ALOHAEMORA

remus spends the whole series speaking so cautiously, hesitating before he talks, choosing his words so carefully; something i think about a lot is the rarity with which he uses contractions in his speech, i.e. its always “he will” instead of he’ll,” etc. what that says to me is that he speaks slowly, he thinks before he talks, he is measured and careful in his speech. everything he says out loud he has already gone through in his head.

and there’s a reason for that, yeah? he does this on purpose, he does it because he has to maintain this exacted control or else people are going to be afraid. if he loses it, it is going to scare people. anger from remus – a raised voice, an aggressive movement, anything – is going to be perceived as corroboration of every stereotype and prejudice that he encourages people to resist with his constructed performance as a Good Werewolf. he can’t afford to trust that he can drop that emotional wall, because the reality of it is, maybe he can’t. maybe he drops it and people say “here it is, here is the proof that he is a monster, and now we must do what has to be done to monsters.” and so through the entire series, remus is characterized largely by his restraint: what he does not say, what he does not show, what he does not let himself feel.

twice harry (and the reader) sees remus lose control: when dumbledore dies (triggered by grief) and during their fight in grimmauld during deathly hallows (triggered by shame, fear, anger, self-loathing – a lot of things). extreme situations and emotions are the only things that shake him, right, thats when he breaks, that’s when he drops that shield: when he himself is so broken that he does not have the strength to keep it up any longer.

but here is the point in the long-winded rant where i wrap myself back around to the point:

whensirius says ‘you should hear remus talk about her,” there is (to me, anyway) a clear implication that when remus talks about umbridge, he’s pissed. he’s angry. he gives himself permission to be angry around sirius and that is important to me because it means that he trusts sirius. he trusts that sirius knows who he is, and he trusts that around sirius he does not have to maintain this constant charade of being a Good Werewolf. he can be angry, and sirius will think no less of him.  

there is trust there, and that’s important to me, to know that remus does trust sirius again. it’s not a shipping thing or whatever, it’s just, the fact of the matter is that remus does not perform this self-protective act around sirius. that means there is one person who remus trusts himself with, and he needs that, and he deserves that. and i’m glad that it was sirius, for a very short period of time. i’m glad that they had one another back again, that they both had somebody who understood them fully again.

this is why i can’t get behind “remus and sirius aren’t close actually” - that’s an assumption you can make about them as teenagers from what we see in swm, sure, but their adult interactions do paint a different picture.

hard agree around remus’s usual considered speech patterns and restraint being about feeling pressure to perform the Good Werewolf - i’m always struck by this in the dh confrontation in grimmauld place:

Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face.

like… when remus’s unrestrained anger comes out (at the [correct] suggestion he’s being a coward), this is what harry thinks!! harry doesn’t even have the ingrained werewolf prejudice of wider wizarding society, but that’s still the association he makes upon witnessing remus’s anger. remus really can’t express his emotions fully without running the risk of enforcing societal prejudice, and that informs so much of how he interacts with the world.

Sirius escapes, part two

He wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been in there.

He might have fallen asleep on the loo. It wouldn't have been the first time.

There had definitely been a loud crash.

Someone had shouted.

Or perhaps that had been him after stubbing his toe on the sink pedestal for what felt like the hundredth time that year. It was difficult to tell when you couldn't quite summon the energy to open both eyes.

"Your pain and your hunger / They're driving you home /

And freedom, oh, freedom / Well that's just some people talking /

Your prison is walking through this world all alone."

— "Desperado" by The Eagles

I imagine that before wands were popularized, different magical cultures likely used innate, environmental, ancestral or ritualistic forms of magic. Wands arrive as a “superior,” “efficient,” “civilized” tool, completely mirroring how colonizers frame their tech and culture, and once wand use becomes standardized (under European dominance), it becomes the metric for what “proper” magic is. It’s like a classic colonizer move: redefine the standard so the colonized never quite measure up.

I can see wands existing as instruments of surveillance, to track and record wand bearers. If we look at canon we see that The Ministry can trace spells, that wand registration exists, that underage magic is tracked via wands and that muggleborns need documentation about their wand status (and are suspected without one). This echoes real-world issues where colonizers impose paperwork, IDs, “permits,” licenses… Wands give the Ministry the power to know who you are, what you can do, what magic you’re capable of, when you break laws… So if you come from a magical tradition without wands, you’re suddenly invisible, illegible and therefore illegal.

Because of that, wandless magic would be considered “primitive”, “wild” and “dangerous”. This is exactly how colonizers treat any practice outside their norm. Elves can perform wandless magic with terrifying skill, so their use of wands is banned. Goblins have their own magical lore, so the wandmakers keep that knowledge proprietary and exclude them. Even wizard-on-wizard discrimination exists (Western wandmaking superiority mythos). The entire hierarchy is created around wand access, not magical ability. It’s not that non-wand cultures have “lesser” magic, it’s that the system is built to invalidate them.

I also see a relation between wands and industrialization and commercialization of the innate. Magic used to be craft, ritual, birthright, relationship with land, energy. Then wands turn it into products, brands, patents, trade secrets, regulated commodities. It literally mirrors the industrial revolution, with something natural becoming standardized, mass-produced and commercialized. Wand cores are harvested, trees are cut for wand wood, ecosystems are commodified. Magic becomes a consumer good.

Wands can also be seen as a cultural erasure weapon. For many communities, magic done with hands, through song, nature and ancestral rites would carry spiritual meaning. But wizards, especially European ones, invalidate that, create a monoculture of wand magic and enforce it through Ministry law. That’s not just colonization, it’s cultural genocide.

We can imagine social implications as the divide between “civilized” wand users and “primitive” wandless ones, wizard supremacy ideology brewed not just from blood purity but method purity, power defined by conformity, not ability, education systems that erase non-wand magic (Hogwarts teaches nothing else), a Ministry that claims to “protect” lesser magical cultures but actually suppresses them.

Oh, I LOVE the name.

Most people have a problem with the 'Severus' part, and I feel that Harry naming his son after Severus Snape, his bully and arguably the most grey-est character in the series, summarises Harry's character so well.

My boy is the most forgiving person in the entire series. During the last duel he even asked Voldemort, who was the literal enemy, to feel remorse so he would not die (i don't have the books on me currently to quote it verbatim)

Harry Potter is a coming of age story. There's a great reddit thread i once read which pointed out that Dumbledore and Snape have so many parallels. Both were haunted by their guilt because in their youth they took the dark part because of a girl and then later in their life worked selflessly to repent.

Since the starting of the series, Harry sees Dumbledore as the "right" figure, and Snape as an "evil" figure.

Later in the story, during DH, Harry finds stuff about Dumbledore which tarnishes his holy figure and Harry puts him off the pedestal. Similarly, Harry finds stuff about Snape which lightens his dark image.

There's a reason the epilogue was Albus' first day of school. Not James. Not Lily. But Albus.

Albus Severus shows the growth Harry had made. It shows Harry understands the world is not divided between "good" and "bad". Between professors wearing white robes and has twinkling eyes and professors wearing dark robes and has haunting eyes.

So those who say "Harry would never name his son after Severus Snape." Do not understand Harry's character at all.

remus spends the whole series speaking so cautiously, hesitating before he talks, choosing his words so carefully; something i think about a lot is the rarity with which he uses contractions in his speech, i.e. its always “he will” instead of he’ll,” etc. what that says to me is that he speaks slowly, he thinks before he talks, he is measured and careful in his speech. everything he says out loud he has already gone through in his head.

and there’s a reason for that, yeah? he does this on purpose, he does it because he has to maintain this exacted control or else people are going to be afraid. if he loses it, it is going to scare people. anger from remus – a raised voice, an aggressive movement, anything – is going to be perceived as corroboration of every stereotype and prejudice that he encourages people to resist with his constructed performance as a Good Werewolf. he can’t afford to trust that he can drop that emotional wall, because the reality of it is, maybe he can’t. maybe he drops it and people say “here it is, here is the proof that he is a monster, and now we must do what has to be done to monsters.” and so through the entire series, remus is characterized largely by his restraint: what he does not say, what he does not show, what he does not let himself feel.

twice harry (and the reader) sees remus lose control: when dumbledore dies (triggered by grief) and during their fight in grimmauld during deathly hallows (triggered by shame, fear, anger, self-loathing – a lot of things). extreme situations and emotions are the only things that shake him, right, thats when he breaks, that’s when he drops that shield: when he himself is so broken that he does not have the strength to keep it up any longer.

but here is the point in the long-winded rant where i wrap myself back around to the point:

whensirius says ‘you should hear remus talk about her,” there is (to me, anyway) a clear implication that when remus talks about umbridge, he’s pissed. he’s angry. he gives himself permission to be angry around sirius and that is important to me because it means that he trusts sirius. he trusts that sirius knows who he is, and he trusts that around sirius he does not have to maintain this constant charade of being a Good Werewolf. he can be angry, and sirius will think no less of him.  

there is trust there, and that’s important to me, to know that remus does trust sirius again. it’s not a shipping thing or whatever, it’s just, the fact of the matter is that remus does not perform this self-protective act around sirius. that means there is one person who remus trusts himself with, and he needs that, and he deserves that. and i’m glad that it was sirius, for a very short period of time. i’m glad that they had one another back again, that they both had somebody who understood them fully again.

He’s poor, marginalised, and a werewolf (someone the wizarding world openly discriminates against) and he’s one of James Potter’s best friends?!

James doesn’t end up marrying a pure-blood aristocrat either!!! He marries Lily Evans, a Muggle-born girl from the Midlands. If James (and by extension their best man, Sirius Black) genuinely looked down on people because of their class or background, that makes very little sense.

“Huh?” Harry said in a way that made it obvious to Ginny he had not heard what she had asked him.

“What are you holding that has you concentrating so hard? An obsessive note from a Rita Skeeter admirer?” she teased, settling onto the sofa.

Harry still stood in the middle of the sitting room, one hand tangled in his hair, the other holding a slightly crumpled envelope, unmistakably Muggle with the stamps on the front. The sort that had never once found its way to their home before.

“It’s a birthday card,” he said, a little distantly.

“That makes sense,” Ginny replied lightly. “Go on, pin it up with the rest.”

Harry didn’t move. His gaze remained fixed on the card, as though it might vanish if he looked away.

“It’s from my cousin,” he said.

Ginny stilled. “Your cousin? Dudley?”

“I only have the one.”