravenclaw is a nun. it’s not a profession she came to young; she came after her husband, after her daughter, after she was widowed and everyone looked at her a little differently, and a little sadly. after she started having visions, after her angry words started to hurt. so she went to a cloister, and discovered she was touched by god, and also that there were children here, like her daughter, who needed education and that she was very, very good at this. it’s rowena who reaches out to those she knows, here and there, saying, do you want to make this real? do you want to make this official? rowena has had a lot, and lost a lot, and found something else entirely, and is determined to take everyone along with her.

godric is a monk. he is not a very good monk. he is not big on the seclusion or the copying. he is very big on living in the community and helping them (he would make a decent fransciscan if he was born 500 years later). he’s an absolute stickler for penance, for himself or for anyone else, and also for justice. he became a monk because he got in an argument with a neighbor, and the next day the neighbor’s cow died, and there was an accusation made, so he decided that the appropriate solution was to vanish and made his way to ireland to become a monk. he sees people every day who don’t know what they can do, who do know what they can do but not how, who are hurting others and helping others and want only to know why, whether this was from god or from the devil, and he does his best to help them. but he can’t help but think that there must be some better way to do this, that if there was a monastery just for monks like him, they might be able to do something.

and they do.

abigail-nicole

i love this format of fanfic

findingfeather

You know this strongly implies that you can then trace the HARD-split of Magic-Muggle society to the Reformation, and it’s probably Calvin’s fault, and that’s beautiful.

professorsparklepants

Given that Wizards canonly celebrate Christmas (even if it’s in a very secular manner) and that two of the hard laws of magic we’re given (can’t raise the dead, can’t create food with magic) are both miracles performed by Jesus, I am so down for this.

chickenfarmersan

stultiloquentia

I am reading scholarly works about Jane Austen and having hearteyes about obscure details in the Pemberley chapters of P&P that indicate Mr. Darcy’s sustainable land management praxis.

stultiloquentia

Okay, let’s talk about Pemberley!

Austen, as a rule, doesn’t spend many paragraphs describing locations. There’s often information to be gleaned from their names (Sense and Sensibility is full of lurking references to sexual scandals and Mansfield Park to slavery), but Longbourn just means “long stream” or “long boundary,” Netherfield means “lower field,” and Rosings’ original owner was a redhead. Meryton, a pun on “merry town,” is kind of fascinating, given the installment of the militia and the threat to stability and serenity they represent. Partying and shenanigans. Possibly a Shakespeare ref.

Longbourn barely gets any description at all. From the get-go, everyone who lives there is obsessed with other places, with getting out (except Mr. Bennet, who never wants to leave his library, never mind the house). Lady Catherine deems it small and mildly uncomfortable, which is in keeping with the theme of confinement, but also it’s Lady Catherine talking. Netherfield can’t tell us much about Bingley, who is only a tenant. Rosings is expensively, ostentatiously modern and gaudily furnished, though it has a handsome park that Lady Catherine and her stifled daughter never set foot in but Elizabeth and Darcy both frequently escape to during their stays.

So it’s notable and wonderful that Austen goes out of her way to describe Pemberley as an old-fashioned, highly successful, working estate. Its practical old Anglo-Saxon name means “Pember’s clearing.” A pember is a man who grows barley. Darcy most likely still does. As Elizabeth and the Gardiners approach and tour the house, they notice and admire its beautiful surrounding woods, and then when they wander outside, the specific word Austen uses is coppice woods. A coppice is a woodland filled with tree species that grow new shoots from their stumps when you chop them down. Darcy probably has oaks on a fifty-year cycle as well as faster-growing species such as hawthorn and hornbeam for firewood, timber and cattle fodder. Coppice forestry is functional and sustainable, and provides habitat for beasts and birds.

Darcy is the anti-John Dashwood (Dashwood, srsly), the brother in Sense and Sensibility who inherits Elinor and Marianne’s childhood estate of Norland, whose wife immediately starts making plans to hack down trees (not even coppice trees, but big, gorgeous, venerable hardwoods) to make way for a folly. Jane Austen hated follies. Also, it ought to be noted that timber was so valuable in Britain at the time that estates often had inheritance clauses that detailed who was and wasn’t allowed to chop down what.

Darcy’s a food producer and land conservator, prefers nature over fussy, ornamental landscape design, his servants and tenants like him, he gives money to the poor… and… he’s a trout fisherman! He shoots, too, as do Bingley and Hurst and Mr. Bennet, but it’s a particular mark in his favour that Austen singles him and Mr. Gardiner out as anglers. It’s a pastime that signifies a taste for contemplation and quietness and appreciation of nature, as blissfully described in The Compleat Angler; or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation, a hugely popular travel book first published in the 1600s and reprinted often for 18th C libraries. The plot of The Compleat Angler is about the conversion of a hunter (pastime of the ultra-rich) to a fisherman who learns to love the peaceful sport. We receive ample evidence elsewhere that Darcy is a man capable of swift, decisive action and formidable effectiveness. But at Pemberley, Austen takes care to show us how he’s balanced.

Most of the information in this post comes from Margaret Doody’s Jane Austen’s Names.

downthepub

I didn’t know any of this! I always thought it was a bit odd how her viewing the estate changed her views of the man himself, as if it was about how big the place was. Instead it was how he cared for the land / people. Fascinating! Completely missed that.

stultiloquentia

It’s literally his character reference! Most women at the time had to marry for financial security, yet marriage was horribly risky, because divorce was almost impossible. If you married someone you didn’t know well, and he turned out to be lazy, irresponsible, or abusive, you were stuck.

This is why so many Austen heroes are mature, almost frumpy men the heroines have known for years. Local fellows with family ties. They don’t offer breathless romances; the happy endings they offer are happy because they are safe.

Darcy is not a local boy. Darcy is not a fully formed, baggable Austen hero when he proposes at Hunsford, not just because he’s rude af, but because Lizzy doesn’t know him well enough yet. She has no real way of knowing how he would treat her. Austen sends Lizzy to Pemberley not to dazzle her with Darcy’s wealth, but to provide her with good, hard evidence of his treatment of the people under his protection, including his tenants, his sister, and the intelligent, dignified housekeeper who has known him since he was a toddler.

Character references established, we may proceed with the romance.

(n.b. He doesn’t know her either, until she’s rejected him. He proposes, despite his giant pile of reservations, because he’s so horny for her he can’t stand it (at least, to his credit, he’s turned on by her brains as much as her hot little bod), but only after her refusal does he realize how completely he has failed to understand this woman or make himself worthy of her. He falls in love for real only after she has demanded that he live up to his own high standards. Refreshing, ain’t it?)

nevver

Emotional Overlap / Inside Out

eighteenbelow

You know, this is actually pretty useful for people who struggle to understand/identify their emotions.

imoverallofit

Proof that hatred is fear of what you don’t understand or like

fembykitten

I haven’t seen the movie but this is a great reference

edwardspoonhands

There was more legitimate science in ‘Inside Out’ than there was in ‘Interstellar’. [source]

accidental-muse

i love this movie so much and i wanna see it again.

mostlysignssomeportents

Heavy denim "Starfleet" jackets

I love the clothes from Volante Design (“Superhuman Streetwear”); their latest is the “Starfleet 2364” line of men’s and women’s jackets inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation uniforms.

The jackets are made of heavy denim and are basically extremely well-styled/tailored biker jackets (like Volante’s excellent Hacker jackets), partially or fully unzipping them and folding down their lapels takes them from “cosplay” to “cosplay adjacent” in an instant. They’ve got loads of interior and exterior pockets, and are double-stitched and come in “Command Red, Operations Gold, or Sciences Blue,” sized 37 - 51, 55 (men), and 33 - 45 (women). They’re made in Chicago, retail for $315, and will ship by December 14th.

https://boingboing.net/2018/11/20/cosplay-adjacent-2.html

wilwheaton

OH MY FUCKING GOD

thecoldheartofspace

so there’s this guy in three of my dance classes

and first off, I’m 5'7, 5'11 in dance shoes, 170 pounds, broad shoulders and big hips and not small in any dimension. For a ballroom dancer, this means a lot of time spent learning the men’s parts. Especially in lifts.

I’ve had years now of guys kinda just going “lol heck naw” when told to lift me. I don’t admit this part much, but it makes me want to sink into the ground and die when every other girl can be lifted, but I’m just too big.

So this guy, smaller than me and really cute, shows up at auditions and I see this girl across the room getting tossed about like the beautiful pixie she is, and apparently I looked a little wistful because this boy asked me if I liked lifts.

“Oh. I… Uh… I’ve never really done the girls part. I’m a little big, haha…” (laugh it off, as usual.)

He looked me dead in the eye and then picked me up like a movie princess, bounced me in the air a few times, and set me down effortlessly while telling me whoever refused to lift me before was just being a lazy wimp.

I seriously doubt this boy will ever really get how much that meant to me. But, holy cow. Some faith in humanity just got restored.

neurodivergent-crow

Magical Boy of Body Positivity

foxyshadow

This is beautiful

katswenski

A quality dog, yessir! My website – My Instagram – See me on Webtoon!

smokeypsd-games

BitTorrent usage has bounced back because there's too many streaming services, and too much exclusive content.

demon-princess-serina-verified

You know, it’s almost like that was the fucking problem in the first place you stupid bastards

racistspiderman

the absolute need for every online video platform to become just like cable tv despite the fact their success comes from not being like cable tv is just overwhelming

therealfeedback-deactivated2018

Netflix: Alright guys, we have a fantastic model going! Piracy is down, subscriptions are up, everyone’s making money with these contracts for your show’s streaming rights, and viewers are getting a ton of great content they enjoy. Everybody wins!

Morons: But what if we had our own streaming service just for our content?

Netflix: …I mean in-theory that would work at first, but if everyone’s content was suddenly 100% exclusive and you have to get a dozen subscriptions to a dozen proprietary streaming services just to watch three shows, that defeats a lot of the val–

Morons: And we could charge more than Netflix and Hulu too! We could make even more money!

Netflix: Well at a certain point you’re going to start charging more than people are willing to pay and you’ll start losing more money than you’ll gain. We’ve been doing this since 1997 so we have a pretty good idea of–

Morons: *create streaming sites for every single fucking studio that all charge more money than their content is worth, saturating the market with too many options, almost all of which have too little content to justify their price*

Consumers: Yeah fuck this

Morons: I knew streaming was a dead-end. It never could’ve worked

Netflix: But we were making money! It was working before you fuckers killed the goose laying golden eggs!

Morons: Yeah, but when we wanted more money, it stopped working, and we’re too good at business to make bad decisions, so clearly it was streaming itself that wasn’t working. It’s not our fault the goose couldn’t keep laying eggs after we ate it!

Netflix: What the fuck is wrong with you people

love-the-weirdo-in-the-closet

Everything is wrong with people

themadcapmathematician

The free market?? Sabotaging itself??? More likely than you’d think

adragonwithbalanceissues

I think my least favorite Hetero Trope is when the girl eats a burger or whatever and the dude is like “Wow, I like a girl who can eat” like what the fuck did your last girlfriend do, photosynthesis?

hungrylikethewolfie

#also this isn’t news but what they mean is ‘I love a girl who can stay skinny but not annoy me with diet restrictions’ #men don’t actually love ‘girls who don’t go on diets’ or ‘girls who don’t wear makeup’ or ‘low-maintenance’ girls #what they DO love is women who can stay thin and flawless without ever having to reveal the effort behind it #it’s baffling to me! #like some Orwellian bullshit #you can’t knowingly demand women look a certain way and then complain when they go on diets lmao (via @halffizzbin)

coelasquid

I was just thinking the other day about how they do a very similar thing with men in the media as well. It may not be as prevalent as with the female characters, but you almost always see superheroic male characters with extremely toned physiques in bars, drinking beer and eating pub food, portrayed as “man’s man” types who let their scrappy lives give them saran wrapped eight packs, when in reality the actors playing those guys are on extremely specialized diets coupled with intense workout programs. At the same time, “gym rat” characters who are actually shown doing the work a person would actually need to to maintain bodies like that are almost unilaterally made out to be stupid, vain, often meanspirited meatheads.

I remember watching the behind the scenes footage of a Jason Statham movie where he’s complaining about only being allowed to eat a plate of steamed veggies while the entire rest of the crew was having a party with cake or something. In the same movie his character is pretending to eat and drink things that real dude Jason Statham was not allowed anywhere near to maintain the idea that regular blue collar working class movie character got sweet abs by drinking beer and driving fast cars.

Then there’s the issue of these actors being harassed in real life when they don’t upkeep their intensely high-maintinence bodies between movies. Like, The illusion has been created that the jacked up bodybuilder physique is their effortless natural state of being, so any deviation from that must be caused by flawed behaviour and you see constant articles about how “[Popular Action movie guy] Really Let Himself Go” or people bombarding the actors’ personal accounts with fat jokes and accusation about their lifestyles

I guess the overarching issue is, people seem to be fed this idea that attractive qualities people may posses are only valid if they came naturally and effortlessly. The person with beautiful hair is desirable, the person who spends an hour making their hair beautiful is “self obsessed”, the person with the athletic body is hot, the person who goes to the gym every day and works on being more athletic is “a dumb jock”. It’s all appreciating the results while devaluing the effort it took to achieve them.

ultrafacts

Source: [x]

Click HERE for more facts!

slightlyfrumiousbandersnatch-de

inkskinned

it is tiring, being endless political just as someone existing. my teacher asks me if i’m writing more of that “feminist poetry.” a lot of it is just talking about me, being a woman, being afraid in the city. i write about walking a line, about how i am expected to choose between home and work, how each comes with a slew of its own insults; how it feels when i am wearing shorts and there are too many men outside. these are just facts of my life. someone in the comments says, “where are woman even coming up with these crazy generalizations in their feminism?”

i hold hands with the prettiest girl i’ve ever seen and someone sighs when they see me. “do they have to make everything gay?” she asks her friend, loudly, “like, do you have to force those views in my face all the time?” i can’t stop blushing. my girlfriend holds my fingers tighter, tighter, tighter, until my knuckles are white, and i let her. somehow, this is us, protesting.

my father’s cuban blood stains my skin, i think. when i am honored with a position in the dean’s private council, a boy sneers, “you only got in because you’re hispanic.” did i? i spend the rest of our meetings wondering if i was selected for my stellar academic record, for the multiple recommendations, for the clubs i lead - or if i was just a move the dean made, to make use of me. when we all take a picture, the dean brings me in the front. in the first three we take, i am not smiling.

it is odd. “i exist.” i say, “i deserve to exist.”

“oh my god,” he groans, “we get it, you’re a feminist.”

perezhilton

stupendousmelody

When you are one with the music

thirstym8nd

Luvs it

rae-redacted

WHO IS SHE

guyofyear

ALONDRA DE LA PARRA

theunimpairedcondition

counterpunches

#a warning to anyone out there attracted to women#she looks great in a tux

missmarionmac

Have some more photos of her in action, because I love her:

And my all-time favorite:

mullersturtleneck

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Someone needs to make an animated movie about conducting with her as the lead. When she ducked down and hid? I love. I wasn’t in band long but I would have killed to be conducted by her as a chorus student.

bogleech

For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public perception and ruining millions of lives. It's time for a new paradigm.

“Diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. “

bethany-sensei

This is a long article, but well worth reading.

yourkinkisnasty

alcohol culture is so wild…people all over fb will be sharing a meme like “i can’t have just one glass of wine, it’s always 2 bottles and 3 people i can never look in the eye again” as if that’s normal? but if a meme like that was going around about cocaine or any other drug, everyone would be like “sounds like a drug problem bruh”

alcoholism is SO normalized and it’s such a toxic environment honestly

audarcy

This article is a fascinating and horrifying observation of alcohol culture in present-day America – especially in the context of women and the “wine mom” attitude seen on Facebook in particular. It’s one of the most eye-opening things I’ve ever read, tbh.

hannahhillam

I threw a dog on the ground today 😭😭😭

coffeeandstring

I am embarrassed by how hard this made me laugh.

fatsexybitch

…..does this mean cat people hurl cats at the ground?

hollowedskin

you just kind of… open ur arms and they sort themselves out. if you try and place them down they get mad and wiggle and make everything worse

everydayconman

shotfromguns

some friends of mine have the most un-cat-ish cat i have ever met

my quintessential example of this:

i was holding him in my arms petting him while we were picking out what games to play that night. when we’d decided on a few, i needed to put the cat down in order to, you know, carry boxes. so i started letting him down, expecting that he’d eventually do the cat hop thing… but he never did.

i ended up lowering him all the way to the floor. and even then he never got his feet under him. i just sort of… plopped him down on his side as he stared up at me like a betrayed sack of flour.

aenramsden

I want to see a fanfic where Harry hatches a basilisk.

I want to see a fanfic where he looks up “magical snakes” as soon as he gets to Hogwarts because that thing at the zoo always bugged him, and so the Trio works out that it’s a basilisk immediately after the first petrification in Second Year. But they don’t know how it’s getting around or where it is or anything, so Harry is just like WELP SET A BASILISK TO FIND A BASILISK while Hermione and Ron are like HARRY NO.

I want to see a fanfic where Harry sticks a chicken egg under a toad and makes all these plans about how he’ll talk to his huge deadly snake and get it eye-blinkers and shit so it doesn’t kill people and make sure it’s not too aggressive, and somehow it never occurs to his twelve-year old brain that the chicken egg has a total volume of about four tablespoons and he is not going to get the giant King of Serpents he is expecting.

I want to see a fanfic where it finally breaks out of the shell and Harry finds himself with a bb!basilisk too smol to even have the murder-eyes yet, who can only petrify someone for about half an hour before the effect wears off. She eats spiders and gets tired very easily and demands that he wear a hood she can curl up in and sleep.

(She is also the same vivid green as his eyes and already hideously venomous, but doesn’t like using her fangs because she says they get cold and give her brain freeze when she unsheathes them.)

I just… I really want Harry with a haughty, demanding, arrogant danger noodle who has an overinflated sense of her own importance, views Hedwig as a TERRIFYING MENACE because she isn’t big enough to eat owls yet and keeps up a steady stream of insults hissed in Harry’s ear whenever she’s near someone who has a Dark Mark (which she can sense at close range). And who is basically useless as a familiar because she refuses to slither across anything other than sun-warmed stones or Harry, hasn’t got a very powerful gaze yet and doesn’t like biting people.

(Except snake-arm-people. She finds snake-arm-people confusing and annoying, and would probably make an exception on the no-biting thing where they’re concerned.)

thepioden

I mean there are obviously a lot of factors influencing snake growth rate but if we assume basilisks just get stupidhuge because they grow their whole lives and are immortal, this snake is probably going to be at least 8 feet long by Deathly Hallows, which is a significant and intimidating chunk of scaly muscle that is intelligent enough to do what it is told. Like, you know, hey, bite this necklace.

So I mean by like his fourth year it’s going to be pretty hard to hide this snake that is nearly as long as he is tall and it’s not going to do much for his reputation that the Boy Who Lived has a pet fucking basilisk but holy damn does it make book seven a whole hell of a lot shorter.

galahadiant

I feel like I should write this

twinkie13

can you just imagine him ron and hermione coming up with increasingly ridiculous excuses trying to hide their pet baby basilisk in the dorms (hagrid would be so proud). how long do you think it’d take before harry’s pet basilisk is just a really badly hidden secret between all of gryffindor? and the ensuring antics of the entire house as they try to keep mcgonagall from finding out? (she knows something is up, but even just thinking of what could be big enough the entire house is trying to keep it from her makes her want to break out the firewhiskey)

ron gets the idea to try and practices parseltongue with baby basilisk since he hears harry talking in his sleep with it all the time anyway (and ngl, baby basilisk is kind of adorable and eats all the spiders in the dorm so he doesn’t have to deal with them, he’s pretty smitten once she hatches), and as soon as hermione overhears him trying it, she’s dragging him and harry to the library because, well, parseltongue is a language, why can’t they learn it? so it’s the two of them alternating between hissing at harry and hissing at the basilisk and harry is trying so hard not to laugh because 90% of what they’re saying is utter nonsense and the basilisk doesn’t even bother, because she likes these two humans but wow are they dumb, that’s not how words work.

mzminola

#i really wish jkr took more advantage of the parseltongue thing

#it was so freaking cute when harry just chatter with the friendly boa constrictor at the zoo

#it was such a nice boa constrictor

#let harry met more nice snakes [tags via twinkie13]

kyraneko

What about once the basilisk gets a bit big the eyes start being an issue and after Ron accidentally gets petrified one evening and it sticks until he misses History of Magic the next morning (he isn’t complaining and Binns sure as hell didn’t notice but if it’s Transfiguration next time there will be a Problem) they have to find a way of dealing with the eyes because one of these days there will be enough power for the permanent kind.

So after a lot of false starts with, like, goggles and shit, Hermione appears with a stack of advanced transfiguration books and the beginnings of a plan to give it eyelids or at least nictitating membranes that the petrification can’t pass through, but even with her being super smart it’s a few years beyond her abilities.

And then Harry sets eyes on the invisibility cloak and says “if you can’t see the eyes, they can’t petrify you.” Well a snake in a cloak doesn’t work too well, but Hermione has heard of the Disillusionment Charm, and that would also solve nearly all of their problems keeping a snake hidden in the dormitory.

So Sibilance Gloriana Theophania Sunstone (she didn’t quite completely name herself, she and Harry had a little conversation about what she likes and what human names mean and also she’s like a six-year-old in snake years so she is named after hissing, two queens, and her favorite thing to sleep on) is now the Invisible Snake of Gryffindor.

Out of necessity, her existence ends up being shared with a few people, either because they’ve tripped over her (Neville, Oliver, Parvati), they’ve accidentally been petrified by her (Neville, Fred), or their twin has found out about her and shared (George).

Fred and George are very keen to have an invisible house snake, and are brilliant at finding new spells to help out: she gains the ability to crawl up the walls like they’re more floor, to levitate and slither in midair, and to fill her venom sacs with substances other than venom; it is extremely rare that she wants to actually kill anything besides dinner, and it is so much more enjoyable to be able to bite people and use her fangs as a delivery system for itching powder or the line of nondrinkable potions Fred and George are in the process of inventing.

By the time the dueling club rolls around, she’s about three feet long and plump on rats and spiders and mice. She bites Lockhart when Snape sends him flying, and Snape ends up taking over the dueling club entirely while Lockhart hurries to the hospital wing with a set of massive boils on his ankle.

When Draco summons the snake with Serpensortia, Harry squeaks with delight and grabs the snake, hissing at it in greeting, and so the whole school learns Harry Potter is a parselmouth by means of an adorable scene with a very friendly, cuddly snake, which doesn’t strike anyone as particularly Dark Lordly at all.

The new snake, of course, can detect the presence of Sibilance, and Sibilance is delighted to have a serpent companion, so they’re happily engaged in conversation as Harry, Ron, and Hermione return to the dormitories. This scene of adorable domestic bliss is interrupted when they get up to Harry’s dorm room with one more snake than usual, and Ron’s pet rat Scabbers suddenly turns into a man and runs shrieking down the stairs.

(Harry has explained Scabbers to Sibilance back when Sibilance was smaller than Scabbers, and she has never attempted to eat him. The new snake, however, has not received this conversation and it’s a very different thing hanging around with a snake who you watched come out of the egg than meeting one that’s several times your size from the get-go. Absent introductions, the new snake assumes it’s dinnertime and Peter Pettigrew, faced with something very like what the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets would look like from Harry’s perspective, decides discovery is a slight improvement on dying and drops his animagus form.)

It is Peter Pettigrew’s poor luck to run into the Entrance Hall just in time to meet Severus Snape, who can put two and two together as well as most people and who is, easily, one of the fastest duelists Hogwarts has seen in recent decades.

Pettigrew’s capture and interrogation result in the release and exoneration of Sirius Black, who has one conversation with Harry, one conversation with Albus, and one conversation with Vernon and Petunia Dursley; the deal they all come to is that after precisely two weeks at Number Four, Privet Drive, during which time Vernon and Petunia will be scrupulously polite, Harry will go and live with his godfather.

Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore agree that a snake is an acceptable pet, and the new snake takes the name Hex, quite a bit of delight in the spells Sibilance has had adapted for her, and the unofficial position of Gryffindor house mascot.

There is widespread interest in learning Parseltongue, and with Harry translating, a number of students take time to learn at least some basic words. Chief among these is Ginny Weasley, who is desperate for someone else safe to confide in about the blank spaces in her memory.

It is Sibilance, not Hex, that finds out about the diary, sneaking down from Hermione’s dorm looking for spiders (really, where have they all gone to?) in time to overhear Ginny crying as she writes in a book that really, really reeks of dark magic.

She bites the book, of course, and then there’s an awful mess and Ginny furious and distressed that the diary, and with it, her friend Tom, are no more. It takes some doing for Sibilance to explain her existence, the nature of the book, and what was likely happening to Ginny; eventually Harry has to be tracked down to translate.

With Tom Riddle gone, they all speculate on the Chamber of Secrets and it’s Ginny with the suggestion that Moaning Myrtle might be the one who died last time the monster was released. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sibilance, Hex, Ginny, Fred, George, and Neville all head to the bathroom, and from there to the Chamber, where they stand with their eyes closed while Sibilance calls out the massive basilisk.

It’s a long, interesting conversation, and it ends with several spells cast, promises made, and a fascinating comedy of errors as they sneak an invisible basilisk out of the Chamber, through the school, out the main doors, and into the Forbidden Forest where its newfound flying, climbing, and poison-switching abilities will enable it to joyously predate upon the acromantula colony for decades to come.

They all get detentions over the matter when they are caught sneaking back in, less for the Forbidden Forest trip and more for McGonagall’s near heart attack at hearing the whole thing, but there are no more petrifications, the affected students are eventually awoken, and Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup, much to Oliver’s joy.

Hex and Sibilance enjoy warming themselves curled up on the fireplace hearth until Sibilance gets too big, and eventually Snape discovers her existence by tripping over her, but that’s another story.

crazy-pages

Superman

I just realized that Clark Kent probably works at the Daily Planet because it means he and his super-senses are planted right in the middle of a bunch of investigative journalists all day long. He probably knows more about Metropolis’ corruption and abuses of power than anyone else in the world, just by virtue of existing in the Daily Planet’s vicinity.

firebirdeternal

I imagine also that he works there for the reverse reason. Think about all the things he knows about the people in positions of power in the city that Really Should be made known to the public, but he can’t figure out a way to legitimately excuse having that knowledge? Well, all he has to do is drop a hint of a thread in the lap of someone like Lois Lane and his coworkers and friends will be on it like bloodhounds, with a firm air of legitimacy that he himself would never, ever have. Because honestly? Clark Kent probably knows that “I heard about it with my magic alien hearing” isn’t and SHOULDN’T be admissible in a court of law or public opinion. But aiming some good old fashioned investigative journalists in the most competitive news organisation in the city at it? Perfectly legitimate.

crazy-pages

Villain: “Hah! What are you going to do, punch me for tax evasion? Lock me up for conspiracy? With what court-admissible evidence? Admit it Superman, there’s nothing you can do here.”

Superman: “Guess not.”

Later, Clark Kent at the Daily Planet watching his colleagues work: “My god, they’re like bureaucratic piranhas. They went through his entire IRS filings for the last eight quarters in thirty minutes flat.”

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