#bathilda bagshot

@jeggyverses-jegulus-microfic August 7, Word count 319

Previous part First part

It took Reg less than a minute to know James was hiding something from him and less than five minutes to find out what it was. 

“What the fuck happened to the walkway?” he asked, pointing incredulously at the mangled metal. 

“Erm, giant seagull?” James answered nervously. 

“Try again, Potter,” Reg hissed, his eyes narrowed. James audibly swallowed. 

“Look, she can’t help it; she’s old and can’t see very well. From far away, he probably does sort of look like a rat,” James babbled, words falling from his mouth faster than he could tell what he was saying. 

Reg rolled his eyes and looked up at the flat above. 

“OI! BATTY! GET OUT HERE!!!” He bellowed up at Ms Bagshot’s balcony. 

“Yes, dear,” she said, peering over the railing, squinting at Reg through her thick glasses. 

“THROW SHIT AT MY CAT AGAIN, AND I’ll START STEALING YOUR NEWSPAPER AGAIN!!!”

“Yes, dear,” she said sweetly, waving and disappearing again. 

“Reg,” James admonished. “Why on earth did you shout at her like that? She’s got to be a hundred if she’s a day. She’s probably got dementia or something.”

“Who, old Batty? She’s as sharp as a whip and bites twice as hard. She’s just a bit lonely. I’ve not been up to see her since before Sirius’s wedding. What did she throw this time?”

James blinked at Reg’s casualness over the crazy old lady upstairs throwing stuff at his balcony to get his attention. 

“A brick,” he finally answered, pointing at the brick on the pavement below. 

“Aww, last time it was her yellow begonia. Such a shame it was a beautiful plant. Anyway, how was your day?” Reg asked. James decided to leave it. This was clearly something he’d never understand. 

“Well, a funny thing happened.”

“What, as opposed to Batty throwing a brick at Midnight?”

“Yes.”

“I’m intrigued, proceed.”

“Pandora’s applied for a job at the factory.”

“Huh.”

I see a lot of the same regurgitated takes about JKR's sexism in the books while people ignore one of the most basic ones, which I think is much more egregious than like, JKR disliking "girly" things.

This is the list of male characters who are brilliant inventors:

Dumbledore, Voldemort, Grindelwald, Snape, Sirius, James, Remus, Fred and George Weasley, even Arthur Weasley enchanting Ford Anglia; for offhand mentions, there’s Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher’s Stone, Bowman Wright inventor of the Golden Snitch, Damocles Belby inventor of the Wolfsbane potion, Urquhart Rackharrow inventor of the Entrail Expelling Curse; potentially the three Peverell brothers inventing the Hallows though I tend to think Death created them.

For women there’s… Hermione. That’s literally it. That is 14+ men and 1 singular woman.

(Iirc Grindelwald is the only one we don't know a specific invention or innovation but he's acknowledged as a Dark Lord on par with Dumbledore and Voldemort so that's basically the same)

We have women who are acknowledged as skilled in their specific fields and/or skilled in combat, like Bellatrix of course, McGonagall, Bathilda Bagshot, Amelia Bones. But they aren't painted as innovators, as inventors, as making magical discoveries, as doing things never done before, as experimenting and pushing the boundaries of magic, as creative geniuses (a term fandom loves to debate about regarding who counts).

It's very heavily implied that Snape's modifications and inventions are a collaborative effort with Lily, but that's still not explicitly confirmed. Bellatrix probably comes closest as implied to be on level with Dumbledore and Voldemort - described as having prodigous skill like Dumbledore, parallels Voldemort in combat, etc (To her credit, JKR in interviews has implied that she sees Bellatrix as Voldemort's equal, just like Grindelwald is Dumbledore's, which is frankly better than most of this fandom, lol.) But in the text we still don't know her skills other than combat. There's Pandora Lovegood having died experimenting with magic, but there's no specific innovations named. Bathilda Bagshot - who taught Dumbledore and probably Grindelwald too - only exists to highlight how brilliant the two men are.

I rarely even see anyone acknowledge this as an issue amongst the numerous discussions of JKR’s misogyny, much less challenge it.

Most of the time, fandom just accepts the utterly misogynistic viewpoint that Dumbledore and Voldemort are each other's only intellectual equals, usually along with Grindelwald and Snape.

If fandom is going to complain about JKR's misogyny, people should be willing to do the literal bare minimum and challenge the most basic misogynistic notion that women don't have the same intellectual capacity as men.

For example (and all of this is perfectly valid to consider canon in a Watsonian analysis): Bathilda Bagshot made as many magical discoveries as Dumbledore. Hermione is as much of a genius and invented a lot more things off screen - who would've done even more if her school years weren't taken up with dealing with Voldemort. Bellatrix is Voldemort's equal and Voldemort's successes during the war were half because of her, and she invented a lot of the Dark artifacts in Grimmauld Place. And, as I am constantly on my soapbox about, Lily Evans didn't deflect the Killing Curse and vanquish Voldemort by accident, but had a plan and did dark magic to accomplish this, because she was just as brilliant as Voldemort.

“They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle. Dumbledore’s triumph, and its consequences for the Wizarding world, are considered a turning point in magical history to match the introduction of the International Statute of Secrecy or the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. (DH)

Notice how Lily's accomplishment is stated as equal to Dumbledore and Grindelwald's - and yet her name is never mentioned, she's erased from the history books, because of course a Muggleborn woman would be.

When you do try to challenge this misogyny, fandom will counter it with all sorts of takes that are painted as revolutionary but in fact just play into JKR’s shitty sexism. Like how Hermione Isn't That Smart Actually, with 90% of takes defending Ron and Harry’s intelligence completely diminishing Hermione's, and fandom even debates whether Hermione actually invented her few canon inventions (the DA coins, the SNEAK curse, the Four Point Spell), unwilling to give her even that much credit (more on Hermione's intellect here and here). Or like how pointing out that Lily doing dark magic/intentional magic to defeat Voldemort is the superior and Watsonian explanation is Going Against Canon Themes Actually (what canon themes? the one where women are intellectually inferior to men?). Fandom is also perfectly willing to subvert major narrative themes when it comes to male characters - see: the amount of fans who discard JKR's claim that Voldemort is incapable of love (and, as I explain here, if you're claiming that Voldemort is capable of love, then the automatic interpretation that has to be true is that he then wasn't defeated solely by Mother's Love).

It's also just important in terms of plot relevancy and worldbuilding - magical knowledge is evidently a form of capital and power and property, people hoard their "magical secrets" like any other resource, and a pretty large amount of magical society experiments with magic (what we see in the Room of Hidden Things, the Department of Mysteries, Ministry departments such as "Experimental Charms", etc.), it almost seems to be an expectation in portions of the magical world. Brilliant characters and “geniuses” are front and center of the narrative, characters’ intellect is in fact a very major theme in the series, with Harry being academically average (or, above average, but still not a creative genius) serving as a contrast to other players in the war. So women being so overtly absent in this narrative theme is a huge gaping hole in it that needs to be filled.

I wonder if Bathilda intentionally tried to frame them as friends, or if she very clearly implied their chemistry, as she did in Skeeter's article, or even outright stated they were boyfriends, and Lily is one of those infamous historians.

Imagine if the most famous historian of her time were wandering the halls of Hogwarts at the same time as our main character.

Assuming Bathilda being Bathilda, she would write everything down, because she knows this goblin rebellion and the powers at play are something for the history books — her history books :D

but then… maybe because of the Ministry… or perhaps because the main characters wishes, she has to hide these chapters of her work. Either way, I‘m sure if she was around, she wrote everything down in meticulous detail.

Age gap ships if you’re still doing these! Mainly because I’m tired of the discourse around them, your ‘shipping is a skill issue’ philosophy is far more fun. I’m sure most of these have been done, but…

Minerva/Harry

Dumbledore/Hermione (time travelling Ron or otherwise)

Luna/Hagrid

Lily/Bathilda Bagshot

Lavender/Aunt Muriel (vengeance is sweet)

Snape/Aberforth

thank you very much for the ask, anon! i hope things are looking up for you now.

some excellent suggestions here:

minerva mcgonagall/harry potter

we have to acknowledge that - if harry was an adult when any of the following occurred - we'd all be saying that the tension was palpable and we shipped it:

when she said the word "wood" and harry immediately thought of being caned; when she shouted at him for not paying attention and harry described it as like being cracked with a whip; when harry reckoned she'd never let her hair down in her life, and enjoyed the thought; when he thought about her caning him yet again as he rifled around her biscuit tin; when harry watched her dominate umbridge multiple times, and liked it; when she told malfoy to shut up and pay attention and harry then decided to move closer to malfoy in case she looked back over; and - of course - when he used the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in order to defend her honour.

obviously, the context of harry very much not being an adult when they take sours things a little bit... but he becomes one...

albus dumbledore/hermione granger

which also got a shoutout of its own from another anon:

i sort of back this, actually.

i say a lot that i don't vibe with several of the more sapiosexual hermione pairings because they rely on an interpretation of her intellectual expression which isn't there in a canon - by which i mean that they ignore the fact that she's not a creative thinker, that she places an enormous amount of faith in disciplinary authority, and that she doesn't like to experiment or bend the rules of magic.

this is a neutral thing - it's simply one way of approaching life - but something which is really interesting is that the series thinks that it's not neutral, but rather that it's morally correct. the books take a very dim view of people who attempt to transcend the norms of magic, push disciplinary boundaries, and ignore the role of the academic as a gatekeeper to enquiry.

in the canon timeline, dumbledore serves as the figurehead for this approach, while hermione shows us what it looks like in practise, which means that - unlike when she's paired with characters like snape or voldemort - she and dumbledore would actually be able to yap away to each other about transfiguration theories, because he's not going to get angry/overcome with self-loathing at the sight of someone urging him to break the rules and she's not going to be frightened by it.

albus dumbledore/luna lovegood

as i've said elsewhere, my favourite genre of luna-centric ship is for her to be paired with a much older man who believes he can control her with his powers of condescension, but who is steadily corrupted until he's a bumbling mess by the sheer force of her luna-ness.

[bella baxter and duncan wedderburn style.]

which is to say… she'd ruin dumbledore’s life. he'd be writing into transfiguration today redacting all the discoveries he made about dragon's blood because he'd suddenly seen the light and accepted that dragons don't exist.

and i mean that as an endorsement of this pairing.

albus dumbledore/minerva mcgonagall

i have an enormous fondness for albumin - or whatever we used to call it - because it feels so retro.

it was obviously the big dumbledore ship prior to the grindeldore reveal in deathly hallows, and [despite the fact that dumbledore's sexuality is actually far more obviously implied by the text than i think many people are willing to admit...] you can see why.

mcgonagall clearly adores dumbledore, and his respect for her [while it looks much less sincere in the light of all the secrets we now know he was keeping in the first six books] is also palpable.

but i also think that their relationship can be filled in really nicely with the details we have about dumbledore from deathly hallows and mcgonagall from post-series information. their shared grief [and the complex relationship both have with the intersection of desire and loss], their similarly ivory-towerish demeanours, their extremely flawed understanding of what is an appropriate way to run a school, and so on are all really enjoyable things to explore.

i back it.

rubeus hagrid/luna lovegood

yes. we know hagrid loves a walking holiday from his caper with the giants. we also know he's pure-hearted and - no offence to him - outrageously credulous.

he'd be the perfect companion for luna on a snorcack hunt.

bathilda bagshot/lily potter

i back this as a fake dating premise - lily pretends to be going out with bathilda in order to get the tea on grindeldore.

lavender brown/muriel prewett

transcendent.

hermione wants to wear the tiara for her wedding. muriel tells her that she can't, because lavender - who is also going to wear white to the ceremony - will be using it to pull focus from her.

aberforth dumbledore/severus snape

i'm afraid that aberforth/goat is the one canon ship i can never accept seeing broken up.

but another anon in my inbox gave us a magnificent assessment of the premise which i think we could all stand to ponder:

One is thinking how Bathilda is this kind loving great aunt that mourned her nephew's fall into the dark arts and war.