Good Vibes

He loves being able to throw himself into fights - all starting with the thrill of pulling pranks at school and just getting bolder and bolder with it. It could’ve been because it was attention seeking, it could’ve been any number of reasons that I could easily tie to his childhood if it wasn’t one in the morning and I hadn’t spent the last five hours trying to write an essay

It gets worse during the war. Now he has purpose, something meaningful to actually fight for. And when he gets the information that James and Lily have been murdered by Volde-tort that shit skyrockets - he chases after Peter, cackling when Peter gets away with it somehow….

And then he’s in Azkaban. And then there’s nothing for him to do for years and years - the real, human guards barely show their faces, and dementors do not understand spoken language - or humanoid language at all. There’s nothing.

And then he escapes, and that thrill he gets of not being caught is back tenfold. And the cycle repeats. Not getting caught. Being stuck in his childhood home. Calling Harry and almost getting caught. Being stuck. Breaking out to help Harry

But James loved Lily.

And Remus also loved James.

James was his greatest friend he ever had, because Remus needed him most. James who never recoiled from the wolfish parts of him. James who charged into danger with stupid Gryffindor bravery and made Remus feel, for fleeting moments, normal. Safe. Wanted.

But where Remus quietly built James into the center of his world, James had already done that with Sirius years before.

Sirius was the person James sought first in every room. The one glance across a classroom to share a joke with. The one he trusted instinctively, blindly, absolutely. They moved through life like two halves of the same reckless thought.

Remus knew this because James forgave Sirius things he would never forgive anyone else for.

But it was safer for him to love someone who belonged to someone else.

And then there was Peter.

Always there.

Sitting at the foot of their beds while Sirius and James talked late into the night. Laughing a bit too hard at their jokes.

Peter followed them through corridors, through detentions, through war, through transformations under the moon, and somehow still remained peripheral.

The process starts now in my new chapter. (Coming soon)

“What sort of animal would you like to be?” he went on.

“No idea. Something powerful. A lion, maybe,” James’s voice came out of the darkness.

“A lion would definitely suit you,” Peter replied eagerly.

“I don’t mind,” Sirius answered the friends question now. “As long as it’s not something boring like a rabbit or a bird orwhatever.”

James and Peter nodded silently.

“I don’t mind either,” Peter said, answering his own question. “Just not a water creature.”

But first, I need to talk about a book called "Mastiff."

"Mastiff" is the third book in the Provost's Dog trilogy by Tamora Pierce, that follows a young cop called Beka Cooper. You don't need to know much about it to understand why I'm talking about this. What you need to know is that in book 3, Beka receives iron-clad information that one of three people very close to her (mentor, friend, romantic partner) is a traitor working against her.

this could be a great plot device. but something weird happened to me when I read it, and I've talked to other people who have had the same experience, which is that once I knew it HAD to be one of those three....mentally, emotionally, I turned on all of them. I stopped liking all of them the same way. I felt like i had to harden my heart to all three of them. When the traitor was eventually revealed, I almost didn't care. I wasn't even glad for the other two, and i STILL liked them less than I had before I had to come to terms with the fact that they might be a traitor.

I feel like that experience gives me the exact perspective of what Albus is going through at the end of the First War. He knows, according to McGonagall in PoA, that someone "close to the Potters" (I interpret this to mean Remus, Peter, and Sirius) is passing information to Voldemort, and has been for quite a while. He offers to be their Secret-Keeper himself, because the only person he can 100% count on not to be a traitor, controlled, deluded, or misguided by Voldemort is himself. He's already mentally accepted (has had to!) that one of them is a traitor. He did not believe any of them were, but if ONE has to be, then they all CAN be. He has to accept that it is possible each of them COULD be betraying James and Lily. Emotionally, he's hardened himself to it.

It also reminds me of the King's Dilemma in the Stormlight Archives. If you know 3 shepherds in your town have murdered an innocent man, and there are 4 shepherds in your town, and you have no way to know which one is innocent, can the Just King afford to let any of them go free? Can the Just King afford to hang any of them? What if there were 5 shepherds in the town? What if there were 1,000? One king says even if there were 1,000, they must all hang. The other says even if 999 were murderers, he could not hang any of them, because any one might be the innocent one.

If the responsibility of protecting people from traitors is your job, how many can you afford to let go free?

I wanted to talk about the shift in Harry's internal voice from Order of Phoenix to Half Blood Prince, and how his grief, guilt and immense self-loathing for his part in events around Sirius' death informs it. At the end of Order of Phoenix, Harry is a mess - of incoherent, unfocused grief, where he wishes he never wished more that he was anybody else:

“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human — ”

"I DON'T WANT TO BE HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room.

The scene at Dumbledore's office is rife with how much he blames himself for his godfather's death. After one cathartic scene at the office, Harry spends the next year avoiding any and all mention of Sirius (he wolfs down his breakfast when Ron and Hermione bring him up) and suppresses his grief and rage surrounding the events of OOTP- unless he is sure that the person he is speaking to understands the weight of Sirius' loss: he hopes Remus would write to him, he mentions Sirius voluntarily to Tonks (under the impression that she is grieving him), and talks about him to Buckbeak ("Missing him? But you're okay with Hagrid, aren't you?"). His grief and rage manifests in precise, focused rage in this chilling Harry scenes:

Thank you!” said Mundungus, snatching the goblet out of Ron’s hand and stuffing it back into the case. “Well, I’ll see you all — OUCH!”

Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out his wand.

“Harry!” squealed Hermione.

Why do I call it a focused, precise rage? Mostly, because unlike the other times Harry is provoked with perceived disrespect to a dead parent, Harry has not forgotten his wand. (Cue the scene in OOTP that he is so angry he just beats up Malfoy with his fists). What Harry has done is not just grab him by the throat, he makes sure Mundungus (who is shorter than him) is nose to nose with him and then threatens him with a wand. (btw, a note from my reread: younger Harry attacks people bigger than him by grabbing their throats too - Vernon to get his letter, the troll etc etc. It seems to be something he had picked up from Vernon. We see Vernon grabbing him by throat in opening chapters of OOTP)

“You took that from Sirius’s house,” said Harry, who was almost nose to nose with Mundungus and was breathing in an unpleasant smell of old tobacco and spirits. “That had the Black family crest on it.”

“I — no — what — ?” spluttered Mundungus, who was slowly turning purple.

“Give it to me!”

“Harry, you mustn’t!” shrieked Hermione, as Mundungus started to turn blue.

There was a bang, and Harry felt his hands fly off Mundungus’s throat. Gasping and spluttering, Mundungus seized his fallen case, then — CRACK — he Disapparated.

And Tonks has to throw Harry magically off Mundungus.

Harry swore at the top of his voice, spinning on the spot to see where Mundungus had gone.

And he doesn't stop until Tonks magically throws him off Mundungus. It is not a coincidence that we see Harry's darker and more chilling traits in a book where he is heavily paralleled with Tom Riddle. The parallel is explicit in the scene where he uses his mother's death to guilt Slughorn into giving him the memory. But here is a tiny mention of how Tom Riddle reacts to perceived disrespect to an heirloom from his parent:

“That’s right!” said Hepzibah, delighted, apparently, at the sight of Voldemort gazing at her locket, transfixed. “I had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn’t let it pass, not a real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection. Burke bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman who seemed to have stolen it, but had no idea of its true value — ”

There was no mistaking it this time: Voldemort’s eyes flashed scarlet at the words, and Harry saw his knuckles whiten on the locket’s chain.

Quite telling to me that Harry specifically notices how Voldemort's knuckles whiten around the locket, after Hepzibah pretty much talks about how Merope was essentially robbed. Harry understands.

When Harry had finished speaking, Ron shook his head.

“You really understand him.”

And the Draco and James parallels are even more striking. We've talked to death about the "I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" parallels for Hufflepuff and Slytherin... but nobody's mentioned the fact that both James and Draco talk about "the wrong/right sort".

Draco talks shit about muggleborns who didn't know about the magical world until they got their letters for Hogwarts, and Harry takes offence because that's what happened to him.

And James talks shit about Slytherins, which Sirius takes offence to because his family all were from that House- as well as Severus, of course, because that's the House he wanted to go to, but the "wrong sort" parallel matches Sirius a little more because James' response to that information is "i thought you were alright".

And of course, there's the classism in both James and Draco's behaviour: Draco's more blatant with the blood purity/"old families" comment, James' in the way he treats Severus Vs Sirius (Sirius, rich, from old money is treated with a little more respect despite actually being from a family known to be connected to Slytherin House and dark magic, while Severus, who is so visibly poor it's drawn to our attention, is completely mocked despite there being no confirmation that he would actually be in there and the only reason he wants to be there seems to be for "brains").

At least Draco was trying to be friendly with Harry when he was being a little shit. Openly bigoted, yes, but he wasn't actually out bullying Harry but rather just sharing gossip (and I do genuinely believe the only reason Harry got offended about the remarks about Hagrid was due to his friendship with Hagrid- because Harry's just as much of a judge lil prick, see: every description of Snape ever).

Ok having just reread Half-Blood Prince for the audiobook I'm struck with a few things we know about the ways Hogwarts has changed over the past 20-30 years, based on information we have from the books, and honestly, I'm fascinated by the implications.

Goblet of Fire - Apollyon Pringle Whipping Arthur Weasley

So we know that Pringle was the caretaker when Arthur and Molly were at Hogwarts, and the corporal punishment was so severe that it was leaving permanent scarring for things like "being out of bed at 4am to take a walk with your girlfriend." So, this seems like everything in the past was more strict, except..

2. Half-Blood Prince - Slughorn Reports Filch

This is really interesting to me! Slughorn has not been at school for at least a decade, and he's worried that Filch isn't worried about the right things.

3. Order of the Phoenix - Snape's Worst Memory

One thing worth mentioning that I don't see brought up often in discourse about SWM is that no one, at any point, goes or threatens to go for a teacher. I can't think of another altercation of that level in the main storyline where a teacher isn't sent for or arrives partway through. Usually, whenever hexes start flying, it's broken up and everyone sent to the hospital wing very quickly. Speaking of which...

4. Order of the Phoenix - Snape's Worst Memory - 2

Snape, James, and Sirius use spells against each other that in Harry's time would have him in detention for several months. While James and Sirius were in fact often in detention, none of this is treated as being for Intense Crimes like Harry and Draco throwing Crucio and Sectumsepra at each other.

5. Half-Blood Prince - "Petty Crimes"

James and Sirius indeed are often recorded as being in detention for "petty crimes" like hexing fellow students, and McGonagall, Flitwick, Hagrid, etc. treat this fondly in their reminiscences as precursors to the Weasley Twins. It could be memory making them fonder, but I further think that Hogwarts was just generally rougher in those days. And my final point to that effect...

6. Half-Blood Prince - Ginny and the Bat Bogey Hex

I really can't imagine a current teacher congratulating a student on hexing another student and rewarding them about it.

7. Goblet of Fire - Draco as Ferret

Yes, it's obviously Barty in disguise, and yes, he's pretending to be Mad, but it's not like both Barty and Moody didn't go to Hogwarts. Tbh I think it makes the most sense that Transfiguration As A Punishment is something that would have been done decades ago, that Moody would possibly remember.

Okay, conclusion: This all really reminds me of how a lot of Brits I knew in college would reminisce fondly about how when they were young, all the cops were unarmed and it was a good Saturday night to go out and get so rowdy with their friends that they got into fights with cops, whereas these days that's not really DONE. I'm not sure whether the school governors had MORE control, LESS control, were MORE involved, were LESS involved, but it feels like back then, Hogwarts was a much rougher place, and students were expected to be able to take care of themselves, and not rely on teachers to take care of them. Corporal punishment was common, hexes were casual, littering was unimportant.

8. Chamber of Secrets - Albus sends Tom back to bed

This could be seen as preferential treatment to a Prefect, or knowing he has a good reason, but when we go up against Arthur being strung up and whipped for being out of bed, or even Harry getting detention for being caught out of bed in his first year, it seems very indulgent.

9. Half-Blood Prince - They'll All Be In Trouble

It reminds me, a little, of how cruel McGonagall can be in her punishments - and how lenient, when she feels like it.

She is happy to take enough points from first years that they face real social stigma for half the year, just for sneaking out of bed and maybe tricking another boy. She was also yanking Draco by the ear. Even without the scary Forbidden Forest detention - that is harsh.

Then the next year - she teary-eyed lets Ron and Harry walk without escort to 'go see Hermione'... despite there being strict rules put in place because the Chambers were open again. Very much like Albus letting Tom 'hurry off to bed' even though its 'best not to roam the corridors these days. Not since...'

Filch also loves 'the good old days' of hurting students. Fascination with torture - or actual distaste in recent policy change...? hm...

But something seems different since the early 1960s when Arthur was at school, at the very least. Kids aint getting whipped/hexed now. Even in the 1970s, when evidently teacher reaction to bullying was still very lax - Sirius and James were getting detentions, not hurt.

I wonder if Albus Dumbledore becoming headmaster between 1966 and 1970 (probably the later end of that) had anything to do with it.

tl;dr link page:

"It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me. But then Dumbledore became Headmaster, and he was sympathetic." (Remus, PoA ch18)

Remus was bitten in 1965. Until Dumbledore became headmaster his parents deemed it impossible for him to go to Hogwarts.

-a book written by Neville Longbottom co-authored by Hermione Granger and Molly Weasley, introduction written by Remus Lupin, includes excerpts from the prequel “Harry, calm down.” written by Ginny Weasley.

harry was made for being an auror.

harry loves adventures and that's something easy to spot. he thought that meeting fluffy for the first time was a great adventure and was keen on having another one. he felt quite exited to break into damn ministry to steal the horcrux from umbridge for fuck's sake. y'all really think he would sit all day in a castle teaching children? it's noticeable even in such thing as quidditch, this guy just has to move and do something. he would waste himself, his youth and his potential as a teacher.

he has everything a great auror (which he is) needs. he's very observant and notices little details; he always noticed all the little movements someone did and was able to connect it with situation (vernon pretending to read the newspaper cause his eyes weren't moving, hagrid clutching his umbrella tighter at mention of his wand, hermione having book upside down and way more). even right after waking up in gof he was able to say something bad was happening only by the sounds. he is also able to connect the dots: he was the one who had put all the facts together and realize why no one died from basilisk while basing it only on paper left by hermione, he realized bellatrix had horcrux in her vault by her reaction and he realized voldemort was after elder wand only basing on xenophilius' story about deahtly hallows (and that he's ignotus' descendant).

he's great at dada, good at transfiguration, charms, herbology, and even potions. at everything needed to be an auror. he's very powerful; his accidental magic was powerful, he casted a full patronus that drove away hundreds of dementors at age of 13, was able to stand up to imperius, even the one casted by voldemort himself. he was really good at duelling and managed to do it even with death eaters.

not to mention that he's really good at working under stress. and even though his plans don't always work, his intuition never fails. intuition told him to touch quirrell's face, to put on sorting hat, to destroy diary and way more.

he's brave, he's tough and works hard when the matter is really important.

harry WANTED to be an auror ever since crouch jr told him he'd make a good one. he mentioned this position during his career advice. he didn't even want to teach his classmates at first and you think he'd want to teach hundreds of students same things all over again and later having to check their essays? harry isn't the most socialising person and teacher works requires socialising more than auror's one. he would get tired.

and most important; auror's job is to defeat the dark wizards. to prevent them from killing anyone. you know how many babies lose their parents because of such actions? and you know who exactly knows how it feels like? auror harry potter. he would never let any more child lose their parents and any dark wizard to kill someone again. he wants to help people, he wants to reduce the evilness in this world. and after war, he would never sit back and relax knowing that death eaters are still around.

and the argument that ministry did so many bad things is one of the shittiest things i've ever heard. yes, ministry treated him shitty. and you know who else? quirinus quirrell, gilderoy lockhart, bartemius crouch junior, dolores umbridge, severus snape. what they have in common? they are defence against the dark arts teachers. almost everyone treated him like a piece of shit and that consists also of both ministry and hogwarts. but let's notice that the main problems at the ministry were fudge, umbridge, lucius malfoy and later scrimgeour (not counting corrupted ministry). all of them left by the time harry joined ministry.

He takes him with him to the tropics then to live in the cave with him and installs him in Walburga’s room at Grimmauld (and shuts himself up with him when he’s feeling low).

(I think the reason why I've been thinking about that is because I follow a lot of great Snape blogs whose favourite is obviously Severus. And the thing is, I get why! I love his character too! But Albus just tickles my brain a bit more ...)

Anyway, in my opinion, the four main characters through which morality is explored in the books are Harry, Voldemort, Snape and Dumbledore. Voldemort and Harry make up one axis of morality. Their stories mirror each other in many ways, while their reactions to what happens to them stands in direct opposition to each other. One could go into detail here, but since this post is not supposed to be about them, I'll simply argue that this axis explores the concepts of deliverance through selfless love and sacrifice vs. damnation through selfish and self-centred hubris (oh the protestantism of it all...).

And then there's the axis that is Snape and Dumbledore. Again, two characters with remarkably similar backgrounds. (Broken families, intelligence, isolation and othering throughout their lives...) And, contrary to Voldemort and Harry, these two even make very similar choices that lead them into very similar catastrophes. (They react to their respective situation by radicalisation into very dangerous and violent ideologies, leading to a loved one's death.)

A part of their reactions to these are also similar. Both pledge themselves to some sort of penance, both are deeply changed and scarred. Both isolate themselves even more from the people around them.

BUT there is a difference and it's not a moral one. It's how they present themselves. It's how they appear to the rest of the world and thus how we first get to know them.

Severus is not a pleasant man. We can argue about just how much damage he did to his students and if he's actually as bad a teacher as he appears to be through Harry's eyes. But there is no doubt that he is just ... not nice. And not kind either. He's spiteful, often snide, makes openly hurtful comments and holds a grudge like nobody's business. And all of these things are VERY obvious.

Albus (barring some glaring exceptions that most people never see and we only get to witness very late in the game) is none of these things. He's gentle, quirky, humorous and sort of just distantly kind to his students. Everyone we meet that we are supposed to trust places him on a pedestal as a beacon of both morality and intellect, while at the same time, painting him as a bit of an eccentric. All of these things isolate him as effectively from other's as Severus unpleasantness. They serve essentially the same purpose, yet leave very different impressions on both a young Harry, and the reader.

In other words, both of these characters have built reputations around themselves that serves to distance themselves from others. They don them as masks because they do not want what's underneath — their humanity, their vulnerability, their love and pain — to be known.

Yet what's underneath is remarkably similar. The difference is that one mask is (to maybe stretch that metaphor a bit too thin) significantly more pleasant, more comforting than the other. So for one (Snape) what's underneath is beautiful by comparison. For the other (Dumbledore) it can only be hideous if what one is used to and expecting is the ideal of goodness itself. Dumbledore, who was previously a godlike figure, was torn down by his humanity. Snape, by contrast, was lifted up by his.

Aside 1: I think this is the reason that so many fans hate Dumbledore to an almost comical extend. They haven't forgiven him for not having lived up to the ideal he projected of himself, the ideal of pure goodness that only ever was a facade to begin with. So when he makes a mistake (for example, when he hurts Harry through neglect bc he fears what will happen when he gets too close), it must be malicious instead of simply the human failure of a traumatised man.

Aside 2: I think Dumbledore recognises this too (that he was torn down by his humanity, where Severus was lifted up). The phrase "my word, Severus, that i shall never reveal the best of you" (quoted from memory) has always struck me that way. Albus views his own capacity to love as his downfall. In Severus, he sees it as his salvation. I wonder if there was ever resentment there...

Anyway, this is, imo what the moral axis of Snape and Dumbledore explores: The inevitability of one's humanity and goodness, not as an absolute transcendant ideal, but a conscious struggle within a complicated world.

I, personally, find the tearing down of Dumbledore as a god figure more emotionally and philosophically intriguing than the lifting up of Snape. Maybe because to believe in the lie of the benevolent god is so much more convenient and comfortable than to believe in the lie of the nasty and unpleasant children's book villain.