Ashen Warlock

One of the most underrated moments of Sirius’s emotional intelligence in Goblet of Fire is him clocking that Bertha Jorkins’ supposed forgetfulness is completely out of character. In The Daily Prophet, Bagman brushes her off as scatterbrained, but Sirius (who hasn’t seen her in over a decade) immediately recognises that something isn’t right. And he doesn’t just vaguely remember her; he remembers her vividly, enough to say outright, “She was a bit dim, but she had an excellent memory for gossip.”

What makes this so striking is that Sirius is the only person who actually notices something’s off. The people she works with every day don’t question it. Bagman dismisses it entirely. But Sirius, who hasn’t interacted with her in years, immediately knows that her behaviour is fundamentally wrong.

This moment is interesting on multiple levels. First, it speaks to Sirius’s perceptiveness—he instinctively recognises that someone’s fundamental cognitive traits don’t just shift without cause. And of course, he’s right: Bertha’s behaviour is the result of a memory charm placed on her by Barty Crouch Sr. But more than that, it highlights the way he pays attention to people. He doesn’t just remember her vaguely—he remembers who she was.

Also, As an aside he really doesn’t hold back on calling her an idiot (go off pookie).

“She was an idiot. Very nosy, but no brains, none at all. It’s not a good combination, Harry. I’d say she’d be very easy to lure into a trap.”

In the end it hadn’t been love. It hadn’t been James’s voice, strained from the war but still asking him how he was. It hadn’t been his mother cooking his favourite meals each time he visited her. It hadn’t been Lily’s smile, tired but still there despite all. In the end it had been an argument. And not even the logical one, between his fear and his conscience, but one he had eavesdropped on late one night, scurrying in the shadows on the streets after two who still called him friend.

Even the Dark Lord didn’t really trust werewolves and he especially didn’t trust Black renegades, so he had ordered Peter to follow them. At first they had only walked, not even holding hands as he was so used to seeing them do back in Hogwarts. Then, as they were crossing an empty park, Sirius stopped.

“Please tell me it’s not you,” he blurted out.

“What?” Remus turned around frowning.

Peter had stopped in a flowerbed nearby, half-burying his rat frame under the most scented flower there. He knew Remus retained some of the wolf’s nose even in human form. But even from there he could see Sirius’s pleading look in the lamppost lights. For the first time in months, he felt sorry for him.

“Please, Moony. Please tell me it’s not you.”

Remus’s eyes widened.

“You think I’m the spy?”

“You’re away most of the time… With Greyback’s pack.”

“Yes. On Dumbledore’s orders,” Remus’s voice was cold.

“You don’t even look at me anymore!” Sirius shouted. “You don’t touch me, or kiss me, we haven’t fucked in Merlin knows how long!”

“And you can’t stop talking about your family!” Remus shouted back. “Since the beginning of the war it’s been about what have your parents been up to, or your brother-”

“Don’t talk about Regulus.”

Peter buried himself further under the flower. Like Sirius, he only knew Regulus was missing and presumed dead. But what he knew and Sirius didn’t was the fit the Dark Lord had thrown when the Black heir had disappeared without a trace.

“Or even your bloody cousins you’ve hated your whole life!” Remus went on. “You went from ignoring their existence to talk about them every single day!”

“Wait… You think I’m the spy?”

There was a moment of silence, each of them staring at the other.

“I left my family! I ran away because they would’ve killed me!” Sirius was screaming now. “I spent my whole life distancing myself from their beliefs!”

“And I spent mine making sure the people I love knew I’m not a monster!”

“You really think I would betray everything I have, everyone I love to go back to my awful family and the wrong side of the war?!”

“You think I would join a pack of werewolves who are at that side’s beck and call?!”

They were panting when they stopped screaming, and Peter could see tears glisten in Remus’s eyes. Sirius was openly crying by now, his sniffles the only sound in the whole park.

“I’m sorry,” they chorused.

“I know the missions are taking a toll on you, I’m so sorry, Moony, I…”

“And I know there’s no way you would fall back with your family, I’m sorry, Pads…”

“None of us is the spy,” Sirius took Remus’s hand in his. “It’s this bloody war.”

“We’re exhausted and on edge,” Remus nodded, getting closer to Sirius. “None of us is the spy, it’s as ridiculous as if we were to think Prongs or Pete were.”

Peter’s whiskers twitched.

“I love you, Remus Lupin.”

“And I love you, Sirius,” Remus smiled. “And as soon as this war ends I’m marrying you so you will never have to use that surname anymore.”

They were still kissing when Peter scurried away, his tiny heart beating faster, his mind wondering if rats could cry.

So in the end it had been an argument. It might have been love as well, to be fair. Not that it mattered now, as he was facing Voldemort himself, doing his best not to tremble.

“The McKinnons, Wormtail,” Voldemort said slowly. “I want them dead. All of them. Starting with Marlene McKinnon.”

Peter couldn’t stop a shiver running down his spine at the order and the use of his nickname. Wormtail was the brave little soul doing his best to help a friend in need every full moon. Wormtail would live on in the Marauders’ Map they had left in Hogwarts on their last day. Wormtail would never have done what Peter had done. Wormtail would never do what was being asked of him. He took a deep breath.

“No.”

Voldemort narrowed his eyes.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. You will never win this, and it’s high time I got out before I can’t turn back.”

How fitting his last words were the only time he felt as brave as James. As he slowly fell on the floor, the reflection of a bright green light in his eyes, his last thought was for him.

I feel like peter is a character I would love to see explored more. As the weakest link in canon, I'm always fascinated by how authors choose to explore his conflict. (Side note- how did he even fall in with the death eaters anyway? He must have known that even if Voldemort won it would cost him everything he ever cared about)

Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!

I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs) 

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!

As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)

New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!

Read banned books!

This film is a gosh darned masterpiece. I have watched so many hours worth of analysis on this films forshadowing, set design, the mystique of it all and how they adapt the book while doing new things with the story.

Everyone go watch Coraline,

My inner adult: I don't even have the right vocabulary to appreciate the CRAFTSMANSHIP that went into every second of this 2 hour movie, Coraline had SIX THOUSAND FACES. They made SO many hands,all of the flowers in the garden growing at the same time, the choreographed mice??

My inner child:

THESE GUYS MADE AN ENTIRE MULTI HOUR CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE

This film is a gosh darned masterpiece. I have watched so many hours worth of analysis on this films forshadowing, set design, the mystique of it all and how they adapt the book while doing new things with the story.

Everyone go watch Coraline,

The web was built on a model where the website sends you content and a suggestion of how to render it - to give users the freedom to interact with it however they choose. Since then, there's been a battle between corporations and this principle as they use every trick they can come up with to force you to render the content the way they want you to.

The most effective way that corporations have achieved this is with apps. Paraphrasing Cory Doctorow[1], an app is just a website that its illegal to mess with. So many of the notes are people saying "i wish i could block youtube ads on my phone/smart tv/game console". this is a problem, and a bad sign of what to come.

another thing that makes this concept technologically feasible and socially acceptable in my opinion is face id. Having a camera scan your face automatically before letting you progress has become normal. Its common to put tape over your webcam, but nobody puts tape over their phone camera. Somehow, we've been trained to view it differently. more broadly, I dont think the web is meant to be profitable. The old internet was full of small forums run at a loss fueled by the passion of their creators. When corporations moved in down the road with enough money to drive the forums away and take over, those corporations still didnt turn a profit. and they havent for a decade. Now they're getting desperate and they're going to extract as much as they can from their users to try and recoup those costs. Your outrage over the concept of this is important. Visible backlash to hostile practices works. its important that we all say Fuck That loudly and often. Youtube is adding a five second delay for firefox users: I read about this immediately after making the original post. this is such a brazen move by google. I hope they get in some serious shit for leveraging one monopoly to bolster another but im not familiar enough with international law to know if thats likely.

Regardless, google has been showing their hand lately with so many hostile decisions. Their only leverage is their user base. Don't help them. Switch to firefox. if you need to, you can make firefox pretend to be chrome for specific websites Ads are getting worse / loud ads in asmr videos / pragerU and other evil ads: Ad blocking still works! please use an ad block! install ublock origin! Youtube is working hard break ad blockers but the ublock devs are working harder to keep them working. you just need to update the filter lists every now and then. here's a guide I still want to support creators: Find a way to support them directly! youtube is a notoriously unreliable income source. Check how the creator you want to support would prefer you support them. Chucking them a few bucks once will go a lot further than watching ads.

Piss kink references: Thank you tumblr for being tumblr. A lot of the replies have been pretty heavy so these silly responses have been surprisingly refreshing.

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I highly recommend Cory doctorow's defcon talk about the state of the web and how we can fix it. it put words to things i'd been feeling for a long time and introduced me to new ways of thinking about some of this stuff. Its linked at the bottom.

Its been wild having this post break containment like this. Tumblr is my place for shouting into the void and im used to most of my original posts not getting much traction (which is fine, or maybe even the point). the concept of over thirty thousand people reading something i wrote is hard to even conceptualize. I wasn't at all prepared for this but its touching that so many people resonated with my anger and frustration.

I was asked if I wanted to prepare an art for an exhibition themed around "tree". So after thinking it over I have come up with the following options

1. Something made out of wood.

2. A guardian of one specific tree sort of character

3. (And I'm liking this a lot): an art incorporating an actual living plant somehow.

And like mhmmmm your ideas are so good I've decided to not go full on fantasy with it, like I planned originally?

So now the plan is to build something like my friend Arthur here

Maybe witha plant themed costume?

And THEN I'll put him in a flower pot together with a fast growing climbing vine plant and that will quite literally grow on him.

This is Marille the tree wizard! (Nevermind what I said about fantasy, look at her. (Big floppy hat yet to be added, I left her at school over the weekendl)

Also my funky little guy is sort of fanart? You can't really tell but at the very least he was named after @ameliapodcasts funky little guy who has been known to have played the Gravedigger in Hamlet and the leading role in Sleeping Beauty hence the theatre costume vibe of my little guy. (Also I frickin love theatre)

I was asked if I wanted to prepare an art for an exhibition themed around "tree". So after thinking it over I have come up with the following options

1. Something made out of wood.

2. A guardian of one specific tree sort of character

3. (And I'm liking this a lot): an art incorporating an actual living plant somehow.

And like mhmmmm your ideas are so good I've decided to not go full on fantasy with it, like I planned originally?

So now the plan is to build something like my friend Arthur here

Maybe witha plant themed costume?

And THEN I'll put him in a flower pot together with a fast growing climbing vine plant and that will quite literally grow on him.

For the Unfinished Book, I had a random idea of a nomadic people who keep dogs, and choose their leader by an informal public vote - while there's ceremonies involved in aknowledging the new leader, and often the new chief is the offspring of a previous one, the real leader of a clan is simply the one that most people agree should be the one to lead. They also famously rever their dogs so much that people like to say that even the dogs get to vote on who the new chief should be - or even that they let the dogs choose the leader, and the people themselves have no say in the matter at all.

If one of the nomads themselves is asked about it, they'll respond with a deeply confused, mildly offended look and contradicting answers. Some say that of course the dogs don't influence choices like that, and some will say that of course the dogs' opinions are taken into consideration. Outsiders get the idea that whatever the truth is, half of the nomads are blatantly lying to cover it up, for some reason or another. But technically speaking, neither of the contradicting stands is wrong.

The matter is, the dogs aren't making the choices of who should lead the clan. They do, however, observe whom the people themselves regard as a leader. As social pack animals bred and raised alongside humans, they can tell by body language whom people actually respect and yield to, and what the dogs do and whom they obey is a visible indicator of the clan's unspoken common opinion.