#aragog

Hagrid hasn't tamed Aragog, but he does get along with him and his children safely enough through the power of... having chats. Respecting his territory borders. Giving a shit about his well-being.

Happy Thursday, crack fic lovers! 🥚

As you all know we're sharing recs every Thursday to help get everyone in the mood for crack... week.

Check out this week's round of fics, and be sure to leave kudos and comments if you enjoy!

i love you(r skirt), it’s ruining my life by microdamage

This is not how James expected his Friday night would go. He thought for sure he would end up in someone’s bed. It’s the whole reason he wore his best outfit—an arguably too-tight, crimson-colored shirt with a V neckline and snug jeans—and made sure his curls were soft but bouncy (don’t you want to run your fingers through them?), and spritzed his best cologne on all of his heat points. James was prepared to get a little sweaty and a lot fucked in someone else’s bed. And in the universe’s defense, he is in a bed. It’s just…not the one he’d planned on ending up in. — Or, James and Regulus meet in a bar, agree to a one night stand—and absolutely nothing goes as planned. [Jegulus | Explicit | 3,319 words | No Archive Warnings Apply]

There's A Wolfstar Man, Waiting In The Wings by obstacle1

Let All The Children Sushi [Wolfstar | Teen | 1,232 words | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings]

Follow the Butterflies by RainstormRadish

There is a visitor. A new beast in the Forest. It has four legs, like the centaurs, but it’s unlike anything Aragog has ever sensed. Cold, metallic, clanging. Few dare to venture deep enough into the Forest to reach Aragog’s lair, and those who do creep and hide, avoiding the Acromantula. The visitor makes no effort to be stealthy. It tramples through the undergrowth, loud and unapologetic. Foolhardy. Reckless. Intriguing. [Aragog/Flying Ford Anglia | Teen | 1,454 words | Major Character Death]

The Whomping Shack by WayTooTiredForThis

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

james potter/severus snape is here. and of the others...

albus dumbledore/horace slughorn

i have to back it!

obviously, both slughorn and dumbledore have that "confirmed bachelor" vibe - and i am certainly compelled by the idea of them sitting at the staff table individually thinking that they're masterfully concealing their own deep-in-the-closet homosexuality and that they've clocked each other's.

much less glamorously, they also have a shared interest in doing nothing to help their orphaned pupils thrive at hogwarts beyond deciding that it's not creepy at all to describe an eleven-year-old as "very good-looking" [dumbledore] or to tell a vulnerable sixteen-year-old that you'll sort out a high-flying career for him if he does you favours [slughorn].

[a crumb of safeguarding, i beg.]

they also have a shared sweet tooth - i bet our horace would love to let dumbledore have a little rummage in his box of crystallised pineapple, if you know what i mean...

but it's also clear that slughorn thinks that dumbledore's a machiavellian eccentric and dumbledore thinks that slughorn's a gold-digging pervert. i like the idea of each of them thinking they have the upper hand in the relationship [and of each of them repeatedly assuring themselves that they don't actually like the other], as they chuckle contentedly about what an idiot their boyfriend is.

aragog/basilisk

flopping. if there's one thing we can say about ms basilisk, it's that she knows what she wants.

[it's not her fault that what she wants is to rip, tear, and kill. maybe harry could have minded his own business instead of trying to stop a girlboss winning.]

aragog, in contrast, is typically described in canon using the word "fretfully".

she thinks he's fussy and incapable of taking control, and she's not about that life. she complains about this to tom riddle while they're drinking prosecco and watching real housewives of godric's hollow. he - because he's a drama queen [which is why she likes him] - responds by implicating aragog in hagrid's manslaughter charge and forcing him to go live in the forest.

walburga black/muriel prewett

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter Fifteen

Malfoy suggests Snape apply for the Headmaster's job and while Snape says Dumbledore is likely to be back soon he "couldn't suppress a thin-lipped smile" and he smirks at Malfoy's suggestion that he'd have Lucius' vote. I wonder if Snape would like to see Dumbledore gone at this point.

Malfoy follows this up by once again saying "Mudbloods" and both gambling on one dying, and saying it was a pity it wasn't Hermione who died. Snape doesn't hear or ignores this. I know people excuse Snape from acting like a decent person at times like this because he had to keep up his cover, but Voldemort is ostensibly dead, and he could excuse telling Malfoy off as a matter of teaching the brat some public civility (which Malfoy Sr also seems to try teaching him, so that would probably be a really good excuse).

I think there's something important in Ernie apologizing to Harry. Both as a good model of you-should-apologize-to-people and in demonstrating Harry's capacity for forgiveness. He shakes hands with Ernie and that's it on his part, even though Ron is less forgiving.

Harry gets a lot of flack over the course of the books for being both nosy and reckless in the pursuit of solving mysteries. Interestingly, this is one book where he actively delays following up on two leads. They don't go to talk to Hagrid right away, and they don't follow the spiders right away. The last might be a little because of having trouble finding them, but it's also clear they don't think to use the cloak earlier to go looking.

It's interesting that Malfoy and Ron are the two characters afraid of werewolves, who think that they roam the forbidden forest. They're pureblood, so they're the ones in the best position to know about them and have heard rumors, but you'd think they'd also know that werewolves only transform at the full moon. It's possible they went into the forest during a full moon, but there's no moonlight so probably not.

I love Mr. Weasley's dog-car. It makes no sense, but I love it. It's a pity it doesn't come up more often.

I'd forgotten that Aragog has a wife named Mosag.

Chapter Sixteen

There are some characters I have more sympathy for in this reread and some characters I'm finding myself with decidedly less. Percy, I've so far found more understanding towards. Ginny, very much not.

Ginny has four older brothers there at school with her, at least three of whom have been actively trying to help her all year, and it takes her the entire year to even get close to admitting things? Why is she trying to admit them to Harry and Ron anyway? Why didn't she go to Percy, or Fred and George, ages ago? Harry not confiding in others makes sense, because he wasn't raised with anyone to confide in. Ginny doesn't have that excuse.

Despite my sympathy for Percy, ugh, you're so wrong here.

I wonder if, had McGonagall not caught Harry and Ron and stopped them from checking the bathroom out, if they'd have caught Ginny before she disappeared.

Hermione tore the page from a very old library book. Now, why she didn't just take the book... plot, I guess? However, other problem. Why did she need to take it from an old library book, when most of that information is in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a book on her first year class list. The only info on that page that isn't is that spiders flee from it, and the basilisk flees the crowing of the rooster.

Now. Harry and Ron see Snape do a marvelous job, assisted by Professors Flitwick, Sprout and McGonagall, of getting Lockhart out of the way. They even hear McGonagall acknowledge that was just to get him out of the way. So why, why????? do they choose to go to Lockhart with the information instead of telling McGonagall or one of the competent ones.

Why if everyone is shut up in the common rooms, was Percy able to leave to send a letter?

Even though just about everyone seems to suspect that he's a fraud, why does Lockhart admit that to Harry and Ron? It's such an odd thing to do, even if he does expect to be able to obliviate them.

I suppose we must thank Snape for Harry's success in disarming Lockhart. Interestingly, Harry actually calls him "Professor Snape" here.

Flinging Lockhart's wand out the window wasn't a good idea, Ron. You could have used one that actually worked.

Also, Lockhart just admitted that he's a fraud. Why take him with you? Why assume he'd be any help at all?

CW: Non-graphic spider, implied dead bird, mentioned infant spider death, Non-graphic explanation of how spiders reproduce.

Summary: An unlikely friendship is formed in the Forbidden Forest.

Gilderoy sat on the dirty forest floor with his back almost touching a massive tree, his least-best robes shielding his body from coming into contact with whatever filth was covering the forest.

He moved his legs closer to his body and rested his chin on his knees. The position was bad for his posture, but the alternative was to let his luscious locks touch the tree behind him, which was completely covered in dirty, high-priced, acromantula silk. 

If it weren't for how weak his knees felt, he would not have been sitting at all and instead would have run back to the castle as fast as possible. The silence in the forest was not making him feel any more at ease.

Sure, he'd been doing this for a while now. Sure, it had been his idea. But he still tried not to think about the fact that he was sitting right next to— "So... what's it like? Having so many kids, I mean..." He diverted his eyes to the remnants of what used to be a bird, he grimaced but decided it was better than looking at... at...

"I teach them how to hunt and hide from the bigger animals. Until they become the bigger animals. But unfortunately most of them never get to that point, it is the way of nature, but it hurts like a thousand birds gouging your eyes out over and over." The words were marked by that infernal clicking sound that sent cold, electric shivers down Gilderoy's back. 

"I've had many children over the years, so many that I couldn't possibly count them even if I knew how to. And yet I feel each loss deeply and in every part of my body, in every aspect of my life. I feel their loss like an empty space where they should be cuddling their siblings, sleeping on top of me, trusting me to care for them. So young. So young. Too young to having even said their first words. It hurts like having a missing limb that is forever bleeding." He gripped his arms harder. This time the shivers were caused by the grief in the spi— FRIEND! in his friend's voice! 

He did not want to think about his Friend's dead kids. "...Where do acromantula kids come from? I'm sure it's different to what I'm used to." He tried to smile, but he was sure this smile would not have won him any awards. Ever.

"The male uses their pedipalps to put the sperm into their mate's opening. Then she lays eggs and the babies come out of them."

Wait, that sounded familiar. "Scorpions do the same, I think." He frowned. Did they?

His companion clicked his... Pedipalps? "What is a... scorpion?"

"It's..." Gilderoy bit his glossy lips. What the hell was a scorpion? "A small... animal with claws like pincers, eight legs and a long tail that has a spike at the end that they use to..." he swallowed. "sting their venom into their prey..." His words were answered with clicking sounds.

Clicking. "I wish to know more about these scorpions." Clicking.

"Hm, I'll buy Hagrid a book so he can read it to you." More clicking.

"I shall await it, friend of Hagrid."

"Y'know? By this point you might as well call me friend of Aragog." He managed to stare into a pair of his Friend's many white eyes despite knowing he couldn't see it. And promptly tried not to faint when he saw those... things... move.

"Hmm..." Click. "Very well."