The Quest for... Win?: White-Kettle Shufflepunk Reads Harry Potter

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Who'd be more annoying to deal with? Peeves, or Ghost Rimmer?

I'm actually going to say Peeves. Ghost Rimmer you can at least have a conservation with or watch a movie.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

I'm actually going to say Peeves. Ghost Rimmer you can at least have a conservation with or watch a movie.

You'd choose Morris Dancing and 20th Century Telegraph poles over making the ickle firsties' lives hell?

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

You'd choose Morris Dancing and 20th Century Telegraph poles over making the ickle firsties' lives hell?

What, you don't want to watch Bible movies and rob old lockers?

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

It took a few seconds for the absurdity of this statement to sink in. Then Ron voiced what Harry was thinking.

“You’re both mental.”

Ronnest statement of Ron time.

“Ridiculous!” said Hermione faintly.

“Peter Pettigrew’s dead!” said Harry. “He killed him twelve years ago!” He pointed at Black, whose face twitched convulsively.

“I meant to,” he growled, his yellow teeth bared, “but little Peter got the better of me… not this time, though!”

I wonder if ghosts show up on the Map. I'm kind of surprised Rowling resisted having a dead character come back as a ghost (well, sort of, but we'll get to that) which I suppose is only appropriate given the Themes.

And Crookshanks was thrown to the floor as Black lunged at Scabbers; Ron yelled with pain as Black’s weight fell on his broken leg.

“Sirius, NO!” Lupin yelled, launching himself forwards and dragging Black away from Ron again, “WAIT! You can’t do it just like that—they need to understand—we’ve got to explain—”

Crookshanks: Not cool, bro!

They’ve—got—a—right—to—know—everything!” Lupin panted, still trying to restrain Black. “Ron’s kept him as a pet! There are parts of it even I don’t understand! And Harry—you owe Harry the truth, Sirius!”

Black stopped struggling, though his hollowed eyes were still fixed on Scabbers, who was clamped tightly under Ron’s bitten, scratched, and bleeding hands.

“All right, then,” Black said, without taking his eyes off the rat. “Tell them whatever you like. But make it quick, Remus. I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for…”

“You’re nutters, both of you,” said Ron shakily, looking round at Harry and Hermione for support. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.”

Some peak Ron energy this chapter.

He tried to heave himself up on his good leg, but Lupin raised his wand again, pointing it at Scabbers.

“You’re going to hear me out, Ron,” he said quietly. “Just keep a tight hold on Peter while you listen.”

He really was about to fuck off! Because it's dumb! What a legend!

“There were witnesses who saw Pettigrew die,” he said. “A whole street full of them…”

“They didn’t see what they thought they saw!” said Black savagely, still watching Scabbers struggling in Ron’s hands.

“Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter,” said Lupin, nodding. “I believed it myself—until I saw the map tonight. Because the Marauder’s map never lies… Peter’s alive. Ron’s holding him, Harry.”

Harry: Gay.

Ron: Shut up!

Fred and/or George: Don't be homophobic, Harry.

Ron: You too!

“But Professor Lupin… Scabbers can’t be Pettigrew… it just can’t be true, you know it can’t…”

“Why can’t it be true?” Lupin said calmly, as though they were in class, and Hermione had simply spotted a problem in an experiment with grindylows.

As I said earlier, I love the wackadoo energy Thewlis and Goodman have in this section of the film, but I also appreciate weirdly calm Lupin.

“Because… because people would know if Peter Pettigrew had been an Animagus. We did Animagi in class with Professor McGonagall. And I looked them up when I did my homework—the Ministry of Magic keeps tabs on witches and wizards who can become animals; there’s a register showing what animal they become, and their markings and things… and I went and looked Professor McGonagall up on the register, and there have been only seven Animagi this century, and Pettigrew’s name wasn’t on the list—”

Most stereotypical Hermione response possible. "But he can't be an Animagi! It's against the rules!"

“If you’re going to tell them the story, get a move on, Remus,” snarled Black, who was still watching Scabbers’s every desperate move. “I’ve waited twelve years, I’m not going to wait much longer.”

“All right… but you’ll need to help me, Sirius,” said Lupin, “I only know how it began…”

Lupin broke off. There had been a loud creak behind him. The bedroom door had opened of its own accord. All five of them stared at it. Then Lupin strode toward it and looked out into the landing.

“No one there…”

“This place is haunted!” said Ron.

I'm just picturing those 50s greaser ghosts listening at the door. One of them's got some popcorn.

"It’s not,” said Lupin, still looking at the door in a puzzled way. “The Shrieking Shack was never haunted… The screams and howls the villagers used to hear were made by me.”

Or not.

“I was a very small boy when I received the bite. My parents tried everything, but in those days there was no cure.

"There was this Aussie who invented a spell for it, but someone erased their memory without bothering to learn it."

Lockhart: Smiles blithely.

I'm quite curious what kind of quack or experimental treatments the Lupins tried. I assume they at least considered changing their surname. I'm reminded of the part in Flowers For Algernon where Charlie reflects on his mother paying some charlatan to sort of... vibrate him in order to cure his mental disability. Oh, off-topic, but you know what makes that book even sadder in hindsight? The condition that caused Charlie to be mentally disabled is checked for at birth now. It's what the ubiquitous heel prick is for, and its effects can be avoided via controlled diet. If Charlie had been a few decades later, he'd have probably grown up with much less problems.

The potion that Professor Snape has been making for me is a very recent discovery. It makes me safe, you see. As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform… I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again.

Interesting that, like many real medications, the Wolfsbane Potion must be taken consistently over a long period of time to have an effect.

“Before the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once a month. It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren’t likely to want their children exposed to me.

We've already discussed how lycanthropy in Harry Potter is clearly meant to be allegorical for HIV. With that in mind, I'm guessing Rowling here was partly inspired by either the Ryan White or Eve van Grafhorst cases. Ryan and Eve were an American and an Australian child respectively (Eve having won the title of Saddest Australian Child with Most German-Sounding Name) who contracted HIV due to contaminated blood transfusions. Incidentally, AIDS wiped out a huge number of British hemophiliacs because of poor blood screening.

Both Ryan and Eve faced opposition attending school due to their infection. This was of course an hysterical overreaction. It was well understood by then how AIDS spread, and a school kid going about their everyday life isn't going to infect their classmates. It was especially egregious in Eve's case, as she was specifically barred from attending preschool. What? Were they worried the four year old was going to slut it up in the sandpit? Get real into bloodplay? Share her heroin needles? Ryan and Eve were both eventually allowed to go to school--though Eve's family had to move to New Zealand to do it--and both well outlived their initial prognoses, though both of them still died at the tragically young ages of eighteen and eleven.

If any of that feels familiar, it might be because Ryan's story partly inspired that one Captain Planet episode where an anthropomorphic ratman spreads rumours about a boy with HIV because he hopes the panic causes people to act stupid and get AIDS themselves. Honestly, pretty on point for a Captain Planet episode.

“But then Dumbledore became Headmaster, and he was sympathetic. He said that as long as we took certain precautions, there was no reason I shouldn’t come to school…”

Harry: Dumbledore is a great man.

Lupin: Yes, but I also think he gets bored if he doesn't have a conspiracy to attend to.

You might argue that, unlike Remus, Ryan and Eve didn't essentially get demonically possessed every month, driving them to attack everyone they saw, but with the kind of danger Hogwarts cheerfully embraces as part of student life, I don't see why we shouldn't make accommodations for werewolf kids. Helps their bouts of violent madness operate on a strict, predictable schedule. Oh, and before you ask, werewolves can't infect people outside the full moon. The worst they can do in human form is leave you with a fondness for rare steak, which to me indicates lycanthropy is just a virulent form of good taste.

Lupin sighed, and looked directly at Harry. “I told you, months ago, that the Whomping Willow was planted the year I came to Hogwarts. The truth is that it was planted because I came to Hogwarts. This house”—Lupin looked miserably around the room,—“the tunnel that leads to it—they were built for my use. Once a month, I was smuggled out of the castle, into this place, to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone coming across me while I was dangerous.”

So, if the Shrieking Shack was built specifically for Lupin to spazz out in, why was it furnished? Why build a house at all, and not some underground chamber? Hell, with how vast the castle is, you could probably contain him at Hogwarts safely, and that's not even taking things like the Room of Requirement into account.

“My transformations in those days were—were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead. The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumor… Even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don’t dare approach it…

He should be dead within 30 seconds. The werewolf heart is about two-thirds the size of a human's; but, in order to shrink, first, it has to stop. In other words, he has a heart attack. All the internal organs are smaller; so, while he's having his heart attack, he's having a liver and kidney failure too, and if he stops screaming, it's not because the pain has dulled: his throat, gullet, and vocal cords are tearing and reforming. He literally can't make a sound. By now, the pituitary gland should be working overtime, flooding his body with endorphins to ease some of the pain, but that, too, has shut down. Anyone else would have died of shock long ago, but it won't let him. And that's the thing I find most remarkable: it drags him through fire and keeps him alive and even conscious to endure every second. Nothing like this could just evolve; this is the fingerprint of God, an impossible, lethal curse, spread by tooth and claw. Victim begets victim begets victim. It's so cruel, it's... perfect.

Being Human was so fucking cool. Also, are the ghosts in on it, or just gullible?

“Now, my three friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her…

"I was on my period."

But of course, they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth…

“And they didn’t desert me at all. Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi.”

“My dad too?” said Harry, astounded.
“Yes, indeed,” said Lupin. “It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father and Sirius here were the cleverest students in the school, and lucky they were, because the Animagus transformation can go horribly wrong—one reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. Peter needed all the help he could get from James and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will.”

So, becoming an Animagi is so difficult and dangerous, only seven known wizards and witches in the UK have managed it, but two bright teenagers and their pet fat kid did it with no adult help? And if we believe Hogwarts Legacy, it's basically the African equivalent of learning middle school algebra.

A recurring issue with Rowling (and many other fantasy authors) is that she introduces stuff as incredibly rare and difficult, then has loads of people manage it. Also, while Rowling often leaves the nitty-gritty details of "big magic" (Horcruxes, Voldemort's resurrection potion, the Fidelius Charm) vague, she did actually provide us a step by step guide to becoming an Animagi. Let's check that out, courtesy of the Harry Potter wiki:

Any witch or wizard who wished to become an Animagus had to undergo a ritual-like process in order to achieve the ability. The process of becoming an Animagus was long and difficult and it had to be done in a very specific way. It required skill, practice, and patience.

The first step for becoming an Animagus was that the witch or wizard in question had to keep a single Mandrake leaf in their mouth for an entire month (from full moon to full moon). If the leaf was removed or swallowed, the witch or wizard would have to start over again.

At the next visible full moon (if the night happened to be cloudy, one would have to start over) the wizard had to spit the saliva-filled leaf into a small crystal phial that received the moon's pure rays. To the moon-struck phial, the wizard or witch must then add one of their own hairs, a silver teaspoon of dew taken from a place that had not seen sunlight or been touched by human feet for a full seven days, and the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawk Moth. The resulting mixture then had to be put in a quiet, dark place, and could not be disturbed in any way.

The next thing that had to happen was for the wizard to wait for an electrical storm, whenever that might be. During this waiting period the wizard would have to, at sunrise and sundown everyday without fail, chant the incantation Amato Animo Animato Animagus with the tip of their wand placed over the heart. If one kept repeating the incantation, there would come a time when a second heartbeat may have been sensed with the touch of the wand-tip to the chest. This was perfectly normal and should have been ignored. It was important not to let it cause any disturbance to the process.

When, at last, there was a lightning storm, the wizard had to retrieve the phial, which, if everything was done right, should have been found to contain a blood-red potion. The wizard had to immediately move to a large and secure place; somewhere they could achieve the transformation safely and without alarming anyone. To complete the process, the wizard had to point their wand at their heart and recite the incantation one final time, and then drink the Animagus potion.

Well, I can see why so full British wizards and witches bother becoming Animagi. Seems less "difficult" and more "tedious beyond words." I assume African wizards and witches only put themselves through this nonsense for bragging rights over the Yakubian sorcerers.

Actually, we've talked about the "We Wuz Kangs" vibe the African wizards give off, but I could see a more sane, less special snowflake approach. Let's say African wizards and witches never came up with wandlore for whatever reason. I could see them definitely developing better wandless magic skills than the typical European mage, because they had to. However, that doesn't mean every African wizard and witch can do nearly as much on their own as a wizard or witch with a wand. It's like any labour saving device. Someone who never had a washing machine is probably going to be better at doing laundry by hand, but it's still going to be slower and harder. So, one could also imagine a lot of African sorcery, as I previously speculated, revolves around magical artifacts and potions. Perhaps another form of magic could take the form of complicated rituals that grant permanent boons, things like tattoos that grant you perfect night vision, or the Animagi transformation.

Basically, what I'm suggesting is Animagi were an African innovation which spread to Europe, with Africans adopting wands and staves because it was just plain easier.

But how did that help you?” said Hermione, sounding puzzled.

“They couldn’t keep me company as humans, so they kept me company as animals,” said Lupin. “A werewolf is only a danger to people. They sneaked out of the castle every month under James’s Invisibility Cloak. They transformed… Peter, as the smallest, could slip beneath the Willow’s attacking branches and touch the knot that freezes it. They would then slip down the tunnel and join me. Under their influence, I became less dangerous. My body was still wolfish, but my mind seemed to become less so while I was with them.”

This might seem like hippie bullshit (animals living side by side in peace) but I actually think it reflects the nature of werewolves quite well. A werewolf is not a natural organism. It exclusively exists to infect and destroy humans. It doesn't even have to feed itself--the human half of it handles that kind of thing. Why should it give a shit about other animals?

“Hurry up, Remus,” snarled Black, who was still watching Scabbers with a horrible sort of hunger on his face.

“I’m getting there, Sirius, I’m getting there… well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now that we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and the village by night. Sirius and James transformed into such large animals, they were able to keep a werewolf in check.

Imagine if after all that bullshit with the mandrake leaves, James turned into a dolphin, Peter an elephant, and Sirius a butterfly or some shit.

hat sort of animal—?” Harry began, but Hermione cut him off.

“That was still really dangerous! Running around in the dark with a werewolf! What if you’d given the others the slip, and bitten somebody?”

“A thought that still haunts me,” said Lupin heavily. “And there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwards. We were young, thoughtless—carried away with our own cleverness.”

I'm glad we at least acknowledge it.

Lupin’s face had hardened, and there was self-disgust in his voice. “All this year, I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. But I didn’t do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I’d betrayed his trust while I was at school, admitting that I’d led others along with me… and Dumbledore’s trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it… so, in a way, Snape’s been right about me all along.”

"Not even the Scholomance would take me! And they have literally no teachers!"

“Snape?” said Black harshly, taking his eyes off Scabbers for the first time in minutes and looking up at Lupin. “What’s Snape got to do with it?”

“He’s here, Sirius,” said Lupin heavily. “He’s teaching here as well.” He looked up at Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

“Professor Snape was at school with us. He fought very hard against my appointment to the Defense Against the Dark Arts job. He has been telling Dumbledore all year that I am not to be trusted. He has his reasons… you see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me—”

Black made a derisive noise.

“It served him right,” he sneered. “Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to… hoping he could get us expelled…

As you can see, Sirius might not be a murderous monster, but whether you can call him a "good guy" is... debatable.

“Severus was very interested in where I went every month.” Lupin told Harry, Ron, and Hermione. “We were in the same year, you know, and we—er—didn’t like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch field… anyway Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me toward the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be—er—amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it—if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf—but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life… Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden by Dumbledore to tell anybody, but from that time on he knew what I was…”

So, when Remus was infected at age five, did he turn into an adorable werewolf cub?

“So that’s why Snape doesn’t like you,” said Harry slowly, “because he thought you were in on the joke?”

“That’s right,” sneered a cold voice from the wall behind Lupin.

Severus Snape was pulling off the Invisibility Cloak, his wand pointing directly at Lupin.

Ron: Him too?

Lockhart: Professor Lupin, I've got your potion!

Ron: Okay, this is getting--

"Hello, I'm the Ron from the Double-Double Universe."

Ron: Fuck this!

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

"There was this Aussie who invented a spell for it, but someone erased their memory without bothering to learn it."

Lockhart: Smiles blithely.

"You brought Lockhart with you?"

"Lockhart has to be supervised at all times -- he keeps trying to pet the Dementors."

"I just think Ring Wraiths are swell."

"You can't call them that in current year!"

If any of that feels familiar, it might be because Ryan's story partly inspired that one Captain Planet episode where an anthropomorphic ratman spreads rumours about a boy with HIV because he hopes the panic causes people to act stupid and get AIDS themselves. Honestly, pretty on point for a Captain Planet episode.

The scene of the furry dude in a trench coat calling out to a crowd "Look out, that kid has AIIIIIIIDS!" is seared into my brain alongside the scene of Legally Distinct Hitler being such a chad that his hatred allows him to silently glare Captain Planet into submission.

He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch field…

You know Lupin was tempted for a moment to just say "He really wanted to show your mum his Flipendo charm."

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I wonder if ghosts show up on the Map

I think they do? Or maybe poltergeists were an exception.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

Death: Argh, I'm so bad at this.

Yeah, while lots of the books were set out and positioned well in advance, both the mechanics and the Themes of the Hallows were...not, in my opinion. If I were doing it, I would have kept with the idea that the Cloak was...scuffed, in a way that Harry could sense but didn't have context for. It would be cool and thematic if Dumbledore and only Dumbledore could get past it because he was so aggressively chill with mortality that he didn't go down the Death way of doing things at all, for example, but I think that the real core of the Cloak is a legacy from Harry's father, and turning it into a plot artifact detracts from that.

You might argue that, unlike Remus, Ryan and Eve didn't essentially get demonically possessed every month, driving them to attack everyone they saw...

Harry Potter, I will remind you, is not our world. One of the things that our world has is standardized mass production. If you're in a corporate environment, you might have heard the term six sigma before. It's not just more corporate bullshit; it comes from manufacturing, where you can, if you have good enough controls over your inputs and processes, actually have defects down to one in a million, and fill drug stores with incredibly cheap, incredibly potent, incredibly well-measured-and-regulated drugs.

This is not that world. Even if we assume that the new drug is the equivalent of PrEP, it needs to be made by another magical prodigy, and remember, no one has any idea of magical theory. What if the preparer discovers a new way to fail to make the potion one month and no one notices? What if there's an interaction with another magical effect? What if another student has a latent family curse which gets supercharged by accidental hominid-werewolf infection and they turn into a monster that way? What if the correct time for the dose is actually three weeks out for the harvest moon of of the year, but only years that are a multiple of the seventy-seventh anniversary of the binding of Fenrir? In magic, I feel that you're almost obliged to adopt vibes-based solutions to things, and as Lupin himself admits, this whole deal is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

And, actually, now that I think about it, Dumbledore's idea of "I got it! Let's plant a murder-tree to help cover for our werewolf student's disappearances!" feels...characteristic of both Dumbledore and his plans in general. And I feel like the proof of all of this is that even if no one actually died or got infected because Dumbledore took a chance on Lupin, his actual behavior and the number of close calls makes me feel that this is plainly a bad practice.

I also think that there is something that we are not being told about Lupin's actual interactions during his historic werewolf freakouts. If werewolves will hurt themselves for lack of other creatures to target, why not a nice juicy deer? Or is the point that when he says that Black and Potter could keep him check, what he's actually saying is this was Magical Fight Club, Furry Edition?

I know that this is just some metaphors getting poorly mixed, but knowing what we know now about what we thought we knew about the AIDS crisis, "There was a large subset of the infected population that fucked things up for everyone by exacerbating the risk factors and lying about it decades after the fact." does feel like it completes the metaphor for me.

"Not even the Scholomance would take me! And they have literally no teachers!"

I mean, there was famously one teacher, as I recall, but I'm sure the name is being re-used from the reference I'm thinking of.

---

And now we get Snape out of nowhere, and we're not even at full mast for random escalations and reveals! I will say that with full context, I think that we can get a bit more insight into Snape's character. Why is he a Potions teacher, and not making werewolf suppressant and similar extremely-exacting brews for the richest and most exclusive wizards?

Well, presumably, either he took the job of teacher because he wanted it, or because it was all that he had available to him, and given his sterling personality, I feel like it was very likely that he graduated, tried to lean on the Slytherin patronage network, got told that he was way too Mudblooded to get a high-prestige job for that no matter how talented he was, got offered a job by Dumbledore out of pity and has hated him ever since, and that his school favoritism comes with a cost; any Slytherin that doesn't explicitly butter him up loses points for all the other Slytherins. He is mean (in the modern and archaic senses) and miserable, and the architect of his own misfortunes, but he's also been dealt a shit hand due to the attitudes of the previous generation of wizards.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

The scene of the furry dude in a trench coat calling out to a crowd "Look out, that kid has AIIIIIIIDS!" is seared into my brain alongside the scene of Legally Distinct Hitler being such a chad that his hatred allows him to silently glare Captain Planet into submission.

Shout out to that time the Planeteers swore to only have two children and told kids to do the same. Having the blue, superpowered tulpa tell people to keep a level head about HIV and not shun people with it feels almost sober in comparison.

What if the correct time for the dose is actually three weeks out for the harvest moon of of the year, but only years that are a multiple of the seventy-seventh anniversary of the binding of Fenrir? In magic, I feel that you're almost obliged to adopt vibes-based solutions to things, and as Lupin himself admits, this whole deal is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

Fenrir Greyback isn't that old! That does roughly as convoluted and tortured as the animagus ritual, though, yes. My feeling is that Hogwarts doesn't really have a leg to stand on denying young Lupin an education because the danger he poses when, among other things, their school sport is the Stupidest, Most Dangerous Game in the World. I do agree the whole rigmarole with the Whomping Willow and the Shack is overly complicated and risky. To me, the best accommodation for Lupin (prior to the invention of Wolfsbane Retroviral Therapy) would've been sticking him in the chamber they stuck the Stone in the first book, bolting it, and having Dumbledore himself stand guard overnight. He'd have both the authority to shoo away students and the badass magic to keep Lupin contained should something go wrong. But Dumbledore, especially in these early books, is basically a kindlier Professor Farnsworth.

Yeah, while lots of the books were set out and positioned well in advance, both the mechanics and the Themes of the Hallows were...not, in my opinion. If I were doing it, I would have kept with the idea that the Cloak was...scuffed, in a way that Harry could sense but didn't have context for. It would be cool and thematic if Dumbledore and only Dumbledore could get past it because he was so aggressively chill with mortality that he didn't go down the Death way of doing things at all, for example, but I think that the real core of the Cloak is a legacy from Harry's father, and turning it into a plot artifact detracts from that.

Harry: Of course I get the shitty one.

And now we get Snape out of nowhere, and we're not even at full mast for random escalations and reveals! I will say that with full context, I think that we can get a bit more insight into Snape's character. Why is he a Potions teacher, and not making werewolf suppressant and similar extremely-exacting brews for the richest and most exclusive wizards?

Well, presumably, either he took the job of teacher because he wanted it, or because it was all that he had available to him, and given his sterling personality, I feel like it was very likely that he graduated, tried to lean on the Slytherin patronage network, got told that he was way too Mudblooded to get a high-prestige job for that no matter how talented he was, got offered a job by Dumbledore out of pity and has hated him ever since, and that his school favoritism comes with a cost; any Slytherin that doesn't explicitly butter him up loses points for all the other Slytherins. He is mean (in the modern and archaic senses) and miserable, and the architect of his own misfortunes, but he's also been dealt a shit hand due to the attitudes of the previous generation of wizards.

Tilts hand.

I know that this is just some metaphors getting poorly mixed, but knowing what we know now about what we thought we knew about the AIDS crisis, "There was a large subset of the infected population that fucked things up for everyone by exacerbating the risk factors and lying about it decades after the fact." does feel like it completes the metaphor for me.

Remus: Look, fellas, if we just close the bath houses--

Fenrir Greyback: Respectability politics!

I mean, there was famously one teacher, as I recall, but I'm sure the name is being re-used from the reference I'm thinking of.

Imagine an author who's clearly more comfortable with historical romance giving into market pressure and writing a modern day "dark academia" series that's a darker and edgier take on Hogwarts. Now imagine there was a convoluted setup to justify the school having no teachers at all, and no holidays, and also, you have to fight your way through a gauntlet of horrible monsters to graduate, and even before that half the students on average are killed by slightly less horrible monsters, even though the point of this school is to shelter magical kids from the horrible monsters. Now imagine that, supposedly, even in the safest, most fortified magical communities, two thirds of all wizards kids are killed during puberty, but all the wizard families described only have one or two kids at all.

Hermione screamed. Black leapt to his feet. Harry felt as though he’d received a huge electric shock.

“I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow,” said Snape, throwing the cloak aside, careful to keep this wand pointing directly at Lupin’s chest. “Very useful, Potter, I thank you…”

I love in the film how Alan Rickman skulks into sight in the background before revealing himself. I feel like Cuarón was quite deliberately drawing from theatrical staging, particularly British panto:

"He's behind you!"

Turns out Snape was delivering Lupin's potion to his office when he saw the Map open on his desk.

“Severus, you’re making a mistake,” said Lupin urgently. “You haven’t heard everything—I can explain—Sirius is not here to kill Harry—”

“Two more for Azkaban tonight,” said Snape, his eyes now gleaming fanatically. “I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this… He was quite convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin… a tame werewolf—”

“You fool,” said Lupin softly. “Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?”

BANG!

"Snape took a deep sip from his BANG energy drink."

Thin, snakelike cords burst from the end of Snape’s wand and twisted themselves around Lupin’s mouth, wrists, and ankles; he overbalanced and fell to the floor, unable to move. With a roar of rage, Black started toward Snape, but Snape pointed his wand straight between Black’s eyes.

“Give me a reason,” he whispered. “Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will.”

Severus Snape and the Jocks From High School.

arry stood there, paralyzed, not knowing what to do or whom to believe. He glanced around at Ron and Hermione. Ron looked just as confused as he did, still fighting to keep hold on the struggling Scabbers. Hermione, however, took an uncertain step toward Snape and said, in a very breathless voice, “Professor Snape—it—it wouldn’t hurt to hear what they’ve got to say, w—would it?”

“Miss Granger, you are already facing suspension from this school,” Snape spat. “You, Potter, and Weasley are out-of-bounds, in the company of a convicted murderer and a werewolf. For once in your life, hold your tongue.”

I like that they're only facing suspension. Snape's learned to temper his expectations. My old school never did "suspension" exactly. Instead, it did in-school suspension, where you were forced to come to school and do your work next to the headmaster's office. Based.

Vengeance is very sweet,” Snape breathed at Black. “How I hoped I would be the one to catch you…”

“The joke’s on you again, Severus,” Black snarled. “As long as this boy brings his rat up to the castle”—he jerked his head at Ron—“I’ll come quietly…”

“Up to the castle?” said Snape silkily. “I don’t think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the dementors once we get out of the Willow. They’ll be very pleased to see you, Black… pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I daresay…"

Imagine explaining that to Dumbledore.

"Oh, I found Sirius Black. Then I let the Dementors suck out his soul, right there on the spot."

“Come on, all of you,” he said. He clicked his fingers, and the ends of the cords that bound Lupin flew to his hands. “I’ll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the dementors will have a kiss for him too—”

"Also, I let them consume Professor Lupin's immortal soul, too. Don't worry, he had it coming, these children who hate me will back me up!"

“Get out of the way, Potter, you’re in enough trouble already,” snarled Snape. “If I hadn’t been here to save your skin—”

“Professor Lupin could have killed me about a hundred times this year,” Harry said. “I’ve been alone with him loads of times, having defense lessons against the dementors. If he was helping Black, why didn’t he just finish me off then?”

“Don’t ask me to fathom the way a werewolf’s mind works,” hissed Snape. “Get out of the way, Potter.”

“YOU’RE PATHETIC!” Harry yelled. “JUST BECAUSE THEY MADE A FOOL OF YOU AT SCHOOL YOU WON’T EVEN LISTEN—”

Sirius and Severus are similar in one important way--neither of them ever quite moved on from high school.

“SILENCE! I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT!” Snape shrieked, looking madder than ever. “Like father, like son, Potter! I have just saved your neck; you should be thanking me on bended knee! You would have been well served if he’d killed you! You’d have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black—now get out of the way, or I will make you. GET OUT OF THE WAY, POTTER!”

Harry made up his mind in a split second. Before Snape could take even one step toward him, he had raised his wand.
“Expelliarmus!” he yelled—except that his wasn’t the only voice that shouted. There was a blast that made the door rattle on its hinges; Snape was lifted off his feet and slammed into the wall, then slid down it to the floor, a trickle of blood oozing from under his hair. He had been knocked out.

"I'm not sure why," said Lockhart, "but that made me very, very happy."

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said Black, looking at Harry. “You should have left him to me…”

Harry avoided Black’s eyes. He wasn’t sure, even now, that he’d done the right thing.

“We attacked a teacher… We attacked a teacher…,” Hermione whimpered, staring at the lifeless Snape with frightened eyes. “Oh, we’re going to be in so much trouble—”

Especially if Rowling remembers that usually people who've been knocked unconscious don't wake up perfectly fine half an hour later.

Lupin was struggling against his bonds. Black bent down quickly and untied him. Lupin straightened up, rubbing his arms where the ropes had cut into them.

“Thank you, Harry,” he said.

“I’m still not saying I believe you,” he told Lupin.

Interesting the ropes persist after Snape's been knocked out.

Then it’s time we offered you some proof,” said Lupin. “You, boy—give me Peter, please. Now.”

Ron clutched Scabbers closer to his chest.

“Come off it,” he said weakly. “Are you trying to say he broke out of Azkaban just to get his hands on Scabbers? I mean…” He looked up at Harry and Hermione for support, “Okay, say Pettigrew could turn into a rat—there are millions of rats—how’s he supposed to know which one he’s after if he was locked up in Azkaban?”

“You know, Sirius, that’s a fair question,” said Lupin, turning to Black and frowning slightly. “How did you find out where he was?”

Ron is the editor. Turns out Black saw Scabbers in the photo of the Weasleys' Egypt trip in the Daily Prophet. Remember how the only part of Pettigrew they found was his finger?

“He’s got a toe missing,” said Black.

“Of course,” Lupin breathed. “So simple… so brilliant… he cut it off himself?”

Believe it or not, this is kind of Peter's signature move.

“Just before he transformed,” said Black. “When I cornered him, he yelled for the whole street to hear that I’d betrayed Lily and James. Then, before I could curse him, he blew apart the street with the wand behind his back, killed everyone within twenty feet of himself—and sped down into the sewer with the other rats…

Kind of shocked he was capable of that.

“Look, Scabbers probably had a fight with another rat or something! He’s been in my family for ages, right—”

“Twelve years, in fact,” said Lupin. “Didn’t you ever wonder why he was living so long?”

“We—we’ve been taking good care of him!” said Ron.

Molly: So this is why I keep finding horrible rat-human hybrid stillbirths around the house.

(Side note, I was mistaken, Arthur was the one who warned us to never trust something when you can't see where it keeps its brain)

He’s been scared of that mad cat!” said Ron, nodding toward Crookshanks, who was still purring on the bed.

But that wasn’t right, Harry thought suddenly… Scabbers had been looking ill before he met Crookshanks… ever since Ron’s return from Egypt… since the time when Black had escaped…

“This cat isn’t mad,” said Black hoarsely. He reached out a bony hand and stroked Crookshanks’s fluffy head. “He’s the most intelligent of his kind I’ve ever met. He recognized Peter for what he was right away. And when he met me, he knew I was no dog. It was a while before he trusted me… Finally, I managed to communicate to him what I was after, and he’s been helping me…”

“What do you mean?” breathed Hermione.

“He tried to bring Peter to me, but couldn’t… so he stole the passwords into Gryffindor Tower for me… As I understand it, he took them from a boy’s bedside table…”

I honestly feel bad comparing Crookshanks to Greebo. I forgot he was such a bro.

“But Peter got wind of what was going on and ran for it…” croaked Black. “This cat—Crookshanks, did you call him?—told me Peter had left blood on the sheets… I supposed he bit himself… Well, faking his own death had worked once…”

Interesting that Crookshanks can communicate all that shit, but not his name.

These words jolted Harry to his senses.

“And why did he fake his death?” he said furiously. “Because he knew you were about to kill him like you killed my parents!”

"And then stayed a rat for twelve years after you were imprisoned!"

“No,” said Lupin, “Harry—”

“And now you’ve come to finish him off!”

“Yes, I have,” said Black, with an evil look at Scabbers.

“Then I should’ve let Snape take you!” Harry shouted.

I'm beginning to think the reason Sirius got chucked in Azkaban was that he kept trying to explain his innocence with ominous euphemisms.

“Harry,” said Lupin hurriedly, “don’t you see? All this time we’ve thought Sirius betrayed your parents, and Peter tracked him down—but it was the other way around, don’t you see? Peter betrayed your mother and father—Sirius tracked Peter down—”

“THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Harry yelled. “HE WAS THEIR SECRET-KEEPER! HE SAID SO BEFORE YOU TURNED UP. HE SAID HE KILLED THEM!”

He was pointing at Black, who shook his head slowly; the sunken eyes were suddenly overbright.

“Harry… I as good as killed them,” he croaked.

See?

“I persuaded Lily and James to change to Peter at the last moment, persuaded them to use him as Secret-Keeper instead of me… I’m to blame, I know it… The night they died, I’d arranged to check on Peter, make sure he was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding place, he’d gone. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. It didn’t feel right. I was scared. I set out for your parents’ house straight away. And when I saw their house, destroyed, and their bodies… I realized what Peter must’ve done… what I’d done…”

Harry: Okay, now I hate you for being dumb as balls.

Lupin convinces Ron to hand over Scabbers so he can force him to reveal his true form, promising that if he's wrong, he will not be harmed. Him and Sirus cast a spell (the one Lockhart claimed he used to make the Wagga Wagga Werewolf turn human?) and then some Animorphs shit goes down.

It was like watching a speeded-up film of a growing tree. A head was shooting upward from the ground; limbs were sprouting; a moment later, a man was standing where Scabbers had been, cringing and wringing his hands. Crookshanks was spitting and snarling on the bed; the hair on his back was standing up.

He was a very short man, hardly taller than Harry and Hermione. His thin, colorless hair was unkempt and there was a large bald patch on top. He had the shrunken appearance of a plump man who has lost a lot of weight in a short time. His skin looked grubby, almost like Scabbers’s fur, and something of the rat lingered around his pointed nose and his very small, watery eyes. He looked around at them all, his breathing fast and shallow. Harry saw his eyes dart to the door and back again.

“Well, hello, Peter,” said Lupin pleasantly, as though rats frequently erupted into old school friends around him. “Long time, no see.”

Is the idea that Peter's been a rat so long, it's crept into his human form, like shapeshifter screen burn-in?

“We’ve been having a little chat, Peter, about what happened the night Lily and James died. You might have missed the finer points while you were squeaking around down there on the bed—”

“Remus,” gasped Pettigrew, and Harry could see beads of sweat breaking out over his pasty face, “you don’t believe him, do you…? He tried to kill me, Remus…”

“So we’ve heard,” said Lupin, more coldly. “I’d like to clear up one or two little matters with you, Peter, if you’d be so—”

“He’s come to try and kill me again!” Pettigrew squeaked suddenly, pointing at Black, and Harry saw that he used his middle finger, because his index was missing. “He killed Lily and James and now he’s going to kill me too… You’ve got to help me, Remus…”

Remus: You know, even if this was true, Sirius has been locked up in Azkaban for over a decade. Why wouldn't you have shown yourself?

Peter, gesturing at Ron: Look at this boy! You think I could bear parting with him? He doesn't even wear a towel after showering!

Ron: I want to die now.

Sorted things out?” squealed Pettigrew, looking wildly about him once more, eyes taking in the boarded windows and, again, the only door. “I knew he’d come after me! I knew he’d be back for me! I’ve been waiting for this for twelve years!”

“You knew Sirius was going to break out of Azkaban?” said Lupin, his brow furrowed. “When nobody has ever done it before?”

“He’s got dark powers the rest of us can only dream of!” Pettigrew shouted shrilly. “How else did he get out of there? I suppose He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named taught him a few tricks!”

Black started to laugh, a horrible, mirthless laugh that filled the whole room.

“Voldemort, teach me tricks?” he said.

Voldemort: Pick a card! All of them are certain death!

Pettigrew flinched as though Black had brandished a whip at him.

“What, scared to hear your old master’s name?” said Black. “I don’t blame you, Peter. His lot aren’t very happy with you, are they?”

“Don’t know what you mean, Sirius—” muttered Pettigrew, his breathing faster than ever. His whole face was shining with sweat now.
You’ve been hiding from Voldemort’s old supporters. I heard things in Azkaban, Peter… They all think you’re dead, or you’d have to answer to them… I’ve heard them screaming all sorts of things in their sleep. Sounds like they think the double-crosser double-crossed them. Voldemort went to the Potters’ on your information… and Voldemort met his downfall there. And not all Voldemort’s supporters ended up in Azkaban, did they? There are still plenty out here, biding their time, pretending they’ve seen the error of their ways… If they ever got wind that you were still alive, Peter—”

I like the image of Voldemort being lured into the lair of like, some badass baby.

“Don’t know… what you’re talking about…,” said Pettigrew again, more shrilly than ever. He wiped his face on his sleeve and looked up at Lupin. “You don’t believe this—this madness, Remus—”

“I must admit, Peter, I have difficulty in understanding why an innocent man would want to spend twelve years as a rat,” said Lupin evenly.

“Innocent, but scared!” squealed Pettigrew. “If Voldemort’s supporters were after me, it was because I put one of their best men in Azkaban—the spy, Sirius Black!”

Black’s face contorted.

“How dare you,” he growled, sounding suddenly like the bear-sized dog he had been. “I, a spy for Voldemort? When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter—I’ll never understand why I didn’t see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who’d look after you, didn’t you? It used to be us… me and Remus… and James…”

"And your most powerful friend of all, Ron!"

“Lily and James only made you Secret-Keeper because I suggested it,” Black hissed, so venomously that Pettigrew took a step backward. “I thought it was the perfect plan… a bluff… Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they’d use a weak, talentless thing like you… It must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters.”

Seriously, Black, did you not say "trust my friends' safety with our snivelling coward friend" out loud to yourself?

“Professor Lupin?” said Hermione timidly. “Can—can I say something?”

“Certainly, Hermione,” said Lupin courteously.

“Well—Scabbers—I mean, this—this man—he’s been sleeping in Harry’s dormitory for three years. If he’s working for You-Know-Who, how come he never tried to hurt Harry before now?”

“There!” said Pettigrew shrilly, pointing at Ron with his maimed hand. “Thank you! You see, Remus? I have never hurt a hair of Harry’s head! Why should I?”

"He's so beautiful."

Side note, thank god Animagi are the kind of shapeshifters that take their clothes with them. Well, except in the film, where when Peter escapes (spoilers) he leaves his suit and coat behind, because I guess he just felt like being naked next time he resumed human form.

“I’ll tell you why,” said Black. “Because you never did anything for anyone unless you could see what was in it for you. Voldemort’s been in hiding for fifteen years, they say he’s half dead. You weren’t about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore’s nose, for a wreck of a wizard who’d lost all of his power, were you? You’d want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn’t you? Why else did you find a wizard family to take you in? Keeping an ear out for news, weren’t you, Peter? Just in case your old protector regained strength, and it was safe to rejoin him…”

Peter is the J.D Vance of dark wizards, is what we're saying.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how—how did you get out of Azkaban, if you didn’t use Dark Magic?”

“Thank you!” gasped Pettigrew, nodding frantically at her. “Exactly! Precisely what I—”

But Lupin silenced him with a look. Black was frowning slightly at Hermione, but not as though he were annoyed with her. He seemed to be pondering his answer.

“I don’t know how I did it,” he said slowly. “I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn’t a happy thought, so the dementors couldn’t suck it out of me… but it kept me sane and knowing who I am… helped me keep my powers… so when it all became… too much… I could transform in my cell… become a dog. Dementors can’t see, you know…” He swallowed. “They feel their way toward people by feeding off their emotions… They could tell that my feelings were less—less human, less complex when I was a dog… but they thought, of course, that I was losing my mind like everyone else in there, so it didn’t trouble them. But I was weak, very weak, and I had no hope of driving them away from me without a wand…

This does make me picture Dementors bumping into walls and shit like Mr. Magoo.

“But then I saw Peter in that picture… I realized he was at Hogwarts with Harry… perfectly positioned to act, if one hint reached his ears that the Dark Side was gathering strength again…”

Pettigrew was shaking his head, mouthing noiselessly, but staring all the while at Black as though hypnotized.

“…ready to strike at the moment he could be sure of allies… and to deliver the last Potter to them. If he gave them Harry, who’d dare say he’d betrayed Lord Voldemort? He’d be welcomed back with honors…"

"And if not, a dorm full of boys and a castle I assume is full of fine rat baddies."

“So you see, I had to do something. I was the only one who knew Peter was still alive…”

Harry remembered what Mr. Weasley had told Mrs. Weasley. “The guards say he’s been talking in his sleep… always the same words… ‘He’s at Hogwarts.’”

In retrospect, it would be weird for Black to only realise Harry was at Hogwarts now. Where else would he be? Beauxbatons? Actually, imagine how awkward it'd be if Ron had left Scabbers at home this year.

“It was as if someone had lit a fire in my head, and the dementors couldn’t destroy it… It wasn’t a happy feeling… it was an obsession… but it gave me strength, it cleared my mind. So, one night when they opened my door to bring food, I slipped past them as a dog… It’s so much harder for them to sense animal emotions that they were confused… I was thin, very thin… thin enough to slip through the bars… I swam as a dog back to the mainland… I journeyed north and slipped into the Hogwarts grounds as a dog. I’ve been living in the forest ever since, except when I came to watch the Quidditch, of course. You fly as well as your father did, Harry…”

"He too was a bizarrely talented bad luck charm."

“Believe me,” croaked Black. “Believe me, Harry. I never betrayed James and Lily. I would have died before I betrayed them.”

And at long last, Harry believed him. Throat too tight to speak, he nodded.

“No!”

Pettigrew had fallen to his knees as though Harry’s nod had been his own death sentence. He shuffled forward on his knees, groveling, his hands clasped in front of him as though praying.

“Sirius—it’s me… it’s Peter… your friend… you wouldn’t…”

Black kicked out and Pettigrew recoiled.

“There’s enough filth on my robes without you touching them,” said Black.

I always forget the characters don't really dress like they do in the films.

“Remus!” Pettigrew squeaked, turning to Lupin instead, writhing imploringly in front of him. “You don’t believe this… wouldn’t Sirius have told you they’d changed the plan?”

“Not if he thought I was the spy, Peter,” said Lupin. “I assume that’s why you didn’t tell me, Sirius?” he said casually over Pettigrew’s head.

“Forgive me, Remus,” said Black.

“Not at all, Padfoot, old friend,” said Lupin, who was now rolling up his sleeves. “And will you, in turn, forgive me for believing you were the spy?”

“Of course,” said Black, and the ghost of a grin flitted across his gaunt face. He, too, began rolling up his sleeves. “Shall we kill him together?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Lupin grimly.

It'll be a rich, full day.

You wouldn’t… you won’t…,” gasped Pettigrew. And he scrambled around to Ron.

“Ron… haven’t I been a good friend… a good pet? You won’t let them kill me, Ron, will you… you’re on my side, aren’t you?”

But Ron was staring at Pettigrew with the utmost revulsion.

“I let you sleep in my bed!” he said.

“Kind boy… kind master…” Pettigrew crawled toward Ron, “you won’t let them do it… I was your rat… I was a good pet…

I think the "Peter is a perv" jokes are earned.

Pettigrew turned on his knees, staggered forward, and seized the hem of Hermione’s robes.

“Sweet girl… clever girl… you—you won’t let them… Help me…”

Hermione pulled her robes out of Pettigrew’s clutching hands and backed away against the wall, looking horrified.

Again, Hermione in the books is allowed to sometimes just be horrified or upset without judgement or girlbossification.

“Harry,” whispered Pettigrew, shuffling toward him, hands outstretched. “Harry, James wouldn’t have wanted me killed… James would have understood, Harry… he would have shown me mercy…”

Both Black and Lupin strode forward, seized Pettigrew’s shoulders, and threw him backward onto the floor. He sat there, twitching with terror, staring up at them.

“You sold Lily and James to Voldemort,” said Black, who was shaking too. “Do you deny it?”

Pettigrew burst into tears. It was horrible to watch, like an oversized, balding baby, cowering on the floor.

“Sirius, Sirius, what could I have done? The Dark Lord… you have no idea… he has weapons you can’t imagine… I was scared, Sirius, I was never brave like you and Remus and James. I never meant it to happen… He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named forced me—”

“DON’T LIE!” bellowed Black. “YOU’D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!”

“He—he was taking over everywhere!” gasped Pettigrew. “Wh—what was there to be gained by refusing him?”

Peter is like one of those guys who used to tell edgy jokes but went all in on woke to be spared.

Black and Lupin stood shoulder to shoulder, wands raised.

“You should have realized,” said Lupin quietly, “if Voldemort didn’t kill you, we would. Good-bye, Peter.”

Again, Lupin's energy in the film is quite different here, and it's great, but I also like his grim resignation and cold anger here. Harry steps between the wizards and Peter, imploring them to spare Peter, because he feels his parents wouldn't want them to become murderers in their name, and because Azkaban is way worse a punishment than a painless death.

Harry stepped out of the way. Thin cords shot from Lupin’s wand this time, and next moment, Pettigrew was wriggling on the floor, bound and gagged.

“But if you transform, Peter,” growled Black, his own wand pointing at Pettigrew too, “we will kill you. You agree, Harry?”

Harry looked down at the pitiful figure on the floor and nodded so that Pettigrew could see him.

Harry's cool.

“Right,” said Lupin, suddenly businesslike. “Ron, I can’t mend bones nearly as well as Madam Pomfrey, so I think it’s best if we just strap your leg up until we can get you to the hospital wing.”
He hurried over to Ron, bent down, tapped Ron’s leg with his wand, and muttered, “Ferula.” Bandages spun up Ron’s leg, strapping it tightly to a splint. Lupin helped him to his feet; Ron put his weight gingerly on the leg and didn’t wince.

“That’s better,” he said. “Thanks.”

Ron: How come nobody consulted me over whether the creep got to live?

“What about Professor Snape?” said Hermione in a small voice, looking down at Snape’s prone figure.

“There’s nothing seriously wrong with him,” said Lupin, bending over Snape and checking his pulse. “You were just a little—overenthusiastic. Still out cold. Er—perhaps it will be best if we don’t revive him until we’re safely back in the castle. We can take him like this…”

"Well, there's the brain bleed, but still, he's fine."

He muttered, “Mobilicorpus.” As though invisible strings were tied to Snape’s wrists, neck, and knees, he was pulled into a standing position, head still lolling unpleasantly, like a grotesque puppet. He hung a few inches above the ground, his limp feet dangling. Lupin picked up the Invisibility Cloak and tucked it safely into his pocket.

How compressible is that thing?

“And two of us should be chained to this,” said Black, nudging Pettigrew with his toe. “Just to make sure.”

“I’ll do it,” said Lupin.

“And me,” said Ron savagely, limping forward.

Black conjured heavy manacles from thin air; soon Pettigrew was upright again, left arm chained to Lupin’s right, right arm to Ron’s left. Ron’s face was set. He seemed to have taken Scabbers’s true identity as a personal insult.

Hell hath no fury like a bro scorned.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Yeah, while lots of the books were set out and positioned well in advance, both the mechanics and the Themes of the Hallows were...not, in my opinion.

I feel like the Deathly Hallows were made up at the last minute because Rowling needed some magical trinket or name to base the title around.

Why is he a Potions teacher, and not making werewolf suppressant and similar extremely-exacting brews for the richest and most exclusive wizards?

"I don't want to make money and buy all the red headed bitches I could ever want. I want to torment school children!"

got offered a job by Dumbledore out of pity and has hated him ever since

I don't remember Hallows too well, but isn't their whole deal that Snape has agreed to be Dumbledore's bitch until the day he dies in return for Dumbledore hiding the Potters? He works at Hogwarts because Dumbledore wants him where the action always seems to take place in case Voldemort tries to hit Snape up for some double agent action.

"Also, I let them consume Professor Lupin's immortal soul, too. Don't worry, he had it coming, these children who hate me will back me up!"

This is where everyone agrees to pin Pettigrew's crimes all on Snape and send him to Azkaban.

Also, Rickman sells the fuck out of the line in the movie.

"I could do it, you know... But why deny the Dementors? They're so longing to see you. Do I detect a flicker of fear? Ah, yes. The Dementor's Kiss. One can only imagine what that must be like to endure. It's said to be nearly unbearable to witness, but I'll do my best."

"I'm not sure why," said Lockhart, "but that made me very, very happy."

"Where did the second expeliarmis come from?"
"Lockhart finally locked-in."

Peter is like one of those guys who used to tell edgy jokes but went all in on woke to be spared.

"Can't you see, Sirius? I've matured and changed into a much healthier person -- becoming a cuck and a literal rat is the path of a true man!"

Hell hath no fury like a bro scorned.

Sirius looked at the injured school boy hobbling on one leg and didn't even blink at agreeing to let Ron chain himself to the mass murderer. He recognises game.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

This is where everyone agrees to pin Pettigrew's crimes all on Snape and send him to Azkaban.

Also, Rickman sells the fuck out of the line in the movie.

"I could do it, you know... But why deny the Dementors? They're so longing to see you. Do I detect a flicker of fear? Ah, yes. The Dementor's Kiss. One can only imagine what that must be like to endure. It's said to be nearly unbearable to witness, but I'll do my best."

I love how Snape in both versions clearly thinks he's the protagonist of this book. It's a delightful vibe, and I think speaks well to Rowling's ability to lend her quite archetypal characters humanity, even if it's an icky, noisome sort of humanity.

Sirius looked at the injured school boy hobbling on one leg and didn't even blink at agreeing to let Ron chain himself to the mass murderer. He recognises game.

If I'm not careful, I'm going to turn into Wogglebuglover, but for Ron. Actually, I've been rereading her thread lately, and I notice that aside from Woggie himself, Cynthia's favourite characters include Petrie from The Land Before Time and Dobby. Not to slander Dobby, who is a true bro, but I love consistently that woman is drawn to small, annoying brown things. Putting aside the delightful alternate timeline where Cynthia dedicated her life to giving Dobby his own fandom because Harry was a bit grumpy about nearly being killed and/or having his life ruined, I like to think this is the only other thread here she's likely to crash.

Just a note, I'm going to be travelling for a few days, and the Australian Federation of Wizards confiscated my Time-Tuner after I tried using it to correct my many embarrassing typos, so no update for a little bit.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

I'm back! However, the friend I was staying with in Perth called Ron "mid." He's dead now.

Harry had never been part of a stranger group. Crookshanks led the way down the stairs; Lupin, Pettigrew, and Ron went next, looking like entrants in a six-legged race. Next came Professor Snape, drifting creepily along, his toes hitting each stair as they descended, held up by his own wand, which was being pointed at him by Sirius. Harry and Hermione brought up the rear.

It amuses me that Crookshanks has done way more traditional protagonist shit this book than Harry. Harry hasn't really done any of his usual investigating, and his sneaking has been for fairly normal "kid at boarding school" reasons rather than say, trying to learn more about an immortal alchemist, or tricking the class shithead into confessing to a series of attempted murders. Earlier in the book, Mr. Weasley warned Harry not to go looking for Black, and he... really hasn't. Most of the book has just been Harry dealing with his feelings about the situation and his friends' drama. The plot has come to him rather than the other way around. To be clear, this isn't a criticism--"agency" isn't the be all and end all of good writing, and Harry's been perfectly engaging--I just find it funny you could call this book Crookshanks the Cat and the White Woman's Bane.

“You know what this means?” Black said abruptly to Harry as they made their slow progress along the tunnel. “Turning Pettigrew in?”

“You’re free,” said Harry.

“Yes…,” said Black. “But I’m also—I don’t know if anyone ever told you—I’m your godfather.”

“Yeah, I knew that,” said Harry.

“Well… your parents appointed me your guardian,” said Black stiffly. “If anything happened to them…”

Harry waited. Did Black mean what he thought he meant?

“I’ll understand, of course, if you want to stay with your aunt and uncle,” said Black. “But… well… think about it. Once my name’s cleared… if you wanted a… a different home…”

I kind of hope Black already knows the Dursleys are massive pricks, because otherwise, this is a kind of a weird thing to suggest to a child you've just met. That's not me making a lazy pedophile joke, I just kind of suspect Sirius on some level wants to share a bachelor pad with what he sees as his best mate reincarnated.

Some sort of explosion took place in the pit of Harry’s stomach.

“What—live with you?” he said, accidentally cracking his head on a bit of rock protruding from the ceiling. “Leave the Dursleys?”

“Of course, I thought you wouldn’t want to,” said Black quickly. “I understand, I just thought I’d—”

“Are you insane?” said Harry, his voice easily as croaky as Black’s. “Of course I want to leave the Dursleys! Have you got a house?

"Well, kind of, but really, I've been living in a cave--"

"That is not a deal breaker, trust me."

When can I move in?”

And then Sirius was sniped in the head by Molly Weasley.

Black turned right around to look at him; Snape’s head was scraping the ceiling but Black didn’t seem to care.

“You want to?” he said. “You mean it?”

“Yeah, I mean it!” said Harry.

It's probably not at all surprising that many fanfics have Harry getting to live with Sirius. What I find strange is that the stock plot associated with this plot is Sirius and Harry becoming like, gentlemen thieves who steal from haughty pureblood families to fund their lifestyle. Harems are usually involved. It's just so... oddly specific. I assume the writers of that kind of fic are all really into Now You See Me these days.

The grounds were very dark now; the only light came from the distant windows of the castle. Without a word, they set off. Pettigrew was still wheezing and occasionally whimpering. Harry’s mind was buzzing. He was going to leave the Dursleys. He was going to live with Sirius Black, his parents’ best friend… He felt dazed… What would happen when he told the Dursleys he was going to live with the convict they’d seen on television…!

Beg you to stay. Their entire family life depends on having you around to recreationally abuse.

Snape collided with Lupin, Pettigrew, and Ron, who had stopped abruptly. Black froze. He flung out one arm to make Harry and Hermione stop.

Harry could see Lupin’s silhouette. He had gone rigid. Then his limbs began to shake.

“Oh, my—” Hermione gasped. “He didn’t take his potion tonight! He’s not safe!”

“Run,” Black whispered. “Run. Now.”

Christ, Lupin, set an alarm!

There was a terrible snarling noise. Lupin’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling into clawed paws. Crookshanks’s hair was on end again; he was backing away—

Sadly, not even Crookshanks is enough of a bro to tame a savage werewolf.

As the werewolf reared, snapping its long jaws, Sirius disappeared from Harry’s side. He had transformed. The enormous, bearlike dog bounded forward. As the werewolf wrenched itself free of the manacle binding it, the dog seized it about the neck and pulled it backward, away from Ron and Pettigrew. They were locked, jaw to jaw, claws ripping at each other—

So, I guess it really was just Furry Fight Club back in the day.

Harry stood, transfixed by the sight, too intent upon the battle to notice anything else. It was Hermione’s scream that alerted him—

Pettigrew had dived for Lupin’s dropped wand. Ron, unsteady on his bandaged leg, fell. There was a bang, a burst of light—and Ron lay motionless on the ground. Another bang—Crookshanks flew into the air and back to the earth in a heap.

Pettigrew's got his priorities straight--take out Ron and the cat first.

“Expelliarmus!” Harry yelled, pointing his own wand at Pettigrew; Lupin’s wand flew high into the air and out of sight. “Stay where you are!” Harry shouted, running forward.

Too late. Pettigrew had transformed. Harry saw his bald tail whip through the manacle on Ron’s outstretched arm and heard a scurrying through the grass.

Shout out Peter being a creepy bastard about it in the movie:

Seriously, did he convert to nudism or something? Lupin fucks off into the forest, presumably to get drunk with those werewolves Draco was so scared of.

Black was bleeding; there were gashes across his muzzle and back, but at Harry’s words he scrambled up again, and in an instant, the sound of his paws faded to silence as he pounded away across the grounds.

Harry and Hermione dashed over to Ron.

“What did he do to him?” Hermione whispered. Ron’s eyes were only half-closed, his mouth hung open; he was definitely alive, they could hear him breathing, but he didn’t seem to recognize them.

“I don’t know…”

Aw, shit, they turned him into movie Ron.

Harry looked desperately around. Black and Lupin both gone… they had no one but Snape for company, still hanging, unconscious, in midair.

Notice the bit from the film where Snape actively places himself protectively between Lupin and the kids doesn't happen here. Anyway, clearly we should've lashed Peter and Snape together like some kind of stretcher.

But then, from beyond the range of their vision, they heard a yelping, a whining: a dog in pain…

“Sirius,” Harry muttered, staring into the darkness.

He had a moment’s indecision, but there was nothing they could do for Ron at the moment, and by the sound of it, Black was in trouble—

Harry set off at a run, Hermione right behind him. The yelping seemed to be coming from the ground near the edge of the lake. They pelted toward it, and Harry, running flat out, felt the cold without realizing what it must mean—

They were in Scotland! Peter Capaldi could attack at any moment!

he yelping stopped abruptly. As they reached the lakeshore, they saw why—Sirius had turned back into a man. He was crouched on all fours, his hands over his head.

“Nooo,” he moaned. “Noooo… please…”

And then Harry saw them. Dementors, at least a hundred of them, gliding in a black mass around the lake toward them. He spun around, the familiar, icy cold penetrating his insides, fog starting to obscure his vision; more were appearing out of the darkness on every side; they were encircling them…

“Hermione, think of something happy!” Harry yelled, raising his wand, blinking furiously to try and clear his vision, shaking his head to rid it of the faint screaming that had started inside it—

Hermione: At least if the Dementors suck out our souls, Trelawney can't say she saw it coming!

Harry: Not helpful!

Also, if only Hermione had a device that could let them retreat to a safe place, or even the same place, but without the Dementors!

I’m going to live with my godfather. I’m leaving the Dursleys.

He forced himself to think of Black, and only Black, and began to chant: “Expecto patronum! Expecto patronum!”

Once you go Black, you never go back. (To the Dursleys.)

Also, let's be real, Harry. If Dumbledore isn't willing to let the Weasleys dye your hair red and adopt you, he's not letting you live with Black, innocent or not.

But she couldn’t do it. The dementors were closing in, barely ten feet from them. They formed a solid wall around Harry and Hermione, and were getting closer…

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” Harry yelled, trying to blot the screaming from his ears. “EXPECTO PATRONUM!”

A thin wisp of silver escaped his wand and hovered like mist before him. At the same moment, Harry felt Hermione collapse next to him. He was alone… completely alone…

“Expecto—expecto patronum—”

Harry felt his knees hit the cold grass. Fog was clouding his eyes. With a huge effort, he fought to remember—Sirius was innocent—innocent—We’ll be okay—I’m going to live with him—

I bet there's an essay somewhere about how in this scene, Harry can only produce a weak, timid spurt of white stuff from his Rod of Power.

He could feel them watching him, hear their rattling breath like an evil wind around him. The nearest dementor seemed to be considering him. Then it raised both its rotting hands—and lowered its hood.

Where there should have been eyes, there was only thin, gray scabbed skin, stretched blankly over empty sockets. But there was a mouth… a gaping, shapeless hole, sucking the air with the sound of a death rattle.

Cecily Kellog's final form now she's started Ozempic.

And then, through the fog that was drowning him, he thought he saw a silvery light growing brighter and brighter… He felt himself fall forward onto the grass… Facedown, too weak to move, sick and shaking, Harry opened his eyes. The dementor must have released him. The blinding light was illuminating the grass around him… The screaming had stopped, the cold was ebbing away…

Something was driving the dementors back… It was circling around him and Black and Hermione… They were leaving… The air was warm again…

With every ounce of strength he could muster, Harry raised his head a few inches and saw an animal amid the light, galloping away across the lake… Eyes blurred with sweat, Harry tried to make out what it was… It was as bright as a unicorn…

Has Harry ever seen a unicorn that wasn't dead?

Harry proceeds to use his other, other signature move--fainting, and the chapter ends.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

I kind of hope Black already knows the Dursleys are massive pricks, because otherwise, this is a kind of a weird thing to suggest to a child you've just met. That's not me making a lazy pedophile joke, I just kind of suspect Sirius on some level wants to share a bachelor pad with what he sees as his best mate reincarnated.

And then Sirius was sniped in the head by Molly Weasley.

Ron: "Oh, so we're just not good enough for you, huh?"
This is how Ron's Death Eater arc begins.

Beg you to stay. Their entire family life depends on having you around to recreationally abuse.

Black is found dead the next morning, mysterious drill-shaped wounds in the back of his head and dog biscuits stuffed in his mouth.

So, I guess it really was just Furry Fight Club back in the day.

"And here comes Doggie Black with the steel chair!"

Notice the bit from the film where Snape actively places himself protectively between Lupin and the kids doesn't happen here.

Book Snape would at least take a minute to watch them squirm before helping. Also, rewatching that scene, it's fucking hilarious how Snape stumbles out of the willow while Lupin's mid-howl, starts to talk to the kids and then turns around surprised like he somehow missed the big screaming werewolf that was directly in his line of sight.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I'm back! However, the friend I was staying with in Perth called Ron "mid." He's dead now.

I would not call Ron mid he is firmly above average. He deserves a seat at the table with Samwise and Talmanes on the "Guys who didn't sign up for this shit" table.

I just kind of suspect Sirius on some level wants to share a bachelor pad with what he sees as his best mate reincarnated.

Given that Harry was born when the Potters were the target of the Wizarding World's answer to to Antifa I imagine that the conversation of "If anything happens to us we want you to take care of Harry" happened in some form between the Potters and Sirius.

Also, rewatching that scene, it's fucking hilarious how Snape stumbles out of the willow while Lupin's mid-howl, starts to talk to the kids and then turns around surprised like he somehow missed the big screaming werewolf that was directly in his line of sight.

listen we all roll Natural 1s on perception checks occasionally.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

Especially if Rowling remembers that usually people who've been knocked unconscious don't wake up perfectly fine half an hour later.

Wizards do seem oddly resilient generally, though. This is probably just kids' books make-violence-generally-less-serious, but since we don't see muggles shrugging off two-story falls, the implication is that wizards are pretty resilient generally.

Is the idea that Peter's been a rat so long, it's crept into his human form, like shapeshifter screen burn-in?

I always figured that the intent was that an animagus was just expressing the animal nature bits that were already part of them. Fierce, loyal, devoted unto death, not too bright: hound dog. Sneaky, sniveling, cunning: Rat. Wise, patient, deeply affectionate but does not always show it visibly: cat. Crowned in antlers, heraldric symbol of nobility, kind of useless otherwise; stag.

Seriously, Black, did you not say "trust my friends' safety with our snivelling coward friend" out loud to yourself?

If Pettigrew had been in the friend group for years and years, and hadn't actually broken faith with them up until that point, I can see them mistaking fear of the werewolf, the fake werewolf, and the golden boy for principle, until someone actually scarier came along.

Christ, Lupin, set an alarm!

What, on his cell phone?

Also, wasn't the potion supposed to be taken in, like, the preceding week?

I am actually annoyed by this. If the story wants to tell the moral that werewolves got dealt a shit hand and shouldn't be shunned, then showing how a logistical fuck-up can, in fact, turn a werewolf into a dire, infectious threat contradicts your theme. And it's not even like the book is trying to be clever or both-sides this; it's just saying "No, werewolves are like the good AIDS victims!" while leaning on Lupin turning to provide a distraction to get the plot moving just feels like bad writing.

I bet there's an essay somewhere about how in this scene, Harry can only produce a weak, timid spurt of white stuff from his Rod of Power.

There is a selection of passages in which someone has replaced 'wand' with 'wang' floating around the Internet somewhere.

---

Also, I think I've nailed what, for me, what made Black extra-appealing, and the prospect of Harry living with him seem good in and of itself and not just as an escape from the Dursleys. In Harry Potter, the primary constraint on what mages do is purely social convention. We almost never run into the limits of magic, we run into either commonly what is legal (or just Not Done), and sometimes run into genuine moral principles around magic. But Black as a mentor offers a "Fuck it, we ball." attitude that we just haven't seen before, combined with a reasonable moral compass (or at least, Only Do Bad Things To Bad People, which is fine with quite a lot of people).

And while I have been complaining about plot stuff, and having the pileup of the protagonists and Snape does seem convenient, I do like the point made that Pettigrew isn't killed because bringing him back in offers a hope for the future. Of the things I can complain about, him getting away to Cause Problems (and what comes of that, and why) feels thematic and good.

Also, a thought; imagine that being infected as a werewolf does actually make you more sociopathic in your human form, but also makes you better at hiding it, and deception in general. Werewolves are historically creatures of deception, so it would fit with the vibes. And barring someone rounding up dozens of werewolves and digging really deep into their brains, how would you tell?

I think that there may also be a selection effect; wizards not willing to endanger a school full of helpless kids to take a teaching job either run out to 24/7 furry LARP in areas where there is basically no human civilian population, or just take the honorable way out. So, that leaves the openly-bastards, the sneaky bastards, the low-agency people who won't take affirmative action either way and just let things happen, and whatever good werewolves are sprinkled in the population.

Man, I can't believe that we've still got The Big Twist to go for this book.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

listen we all roll Natural 1s on perception checks occasionally.

Natural 1 would turn it into a pantomime with the kids yelling "He's right behind you!" "Oh no he isn't." with Lupin somehow always ducking just out of view every time Snape turns around.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Also, wasn't the potion supposed to be taken in, like, the preceding week?

Once a day over the preceding week, a bit like oral birth control. Tiny bit more understandable, but I don't blame ya for having a "One Strike" policy about forgetting to take your "No murder" medication.

I always figured that the intent was that an animagus was just expressing the animal nature bits that were already part of them. Fierce, loyal, devoted unto death, not too bright: hound dog. Sneaky, sniveling, cunning: Rat. Wise, patient, deeply affectionate but does not always show it visibly: cat. Crowned in antlers, heraldric symbol of nobility, kind of useless otherwise; stag.

Oh, this is very true, but Peter seems to be the one Animagi who physically resembles his Heart Shape.

 

[LoverofPi]

I kind of hope Black already knows the Dursleys are massive pricks, because otherwise, this is a kind of a weird thing to suggest to a child you've just met. That's not me making a lazy pedophile joke, I just kind of suspect Sirius on some level wants to share a bachelor pad with what he sees as his best mate reincarnated.

Nah, he's a named godparent, there's an expectation of taking him in.

"Well, kind of, but really, I've been living in a cave--"

"That is not a deal breaker, trust me."

"Are you sure? It's full of spiders"

"Sirius, you don't have to keep selling me on the idea, I've already said yes"

Sadly, not even Crookshanks is enough of a bro to tame a savage werewolf.

It's not that he's not game, it's just a lack of mass to body the guy.

They were in Scotland! Peter Capaldi could attack at any moment!

You think he can only attack if you're in Scotland? More fool you.

Also, if only Hermione had a device that could let them retreat to a safe place, or even the same place, but without the Dementors!

But Shufflepunk, then we wouldn't get to see the full events from an incomplete perspective first!

I bet there's an essay somewhere about how in this scene, Harry can only produce a weak, timid spurt of white stuff from his Rod of Power.

AN essay? No, several.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Well, it's penultimate chapter, and it's... a hell of a penultimate chapter.

“Shocking business… shocking… miracle none of them died… never heard the like… by thunder, it was lucky you were there, Snape…”

“Thank you, Minister.”

Asgard hasn't been the same since it became a republic.

“Order of Merlin, Second Class, I’d say. First Class, if I can wangle it!”

“Thank you very much indeed, Minister.”

I like that Snape clearly appreciates the idea of prestige and fame. It's humanising, even if it's a grubby, venal humanity.

“Nasty cut you’ve got there… Black’s work, I suppose?”

“As a matter of fact, it was Potter, Weasley, and Granger, Minister…”

“No!”

“Black had bewitched them, I saw it immediately. A Confundus Charm, to judge by their behavior. They seemed to think there was a possibility he was innocent. They weren’t responsible for their actions. On the other hand, their interference might have permitted Black to escape… They obviously thought they were going to catch Black single-handed. They’ve got away with a great deal before now… I’m afraid it’s given them a rather high opinion of themselves… and of course Potter has always been allowed an extraordinary amount of license by the headmaster—”

"Oi, 'ave you got a loisence to save the school twice?"

Also, wizard justice is terrifying. They live in a world where it's at least believable that a criminal could rewrite your memory, their only prison is like something a Christian apologist would come up with while trying to imagine Hell, and if you manage to escape, the punishment is the complete destruction of your soul.

“Ah, well, Snape… Harry Potter, you know… we’ve all got a bit of a blind spot where he’s concerned.”

“And yet—is it good for him to be given so much special treatment? Personally, I try and treat him like any other student. And any other student would be suspended—at the very least—for leading his friends into such danger. Consider, Minister—against all school rules—after all the precautions put in place for his protection—out-of-bounds, at night, consorting with a werewolf and a murderer—and I have reason to believe he has been visiting Hogsmeade illegally too—”

Hanging out with murderers and filthy lycanthropes is one thing, but sneaking out to a village for a non-alcoholic pint? Expulsion! Expulsion at once!

“What amazes me most is the behavior of the dementors… you’ve really no idea what made them retreat, Snape?”

“No, Minister… by the time I had come ’round they were heading back to their positions at the entrances…”

I like that even as sleazy as Snape is being here, he's not actually being dishonest. He isn't claiming he drove away the Dementors himself and fucked all their girlfriends, and I do think he legitimately believes Sirius and Lupin are guilty.

Madam Pomfrey now came walking briskly up the dark ward to Harry’s bed. He turned to look at her. She was carrying the largest block of chocolate he had ever seen in his life. It looked like a small boulder.

“Ah, you’re awake!” she said briskly. She placed the chocolate on Harry’s bedside table and began breaking it apart with a small hammer.

Madam Pomfrey is in league with Big Insulin.

“How’s Ron?” said Harry and Hermione together.

“He’ll live,” said Madam Pomfrey grimly.

She's also a Harry Potter fanfic writer.

Harry was sitting up, putting his glasses back on, and picking up his wand.

“I need to see the headmaster,” he said.

“Potter,” said Madam Pomfrey soothingly, “it’s all right. They’ve got Black. He’s locked away upstairs. The dementors will be performing the kiss any moment now—”

I often comfort children by telling them depression demons are obliterating someone's soul upstairs.

“WHAT?”

Harry jumped up out of bed; Hermione had done the same. But his shout had been heard in the corridor outside; next second, Cornelius Fudge and Snape had entered the ward.

“Harry, Harry, what’s this?” said Fudge, looking agitated. “You should be in bed—has he had any chocolate?” he asked Madam Pomfrey anxiously.

Clearly Fudge wants Harry fat and complacent.

Minister, listen!” Harry said. “Sirius Black’s innocent! Peter Pettigrew faked his own death! We saw him tonight! You can’t let the dementors do that thing to Sirius, he’s—”

But Fudge was shaking his head with a small smile on his face.

“Harry, Harry, you’re very confused, you’ve been through a dreadful ordeal, lie back down, now, we’ve got everything under control…”

“YOU HAVEN’T!” Harry yelled. “YOU’VE GOT THE WRONG MAN!”

“Minister, listen, please,” Hermione said; she had hurried to Harry’s side and was gazing imploringly into Fudge’s face. “I saw him too. It was Ron’s rat, he’s an Animagus, Pettigrew, I mean, and—”

“You see, Minister?” said Snape. “Confunded, both of them… Black’s done a very good job on them…”

As you can see, Fudge is the sort of politician who will always pick a convenient, clean narrative over the truth. The sort of guy whose priority after a terrorist attack is where the band is going to play 'Don't Look Back in Anger.'

Madam Pomfrey orders everyone who isn't her or a sick child out of the infirmary, only for Dumbledore to turn up.

I need a word with Mr. Potter and Miss Granger,” said Dumbledore calmly. “I have just been talking to Sirius Black—”

“I suppose he’s told you the same fairy tale he’s planted in Potter’s mind?” spat Snape. “Something about a rat, and Pettigrew being alive—”

“That, indeed, is Black’s story,” said Dumbledore, surveying Snape closely through his half-moon spectacles.

“And does my evidence count for nothing?” snarled Snape.

Dumbledore: Nope.

I think this is the most hater energy Snape has all series, and that includes the time he channels the power of murderous hatred to kill Dumbledore. Also, worth noting, Snape has what are essentially mind reading powers, and he didn't bother using them on Sirius. That's how much of a hatin' ass nigga (with no bitches at all) he is.

“Peter Pettigrew was not in the Shrieking Shack, nor did I see any sign of him on the grounds.”

Dumbledore: What about on the Marauder's Map?

Snape: If Potter can make that mistake, so can I!

Dumbledore: So, you're saying you're at least as incompetent as a thirteen-year-old boy?

Snape: Shut up!

“You surely don’t believe a word of Black’s story?” Snape whispered, his eyes fixed on Dumbledore’s face.

“I wish to speak to Harry and Hermione alone,” Dumbledore repeated.

Snape took a step toward Dumbledore.

“Sirius Black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen,” he breathed. “You haven’t forgotten that, Headmaster? You haven’t forgotten that he once tried to kill me?”

“My memory is as good as it ever was, Severus,” said Dumbledore quietly.

It kind of amuses me that Sirius was essentially the Stephen King bully who starts freaking out the other bullies.


Dumbledore finally manages to get a private word with Harry and Hermione. Ron is excluded, partly because he's sleeping off all the shit he went through the last few chapters, and partly because, frankly, Hermione sits out a surprising amount of the first three books. It's a lot less galling here than in the films, which seem to systematically remove all Ron's good moments. So, rest easy, bro of bros.

“It is your turn to listen, and I beg you will not interrupt me, because there is very little time,” he said quietly. “There is not a shred of proof to support Black’s story, except your word—and the word of two thirteen-year-old wizards will not convince anybody. A street full of eyewitnesses swore they saw Sirius murder Pettigrew. I myself gave evidence to the Ministry that Sirius had been the Potters’ Secret-Keeper.”

“Professor Lupin can tell you—” Harry said, unable to stop himself.

“Professor Lupin is currently deep in the forest, unable to tell anyone anything. By the time he is human again, it will be too late, Sirius will be worse than dead. I might add that werewolves are so mistrusted by most of our kind that his support will count for very little—and the fact that he and Sirius are old friends—”

“But—”

“Listen to me, Harry. It is too late, you understand me? You must see that Professor Snape’s version of events is far more convincing than yours.”

Guy who's convinced that Sirius actually was guilty and this entire book was a psyop.

(It's Eliezer Yudkowsky. He is the guy who thinks that.)

“He hates Sirius,” Hermione said desperately. “All because of some stupid trick Sirius played on him—”

“Sirius has not acted like an innocent man. The attack on the Fat Lady—entering Gryffindor Tower with a knife—without Pettigrew, alive or dead, we have no chance of overturning Sirius’s sentence.”

"The fact he speaks entirely in menacing euphemisms and double entendres doesn't help."

Do you think he did that at whatever passed for his trial?

"Did you betray Lily and James Potter, and then kill thirteen people?"

"Oh, I betrayed them all right. I sent them to their deaths! Them and all those poor, stupid Muggles."

"Right, guilty."

"Wait, I--"

“But you believe us.”

“Yes, I do,” said Dumbledore quietly. “But I have no power to make other men see the truth, or to overrule the Minister of Magic…"

"I mean, I probably do--Lucius Malfoy manages it on a weekly basis, and nobody even likes him--but this way is more fun."

“What we need,” said Dumbledore slowly, and his light blue eyes moved from Harry to Hermione, “is more time.”

“But—” Hermione began. And then her eyes became very round. “OH!”

“Now, pay attention,” said Dumbledore, speaking very low, and very clearly. “Sirius is locked in Professor Flitwick’s office on the seventh floor. Thirteenth window from the right of the West Tower. If all goes well, you will be able to save more than one innocent life tonight. But remember this, both of you: you must not be seen. Miss Granger, you know the law—you know what is at stake… You—must—not—be—seen.”

"Kill anyone who stands in your way."

“I am going to lock you in. It is—” he consulted his watch, “five minutes to midnight. Miss Granger, three turns should do it. Good luck.”

“Good luck?” Harry repeated as the door closed behind Dumbledore. “Three turns? What’s he talking about? What are we supposed to do?”

Dumbledore: PS, it has a tendency to get stuck on "pumpkins."

But Hermione was fumbling with the neck of her robes, pulling from beneath them a very long, very fine gold chain.

“Harry, come here,” she said urgently. “Quick!”

Harry moved toward her, completely bewildered. She was holding the chain out. He saw a tiny, sparkling hourglass hanging from it.

“Here—”

She had thrown the chain around his neck too.

“Ready?” she said breathlessly.

“What are we doing?” Harry said, completely lost.

Hermione turned the hourglass over three times.

The dark ward dissolved. Harry had the sensation that he was flying very fast, backward. A blur of colors and shapes rushed past him, his ears were pounding, he tried to yell but couldn’t hear his own voice—

And then he felt solid ground beneath his feet, and everything came into focus again—

He was standing next to Hermione in the deserted entrance hall and a stream of golden sunlight was falling across the paved floor from the open front doors. He looked wildly around at Hermione, the chain of the hourglass cutting into his neck.

As you can see, unlike in the film--shout out to Neville being mummified in the background while time is being rewound--in the book, the Time-Turner actually does move you through space as well as time. Thankfully, we are still spared a tedious "Where are we?" "I think you mean when are we?" exchange. I do wonder how the Time-Turner decides where to spit you out, given there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for choosing landing coordinates. Maybe Hermione's is set to always place her in the entrance hall?

“Hermione, what—?”

“In here!” Hermione seized Harry’s arm and dragged him across the hall to the door of a broom closet; she opened it, pushed him inside among the buckets and mops, then slammed the door behind them.

Knocking over Crabbe and Goyle, who had fallen victim to floor candy again. Hermione explains that, yes, they have gone back in time, and the footsteps they can hear outside are most likely her, Harry and Ron heading down to Hagrid's.

“Where did you get that hourglass thing?”

“It’s called a Time-Turner,” Hermione whispered, “and I got it from Professor McGonagall on our first day back. I’ve been using it all year to get to all my lessons. Professor McGonagall made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone. She had to write all sorts of letters to the Ministry of Magic so I could have one.

Imagine writing to the Department of Mysteries or whoever, arguing that a barely teenaged girl should be given the power to break the law of causality, so she can fit in more electives:

"You see, Muggle Studies conflicts with Ancient Runes--yes, Miss Granger is Muggleborn..."

In a way, the Time-Turner segment feels like the ultimate intersection of Harry Potter's Two Tones. On the one hand, we have moody atmosphere, a bittersweet ending (spoilers) and heavy themes of injustice, revenge, and betrayal. On the other hand, we gave a fourteen-year-old a time machine for extra credit.

I think another thing that makes it feel so strange is that when time travel is included in a story, it's usually the core conceit, not something that comes into play in the final thirty pages. You'd almost think Rowling pulled it out her arse, but it's been seeded all throughout the story. It kind of reminds me of that one episode of the original Star Trek with the drunk plague, which was also a non-time travel story that was resolved with time travel.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, Hermione's year of time travel abuse is often used to justify "revealing" she is of legal age, making her eligible for various Handmaid's Tale style "marriage laws." Some of them even get published as real books!

“Harry, I don’t understand what Dumbledore wants us to do. Why did he tell us to go back three hours? How’s that going to help Sirius?”

Hermione: Wow, the Dursleys really didn't let you watch movies, did they?

Harry: No, they did not.

Hermione: What about books?

Harry: Not as many as you, but I read.

Hermione: What's your favourite book?

Harry: Charlotte's Web. Problem is, these days, it's also Dudley's favourite book.

Hermione: What's wrong with--ohhhh.

Harry: Yeah, I keep it at Ron's place now.

“There must be something that happened around now he wants us to change,” he said slowly.

No, he just needed time to plan your surprise party.

To her credit, Hermione does quickly figure out Dumbledore was telling them to save Buckbeak, then use him to spring Sirius.

Harry pushed open the closet door. The entrance hall was deserted. As quietly and quickly as they could, they darted out of the closet and down the stone steps. The shadows were already lengthening, the tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest gilded once more with gold.

“If anyone’s looking out of the window—” Hermione squeaked, looking up at the castle behind them.

“We’ll run for it,” said Harry determinedly. “Straight into the forest, all right? We’ll have to hide behind a tree or something and keep a lookout—”

I mean, is everyone in the school constantly keeping track of Harry and Hermione's movements? Worst comes to worst, someone dobs you in for being outside past curfew.

“Right,” she gasped. “We need to sneak over to Hagrid’s… Keep out of sight, Harry…”

They made their way silently through the trees, keeping to the very edge of the forest. Then, as they glimpsed the front of Hagrid’s house, they heard a knock upon his door. They moved quickly behind a wide oak trunk and peered out from either side. Hagrid had appeared in his doorway, shaking and white, looking around to see who had knocked. And Harry heard his own voice.

“It’s us. We’re wearing the Invisibility Cloak. Let us in and we can take it off.”

“Yeh shouldn’ve come!” Hagrid whispered. He stood back, then shut the door quickly.

“This is the weirdest thing we’ve ever done,” Harry said fervently.

At least until you grow up, get executed for murdering Ron and aborting his rape baby, possess your childhood selves, and get Ron force femmed via troll club between the legs.

They crept through the trees until they saw the nervous hippogriff, tethered to the fence around Hagrid’s pumpkin patch.

“Now?” Harry whispered.

“No!” said Hermione. “If we steal him now, those Committee people will think Hagrid set him free! We’ve got to wait until they’ve seen he’s tied outside!”

“That’s going to give us about sixty seconds,” said Harry. This was starting to seem impossible.

For no magic can speedily sever a rope. That's why the wizards who ruled Gordion were so shocked when Alexander the Great did his thing.

t that moment, there was a crash of breaking china from inside Hagrid’s cabin.

“That’s Hagrid breaking the milk jug,” Hermione whispered. “I’m going to find Scabbers in a moment—”

Sure enough, a few minutes later, they heard Hermione’s shriek of surprise.

“Hermione,” said Harry suddenly, “what if we—we just run in there and grab Pettigrew—”

“No!” said Hermione in a terrified whisper. “Don’t you understand? We’re breaking one of the most important wizarding laws! Nobody’s supposed to change time, nobody!”

Unless, of course, they'd have to choose between school electives.

“We’d only be seen by ourselves and Hagrid!”

“Harry, what do you think you’d do if you saw yourself bursting into Hagrid’s house?” said Hermione.

“I’d—I’d think I’d gone mad,” said Harry, “or I’d think there was some Dark Magic going on—”

“Exactly! You wouldn’t understand, you might even attack yourself! Don’t you see? Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time… Loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!”

It's interesting. Here, Rowling indicates that, in her fictional universe, it is possible to have Back to the Future/Sound of Thunder/Terminator style time fuck ups, but here, the events play out as a stable, closed time loop. History doesn't change at all, it just sort of circles back on itself. It's a very elegant model, and since I don't get the impression Rowling ever planned on using the Time-Turner again (at least until that West End play) I wonder if she nodded at temporal mutability to avoid questions regarding predestination or free will. Harry Potter and the Eternalist Cosmology.

There was a knock on Hagrid’s front door. The execution party had arrived. Hagrid turned around and headed back into his cabin, leaving the back door ajar. Harry watched the grass flatten in patches all around the cabin and heard three pairs of feet retreating. He, Ron, and Hermione had gone… but the Harry and Hermione hidden in the trees could now hear what was happening inside the cabin through the back door.

“Where is the beast?” came the cold voice of Macnair.

“Out—outside,” Hagrid croaked.

Harry pulled his head out of sight as Macnair’s face appeared at Hagrid’s window, staring out at Buckbeak. Then they heard Fudge.

“We—er—have to read you the official notice of execution, Hagrid. I’ll make it quick. And then you and Macnair need to sign it. Macnair, you’re supposed to listen too, that’s procedure—”

Do you think this is Macnair's full time job? Executing magical animals? Honestly, I could see the Ministry paying a regular salary for a job that only comes up a few times a year. And it's probably bigger than Arthur's.

Wait here,” Harry whispered to Hermione. “I’ll do it.”

As Fudge’s voice started again, Harry darted out from behind his tree, vaulted the fence into the pumpkin patch, and approached Buckbeak.

“It is the decision of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures that the hippogriff Buckbeak, hereafter called the condemned, shall be executed on the sixth of June at sundown—”

"The carcass will then be stuffed, mounted, and present four days later to White-Kettle Shufflepunk as a birthday present."

After a bit of struggling, Harry manages to get Buckbeak to follow him.

“Quick! Quick!” Hermione moaned, darting out from behind her tree, seizing the rope too and adding her weight to make Buckbeak move faster. Harry looked over his shoulder; they were now blocked from sight; they couldn’t see Hagrid’s garden at all.

“Stop!” he whispered to Hermione. “They might hear us—”

Hagrid’s back door had opened with a bang. Harry, Hermione, and Buckbeak stood quite still; even the hippogriff seemed to be listening intently.

Silence… then—

“Where is it?” said the reedy voice of the Committee member. “Where is the beast?”

“It was tied here!” said the executioner furiously. “I saw it! Just here!”

“How extraordinary,” said Dumbledore. There was a note of amusement in his voice.

Dumbledore doesn't know what's going on, he just thinks Hagrid mercy killed Buckbeak.

“Beaky!” said Hagrid huskily.

There was a swishing noise, and the thud of an axe. The executioner seemed to have swung it into the fence in anger.

I've seen wits on the internet call the end of this book "confusing", which is weird, seeing as it's probably one of the most straightforward time travel bits I've ever seen. Seriously, you could use this as a child's introduction to the concept, which is good, since it probably was for at least a few.

“Now what?” whispered Harry, looking around.

“We’ll have to hide in here,” said Hermione, who looked very shaken. “We need to wait until they’ve gone back to the castle. Then we wait until it’s safe to fly Buckbeak up to Sirius’s window. He won’t be there for another couple of hours… Oh, this is going to be difficult…”

She looked nervously over her shoulder into the depths of the forest. The sun was setting now.

Waiting patiently, the ultimate challenge.

Harry, Hermione, and Jabirdus relocate so they can keep track of the action at the Whomping Willow:

That was Crookshanks pressing the knot,” said Hermione.

“And there we go…,” Harry muttered. “We’re in.”

The moment they disappeared, the tree began to move again. Seconds later, they heard footsteps quite close by. Dumbledore, Macnair, Fudge, and the old Committee member were making their way up to the castle.

“Right after we’d gone down into the passage!” said Hermione. “If only Dumbledore had come with us…”

“Macnair and Fudge would’ve come too,” said Harry bitterly. “I bet you anything Fudge would’ve told Macnair to murder Sirius on the spot…”

With his axe, because apparently he works on White Council rules. Also, yes, Harry, imagine immediately trying to execute Sirius Black.

“Here comes Lupin!” said Harry as they saw another figure sprinting down the stone steps and haring toward the Willow. Harry looked up at the sky. Clouds were obscuring the moon completely.

They watched Lupin seize a broken branch from the ground and prod the knot on the trunk. The tree stopped fighting, and Lupin, too, disappeared into the gap in its roots.

“If he’d only grabbed the cloak,” said Harry. “It’s just lying there…”

He turned to Hermione.

“If I just dashed out now and grabbed it, Snape’d never be able to get it and—”

“Harry, we mustn’t be seen!”

Also, the whole shredding spacetime thing. Hermione prevents Harry from turning this into an entirely different type of time travel story, which is good, because Hagrid happily staggers by right after.

Barely two minutes later, the castle doors flew open yet again, and Snape came charging out of them, running toward the Willow.

Harry’s fists clenched as they watched Snape skid to a halt next to the tree, looking around. He grabbed the cloak and held it up.

“Get your filthy hands off it,” Harry snarled under his breath.

“Shh!”

Man, Harry loses that thing a lot.

As they wait for the plot to catch up to them, Hermione ponders who made the Dementors fuck off last chapter.

“There’s only one thing it could have been, to make the dementors go,” said Harry. “A real Patronus. A powerful one.”

“But who conjured it?”

Harry didn’t say anything. He was thinking back to the person he’d seen on the other bank of the lake. He knew who he thought it had been… but how could it have been?

“Didn’t you see what they looked like?” said Hermione eagerly. “Was it one of the teachers?”

“No,” said Harry. “He wasn’t a teacher.”

“But it must have been a really powerful wizard, to drive all those dementors away…

Or magical pedagogy is incredibly shit.

“Who did you think it was?”

“I think—” Harry swallowed, knowing how strange this was going to sound. “I think it was my dad.”

J.K Rowling: Little dumbass.

“Harry, your dad’s—well—dead,” she said quietly.

“I know that,” said Harry quickly.

“You think you saw his ghost?”

“I don’t know… no… he looked solid…”

“But then—”

“Maybe I was seeing things,” said Harry. “But… from what I could see… it looked like him… I’ve got photos of him…”

Hermione was still looking at him as though worried about his sanity.

“I know it sounds crazy,” said Harry flatly. He turned to look at Buckbeak, who was digging his beak into the ground, apparently searching for worms. But he wasn’t really watching Buckbeak.

He was thinking about his father and about his father’s three oldest friends… Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs… Had all four of them been out on the grounds tonight?

I love that J.K Rowling basically put this bit in just to remind the children reading that, no, death is, in fact, real.

Wormtail had reappeared this evening when everyone had thought he was dead… Was it so impossible his father had done the same? Had he been seeing things across the lake? The figure had been too far away to see distinctly… yet he had felt sure, for a moment, before he’d lost consciousness…

Hypothetical James Potter: Lets his son be abused by his horrible in-laws for his entire childhood.

“Here we come!” Hermione whispered.

She and Harry got to their feet. Buckbeak raised his head. They saw Lupin, Pettigrew, and Ron clambering awkwardly out of the hole in the roots… followed by the unconscious Snape, drifting weirdly upward. Next came Harry, Hermione, and Black. They all began to walk toward the castle.

Harry’s heart was starting to beat very fast. He glanced up at the sky. Any moment now, that cloud was going to move aside and show the moon…

“Harry,” Hermione muttered as though she knew exactly what he was thinking, “we’ve got to stay put. We mustn’t be seen. There’s nothing we can do…”

“So we’re just going to let Pettigrew escape all over again…” said Harry quietly.

“How do you expect to find a rat in the dark?” snapped Hermione. “There’s nothing we can do! We came back to help Sirius; we’re not supposed to be doing anything else!”

"If only we wizards and witches could create light!"

“All right!”

The moon slid out from behind its cloud. They saw the tiny figures across the grounds stop. Then they saw movement—

“There goes Lupin,” Hermione whispered. “He’s transforming—”

“Hermione!” said Harry suddenly. “We’ve got to move!”

“We mustn’t, I keep telling you—”

“Not to interfere! Lupin’s going to run into the forest, right at us!”

Hermione gasped.

I'm sure someone's written a Harry/Hermione ship fic where they both become werewolves and "mate-bond" or something.

Speaking of animal transformations, it's pretty common for fanfic to make Harry an Animagus, usually via birth rather than lengthy, finicky ritual. These fics usually make him something cool or edgy, like a gryphon or a big, fuck-off snake. One story had him turn into a kitten and be adopted by the Grangers (the sort of story that calls Mr. and Mrs Granger "Dan and Emma" natch) but I personally think Harry should turn into a giant fucking spider.

Harry, Hermione, and that guy from American McGee's Alice retreat to Hagrid's hut, seeing as it's empty now.

“I think I’d better go outside again, you know,” said Harry slowly. “I can’t see what’s going on—we won’t know when it’s time—”

Hermione looked up. Her expression was suspicious.

“I’m not going to try and interfere,” said Harry quickly. “But if we don’t see what’s going on, how’re we going to know when it’s time to rescue Sirius?”

“Well… okay, then… I’ll wait here with Buckbeak… but Harry, be careful—there’s a werewolf out there—and the dementors—”

And then Hagrid came back and the universe imploded.

For a fraction of a second he stood, irresolute, in front of Hagrid’s door. You must not be seen. But he didn’t want to be seen. He wanted to do the seeing… He had to know…

And there were the dementors. They were emerging out of the darkness from every direction, gliding around the edges of the lake… They were moving away from where Harry stood, to the opposite bank… He wouldn’t have to get near them…

Harry began to run. He had no thought in his head except his father… If it was him… if it really was him… he had to know, had to find out…

The lake was coming nearer and nearer, but there was no sign of anybody. On the opposite bank, he could see tiny glimmers of silver—his own attempts at a Patronus—

Harry: Look, I've had two orgasms my entire life, I deserve one more for the road.

here was a bush at the very edge of the water. Harry threw himself behind it, peering desperately through the leaves. On the opposite bank, the glimmers of silver were suddenly extinguished. A terrified excitement shot through him—any moment now—

“Come on!” he muttered, staring about. “Where are you? Dad, come on—”

But no one came. Harry raised his head to look at the circle of dementors across the lake. One of them was lowering its hood. It was time for the rescuer to appear—but no one was coming to help this time—

And then it hit him—he understood. He hadn’t seen his father—he had seen himself—

Harry flung himself out from behind the bush and pulled out his wand.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” he yelled.

But this time, Harry's a man.

The Patronus turned. It was cantering back toward Harry across the still surface of the water. It wasn’t a horse. It wasn’t a unicorn, either. It was a stag. It was shining brightly as the moon above… it was coming back to him…

It stopped on the bank. Its hooves made no mark on the soft ground as it stared at Harry with its large, silver eyes. Slowly, it bowed its antlered head. And Harry realized…

“Prongs,” he whispered.

But as his trembling fingertips stretched toward the creature, it vanished.

Not sure I approve of Harry's Patronus being a stag like his dad's. I'd have made him a mule. Not flashy, but reliable. Or a swarm of spiders, representing his kind heart.

Anyway, Rowling having reminded the readers of the permanence of death and the importance of self-reliance, it's time to go save Sirius.

They save him. Yay!

The hippogriff gave one sweep of its mighty wings and they were soaring upward again, high as the top of the West Tower. Buckbeak landed with a clatter on the battlements, and Harry and Hermione slid off him at once.

“Sirius, you’d better go, quick,” Harry panted. “They’ll reach Flitwick’s office any moment, they’ll find out you’re gone.”

Buckbeak pawed the ground, tossing his sharp head.

“What happened to the other boy? Ron?” croaked Sirius.

“He’s going to be okay. He’s still out of it, but Madam Pomfrey says she’ll be able to make him better. Quick—go—”

"Soon as she rewires his brain so he's no longer attracted to Hermione. So, until she gives up."

But Black was still staring down at Harry.

“How can I ever thank—”

"Let me move in with you."

"But I'm a wanted criminal! Being hunted by soul-devouring demons!"

"Let. Me. Move. In. With. You."

 

[TenMilesWide]

Speaking of animal transformations, it's pretty common for fanfic to make Harry an Animagus, usually via birth rather than lengthy, finicky ritual. These fics usually make him something cool or edgy, like a gryphon or a big, fuck-off snake. One story had him turn into a kitten and be adopted by the Grangers (the sort of story that calls Mr. and Mrs Granger "Dan and Emma" natch) but I personally think Harry should turn into a giant fucking spider.

Not sure I approve of Harry's Patronus being a stag like his dad's. I'd have made him a mule. Not flashy, but reliable. Or a swarm of spiders, representing his kind heart.

An animagus that turns into a giant spider, whose patronus is a swarm of bees. Now that'd be a formidable wizard, I certainly wouldn't mess with him.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Asgard hasn't been the same since it became a republic.

Snape was Loki all along, of course!

"Oi, 'ave you got a loisence to save the school twice?"

"And if I might suggest, Minister, Potter should also be removed from the Quidditch team and have Gryfindoor's trophy rec-"
*Snape suddenly experiences a seizure*

I think this is the most hater energy Snape has all series, and that includes the time he channels the power of murderous hatred to kill Dumbledore. Also, worth noting, Snape has what are essentially mind reading powers, and he didn't bother using them on Sirius. That's how much of a hatin' ass nigga (with no bitches at all) he is.

Is Snape too much of a hater to read Sirius' mind, or is Sirius too much of a hater to let that greasy little bitch stick one crooked finger in his head even at the cost of proving his innocence?

Some of them even get published as real books!

Sounds like you have plenty of material to add to the Quest reading list.

Also, the whole shredding spacetime thing. Hermione prevents Harry from turning this into an entirely different type of time travel story, which is good, because Hagrid happily staggers by right after.

Do you think Lupin would be able to see multiple Hermoines and Harrys on the map? They've been here since the start of the day.

Hypothetical James Potter: Lets his son be abused by his horrible in-laws for his entire childhood.

James knows that all cool heroes have tragic backstories.