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Chapter Text

This story can’t start with the Dursleys, or even the Potters. This story has to start with Lily and Petunia Evans, and their parents.

Lily was magic, and special, and Petunia wasn’t. And that’s where so much of this story begins. With Mr. and Mrs. Evans, to Petunia’s eyes, favoring Lily over her boring older sister. With Lily and Petunia at odds due to something neither of them had any control over. With Snape widening the rift between the sisters, due to his own motivations and fears and desires (and don’t worry, we’ll get to him).

So in this story, the Evans family talks. Lily and Petunia talk to their parents, talk about the favoritism and the imbalance and the Evanses listen. They shift their focus, make sure they pay as much attention to Petunia and her achievements as they do Lily’s. Petunia still writes a letter to Dumbledore, still gets turned down. But in this world, Lily’s having none of that. While she’s at Hogwarts and her sister’s at public school, Lily writes her detailed letters, telling her about anything and everything, as much of the wizarding world as she can share. Petunia grows up welcomed into magic and mysteries.

So in this story, Petunia isn’t so afraid and hateful of wizards, and everything changes dramatically. To start, she doesn’t marry Vernon specifically to avoid magic. Maybe she actually explains things to him beyond “wizards real, wizards bad.” Maybe Vernon gets over his weird biases and is at least cordial, if not friends, with his in-laws.

Harry James Potter’s parents die when he’s a baby, because this isn’t that kind of fix-it fic. Harry saves the wizarding world, and is sent off by Dumbledore to live with his aunt and uncle. Which, okay Dumbledore, we’re going to get into you and your choices later, too. But in this story, it’s not so bad. Maybe Petunia still is uncomfortable with magic, maybe Vernon really doesn’t get what’s going on. But there is a broad spectrum of possible reactions that don’t involve locking your adopted son in a cupboard.

Harry grows up in a normal bedroom, in a normal house, with overall a fairly normal childhood. After all, the Dursleys are experts at Keeping Up Appearances, and this is how they can protect their nephew. Strange things happen on occasion, which the Dursleys brush off, rather than retaliate. Harry grows up not quite knowing that magic is real, but still knowing something is up.

And then the Hogwarts letter comes. Letter, singular, because even if it frightens Vernon and Petunia, they knew this was coming. Maybe Hagrid still comes, maybe they sent a polite response back asking for someone to visit in person to properly explain what’s happening to Harry and Dudley. Maybe Hagrid, in all his half-giant glory, has tea with the Dursleys at their small kitchen table at number four, Privet Drive.

Hagrid still takes Harry to Diagon Alley, but all three Dursleys see him off at King’s Cross Station. It’s loud and noisy and quite honestly not their cup of tea, but they’re trying.

And then Harry Potter meets Ron Weasley. And this goes pretty much the same, honestly. Harry’s still coping with being a hero and an outsider at the same time, and Ron is earnest and friendly and kind. Harry still befriends Ron, still makes a lifelong enemy of Draco Malfoy, still arrives at Hogwarts and is sorted into Gryffindor.

Honestly, little of this story changes. This is a book for children by a first-time author, working in the structure of so many stories before her. The story is simple, the problems straightforward, the conflicts between a student and bullies and unfair teachers. There are undercurrents of larger conflicts, but not much yet. She’s not trying to make a statement, she doesn’t yet have the platform we know today. This can stay. So Harry plays Quidditch and fights a troll and befriends Hermione Granger, the smartest witch he’ll ever know.

But canon fractures again when Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised. Harry sees his family, the magical branches he’s never met, and he misses something he’s never known. And then he goes back to his dormitory and writes a letter to Aunt Petunia. Petunia, who in this world did not cut herself out from her sister’s life, makes some calls and writes some letters. Lily and James’s families and friends were shattered by the war, but that doesn’t mean everyone is gone. So Harry starts getting owls from second cousins and old schoolmates and learns he’s not alone.

(this will change things, later.)

There are dragons and mysteries and secrets hidden in the dark of the Forbidden Forest, and then there’s Nicholas Flamel, and the Philosopher’s Stone, the Sorcerer’s Stone, the target of evil and malice and greed. And the circumstances that put three eleven year olds up against the world.

These are children, they are children, and they are up against traps designed to stop the most powerful evil in the world. And they do it, because they’re clever and brave and resourceful and lucky, so very lucky. There are costs and risks and dangers no child should have to face, but no one believed them, no one came to help, so they must face them regardless.

And so Harry, just Harry alone, finally makes it to the end, to the mirror and the stone and his greatest enemy from his past and his future. And he doesn’t understand. No one has told Harry why Voldemort cares, what Voldemort wants, what Voldemort can do - only that he is evil and must be stopped.

(This restriction of information, sheltering and shaping and manipulating a child for his safety, for the safety of others, for the good of the world - this, too, will have an impact later.)

Harry retrieves the Stone, because he wants to help, to do good for its own sake. Quirrel burns, the stone is destroyed, and the boy who lived wakes up in the hospital. And Dumbledore explains, but not enough, never enough.

Maybe in a perfect world, he lays it all out right now. Harry’s protection, and what that truly means. Voldemort’s past, and why he can’t be killed. Horcruxes and fated death and neither can live while the other survives. And maybe how that’s not truly a death sentence, or won’t be.

But that doesn’t happen in this world. Dumbledore doesn’t tell Harry about horcruxes, for he doesn’t yet know. The headmaster is scrambling, is struggling, is trying to pull together any reason that Voldemort can never truly be stopped. And he won’t find out for years, and only with the help of the boy before him. Because he is one man, and not omnipotent, despite what he feigns.

And because Dumbledore can’t bear it. To tell a boy, all of eleven years old, that he is doomed to die to save the world. To tell him that prophecies are real, that fate is real, and that Harry’s future is martyrdom... Dumbledore is a coward, and a coward in two ways. He can’t bear to tell a child he’s going to die, to be the bearer of that horrible news. And he fears what might happen, for the future of the world, if Harry refuses to play by the prophecy’s rules.

There are many years ahead of him yet, and maybe Dumbledore spends them researching prophecies, looking for loopholes, finding any way to break Harry out of this curse. And it seems he has some idea, knows some of the magic of Harry’s blood and the linking of their souls and the flexibility of the interpretation of fate.

But it all depends on what Dumbledore is willing to risk.

He’s not entirely wrong, though, to stay silent at this point. There’s still time. Voldemort is dormant, not quite sleeping, not quite gone. It may be years until he returns (and it is). Harry should not have to act until then, because what do they know of diaries, of Peter Pettigrew, of Barty Crouch, Jr? While Dumbledore scrambles for answers, Harry can be a child still. He’s had so much of his childhood stolen already.

(But oh, when the time comes, there will be a reckoning.)

Harry finishes the school year, oblivious and caring most about his loss in Quidditch. They win the House Cup, they rejoice in the simple victories of children, and they prepare to go home.

And Harry goes to a place he truly does consider home, this time around. He goes home to his aunt and uncle and cousin, to people who may not understand him but who care regardless. He tells them about his year of magic, and they tell him about their year of mundanity, and it’s comforting. They’re happy. And Harry has no reason to dread the summer.

Chapter Text

Every story diverges here, the end and beginning of the summer. The Dursleys are Harry’s family, and while they struggle with magic and a world so different from their own, they love him.

(Dumbledore relies on that, raising worrying questions of what he, in another world, thinks love is.)

They don’t lock away his books, his broom, his wand. They talk about his year, his school, because he is twelve years old and deserves to be excited. They do ask him not to practice quidditch inside the house, but that’s just practical.

In this world, when Dobby arrives, the Dursleys adapt. They cover for the dropped pudding, making excuses that don’t involve throwing their nephew under the bus. After all, these are Dursleys who both trust Harry and have some understanding of magic - they know something’s up.

After the dinner party, after the letter, they talk. Because here’s the thing - Dobby’s warning is a problem. Harry’s home is protected against Voldemort, and Voldemort only. Dobby was harmless, even helpful, but he had no problem entering their home, approaching Harry. Whatever threat is looming, whatever danger Harry faces, it may come to number four, Privet Drive, just as easily.

(They know nothing of house-elf magic, of diaries, hell, even hardly anything of the magic that protects their home. No one has explained anything to them. They’re trying their best.)

So Hedwig is sent off to the Weasleys with a letter. Harry has two friends, and only one with wizarding parents - parents who, hopefully, can guard against malicious magic. The letter is apologetic, pleading - this is a lot to ask, and they’ve never met, but can they help?

Hedwig returns within the day with an enthusiastic offer to take Harry in for the last few weeks of summer, and the following day a sky blue Ford Anglia drives - yes, drives - down Privet Drive.

And so the Dursleys are introduced to the Weasleys, much more cordially this time. This is in no small part due to the presence of Molly Weasley and the lack of the twins, but not having heard of years of abuse can’t have hurt. Molly, Arthur, and Ron Weasley have tea with the Dursleys, polite and even friendly, with Molly’s focus on the topic at hand and Petunia’s greater familiarity with magic creating common ground.

Harry’s sent off with hugs and reminders to write, and the car stays on the ground just until they turn the corner and are out of sight. There’s only so much the Dursleys can cope with in one day, and Molly’s disinclined to frighten their new friends. After all, she now has a hastily written set of instructions on how to use the muggle post, and she intends to use them.

So Harry, in this world too, spends a magical few weeks with the Weasleys. It’s not the same as before - this isn’t his first experience with a loving family, a family that cares about him and each other. But it is his first experience with this vibrancy, with chaos and joy and magic. The Dursleys care, but are rather quiet, normal folks who rely on the safety of hiding under the radar.

The Weasleys don’t hide. They are loud and brilliant and stand up for their beliefs, and the first few days at the Burrow Harry’s just stuck in awe at the whirlwind around him. Harry’s had a loving household, but never a magic one, where spells are used to wash the dishes and quidditch is played in the yard after dinner. It’s new and unknown and a part of Harry’s heritage he feels quietly click into place.

And this is where Harry meets Ginny. And at this point they’re not even friends, they can’t be. Everything in Ginny’s life is a completely new experience to Harry, and they have almost no common ground. And Ginny can’t even talk to him because she’s starstruck by the name, the scar, like so many others.

They’ll get there.

The Weasleys don’t quite ignore that Harry might be in danger, but it’s not so much of a concern. They still take him to Diagon Alley, still encounter Lucius and Draco Malfoy, and still meet Mr. and Mrs. Granger.

And let’s talk about the Grangers. Let’s establish some things, Joanne. Because the Dursleys get plot lines and character development, the Weasleys are integral to the series as a whole, even the Malfoys get nuance and depth.

The Grangers don’t get first names. Hermione, a keystone of the series, has family who are an entire non-entity. Heritage is an unavoidable theme in these stories, especially later, and Hermione’s muggleborn background is key in this book and others. And yet what we know of her parents is that they love her, that they’re dentists, that they’re muggles, and one time, they went camping. Seven books, and that’s all we know.

So let’s change things. Who are the Grangers? They’re dentists, both of them. Why? Did they expect Hermione to follow in their footsteps? They’re doctors, they’re medical professionals, and yet - they’re the kind of people to name their baby daughter Hermione in the year 1979. They immediately accept that magic is real, that their daughter is magic, that the world is a stranger place than they’ve ever imagined. They support their daughter without any of the crises of the Dursley-Evans family. These are deeply interesting concepts.

So we elaborate. So the Weasleys meet the Grangers, who will one day be their in-laws, and they talk! Arthur Weasley is fascinated by the muggle world, and the Grangers vice versa, and they ask each other questions and strike up a friendship. And this stays throughout all their years of school. The Grangers have dinner at the Burrow, the Weasleys come over to the never described Granger home, and after a few conversations and exchanges of contact information, the Grangers and the Dursleys begin to commiserate over the strangeness of being thrown into a magical world. All three families are tied together, all three learn from each other, and the Grangers become another keystone in the mish-mashed worlds of Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

But some things still stay, because Dobby cannot be stopped. Because twelve year olds, worried about being late for school, don’t necessarily stop and think logically. Because Harry and Ron deserve to carjack a flying car.

Except they’re twelve, and can’t drive, so it’s a miracle they even manage to crash into the Whomping Willow.

And so the school year starts off with a bang. Ron’s wand is broken, Harry has a new quidditch rivalry, and we’re introduced to magical racism. Draco Malfoy is a bigoted asshole, but in a way that makes sense in-narrative. The concept of blood purity, of purebloods and halfbloods and muggleborns, adds a layer of depth to the interpersonal conflicts, and this isn’t that kind of fix-it. And this establishes a core, crucial theme in this series - blood doesn’t matter. Lineage isn’t everything. It’s what you do, it’s who you are that’s important, not who you were born. A theme that is violently thrown out the window later.

(and oh fucking boy we’ll get to that.)

Harry has detention with Lockhart and helps him answer fan mail, while Ron is sent off to clean trophies in turn. And there is a problem that begins here, a very recurrent problem, of Harry being left alone with adults who are far too interested in him - Lockhart, Slughorn, “Moody.” We’ll circle back around to this.

The Basilisk makes its presence known, Mrs Norris is petrified, and suspicion begins to circle Harry as he keeps ending up in precisely the wrong circumstances. Everyone is remarkably suspicious of a twelve year old, considering. And we’re back to blood. The Heir of Slytherin, Salazar’s direct descendant - only they could possibly do this. So people leap to conclusions. Which, honestly, that’s fairly accurate, if wrong.

Things get worse, as they tend to do around Harry. Dobby continues to interfere in attempts to help that go - well, awry for Harry, not for Dobby. More people are petrified, people who just happen to have inconvenient connections to Harry. Harry and his friends decide to take matters into their own hands, as no one else seems to be doing anything effective, particularly not the adults charged with their protection. So the Polyjuice potion is made and they start to piece together the clues, and Harry finds a diary.

And so Harry meets Tom Riddle, or at least his memory. And they’re pointed toward Hagrid, implicated in the death of Myrtle, guilty only for a fondness toward questionable pets and his non-human heritage. And again, with blood - Hagrid’s not human, not fully, let alone pureblood. And he’s clearly shown as one of the kindest and most genuinely good people at Hogwarts.

So of course he’s arrested, and Dumbledore is suspended, and some of the very few people who know what’s happening, who could recognize the name Tom Riddle if only given the chance to do so, are gone.

And so is Hermione. Petrified minutes after she figured out the culprit, after she solved everything. The first to do so, and she’s all of twelve years old. Thank goodness she brought a redundancy with her.

They have their answer, they know the cause, and it’s still not soon enough, because Ginny is gone, too. Lockhart is sent after her, and tries to run, because the rest of the staff are knowingly sending him off to die. Presumably they knew he’d run, because otherwise, wow that’s cold.

But he doesn’t run, because he’s blackmailed by twelve year olds, and Harry, Ron, and a fraud all enter the Chamber. Ron’s wand backfires, Lockhart is incapacitated, and Harry is left to face the basilisk alone. And he does, and he finds Ginny, and he meets Tom Riddle.

And here’s the blood thing again, and how lineage both does and does not matter. Because Ginny was not the Heir of Slytherin, because Ginny is a pureblood witch of a known wizarding house, her lineage known and evident. And so she was deemed blameless, even though she wasn’t hiding her actions all that well. Everyone trusted what they knew of descent, of magic that passes through generations, and because of that, they were wrong. A counterpoint to the other stance on legacy - not only does it not matter where a person comes from, focusing on that alone and blinding oneself to alternatives can actively harm. Ginny was pureblood and none of that matters, because the true Heir of Slytherin had no need to do their own dirty work.

And Harry faces down Riddle and the basilisk with the Sword of Gryffindor - not given to him because his descent, because he’s Gryffindor’s heir by blood, but because he’s brave and desperately trying to do what’s right, to save - not even his friend, yet, but an eleven year old girl who doesn’t deserve to die. And it’s that, his intentions and his choices, that make him worthy. Imagine that.

Harry destroys the diary, destroys a portion of Voldemort’s soul, though he won’t know that for years yet. Fawkes rescues them all from the Chamber, and there’s one final facedown: Dumbledore and Lucius Malfoy, Harry and Dobby.

Dumbledore’s still working on incomplete knowledge, as is Malfoy. Bits and pieces, the start of the right track, but not enough, not yet. So Dumbledore returns, but Lucius goes free.

And so does Dobby. Working in the structure of centuries of folklore, of stories of trickery and loopholes, Harry gets Dobby freed from slavery. Which in this story, and rightfully so, is seen as the obviously and inarguably good and right thing to do. Keep that in mind.

Hagrid is returned, the victims un-petrified, Harry exonerated of suspicions. In this world, Ginny is instantly whisked off to therapy, because she desperately needs help after being manipulated and controlled for much of a year. Because this is a world where somebody looked at the wizarding world, and the lives that wizards and their children lead, and immediately started studying psychology. Because the lack of support, the lack of ability to get help when needed, is a problem. Even the others - Ginny nearly died, Hermione and others were petrified, and everyone else spent a year terrified of their friends being killed in their home with no idea of how to stop it, with no support systems.

Everyone in Hogwarts needs therapy. It wouldn’t fix everything, but it sure would help!

But the year ends, a celebration is had, exams are cancelled, and again Harry goes home to Privet Drive. A reprieve from magic, from a world where trauma and horror are commonplace, with new kinds of biases on top of existing bigotry.

Harry goes home and asks Aunt Petunia what Lily had felt, growing up as a muggleborn, a mudblood. Because that’s a part of his legacy he refuses to let anyone forget.

Chapter Text

Another year, another summer.

The Dursley family sits around the breakfast table watching the news. Amidst the weather, the common events of the day, there’s a special report - convicted murderer Sirius Black has broken out of prison. Vernon makes a snide comment about the uselessness of not naming the particular prison, as usual.

Petunia Dursley drops her glass. Harry Potter freezes.

Because here’s the thing. Petunia Evans Dursley stayed close to her sister, close enough to be maid of honor at Lily’s wedding. Close enough to meet James’s best man at that wedding. She knows who Sirius Black is. And as a result, so does Harry.

Two years back, when she reached out to Harry’s other family, Petunia looked for Sirius, too. She couldn’t find him, but that was no real shock. She never told Harry how many of the people she knew of had been killed or disappeared during Voldemort’s reign of terror, only told Harry of the ones who lived. She assumed Sirius was gone too, and that was the end of it.

Evidently not.

A few strongly worded owls and letters and a brief explanation to a baffled Vernon and Dudley later, Harry and Petunia have the official story. Sirius Black went mad and murdered Peter Pettigrew and a number of muggle bystanders in broad daylight. He was imprisoned for his crimes in Azkaban without a proper trial and should have lost his mind to the dementors. The fact that he’s escaped is worrying, to say the least.

Petunia sends more harshly worded owls. Minerva McGonagall, swearing Petunia to secrecy, shares the truth: Sirius Black betrayed the Potters. He was a double agent, he told Voldemort everything, he killed his best friends. He’ll kill Harry if given the chance.

Petunia immediately tells Harry, because they both agree that’s horseshit.

Aunt Marge is respectfully asked to come to dinner at a less tense time.

The Weasleys, his teachers, the adults in his life (sans Petunia) beg Harry not to go looking for Black. Harry cheerfully lies through his teeth. Although it’s not all a lie - he’s certainly not after revenge. Quite the opposite, rather. After all, it’s not every day you find out you have a godfather and that you’re possibly his only chance at exoneration.

So Harry, already planning in detail how to save Sirius, boards the Hogwarts Express with his best friends. Hermione has a cat now, and Ron’s rat is acting stranger and stranger, that’s going to be fun to deal with. They stumble into the only compartment left, where a teacher is sleeping, and here things change again.

Because Harry knows who Remus Lupin is too. Quite a bit about him, honestly, because Petunia had met him, because Lily was friends with him and talked about him.

Harry starts the school year knowing three key things about RJ Lupin: he was one of his parents’ closest friends, he was (and presumably still is) a werewolf, and prior to everything falling apart, he had been dating Sirius Black.

(Yeah, Joanne, we’re actually committing to some fucking representation this time around.)

Thirteen year old Harry Potter sees a scruffy, sleeping man on a train as possibly one of his greatest allies. Now to explain to Ron and Hermione exactly what is going on, and exactly what he plans to do this year, without both of them judging him at best and telling an adult at worst.

His plotting is rudely interrupted by a dementor entering his compartment, at which point he passes out, hearing screaming. He’s awoken by Lupin, given some chocolate and few explanations, and firmly shuttled off to the hospital wing. His plans will have to wait.

And so the school year starts, with Remus Lupin as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Hagrid as Care of Magical Creatures professor, and the appearance of Sybill Trelawney as Divination professor.

Trelawney. Oh boy. Sybill Trelawney is ridiculed by the characters and author, viewed as crazy, attention-seeking, and ultimately a fraud. Those who believe her, Lavender and Parvati in particular, are written off as well. This is going to come up again and again and again, and is yet again flavored by the author’s “not like other girls” problem.

But here’s the thing. Trelawney is inarguably one of the most important characters in the series, because she’s right. Trelawney is a true seer. Her prophecies - particularly the one regarding the individual chosen to defeat Voldemort - shape the entire series. Voldemort’s actions, Dumbledore’s actions, Snape’s actions, Harry’s - all are directly driven by what Trelawney has seen and shared.

And yet, bizarrely, divination both drives the series and is written off as hooey. Trelawney and Lavender and Parvati’s crime is what - to believe in magic? A world of magical creatures and spellcraft and possibilities beyond imagination, and this is where you draw the line? Hermione in particular is disdainful of divination, and yet. Hermione takes Arithmancy. That’s the exact same thing! But numbers are inherently better and more trustworthy than tea? Please don’t tell me magic schools have the same STEM vs humanities bullshit because I can’t take that.

So this time around? Trelawney actually gets some respect. She’s eccentric, and a little weird, that’s undeniable and adds to her character. But she’s a true seer, and people know that. She was explicitly hired by Dumbledore because of that. She’s not always right, but she’s been right enough that people listen to her, that people trust her. Maybe Hermione still doesn’t like her, still doesn’t like Divination as a field, but she can keep those feelings and still respect that Trelawney knows what she’s doing, that divination is real.

The first Hogsmeade weekend comes, and despite having a signed permission slip from his aunt, Harry isn’t allowed to go. It’s not safe, you see, the professors tell him. Sirius Black is out there. He’ll be safer in the castle.

Harry, a thirteen year old fueled by spite, goes to find Professor Lupin. He’s moving up his timetable.

Again, they have tea in Lupin’s office. Lupin explains what happened with the boggart in class, days earlier - that he didn’t let Harry face it because he was worried it would be Voldemort, rather than he thought Harry couldn’t handle it. He reveals that he knew Harry’s parents.

Harry retorts that he already knew that, and Petunia sends her regards. While Lupin’s reeling from that, Snape comes in with his wolfsbane, and once he leaves Harry drops that particular bombshell too.

This day is not going how Lupin thought it would.

Harry starts off by making it clear he’s not going to tell anyone about anything because that’s Lupin’s private medical information. He’s not here to extort or manipulate anyone - he genuinely wants to make friends with his parents’ friend, and just feels it’s better to get everything out there first. This is a boy who’s spent his wizarding life constantly searching for more family, and Lupin is practically an uncle, or a second godfather.

He’s also a very important potential ally in saving his other godfather, but that’s kind of a lot to add on to this already challenging day, so Harry holds onto that for now.

He again decides to speed things up when it’s revealed that Sirius broke into Hogwarts that night. But this raises more questions, too - because Harry knows (or hopes, desperately hopes) that Sirius isn’t out to kill him. So what does he want?

While he ponders that, Snape substitute teaches a Defense Against the Dark Arts class about werewolves. Harry glares daggers at him the entire time, and refuses to explain why.

After that, finally, Harry pulls Ron and Hermione into his conspiracy. This is much easier said than done. Ron and Hermione are at odds over Crookshanks and Scabbers, though of course that’s not quite the whole of it. Ron thinks Sirius is a stone-cold murderer and Hermione thinks Harry should tell a teacher. However, both of them know how Harry can get when he’s dead-set on a course of action, and they reluctantly join him, if only to do their best to protect him.

The quidditch game goes just as horribly this time around. Harry sees a black dog - for the first time, this time - run onto the field, moments before being swarmed by dementors, falling off his broom, and passing out. His broom is shattered, and he is done with being tormented by dementors. He goes to Lupin and asks for lessons, and Lupin agrees.

Hogsmeade weekend comes again, and Fred and George reveal the Marauder’s Map. Harry barely manages to keep a straight face at the names Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs as he puts together a few things very quickly - though not all of it. He sneaks into the Three Broomsticks, he hears the discussion of how Sirius killed his parents, and does his best not to snort. He’s still not buying it. Hermione and Ron are even more concerned.

Buckbeak and Hagrid’s story continues in the background, the same as before. This is far from the first time Lucius Malfoy has directly interfered with the running of Hogwarts, and it won’t be the last. This trial will be a sham, and everyone knows it, but they still have to try.

Harry receives the Firebolt for Christmas, and Hermione still believes it was sent by Sirius. In hindsight, that’s a wild thing to be right about, since most criminals on the run wouldn’t have the funds or ability to do this in the slightest. But this time she doesn’t tell McGonagall, because there’s the possibility Harry might be right. She holds back, despite her better judgement, despite telling someone being the objectively smart thing to do, and their friendship is more stable for it.

Lupin teaches Harry the Patronus Charm, a month of repeatedly trying and failing to shoot happy memories at a Boggart. It’s slow going, but he’s getting somewhere. And two lessons in, Harry broaches the topic of Sirius Black.

Frankly, Lupin is horrified. Because here’s the thing - Lupin’s had his theories too. He thought he knew Sirius, a man who would never have committed the crimes he was imprisoned for. Who now under no circumstances would want to kill Harry. There are unanswered questions here, and Lupin’s not helping Black, per se. But he didn’t say anything about the large black dog at the quidditch match, either. So he’s figuring some things out, and hoping to put all the pieces together before his divided loyalties become a real problem.

But he absolutely does not want Harry getting caught in the middle of this. Lupin will not pull a child, a child he feels responsible for protecting, into something that will at best get him arrested, and at worst… well, the dementors are still out there. He refuses to pull Harry into his conspiracy, even though the offer was really for Harry to bring Lupin into his.

Harry takes that polite refusal with little grace. He’s tired of being kept out of things because he’s a child, because it’s dangerous. He keeps Lupin in mind as an ally if things really go bad, but for now, he’s on his own. And more so than usual.

Because Scabbers disappears, presumed eaten. Hermione and Ron were better friends at this point, but this is still something that shatters them, that breaks their friendship. Hermione splits off entirely, drawn into her studies and Buckbeak’s defense, much more pressure than a thirteen year old should ever face.

(And we’ll get to that.)

But first - why is a teacher’s only legal aid, in a case of a parent against the school, a thirteen year old student? Is there no structure for this? Even if Dumbledore couldn’t interfere, although Dumbledore’s political position gets muddy at best as the series goes on, why not literally anyone else? Why was Hagrid deserted by Hogwarts?

So in this version, this time, people help. Minerva McGonagall writes cutting arguments, words shaped so sharply that they cannot be denied or contradicted. Professor Binns researches precedents, as there must have been many in the time this school has operated. Professor Kettleburn is reached out to in order to confirm the inherent hazards of this type of course, as he testifies with his missing limbs.

They still don’t stand a chance, but they don’t leave their colleague, their friend, to face this alone.

Sirius Black breaks into Gryffindor Tower, or rather is welcomed in, and stands over Ron Weasley’s bed with a knife. He escapes, but this raises a number of questions. After all, Ron and Harry look nothing alike. If he’d wanted to kill Harry, there were only five people in that room. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out.

Ron is not comforted by that fact, as now it appears the escaped mass murderer wants him dead, but he’s more on Harry’s side. Whatever that was, it’s not what everyone expected of Black. There’s something else going on.

Hermione is reconciled with, Buckbeak is sentenced to death, and Lupin confiscates the Marauder’s Map. It’s a miracle they get through that altercation with Snape, as now Harry also knows what Lupin’s not saying. It didn’t take a genius to put together the nicknames with Petunia’s stories, although of course he’s still missing the most important parts.

But now Lupin has the map, and can see what Harry never did - because how Lupin was able to find Peter Pettigrew on the map, while the Weasley twins and Harry never noticed, remains deeply confusing.

Hermione begins acting more stressed, more distracted and erratic. Gryffindor wins the quidditch cup, as they always do - like, I know it’s a kid’s book where the heroes always win, but I have to imaging that there’s some angry teenage statisticians at this school. Final exams are held, and Harry becomes audience to one of Trelawney’s true prophecies.

Maybe this is the point where he should’ve told an adult, but there’s a recurring issue of adults not trusting him with major concerns and he’s inclined to return the favor. Anyway, he’s thirteen and his greater priority is his friends, like Hagrid, who has finally lost Buckbeak’s case for good.

They comfort Hagrid, having tea in his cabin, and make the alarming discovery that Scabbers is still alive. This is baffling, as the bloodstains left on Ron’s pillow sure indicated otherwise, and makes things very awkward for Ron and Hermione. But there’s no time to process this, and to consider that it seems like Ron’s pet rat somehow faked his own death, because the executioners arrive.

As they sneak away, and manage to hide three teenagers under one cloak, they’re attacked by the dog Harry’s seen once before. Still missing half the pieces, he doesn’t connect the dots quite yet, and is rather distracted as Ron is dragged away to the Whomping Willow. Crookshanks follows, as do Harry and Hermione, just rolling with the fact that apparently her cat’s semi-sentient.

They follow the tunnels to the Shrieking Shack, where they’re abruptly confronted with not a dog, but an armed and dangerous SIrius Black standing in front of a crumpled Ron, incapacitated by a broken leg. Black disarms Harry and Hermione.

Harry hugs him.

This is clearly not how Sirius expected this altercation to go. His demeanor instantly changes, a harsh facade dropping in favor of relief and warmth. Harry begins barreling off questions, Hermione with her face in her hands because okay, sure, they’re doing this.

Before Sirius can explain anything, Lupin joins the party, to Harry’s relief and Ron and Hermione’s continued exasperation. There are more hugs. Explanations are quickly made, less aggressively than last time considering Harry was on the same side this time around. Hermione’s less antagonistic with the reveal that Lupin is a werewolf, which this time is news only to Ron, who’s having quite a day.

Snape appears, abruptly and inconveniently, and is just as abruptly sidelined. That is going to come back to haunt them, very soon, but not one was thinking clearly at the time.

And then it’s explained that Scabbers is Peter Pettigrew.

And here it is again - Harry knows who Pettigrew is. The one who rounded out the quartet, one of the Marauders, another one of his father’s closest friends. He knows probably the least about him of the four, as Pettigrew was unlikely very impressive to Petunia. He wasn’t really impressive to anyone, really. But again, it’s hard to believe one of James’s best friends would have him killed.

Or at least it is until Scabbers is transformed into a dead man who immediately confesses to the crime.

That’s a lot to process. Pettigrew is restrained, with the intent of bring him to face justice, or at least Dumbledore. Even if he hadn’t confessed, his sheer existence is enough to crack Sirius’s imprisonment - after all, you can’t have murdered someone who is still demonstrably alive. There’s glee in the air as they make their way out of the tunnels. This could be it.

Sirius, overjoyed at seeing his godson again, shyly asks if Harry wants to come live with him. Which, given what we will learn later about Sirius’s house, is an interesting call. And Harry considers it, really, but not for long. Instead, he proposes a counteroffer - would Sirius like to live with him? And his aunt, uncle, and cousin?

Harry knows exactly what chaos this would cause, bringing a shabby dog slash wizard to Privet Drive, and it’s precisely what he wants out of life.

Sirius is about to respond, about to agree, when it all goes to hell. Because it’s a full moon, because Lupin’s a werewolf, because Harry Potter can’t have nice things. Lupin transforms and Pettigrew too and all are off running, to fight and to flee and protect.

And then the dementors come, and the glowing white stag, and darkness.

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger wake up the hospital wing and are immediately confronted with everything having gone wrong, with SIrius recaptured and Pettigrew escaped and Snape the hero. Dumbledore arrives, and for once an adult in power believes Harry, although they can’t actually do something to help him. Instead he just has coded messages that he expects Hermione to understand, and she does.

Hermione reveals the time-turner.

Which she has to have, for this book to work, and yet…. no one should have fucking allowed this. Hermione is bright and clever and eager to learn, and that’s good! A thirst for knowledge defines her character, makes her who she is, and wanting to take more classes than there are hours in the day is a truly understandable urge. The problem is that the adults responsible for this thirteen year old child allowed that, enabled that, encouraged that.

Or that’s half of it, that they gave her the means to do much more work than she was physically capable of doing. The other half is that they made her keep it a secret. They gave her an incredibly powerful magic item, one kept under lock and key by the government, and told her she couldn’t let anyone know. Hermione was cracking under stress throughout this book, putting strain on herself and her relationships by trying to keep an insane timetable while also keeping it secret from everyone else. Not only could she not explain why she was struggling, could she not have a support system, but actively having to lie about what she was doing strained those friendships even further.

She’s thirteen. There will always be more time to learn, and an adult should have told her that.

Hermione takes them back in time, untying Buckbeak from his post behind Hagrid’s cabin, hiding in the forest and waiting for the right moment. They talk a bit, as it’s been a rough year for the three of them - Harry tried not to pick sides, but that was difficult, and he tended to side with Ron. Knowing what they know now puts a weird spin on things. How precisely do you process that no, one of your friend’s pets wasn’t trying to eat the other, but was rather trying to capture it and take it to an escaped criminal because the beloved pet rat is also a human criminal? That’s a conversation for later, and not really for Harry, but he anticipates having to help Ron with wording his apologies.

Harry sneaks away to the lake, to see if he can spot the person who made that patronus, who looked so much like his father. And he waits, and waits, and has a final realization about loops and echoes in history.

Harry saves his own life that night, and puts together why his father was named Prongs.

And at this point, the parallel doesn’t hurt. Harry still knows so little about his parents, hasn’t had their legacy hanging over him for so long. Not so many people have told him he looks like James, but with Lily’s eyes. And frankly, he still knows so little about his father. Any connection, even a shared resemblance, is something he welcomes, for the moment.

For the moment.

They fly to the Astronomy tower where SIrius is being held, and set him and Buckbeak on his way. Sirius promises to keep in touch, to find him when it all dies down enough, and the two escapees fly off into the night.

They make it back just in time, sneaking back into the hospital wing before they were ever gone. Snape rants and rages at Black’s escape, Cornelius Fudge is concerned and alarmed, Ron Weasley deserves for someone to explain what the hell has happened in the last twelve hours, and Harry and Hermione try so hard not to laugh.

And Severus Snape is prevented from ruining someone else’s life. Because Dumbledore should’ve expected he would try something, that he would lash out and get revenge. And Dumbledore is the only one with any kind of leverage against Snape that could actually work. So Snape is prevented from sharing a man’s private medical information with the world, Lupin isn’t ostracized, and no one beyond a select handful know his secret.

But Lupin chooses to leave anyway. He has a lot to reconsider, plans that go beyond teaching, and some people to find. He all but dropped off the face of the earth for the past twelve years, and he has connections to rebuild, especially with the future shaping out the way it is. If these plans also involve finding a certain fugitive, that’s his business.

Harry goes home, contemplative and a bit sad, as Ron and Hermione awkwardly reconcile. Hermione wisely chooses to return the time-turner, Ron makes plans for visits over the summer, and a small puffball of an owl flies smack into the train carriage’s window. Once retrieved, it’s revealed to be a letter and a gift from Sirius - the letter for Harry, and the owl for Ron. And vindication for Hermione, as Sirius confirms that he did in fact send the Firebolt.

They arrive at King’s Cross Station and split up, off into a different world yet again. Harry goes home with his aunt and uncle, explaining in detail to Petunia everything that happened, everything that couldn’t be written in letters.

And sometime in mid-July, a shaggy black dog appears at Number 4, Privet Drive.

Chapter Text

Decades ago, a family is murdered, a groundskeeper is accused, the killer is never caught. Now, this summer, Harry Potter wakes up with an aching scar and a piece of the puzzle. Voldemort, Pettigrew, another murder, an active plot - something is happening, something important.

But Harry’s fourteen, and there’s also the Quidditch World Cup. Harry writes a letter to his godfather, currently traveling the globe after years of unjust imprisonment, and moves on with his life.

Harry is invited to the World Cup by the Weasleys, via a completely normal letter as Petunia and Molly have been corresponding for some years now. There’s a perfectly reasonable number of stamps. There is also no use of Floo Powder, as Molly mentions the plan to Petunia, who immediately sees the problem. Mr. Weasley, Fred, and George apparate instead.

Vernon’s still not thrilled, but at least his living room is intact. So is Dudley’s tongue, as the twins have no reason to hate him this time around. Although even in canon, what the fuck? There’s a couple moments where the ethics of the wizarding world shine through, specifically regarding muggles, and this is one of them. I know this is a kid’s book, but damn. The Weasleys supposedly love muggles so much that they’re ostracized for it.

Harry arrives at the Burrow, meets yet more Weasleys, and settles in. There’s the development of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, and I’m a bit torn on this one. On one hand, truly props to Fred and George for what must be an incredible amount of invention, entrepreneurship, and sheer creativity. That takes some work. Especially considering that they’re sixteen. Which is the other side of things - no wonder Molly wants them to focus on school! These are high school sophomores saying they’re going to drop out to start a business, in a family that does not have a lot of money. No wonder Molly wants them to get more stable careers! This is a thing she writes to Petunia about constantly.

Petunia honestly gets this one pretty well, even if no one on Vernon’s side of the family would ever do this. But she grew up around the Marauders, she knows the shit teenage wizard boys can get up to. Maybe they’ll settle down, she says weakly, thinking of the international fugitive who sent her a postcard from Costa Rica last weekend.

Petunia’s mail correspondence, at this point, takes up a significant amount of space in the postman’s bag.

But all in all, this carries along fairly parallel to canon.

Harry goes to the Quidditch World Cup, conveniently discovering the concept of portkeys and overall getting a further engulfing in the wizarding culture that he’s heard of but rarely ever experienced. And he meets Cedric Diggory, arguably the best person in the entire franchise. The one good Hufflepuff, a genuinely kindhearted teenager who’s good at sports, friendly, and wants things to be fair.

Sorry, Cedric.

And here’s where I have a bone to pick with the Quidditch World Cup. Or rather, the attendees. To start off, I might be an anthropologist but I do not have the spoons to get into the way a certain author decides to portray the residents of other nations. Just gonna put that whole concept out there. There’s another one I’d like to get into.

Are you, Joanne Kathleen Rowling, telling me that wizarding Britain is so isolated from muggle Britain that they don’t know what pants are????

Britain’s not that fucking big, area-wise. I get that there’s like wizard enclaves and they tend to form communities together, but like. They leave those sometimes, right? There aren’t that many wizards! Where the fuck do they get groceries? Are you telling me that there’s a significant portion of the British wizarding population that is so isolated from muggle culture, including muggle-born and half-blood witches and wizards, that they don’t understand the sheer concept of clothes that aren’t robes?

No wonder British wizard politics are so batshit.

Let’s assume, for the sake of my own sanity, that the various weirdly-attired attendees are just half-assing their efforts to blend in and aren’t that disconnected from society. This carries us to the game itself, Ludo Bagman and Barty Crouch and Winky. This goes on as planned. We’ll talk about Winky in a minute.

We’re just going to brush past the veela thing for now, too. More should be done with the fact that Fleur is part terrifying siren creature.

Masked wizards attack the World Cup, which seems like an unbelievable safety breach for a major sporting event. But it happens, because the cracks are starting to show. Voldemort may be gone, but his influence isn’t. Wizarding society isn’t all perfect and stable as the government would like everyone to think.

Winky is thrown completely under the bus, in a massive strategic mistake. There is one person in the entire world that knows the secret Crouch Senior has been keeping for a decade. The only thing keeping her silent is her loyalty to his family, plus the fact that he owns her. So what does he do? Kick her to the curb! Assuming she would be listened to despite her species, she could unravel this entire conspiracy with a word.

But, well. Barty Crouch Senior is about to have bigger problems. Such as the fact that now there’s no one to catch on if his mind-controlled son starts mind controlling him back. Real nice going, sir.

Mad-Eye Moody arrives at Hogwarts, and uh. There are things I cannot change here for the sake of the story functioning in any recognizable manner, but the amount of horrifying incidents that get brushed past or overlooked are simply astonishing.

Moody turns a teenage student into a ferret and smacks him into some walls and he gets a slap on the wrist and a joking “oh, that’s just how he is.” Really? That seriously didn’t raise any red flags? You continue to let this man teach children? Also, knowing what we find out later, this isn’t just the actions of a murderous madman but also tracks with the real Moody’s personality and prior actions?

This man is using torture spells on students in the name of education! I know they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel by this point, but seriously?

We’ll circle back around here.

Also, for fuck’s sake, why is there no standardized Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum? It makes sense that different professors have their own specialities and bring some flavor to the program, but the curse on the position is the only reason any student gets any comprehensive education. Lupin just did creatures, Moody just does curses, there’s never a mixture of topics.

So we’re fixing that. Lupin tackles more than boggarts and grindylows, Moody covers more than three curses, all the professors cover a broad range of topics that you’d generally need to go over in what is at its core a self-defense class. Especially considering apparently none of these kids go to college, either - there’s a lot you’ve got to cover in seven years.

While we’re on this topic, regarding the earlier pants issue: Muggle Studies becomes a mandatory class. Even if it’s just one year of “look, this is a lightbulb!” Fucking something.

And now, now that we’ve arrived at Hogwarts, we’ve come to SPEW. Two books. Two books is all it takes to shift from Dobby’s story, his mistreatment and righteous long for freedom, to SPEW. Now, the problem isn’t SPEW- rather, that’s the problem. In two books we’ve shifted to a narrative of house-elf slaves who want to stay slaves, who see Dobby as strange and upsetting, who are horrified at the thought of house-elves being paid.

And Winky! The horrifying return of Winky! Winky was kicked out of her house by her owner, was taken in by Hogwarts, is so devastated that she has a legitimate drinking problem that’s somehow played both for pity and laughs, and could unravel this year’s mystery here and now were she not so fucked up and painfully loyal to the person who owned her and at the drop of a hat, at a minor error, threw her out of the only place she’s ever lived. You could easily make this horrifying, and Hermione does, and yet it’s brushed past with everything else!

And we’re still expected to believe everything is fine with the house-elf establishment!

I’m sorry, what the fuck? Joanne? What?

There’s an ideological tipping point in these stories, a shift in tone and mindset. House-elves are just one part of it. But they’re an important part.

So in this world. In this fucking world. SPEW works. Maybe it’s a hard sell - going up against centuries of tradition, in a society particularly known for their hard-set traditions and corresponding biases. This is a world with wizarding supremacists, and at least muggles are human. So it’s hard, it’s brutal, it’s fighting for every inch. But it’s right.

Hermione makes connections, makes friends. Harry and Ron help. This time, it’s more than one tired teenager knitting hats - it’s one, then three, then more and more, reaching out, talking to house-elves and professors and anyone who will listen. Hermione’s not kindhearted but slightly pathetic, she’s confident and backed up by her friends. Dobby too - he has the same struggles, as no one wants to pay a house-elf when that’s not how the world works. But when he reaches out to the kitchens, to the other house-elves - maybe they’re afraid. That’s fair. Antagonizing wizards, upsetting the status quo - that could put them in very real danger. Look at Winky, thrown out of her home on a whim. But they’re not angry at the concept of house-elves being paid. They want rights too. Because then they wouldn’t have to be afraid.

So this is the background subplot of the book. Not one girl fighting a hopeless battle, but many together making actual changes. No, they’re not freeing all the house-elves in Britain in a single book. Quite frankly, given all the other shit that goes down this year, it’s amazing they have the time to sleep, and they’re teenagers. But they can make a start. They can free the house-elves in the Hogwarts kitchens, give them freedom and pay and the option to stay or leave without repercussions. And the eyes of wizarding Britain are always on Hogwarts, and this will be noticed. It’s a case study. And if it goes well, if people get their heads out of their asses regarding the status quo, well… who’s next?

While Hermione quietly starts a revolution, the Triwizard Tournament comes into play. And honestly, knowing how college football works, I think we can brush past the “students get killed doing this” part. That tracks. The other schools arrive, with Karkaroff, Maxime, and Fleur making their introductions, and Viktor Krum being reintroduced.

Fuckin’ props to Krum for being an international sports star as a senior in high school, when does this man sleep?

Harry and Cedric’s names are both pulled from the Goblet of Fire. No one believes Harry did it. Like, maybe a couple people? But combine the fact that this is extremely deadly, Harry constantly avoids any taste of fame, and it’s been well established in the past few years that he has an absurd amount of people out to kill him? Everyone looks at it for a solid five seconds and goes, “Yeah, this tracks.” But he’s still kept in the tournament, because magical rules are nonsensical.

This time around Ron’s response is “Well fuck, time to keep you from dying again, I guess.”

The media circus arrives, but Harry is less stressed as he’s backed up by both his best friends, his godfather, and his aunt, who has received some very concerning correspondence from both Sirius and Molly. All three of them, incidentally, in their attempts to figure out what the hell is going on regarding Bertha Jorkins, Karkaroff, and everything else, are beginning to revive a very particular set of contacts.

Harry’s given the hint about dragons, and yet agains immediately tells Cedric. Because that’s the thing about Harry - he’s a teenager and he has his fuckups and drama, and is frequently sabotaged by adults keeping him out of the loop, but given the opportunity he tries to do what’s right.

And Harry Potter faces down a dragon in the most teenage way possible: by turning it into a sports analogy.

And now for the dates to the Yule Ball. Ron’s the center of this all - his inadequacies, his fears of being left behind. One of his best friends, who he may or may not have a crush on, because he’s 14 and emotions are hell, is going with someone else. And not just someone, but another Champion, a talented professional quidditch player that Ron cannot hope to live up to. And his other friend, because somehow he only has two, is a Champion himself. He needs a date, as does Ron, and apparently since Ron only speaks to two women at Hogwarts, including his younger sister, this is Such A Conundrum.

If Joanne could get her heteronormative head out of her ass, there’s an easy solution to this problem. Forget the Patils, let Parvati ask out Lavender and have a genuinely delightful time, let Padma go flirt with some Durmstrang boys. Let Ginny and Neville go be awkward and cute. (Let this be the start of their friendship that leads to a full-scale rebellion in a few years’ time).

Harry takes Ron. It’s as fucking simple as that.

Now Harry gets to spend the ball with someone he enjoys spending time with, multiple teenage girls get to have much better nights, Ron gets to be part of the special little clique, gets to be part of everything, doesn’t feel left behind. Ron even gets to dance with Viktor Krum as well, because come on, he would not turn down that opportunity.

Harry dances with Cho as well as Cedric. Because listen, Harry’s established to have a type throughout the series. And that type is exceptional quidditch players, gender irrelevant. So Harry’s got this crush on Cho… and also one on Cedric. This is the book for lighthearted teen relationship drama, plus Harry’s canonical thing for quidditch players is just a really funny character detail. If book six can have everything it has, I can have Harry’s awkward overlapping crushes, which adds way more flavor to his conflict about the two of them beyond just jealousy.

Also, fuck that line in Order of the Phoenix.

Harry and Ron still wander, still overhear the same conversations. And here, with Hagrid and Madame Maxime, we reiterate a theme. They’re both half-giants. That’s fine. Heritage, lineage, legacy doesn’t matter. Your ancestors are not who you are. Being part-human, part-wizard, muggle-born - none of that matters. We go past this theme again and again and again. It’s your choices that make you who you are, not your birth. Hermione is the brightest witch of her age. Hagrid is a kind and caring groundskeeper and professor. That’s all that matters, all that should matter.

Unless you’re a tabloid reporter.

Rita Skeeter brings up an interesting question, because at this point we’ve met far more unregistered Animagi than registered. It seriously can’t be that complicated? How many witches and wizards are running around Britain just sometimes turning into animals? Also, damn, the Marauders ended up with an extremely convenient mix of species.

Rita Skeeter stays an asshole. That’s not actually specifically the problem with her? Like, antagonists on a different scope than “international evil” add some nice flavor, and she also demonstrates the issues with the system in wizarding Britain failing Harry, as well as more of the pitfalls of being famous for nothing of his own choice. None of that is the problem with Rita Skeeter.

We are circling back around, yet again, to the fact that Rowling can’t write women. Rita Skeeter’s bigotry, her unethical journalistic principles, are overshadowed by what, her painted nails? Rowling has issues with femininity. Teenage girls being girls is a crime, pink and kittens are disgusting… more on that later… But to Rowling, there’s a very particular way to be a woman. Hermione’s that. Ginny’s that. McGonagall too, probably. And that’s about it. They have to be feminine, but not too feminine. And according to her own definitions of femininity. Skeeter’s doing it wrong. She’s trying too hard.

I don’t know if her current horrendous bigotry was at play here. I doubt it. But I don’t doubt that the groundwork for her beliefs, that she later built on and escalated, is.

We can just strip that aspect from the story, this time around. Skeeter’s a normal fucking woman, completely divorced from the fact that she’s also an asshole.

Harry takes Cedric’s advice sooner this time, since he’s struggling with different emotions in that regard but not jealousy. He still doesn’t figure out gillyweed on his own, simply because Harry just doesn’t have that background knowledge. He was raised by muggles! Loving muggles, but still ones without any particular knowledge of magical plants. He does get way further into his plan of summoning scuba equipment.

(side plot: Sirius and Petunia buddy cop storyline of attempting to cover up the weirdest scuba supply store robbery.)

There’s one point of note in the task beneath the lake. Ron is Harry’s rescue, Gabrielle is Fleur’s, Cho is Cedric’s. A best friend of four years, a sister, and someone who’s presumably been a friendly competitor for years, and friends and dating for who knows how long.

Why did Krum not have anyone better than the girl he just met and took to prom? This can go one of two ways. One is simple: Pick someone else. A friend, a relative, anyone from Durmstrang that Krum actually knows.

Two, the option I find more compelling: expand on this. Let’s get this boy a backstory and personality. How isolated is Viktor Krum? He’s a professional athlete; that cannot be easy to balance with school. At best, he has no time for a social life, and hasn’t for years by this point. He has teammates, he has classmates and colleagues - does he have friends? It seems unlikely.

Hermione stands out. She wants to know him for reasons other than his fame and prestige, and she actually seems to like him as a person. She also effectively has a character witness - she’s been friends with The Boy Who Lived for years now and it’s never been about the fame. Krum can trust her, can genuinely like her.

So we’re also going to skip forward a bit and past the concept of Harry being Krum’s romantic competitor. They’re both teenagers in an international spotlight and who can be very socially awkward. They bond! They become friends! They laugh over Rita Skeeter’s article about their love triangle together!

And okay, Ron and Hermione have some issues and some drama. They’re teenagers, it’s practically required. But you know who doesn’t? Literally all the parents. Molly Weasley has known about Ron’s feelings for Hermione for years, even if that’s mostly in the form of aggressively dancing around the topic with the grace of a teenager with hormones. But more importantly than that - she knows Hermione, she knows Harry, and she knows Hermione’s parents and Harry’s aunt. So no, she doesn’t take Skeeter’s article at face value. Beyond the fact that Harry and Hermione clearly have nothing going on, is it a crime for a teenager to date a fellow teenage hot professional athlete who will only be around for six months? No! Have fun, Hermione! She and the Grangers and Petunia exchange incandescent letters, but without any anger at each other - can they believe what this tabloid reporter had to say about their children, these kids they’ve known for years? Unacceptable.

The Grangers, because they seem like that sort of family, look up how to sue a magical newspaper for libel. Every child gets exactly the same sized chocolate easter eggs, because Molly Weasley is a decent human being.

The conspiracy behind the scenes continues, with the trio and Sirius meeting up the same as before. Because this is important context, stage-setting: not just that Voldemort’s supporters were never really stamped out, but the fact that the people who did it weren’t really ethical about their attempts. This isn’t a story about the righteous government destroying all evil. This is about an evil group continuing to flourish without their leader despite the government’s best attempts to pretend everything is fine, plus the fact that maybe this isn’t all black and white and the government aren’t necessarily the good guys or even on Harry’s side.

Harry already heard about exactly how Sirius’s conviction went down, after his and Petunia’s investigations in his third year. That didn’t exactly instill him with a lot of faith in the magical justice system. Having some faces and names to attach to that story sure doesn’t help matters.

The third task comes along and shit gets weirder, featuring insane Barty Crouch, visions of Voldemort featuring sneaky beetle tabloid reporter, and Cornelius Fudge featuring yet more in-canon racism. In some ways, the repeated allegories of racism in the earlier books are Rowling’s most effective social commentaries. Whether it’s muggle-borns or part humans, when it’s done well, it’s not half bad a message for a children’s book.

But damn she made so many ways for wizards to be bigots.

Exposition bomb via Dumbledore’s extracted memories, and there’s an important detail here: Harry’s connection to Voldemort via the failed killing curse. It’s really vital to Dumbledore’s character that he hasn’t figured out the horcrux thing yet. Dumbledore’s fucking scrambling for information here. He had the first clue to horcruxes when Harry brought him Tom Riddle’s diary. He’s had a year and a half, he’s heard “neither can live while the other survives,” it’s possible he pulled more together by now. But holy fucking shit a Dumbledore who knows right now that he is keeping this fourteen year old alive for the sole purpose of him someday dying to kill Voldemort is not an option. Not if we want him to have any moral redeeming value. The later books do their work (dubious in spots as it is) to make Dumbledore a grey character. This unbalances that careful tipping point a bit too much.

I cannot express enough that in this story, Dumbledore has no idea what he is doing. Magic’s weird, Voldemort’s weird, Harry’s weird - there’s a lot going on here. However, as evidenced in this chapter and many others, he is very good at sounding wise and looking like he knows what’s going on.

The third task approaches, Harry stews in anxiety, and the families arrive. Harry is again delightfully surprised by the arrival of Molly and Bill Weasley. He’s also even more shocked by the appearance of Aunt Petunia, setting her first ever steps on Hogwarts grounds, and Petunia’s pet dog, Snuffles.

Petunia and Sirius are quite honestly a terrifying duo. They get shit done. And sometimes that shit is smuggling a wanted mass murderer into a massive wizarding event under the guise of a sweet middle-aged muggle lady.

The facial expressions of everyone in on this particular conspiracy must be incredible. Overall though it’s quite a sweet and heartwarming visit, though, as her sister’s son and her sister’s friend get to show her around the place where Lily spent so much time. There are tears, hugs, and so many near misses of someone nearly seeing human Sirius.

Now imagine the face of Severus Snape facing down both undercover animagus Sirius Black and Petunia Evans Dursley at the same time. Do it. Lily Evans’s sister staring him dead in the eye and saying “This is the family pet, Snuffles,” and him just having to play along.

The maze goes down same as before, Crouch sabotaging Harry’s competitors to get Harry to the finish line first. Except it’s a tie. And this is the heartbreaking part. They’re teenagers, they’re fourteen and seventeen. They’re kids. This is still an adventure, for the few remaining instants before their hands touch that portkey. Harry’s got a bit of a crush, Cedric’s a bit impressed by this scrappy kid who’s kept up throughout the tournament, they both believe in fairness, both have helped each other reach this point. So they grab the portkey together.

And Cedric dies.

This isn’t that kind of fix-it. Cedric’s death is tragic and unnecessary and a waste and that’s the point. Cedric did nothing to get to this point except do his best, trust, and care. And Voldemort has him killed for the crime of getting in the way. He’s called the spare. Voldemort doesn’t even know who he is and does not care. Because Voldemort is a different scope of villain than the last three books, and everything’s about to change, for Harry and for the readers. Cedric Diggory’s death is for a reason, and it’s terrible and necessary for it.

Voldemort is returned, the Death Eaters assemble, this follows canon lines. Voldemort makes a tactical mistake for the sake of drama, their wands meet, and Harry escapes, with horror and shock and Cedric’s body.

He reappears before the crowds, and in the confusion “Mad-Eye Moody” steals him away.

The way Crouch’s plot unfolds is simply incredible. A dubiously sane man who’d been mind controlled for years spent an entire school year impersonating a total stranger, around a number of that stranger’s former friends and associates, with a method that required incredible amounts of coordination, timing, and effort. Dumbledore only figured it out after the third task. Even with Polyjuice components going missing and repeated shit going wrong, such as losing track of his dad on Hogwarts grounds. Albus Dumbledore and all the teachers at Hogwarts had no idea that this man was an impostor until the last days of school when he tried to kill a student.

Even after the ferret thing.

I’m not saying they figure out the whole Barty Crouch Jr decades-long conspiracy, but like. No.

So here’s how it goes this time around:

Dumbledore likes spies, and watching and waiting and not tipping his hand too soon. It becomes clear pretty early on that the Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody who came to Hogwarts is not, in fact, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody. But, he doesn’t know who he is and why he’s there. So he watches, since for most of the year there’s little to no indication that he’s up to do harm. He’s teaching genuine lessons to students, occasionally crossing some ethical lines but generally in a way that can be explained as a bit of magical PTSD from the war. He has no clear agenda and no clear identity. All of his hints to Harry and manipulations of the tournament have been through different proxies in different ways, with no clear trail. Dumbledore likes the long con and not revealing his hand until he’s sure of the outcome. Watching and waiting is safe, is a smart strategy, and does actually work since they pull the plug on the whole charade just barely in time to keep him from committing a murder.

Although, well. Dumbledore’s plans are imperfect. If Crouch had been watched closer, had been stopped…. maybe the heavily influenced chain of events that began with Harry’s name being put in the Goblet of Fire and ended with Cedric Diggory dead on the cold dirt of a graveyard could have been prevented. Maybe not. Maybe Voldemort could have still come back, maybe he had contingencies in place, maybe that part’s more set in stone. But the collateral damage…

Hogwarts has cracks around the edges. Cedric Diggory’s death was a senseless tragedy, and maybe it could have been prevented. Harry’s unending faith in Dumbledore is being chipped away, bit by bit.

Harry’s confrontation with the Minister of Magic is a little less confrontational. Oh, Harry’s fucking pissed, don’t get me wrong. Fudge is still trying to cover up the death of an innocent student and the return of a terrible evil for the sake of politics. He’s furious. But he’s not surprised about it. There’s also the added bit of fury in that during this showdown, Fudge, who’s repeatedly showed bias and bigotry, cannot be responding well to the fact that one of the people calling for accountability is a muggle. A muggle! In wizarding politics!

Yeah, his treatment of Petunia does not help with the whole situation. The government trusts the tabloids, trusts former Death Eaters because they have wealth and status, mistrust hard evidence and anyone who associates with non-wizards. Fudge has one priority, and it is to keep the status quo in place. Harry and Dumbledore are trying to make changes? They are wrong, and they are dangerous.

The wizarding government is fundamentally broken. Nothing about the way it currently stands, the way it has stood since the fall of Voldemort and the death of the Potters, is viable for the future. None of it. Yet again, hold that thought for a few books. We’ll build on that.

Dumbledore dispatches Sirius to reform the Order of the Phoenix. Sirius says “Yep, sounds good, let me grab my sister-in-law.” Because that network of contacts from fourteen years ago is not dead, is not splintered. Petunia Dursley began to reconnect the fractured dots three years ago when her eleven year old nephew asked about his family, and with the help of Sirius and Molly has been fostering new connections since.

After all, what could Death Eaters or the Ministry possibly consider of interest or potential subversion in the muggle post?

The year comes to a close, quiet and careful and grieving. Harry sees Cedric’s parents, surreptitious plans are made, Krum and Fleur say their goodbyes and plans to write. They and the trio are in general on much better terms this go-round.

They set off on the train back home.

And then Hermione Fucking Granger pulls out a jar with an actual human person in it. And you know what? We’re keeping this. Because a very interesting thing about Hermione is she’s occasionally incredibly brutal. I mean, at eleven years old she lit a man on fire as a distraction. She’s not just the clever one, the smart one, and she’s not always right. She is a fourteen year old girl with a fucking bone to pick against this woman and some pretty alarming creativity.

It’s almost more impressive that Skeeter goes along with it, although I’d love to know how well “an eighth grader sussed out the secret I’ve been keeping for decades and trapped me in a jar to blackmail me” would’ve gone along with the other, more legal hit to her reputation. This is going to be a hell of a memoir once the statute of limitations expires.

Hermione also has a remarkably good track record of going “Oh hey! I have a theory I need to test without telling anyone what it is or where I’m going, despite being extremely dangerous!” and actually having that work out. I mean, she got petrified the one time for it, but it still worked in the long run. No! Stop it! Communicate your shit, work together, bring backup!

They arrive at King’s Cross Station, Harry gives Fred and George his winnings, and he sets off with his aunt and uncle into a world and story that are fundamentally different than they were before that one fateful moment in the center of the maze.

Chapter Text

We’re yet again back at Privet Drive, and again a much safer, happier space than in canon. Okay, not exactly happy - it’s hard to be happy when the boy you had a crush on just got murdered in front of you, by the man who tried to kill you and successfully killed your parents as well as many other people close to you, and you’re being slandered by the entire federal government.

But like, at least Harry doesn’t have to get his news from hiding in the shrubbery.

The Dursley-Potter-Black family talks. They all keep an eye on the muggle news together, Sirius splits his time between Privet Drive and the Wizarding World and carries communications back and forth, and Petunia’s letter-writing network has expanded fully into the Order of the Phoenix.

Harry knows he’s being watched. He doesn’t like it in the slightest, but it makes sense. He’s kind of a big deal and the target of both Voldemort and the government, and he’s a teenager who’s still not allowed to use magic unsupervised.

Which, on one hand I get the limitations on letting children use superpowers. But also, in cases like this, they’re really setting up muggle-borns for failure. Which isn’t a surprise, considering. But these magic-tracking spells are so vague? They only track where magic took place, not who performed it, which has already been demonstrated as a fucking problem with Dobby’s clever manipulation of this system in book two. It also means that children in households with wizarding adults effectively have free rein to do whatever the fuck they want and have it blamed on the adult. And there’s the assumption that these wizarding adults will enforce the rules, but like, why should they? Yeah, sure, they probably want their kids to not be setting things on fire with their mind, but what parent would frown upon a kid cleaning their room by magic if it means they cleaned their room?

So wizarding kids have almost no regulation of their magic, and this law solely can be enforced upon muggle-borns or half-bloods like Harry, living with the muggle half. Which. Great to see yet another example of this government’s legislated racism! Let’s emphasize that a little more this time around. It’s a feature, not a bug.

But anyway, back to Privet Drive. Harry’s a heavily targeted teenager with limited means to defend himself. So he’s being watched, and he knows. For one, he’s got a Petunia who gives a shit and Sirius around him most of the time. Talk about helicopter parental-figures. But they can’t always be there, they need to make a system. And that’s not hard, because those two are in touch with a lot of people who care about Harry’s wellbeing.

And one of those people is Arabella Figg. Who Harry knows, as his long-time neighbor, and also a casual friend of his aunt. Because once she started her post network, it didn’t take long to figure out she had an ally in the same damn neighborhood. And more than an ally - someone she could relate to, because as a woman who grew up feeling excluded from the magical world that her sister was a part of and she wasn’t, she has a lot in common with a Squib.

And oh boy, we’ve come to yet another game of Joanne’s Bigotry Bingo! We’ve covered racism, homophobia, we’re gonna get into way more, but it’s time for the ableism. Because in the social setting of the wizarding world, Squibs are disabled. They can’t do magic. And to the greater wizarding world and evidently Joanne Kathleen Rowling, that’s unacceptable.

Squibs are second class citizens at best, and we see this over and over again. Argus Filch is a janitor. And I need to be eminently fucking clear here: there is nothing wrong with being a janitor, and the world would not function without them. But there is a problem with the way our culture treats janitors - as lesser, as dirty, as incapable of doing something “better.” And this is all emphasized with Filch. He’s hated, he’s looked down upon, he’s mocked. In the second book, he’s ridiculed and shamed for trying to learn magic, despite his inability, for trying to become what society says he should be.

And we see this as well with Mrs. Figg. She’s a really important asset to Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix! As a squib, she’s able to integrate into muggle society, where she’s seen as normal. This is something it’s been made eminently clear most wizards from wizarding cultures can’t do (pants, goddamnit!). But she’s able to fit in and be an extremely useful spy and lookout, not just in spite of her disability, but because of it.

Does the book acknowledge this? No.

She’s seen as lucky to be included in the Order, in this part of the wizarding world, at all. She’s an auxiliary to the organization at best, specifically pulled into this by Dumbledore and his machinations. And after her dramatic reveal as a member of the Order, she’s still shamed and emphasized as an outsider. Also, what’s with the crazy cat lady thing? Can we not have one female character who’s not subjected to some sort of judgmental stereotype?

So we’re fixing that. Arabella Figg is a key part of the Order of the Phoenix, and that’s acknowledged this time around. Because this time, the leader isn’t an all-powerful but distant Dumbledore. There’s three ringleaders, in fact - Petunia, Sirius, and Molly. One muggle and two heavily emphasized traitors to their pure-blood race. Yeah, they’re going to be a little more chill about diversity.

Arabella Figg is an acknowledged player in the effort to keep Harry safe, along with Petunia and Sirius. This might not help much - listen, Harry’s fifteen. Even if he knows why he’s under surveillance, he’s sure as hell not going to like it. But it’s at least going to lessen the betrayal when he finds out the random old lady he knew growing up has been secretly spying on him the whole time. Since it’s, you know, not a secret.

And that reveal would still happen, because Harry still gets attacked. It’s a little less awful than in canon - for one thing, Dudley and Harry aren’t at total odds the entire time. Dudley’s not making homophobic jabs at Harry’s traumatic nightmares - again, Joanne, we know Dudley’s supposed to be a dick, but that was fully unnecessary. They might not be best friends, but they grew up together not being pitted against each other, so they probably get along. There’s even a distinct possibility that after spending time around Sirius, Dudley knows what a dementor is and that he can’t see them.

He still might not be rational about that part, though. He and Vernon still aren’t comfortable with magic, and a teenager being faced with a creeping, incessant despair and hopelessness probably isn’t going to think about a random magic fact from his cousin’s weird magic godfather.

So they’re attacked, and Harry defends himself, and succeeds. And gets backup pretty immediately. Arabella did her job and alerted the others, who could help. This time, it’s not Mundungus fucking Fletcher.

There’s no reason for the man to be in this Order, period. Fletcher is a petty criminal with almost nothing positive to contribute. Everyone hates him! Sure, he has criminal connections, but plenty of the Order do, and there’s not very often that seems to have been relevant. This man’s involvement comes back to bite our protagonists multiple times, even fatally! His one role in the Order is his extreme loyalty to Dumbledore, and the later reveal that he’s someone Dumbledore can manipulate.

So in this differently organized Order, nope, not good enough. Sorry Mundungus - even if maybe Dumbledore works with him and his connections from time to time, he’s certainly not a member, and definitely not one esteemed enough to protect Harry.

You know who is down the street and has extensive experience with Dementors? SIRIUS. He can come help and back Harry up!

Although, this is another interesting detail of the Trace spell. Any magic Sirius does at Privet Drive is going to be blamed on Harry. Cue sitcom-like shenanigans as pureblooded wizard Sirius Black, living part-time in suburban England and banned from using magic, gets taught how to use a dishwasher.

But hey, Harry’s already committed illegal magic, that ship has sailed! Second patronus time!

So Harry and Dudley are maybe slightly less fucked up when they, Sirius, and Arabella all make their way back home together.

Harry is still accused of underage magic and bombarded with letters, although slightly less chaotically with multiple adults with their shit together on his side. The Dursleys don’t turn on him, and they don’t threaten to kick him out.

They do make plans for him to stay with Sirius, though, because this has clearly shown that Privet Drive is not safe for him, and his presence is also endangering his family. It may not be safer for him in the wizarding world, but the risk of collateral damage is less.

(And what a thing for a teenager to have to consider. The trauma, Joanne!)

Harry arrives to a rather different Number 12, Grimmauld Place than might be expected. For one, Sirius is not entirely on house arrest and has been spending quite a lot of time out and about in England, so the mood is significantly lighter. For another, they get an earlier start of prepping the house for something, whether a base of operations or just a quiet place for Sirius and Lupin to spend time, which means it is not quite so infested with magical wildlife.

This has some significant impacts on Harry’s general stress levels. Harry Potter is a hormonal fifteen year old, and that’s not a fun time even when your entire government and an embodiment of evil are not both out to get you. Harry spends a not insignificant part of this novel yelling at people, and who could blame him! But teenage life’s a lot easier when you have more supportive adults around you, they’re not all totally miserable, and they’re not shunting you off to fight magical nuisances and clean instead of telling you what the fuck is going on.

Okay, they’re still not telling him everything that is going on. That’s a recurring theme in Harry’s life. But at least this time, they’re less inclined to keep him out of the loop for Dumbledore’s sake. There’s more concern about his safety and above all his right to a childhood. And they’re not really wrong about that. But there’s still consequences to this, as well meaning as it may be (or at least more with Harry’s wellbeing in mind, rather than Dumbledore’s plots).

Steep, severe consequences.

The day of the hearing comes and this truly needs no changes. The wizarding government is corrupt and racist and self-serving at detriment of all others and this is a driving force of the series as a whole. Voldemort’s return is frightening, and destabilizing, and quite frankly would make things very difficult for a number of people in power. So of course it’s in their best interest to discredit Harry.

Harry was a useful symbol for years, and now he’s a person with experiences and opinions, and that makes him a threat.

Never mind that the actual threat is the mass-murdering Dark Lord who totally murdered a teenager a few months ago. Minor details.

So the Ministry try to sabotage Harry’s hearing, and Dumbledore swoops in as Harry’s legal defense, and all this raises a hell of a lot of questions about wizarding Britain’s legal system. Thankfully, the wizarding court system seems slightly less corrupt than the Ministry, but when do they get involved anyway?

Actually, why am I even asking about the legal system when we established how recently Wizarding Britain was basically under martial law and resulted in numerous wizards getting thrown into psychological torture Alcatraz without a trial. Odds are good things have not fully recovered from that.

We could just leave it at the people in power are heavily motivated to maintain the status quo to keep their power and pay off and manipulate the tabloids to sway public opinion to their side. That’s one of the most rational, reasonable pieces of world building established in this entire novel, or even series. But I do really want to read a dissertation on what the eleven year long First Wizarding War did to destabilize and restructure the entire government and culture of Britain.

I also didn’t realize it was eleven years long. That’s too fucking long!

Harry is acquitted by the somewhat-reasonable Wizengamot after his farce of a hearing and home free, and it’s time to prepare for school. And here we go again, with a lack of communication causing interpersonal stress. Because Dumbledore’s not talking to Harry, and now he gave his two best friends leadership positions and not him, so does Dumbledore not trust him anymore?

No! Actually, this is one of the more reasonable judgement calls Dumbledore has made about Harry, in that yep he does not need more stress right now! But good fucking job thinking that one through, my guy. That totally backfired because Dumbledore didn’t fucking explain shit!

So Harry’s a little less stressed and angry when he leaves for Hogwarts, but not by much. People aren’t keeping him in the loop about his own life, the adults around him are also scared, and the government’s still out to get him. And it’s under these circumstances we meet Luna.

Luna Lovegood my beloved. Luna is such a breath of fresh air after everything we’ve seen of wizarding culture. She’s weird and strange and an outsider and she does not give a fuck about it. It’s just who she is.

Luna is allowed to be unabashedly weird in a world where everyone aggressively insists that the bizarre ways they live their lives (PANTS!) is normal, actually, but whatever she’s got going on is too far. Luna exists outside societal norms, and Luna’s RIGHT.

This book’s core isn’t Voldemort, and is only secondarily Harry’s teenage hormones (we’ll get there, book six). It is the status quo versus the rebels, oppression versus freedom, suppression versus learning. The system is broken. Those in power exist to keep their power, rather than fix problems or help people. Our protagonists are teenagers, weirdos, outcasts, and misfits, fighting the uncaring and unfeeling bureaucracy around them.

Luna is weird, and odd, even by her semi-outcast and rebel friends’ standards. Luna believes in invisible creatures and historical nonsense and concepts that make Hermione want to tear out her hair. But Luna is right. Luna sees the thestrals. Luna has connections no one else does. Luna has ideas that sound insane, but work.

Luna Lovegood is the key representative of one end of this ideological spectrum. Dolores Umbridge is the other.

The thing about Umbridge - the really tricky thing to balance - is there’s parts of her character that are perfect for this story. She’s the representative of the government’s desire to gain and keep power above all else, to suppress any perceived threat to their status quo. She imposes her and the Ministry’s will on Hogwarts, she shuts down actual learning of Defense Against the Dark Arts because that would require accepting that true dangers are out there, she’s a blatant racist against non or part-humans, she literally tortures children for daring to speak against her.

Umbridge is also an amazing villain because she’s real. Very, very few people (especially children) have met an equivalent to Voldemort in their lives, an all-powerful dark lord trying to destroy society as we know it. But many, especially children, have met an Umbridge. Someone who uses their power over you for the sake of power, who hates and restricts and power-trips based on her own hatred and fears. Especially children, who have so little control and influence on their world, who are very vulnerable to people looking to exert their own control and influence. Umbridge is real, or at least aspects of her are, and that’s what makes her such a powerful and impactful and hateable villain.

But uh. Hey Joanne? Why the fuck did you have to bring up the pink?

There are two key problems with Umbridge as a character. One is the frequent tendency in this series for ugly to equal evil. She’s toad-like, flabby, wide faced and stubby fingered. This is emphasized heavily in this book as well as others. This is really not the thing to be focusing on when to reiterate, she tortures children? But these two details are tied together. She’s ugly because she’s evil, she’s evil because she’s ugly.

But the far, far more prevalent detail is her femininity. Yet again, to JKR, there are right and wrong ways to be a woman. Although honestly, throughout the series, it seems that there are very few right ways. The right way is Hermione, is Ginny, at least situationally. A book-focused girl who is friends with very few other girls her age and causes a stir when she wears a dress at the Yule Ball, a younger sister of six brothers who is a sports champion. Neither is outstandingly attractive, outside the perspective of their love interests, and neither tries to be. Two girls who both lose a lot of their esteem, their respect in the story, when they become interested in boys, and are constantly “not like other girls” compared to their peers.

Then there’s women like Luna, like McGonagall, who are almost fully divorced from their gender. They never have romances within the confines of the narrative. Their gender is wholly irrelevant the majority of the time. They’re skilled witches and important characters and other than certain stylistic choices like Luna’s eccentric (not stylish, just straight weird) earrings, if you changed their names and pronouns it would change nothing about the story.

Which, speaking of. We’re not doing that. But Luna Lovegood, our eccentric, our misfit, our outcast from society who lives her life the way she wants and couldn’t give less of a fuck about expectations? Who cares about her family and her friends and not what a single person thinks of her? Yeah, this time ‘round Luna’s trans.

Seriously, she couldn’t be more queer-coded if we tried. And we definitely know Rowling didn’t.

Anyway. So this is the way to be a woman, in Joanne’s world. At least in the early 2000s. As an intrinsic part of yourself, but never remarked upon. Keeping up with the boys, not like other girls, a Strong Female Protagonist.

It’s a very, very specific insight onto the time period, that’s for sure. I mean, JKR published as JKR because she’d be taken more seriously in the industry if she wasn’t obviously a woman. But this escalates and doubles down and reinforces a very specific way to cope with sexism.

Umbridge is feminine to an extreme. Her entire attire and office are pink, she likes frills and bows, she has decorations of kittens on saucers hanging from her walls. (Side note, this is the second woman judged for liking cats in this book?) And again, this femininity is not just vilified, but is the representation of villainy. Umbridge is to be hated for her cruelty, for her actions, but also for her mannerisms and fashion choices that are too stereotypically female. And it’s not just that Rowling hates visible femininity - like, okay, she does, but it’s not just that.

We saw this with Skeeter, just a book ago - one of the worst things a woman can do in Joanne’s world is try too hard. Umbridge’s short stubby hands are contrasted with her garishly feminine jewelry. You don’t have to be attractively feminine - maybe you shouldn’t be attractively feminine - but, especially if you’re societally considered unattractive, god forbid you try to be attractive. The only thing worse than being ugly is trying too hard to be something you’re not.

Which is both a callback parallel to how she sees disability and some genuinely quite interesting insight into her current leadership of a hate movement.

So how do we do this, in this story? Balance this fascinating villain concept with Rowling’s weird and heavy handed sexism? It’s honestly so easy. Keep her character, her personality, her role in the government. Keep just about all of her actions! We just have to change the aesthetics. We have something to work with, even - Fudge is routinely described as a hybrid of old-fashioned muggle and typical wizarding in clothing choice, as are many officials at the ministry. So we go with that! Align her sartorially as well as ideologically, bring in those 1930s/40s fashion choices and bright purples and greens and cloaks. Yeah, okay, we can keep some pink in there, but it’s not her entire identity.

Umbridge has the potential to be a great villain, and is in fact almost the only woman villain in the series besides Bellatrix. We can make her a villain because she’s a bigoted power-hungry asshole, not because she’s a woman.

We can also play up her foil to McGonagall without bringing aesthetics into it, as their gender expressions are contrasted against each other in the book. McGonagall and Umbridge are played against each other through the whole novel, and that’s great! Because McGonagall is strict, and an enforcer of rules, but she has reasons. She’s kind. Her rules exist to keep her charges safe, primarily, and to help them learn. Umbridge, meanwhile, creates rules simply to reinforce her own power, to exert control. She actively seeks to harm the students to maintain her own power. And McGonagall isn’t above some rebellious mischief - as a child, my favorite scene in this book was her “It unscrews the other way” to Peeves. She’s nuanced! She’s reasonable! She’s human! She doesn’t torture children!

Although the child torture is apparently not disqualifying for the job. I still haven’t forgotten not-Moody and the ferret.

Okay, back up. We were at the arrival to Hogwarts. Harry makes a new friend, attends the feast, and sees more of the ripples his conflict with the Ministry is having on the world around him. The government is interfering with Hogwarts, his roommate of four years believes the newspaper and thinks Harry’s a liar. This has gone from abstract and awful to immediate and intimate, infecting every aspect of his life.

And on top of this, he’s got homework.

Harry’s facing libel in the press, gossip around campus, interference by the government, and a defense class that explicitly refuses to teach him any defense. And when he snaps, because that’s a hell of a lot for anyone to deal with, he gets torture detention.

I’m not changing the torture detention. That’s fucking metal and a really good representation of Umbridge’s entire deal - she’s power-hungry and bigoted and supporting this oppressive regime, but on top of that all, she’s personally cruel. She didn’t have to torture a child for disagreeing with her. But she happily did it anyway, knows it won’t stop him, and is happy to keep doing it.

Harry balances literal torture with high school team sports in the most teenager aspect of this book series. No, seriously, a real plot point is “I can’t attend tryouts, my teacher will be torturing me that day, and is specifically doing it to keep me from tryouts.” Harry’s priorities are so out of whack but work so well to ground this series as what it is. Sports team drama should be Harry’s priority, he is fifteen years old! His best friend making the team or not should be the most he has to worry about, and it says something that he holds this so highly in his life.

Quidditch is Harry’s escape, his freedom from everything that the world has to throw at him, and he sees missing tryouts as literally worse than carving words into his hand. And this again is what makes Umbridge such a realistic villain - okay, no, I’m really hoping none of us had torture detention, but many readers have had an adult, a person in power, keep them from the things they love out of nothing but cruel spite.

Harry misses tryouts, Ron makes the team anyway, there’s a triumph in Ron’s ongoing quest to be good enough for his best friend. And what a parallel to the start of the school year, of Ron becoming a prefect - Harry and Ron are constantly struggling to be enough for one another. Ron to be special enough, Harry to be normal enough. It’s the one ongoing rift in their otherwise unbreakable friendship.

Someone get both these boys therapy.

The post is being intercepted, the tabloids are continuing to be tabloids, odd things are happening to members of the Order of the Phoenix, and Percy Weasley is an absolute asshole.

Except not as much as he could be. In canon, Percy completely abandons his family, fully sides with the Ministry. And for what, ambition? He cuts them off entirely, except for the occasional warning to stop supporting Harry, stop being weird, if they want a career and a future. And I’m sorry, that just does not track for a child raised by Arthur and Molly Weasley.

So we add some nuance. Yes, Percy is ambitious. He grew up poor, with his father mocked and shamed for his hobbies and choices, with his family seen as traitors to pureblood wizarding society. That cannot be easy to live with! It makes perfect sense that he wants something better for himself, that he has ambition, that he wants a position of influence and respect. And the path he takes in canon is reasonable - from prefect to junior government official. What doesn’t make sense is how he treats his family along the way.

So Percy is conflicted. He’s part of the government now, and if he wants to be successful, he needs to get in line with their status quo. And their stance is that Harry is a liar, is a fraud, is a lunatic trying to undermine the government. But Harry is also the child Percy’s known since they were eleven and fifteen respectively, the child who stayed with his family on many occasions, the child he’s seen deal with some very challenging situations in his life already and handle them the best he can. Harry’s practically yet another younger brother, and I can’t believe that Percy would just get onboard with the Ministry’s slander.

Similarly, but less dramatically, I don’t think he’d cut off his entire family just for supporting Dumbledore. Percy spent seven years of his life viewing Dumbledore as a trusted leadership figure, and the Ministry shouldn’t be able to just reverse that entirely. Certainly not enough for him to fully side against his family over it.

So he doesn’t know what to do. He loves his family, likes his basically adoptive brother, but wants to succeed. He doesn’t want to throw his whole career, what he’s worked toward for years, away entirely. So there are compromises made. He doesn’t speak with Harry or his family in public, but he still writes letters. He still tells Ron to be careful, but not to cut Harry off, just be aware of what he’s facing. He keeps his Christmas sweater tucked away in his closet, but doesn’t send it back entirely. And maybe he doesn’t fully reject the Ministry’s propaganda (they’re the government, surely they wouldn’t just lie) but he’s at least extremely confused, trying to fit the Ministry’s words with the boy he’s known for years.

Harry has a better support network, is facing less isolation, and has some resources at least willing to tell him what the fuck is going on. He speaks with Sirius, gets some background on Umbridge and her truly astonishing levels of racism - and again, it’s personal. She’s not just racist against nonhumans in an abstract way (although boy is she that) she’s responsible for the laws keeping Harry’s other uncle from holding a job after he was outed.

HMMM, OUR VILLAIN IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR BIGOTED LEGISLATION MAKING MARGINALIZED PEOPLES’ LIVES HARDER? WILD.

And Sirius has more information about Umbridge’s true role at Hogwarts, and it’s not really a shock. She is a spy watching the entire school, waiting for an excuse for the Ministry to arrest Dumbledore, to shut down anything to go against the government’s values. And it’s not just them - she is intentionally sabotaging their Defense Against the Dark Arts education. But it goes deeper than that — it’s not just about how teaching self-defense means acknowledging that there’s something to defend against. It’s that Fudge thinks Dumbledore is trying to build his own personal army.

Of eleven to seventeen year old children. Trained by the likes of Gilderoy Lockhart. But hey, it’s a great example of how Fudge’s fears and paranoia are undermining his ability to rationalize, to see reason.

Also, Hermione did set an adult on fire at age eleven, so there’s that.

The conflict between Umbridge and Harry escalates, with Umbridge imposing even more arbitrary rules on the school and inspecting classes to make sure they’re teaching the “right” things. Harry is a characteristically snarky teenager about this (and genuinely hilarious, it must be said) and unsurprisingly, faces more consequences, more detention, and more pissed off Quidditch captains. Everyone is highly exasperated that he cannot keep his mouth shut, but that’s just one of the perils of being a fifteen year old.

And Hermione has a brilliant idea, as is her fashion. If Umbridge won’t teach them, if she’s sabotaging their education (a crime Hermione cannot abide) well. They’ll just have to do it themselves! And by they, she means Harry, who has a knack for it and also the credentials of surviving Voldemort twice.

Not sure the infant one counted in this context, but it makes a great selling point.

So they meet in the Hog’s Head and Harry suddenly becomes a leader of a resistance movement. Well, okay, it’s a school club. But then Umbridge bans clubs, and now it’s a proper rebellion. Harry is the leader, and Hermione the organizer. And Hermione’s ruthless streak shines through again - her enchanted parchment that will reveal anyone who betrays them is ingenious, if dubiously ethical.

And here is the delightful pettiness that comes from pissing off a pile of teenagers, and the dangers of giving them ideas. Teens are so easy to underestimate, but they’re clever, and talented, and truly nothing motivates them like spite and the knowledge that the people in power are genuinely afraid of their potential. You think Dumbledore’s building an army? Well, he’s not. But we are!

Well, if an army was just a bunch of kids reasonably concerned about self defense. But it’s the principle of the thing!

So Dumbledore’s Army begins their education in self-defense with the basics, with disarming. Which is pretty telling, all things considered. It’s not flashy, it’s quite simple. And it’s nonviolent and nonaggressive, just pure self-defense. Which is, you know, the whole point of why they’re here. They’re genuinely not trying to form an army, they just want to keep themselves safe.

Also, Harry used that spell just months ago to kick Voldemort’s ass, so it’s pretty practical.

They cover more spells, all defensive in nature - stunning, impeding, all things to protect, not to harm. Harry’s an effective teacher, and lessons go quite well. Their use of the Room of Requirement as well as innovations like Hermione’s coins to set meeting dates keep them secret, keep them safe.

Which, okay, is super unrealistic. This many teenagers are terrible at sneaking around and keeping secrets. But this is a fantasy story, and a fantasy of rebelling against repression, so we’re going to keep that.

Quidditch season begins, and then Harry’s quidditch season immediately ends when he and the Weasley twins attack Malfoy over a slight to the Weasleys. Not their smartest move, but hey, teenage hormones. Ginny replaces Harry as Gryffindor Seeker, having been secretly practicing for years, and beginning both her quidditch career and her recognition in Harry’s eyes as something other than his best friend’s little sister. She’s a peer. And a really good quidditch player! And both those facts will be relevant later.

Christmas break comes, and Harry and Cho have a conversation, but do not kiss under the mistletoe. We’ll get back to that later as well.

Harry dreams he is a snake who violently attacks Mr. Weasley. He takes this to Dumbledore, who confirms that Mr. Weasley is critically injured and is taken to the hospital. Merry Christmas. He’s recovering at St Mungo’s when Harry and company overhear something they really should not have, or maybe should - that Mad-Eye Moody thinks Harry may be possessed by Voldemort.

Harry deals with this completely reasonably and rationally by fully isolating himself from everyone in his life. And okay, this is partly a teenage reaction, but we’ll talk later about how he’s not the only one dealing with this the same way! Until Hermione and Ginny show up to make him get his shit together. Since Harry just happens to know the only person possessed by Voldemort in the last decade, who’s living in the same fucking house as him, and didn’t think to ask her! Teenagers, man. Establishing that nope, he and Ginny have had totally different experiences, we are back in business and Harry rejoins the others.

Okay, so he’s not being possessed, but there’s clearly something going on here. Harry shouldn’t have been able to see that, he’s no seer and that’s not normal even by wizarding standards. But seriously, Dumbledore, Snape’s really the best Occlumency teacher you could come up with?

I do not have the time or the word count to get into Snape’s whole Deal yet. But really, Dumbledore? You’re giving the incredibly sensitive job of reading Harry’s mind and repeatedly pushing his mental defenses to the guy who clearly fucking hates him, and it’s mutual? Yeah, this is a recipe for a healthy and effective teaching environment. And again, this is going to bite them in the ass, because Harry’s again in a situation where he’s isolated from authority figures he actually trusts. He’s not going to tell Snape shit.

Okay, back to Harry’s personal life and teenage hormones. Yep, it’s time to talk to Cho. She and Harry go to Hogsmeade together, and they do not step a single foot near Madam Puddifoot’s, just hit the Three Broomsticks like everyone else. They do get a more secluded table, although not for any romantic reasons. For crying reasons.

Here’s the thing about Cho and Harry. They barely knew each other before the D.A. They were Quidditch rivals, and probably had some distant but mutual respect for each other. Their one singular link was Cedric. And we know for a fact that Cedric’s death fucked them both up BAD. Cho watched her amazingly talented boyfriend go off to compete in a challenge he had all possibility of winning (and did technically win) and come back as a body. Harry watched the guy he didn’t know too well but respected and who may have been his bi awakening murdered in front of him. Cho keeps crying at the drop of a hat, Harry’s having nightmares. Neither one of them is okay about this.

This is their common ground. Everyone is scared, everyone is mourning, but it is personal for the two of them in a way that it isn’t for anyone else.

Did Harry have a crush on Cho? Yes! Harry’s canonical type is skilled quidditch players, and I’m never going to stop finding that funny. He was a fourteen or fifteen year old boy, she was a very pretty fifteen or sixteen year old girl who could compete with him at his favorite sport. Did Cho have a crush on Harry? Yeah, no. Cho’s grieving and not processing emotions very well. She’s sixteen, and her boyfriend got horribly murdered last year! That would be hard for anyone to deal with, and Harry’s far from the only character in this series plagued by teenage hormones. Harry is inextricably linked to Cedric and Cedric’s death, so no, Cho doesn’t have any real romantic interest in him.

Cho just wants to know what happened to Cedric, and Harry needs to talk about it with someone. So there’s no romantic intrigue between the two of them this time around, not beyond a whirlwind of teenage feelings that are identified and put down. They don’t go on a date, they just hang out. And discuss some horribly traumatic experiences.

Harry’s able to open up more about what he saw, what he’s been dealing with since, with one of the only people who believes him unconditionally. Cho’s able to get closure, to understand what actually happened and what the Ministry has been trying to suppress for most of a year. There is a lot of crying, but at least they learned their lesson from the Hog’s Head about eavesdroppers because no one really notices. And if they do, well, it’s been kind of typical of Cho lately, and Harry’s been dealing with a lot.

So instead of a big blowup, they both leave this as closer friends, and more importantly stronger allies. They are on the same page, they are on the same side, and they have someone they can talk to about this horrible trauma that no one else really understands.

And Cho doesn’t get jealous of Hermione, because 1. They’re not dating, and 2. Cho’s smarter and more reasonable than that. And 3, women are more nuanced than that, Joanne.

Actually, it would be very funny if Cho tagged along to Harry’s interview. They’re already in the right pub! Setting the scene: A smug Hermione, serene Luna, pissed off Rita, and clearly just crying their eyes out Harry and Cho, all sitting around a table with drinks. This is maybe the weirdest fucking assortment of people you could put together on such short notice. But hey, Harry needs more people in his corner!

Harry gives his interview, bolstered by having just told the story to Cho. Rita writes it, Luna gets it published in the Quibbler, and Harry’s side of the story blows up overnight. Apparently in 1996 you can make things go viral with owls. Does everyone believe him? Of course not! But a hell of a lot of people do, faced with the firsthand facts for the very first time. Harry is swinging the tide of public opinion, and Umbridge is pissed.

She bans the Quibbler from the school, which of course just spreads it further because these are teenagers. Like honestly, Umbridge, how have you made it this far into your totalitarian rule without realizing how strongly teenagers are motivated by spite? But every time, she just doubles down.

Trelawney is sacked and replaced by Firenze in the continued pissing match between the Ministry and Hogwarts, and the D.A. is betrayed by Marietta Edgecombe. Again, it’s a bit of a miracle they were able to keep it secret this long, with dozens of teenagers sneaking around behind the backs of not just teachers, but other nosy teenagers. And Marietta had more reason than most - her mother works for the Ministry, she was being torn in two directions by her involvement in the D.A. This is a story of complicated loyalties, of emotional conflict. If anyone was going to betray them, at least it was a person with a solid motivation. Also, Hermione got her revenge like immediately.

This is another great example of Hermione’s ruthlessness, which is one of my favorite aspects of her character. This girl gets shit done and she does not truck with betrayal of any sort. Although, it may have worked a little better as a deterrent if she told them what would happen if they spilled the beans… but hey, teenager logic.

This is not the last nail in the coffin in the friendship of Cho and Harry. Yes, Marietta is Cho’s good friend, and she had her reasons. And yes, Hermione’s retaliation was honestly straight-up mean. But Harry and Cho are closer than they ever were, rather than hanging on by a thread. They understand each other, and Cho feels more strongly about the point of the D.A. than she did before that day in Hogsmeade. Also, someone had to have explained exactly why Skeeter was working with Hermione, so this is not Cho’s first introduction to just how ruthless the other girl can get, or her occasional penchant toward revenge. So Cho’s still quite upset, because Marietta’s her friend - who she introduced to the D.A. - and she understands why she did it. But she still believes in the D.A., and she believes in Harry, and she sticks with him and his friends in the chaos that follows.

Dumbledore, swooping in from wherever the fuck he’s been hiding this whole book, takes the fall - after all, it says Dumbledore’s Army on the parchment! Incredibly, the day is saved by teenagers being passive-aggressive little assholes in their naming conventions. He flees Hogwarts, and yet another piece of Harry’s support network falls away - like, he wasn’t doing much for Harry, but he was there. He’s been one of Harry’s constants this whole time, an authority figure who believes and supports him, even if he’s become so weirdly distant. And now he’s gone.

Things at Hogwarts continue to fall apart. Umbridge becomes the Headmistress, solidifying her power, and creates the Inquisitorial Squad. We love seeing how many kids at this school are wannabe fascists. Others, like the Weasley twins, revolt, causing as much chaos as they can. The teachers explicitly do nothing to stop this, and help while they can, because everything Umbridge has done is a horrendous insult to the institute they created and support. And somehow, in all of this, there’s still fucking school.

Harry continues his Occlumency lessons, which somehow get even worse than they already were. He sees a flashback into Snape’s memories, finds out the exact source of the animosity the man’s always had for him, and also finds out some very unwelcome news about his father and his friends. And this is where some of the changes spiral in odd ways - namely, Lily and Snape’s friendship. Lily was much closer to her muggle sister throughout her childhood, and didn’t gravitate to Snape as the only person who understood her. So there must be some changes, because I don’t think this Lily would have put up with Snape’s bigotry as long as she did. She had more friends, not just him, and she was closer to the muggles in her life. So either they’re not friends, or Snape is less of a dick. Additionally, Snape was probably closer to Petunia.

Now, I don’t think Snape and Petunia were ever close. They’re too different and they don’t really understand each other, plus it would have wildly changed some of this early canon. But they know each other, and they’re allies, if not friends. (Which baffles the fuck out of many members of the Order of the Phoenix - when did these two get to know each other???) So ultimately, I think in this world, Snape’s just a little bit less of a bigoted asshole.

Sorry, James, you don’t get the same treatment. Teenagers are assholes! Admittedly, James took it further than most. This is a great example of the shit you can get away with as a privileged rich kid - which, canonically, James was. Look at him and his loving supportive well-off family! Literally everyone knew that James spent all his free time jinxing Snape for fun, and he just… kept getting away with that. He was tormenting a fellow student repeatedly, in public! And that was acceptable, I guess! The fuck, Hogwarts?

Lily sticks up for Snape, James hits on her, and Snape does not call her a racist slur. Their friendship, at least, maintains.

So we need this to stay the same, for the sake of the story. We’ll get back to that. But Harry’s dumbstruck, just had his worldview shattered. This is the father he’s idolized his whole life, who he’s the spitting image of (except for his eyes), who everyone’s compared him to for his entire life, who he’s named after. Sirius, Lupin, anyone who will tell him anything only have good things to say. He’s even the form of his patronus! And now it appears to turn out that everything Snape’s had to say this whole time about him being an arrogant asshole is correct.

This is life-changing, momentous. This is possibly why you don’t put people up on pedestals, because they have the potential to come crashing down catastrophically.

Harry checks in with Sirius and Lupin about the fact that his dad was a dick as a child. They, as in canon, sort of brush it off? To be fair, they’re right, a lot of people are assholes as teenagers. They also probably don’t want to think badly of their horrendously murdered best friend and pseudo-brother! And they have a hell of a lot more context to work with than Harry, and a limited timeframe with which to explain, which is why Harry just gets a vague “well he got better…” as an explanation. We’re keeping that, but we’re elaborating behind the scenes.

The canon timeline makes no sense. We go from this to James and Lily dating in two years. They start dating at seventeen, get married at eighteen, and have Harry at 20. And then are murdered at 21. That is a pretty fucking alarming timeline, to be frank, and it gives people very little time for growth or improvement.

James is a dick at fifteen. Fine. How about we also have him face some consequences. James gets detention, a lot, for the asshole stunts he keeps pulling, so hopefully it gets drilled into his head that hey, you’re supposed to be the good guy, you can’t torture other students for the hell of it?? A billion points from Gryffindor. He deals with actual consequences, as well as disapproval from his peers and Lily, so maybe by the time his seventh year rolls around, he is less of an asshole and more responsible, and for reasons beyond “eh he kind of just sorted himself out.”

James and Lily don’t start dating before they graduate Hogwarts. It hasn’t been enough time yet, they don’t have enough in common. They do start dating during the First Wizarding War, when they’re both members of the Order of the Phoenix and fighting alongside one another. Trauma-bonding, yay! Then when they’re twenty, and they’ve been dating for a year or two, well. There’s kind of a lot to keep track of during a war and a lot of high emotions, so it’s not a huge surprise that Lily’s pregnant. This is again the impetus for them to go into hiding, as well as the reason they get married. It’s still a quiet ceremony, this time at the very height of the war, but at least they’re not teenagers.

They have a peaceful domestic life for about a year and a half, before being horribly murdered at age twenty-one. Sorry guys, not changing that part.

But Harry doesn’t know all those details, just has a single insight onto his parents’ teen years that contradicts everything else he ever knew about them. This really does not help with Harry’s world falling apart around him - Dumbledore’s gone, the D.A.’s disbanded, the crackdowns are getting worse, and now his role model was an asshole and his substitute father figures just are brushing that off. Harry’s emotional stability and rational decision making have never been great this book, and that’s not making it better!

Also, just for a bit of added flavor: Harry can’t form a corporeal patronus anymore.

And life continues, with Harry having to put this all aside and get career advice from McGonagall and of all people, Umbridge. Yeah, this is gonna go well. Harry, a stressed as fuck fifteen year old, is just trying to figure out how to both figuratively and literally survive the school year. He has zero concept of what he wants to do after graduation - how about we focus on living that long to start with? But nope, he has to talk about what he wants to do for a career.

After some scrambling, he lands on Auror. Because a wizard nazi disguised as a wizard cop told him when he was fourteen that he’d be a good wizard cop.

Harry’s spent this entire book (and series, but especially book) fighting against the system that Aurors uphold. His examples are Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks, and Mad-Eye Moody, three members of the Order of the Phoenix who are explicitly traitors to the Ministry using their role in the government to support the Order. Literally two chapters ago Kingsley jinxed a teenager to cover up for the D.A. in front of the Ministry!

So Harry has a pretty skewed idea of what an Auror actually does and how much he’d actually enjoy and agree with the job. But as soon as he suggests it, Umbridge shoots it down, so out of spite he and McGonagall double down on letting Harry pursue whatever he wants to pursue. And, okay, most kids don’t have a solid idea of what they want to be when they’re fifteen, or at least don’t stick with it til adulthood, so we can let this slide for now. But we can take a look at why, precisely Harry wants to be an Auror.

Harry wants to protect people. That’s really the long and short of it! His entire life he and the people he loves have been in danger or just straight up been murdered, and he wants to keep them safe. But being an Auror is really not the most effective way for him to do that.

Hm. If only this book happened to lay the groundwork for another very important job where he could help protect people, that’s been a major plot point through this whole series, that Harry happens to be extremely good at and enjoy doing, that sets him as a foil and contrast to a couple very particular villains in this book and others…

Yeah, let’s hold that thought for a book or two.

School and the general situation get more complicated and worse - somehow, despite that being the trend of this entire damn year. Hagrid’s been so shady because he’s hiding a giant brother in the Forbidden Forest, Harry and Hermione miss Ron winning the Quidditch Cup, they all have to take their magic SATs, and McGonagall nearly gets murdered by wizard cops in the middle of said magic SATs. Great!

And Harry’s Occlumency lessons, having been extremely antagonistic and unhelpful prior to their untimely cancellation, prove to be fully useless. It’s almost like mutual hatred is a pretty significant barrier to teaching and learning something that takes a lot of patience and vulnerability! Wow, Dumbledore, who could’ve seen that coming?

So Harry sees Sirius being tortured by Voldemort. Hermione thinks it’s a trap, but Harry doesn’t know what to think anymore. He’s spent this entire book being stressed, destabilized, attacked at every turn. Literally every adult he could have trusted has been forced out of the school or cut off from communication. Rationally, Harry knows Some Shit Is Up. Emotionally, though, he cannot stand to lose anyone else.

So he breaks into Umbridge’s office, and tries to call Sirius. He gets Kreacher.

Hi, Kreacher, we’re talking about you now. Kreacher’s a great example or JKR’s continual inconsistency with her treatment of house elves. Dobby was fully right in book two, but then by book four SPEW’s a joke, and now in five SPEW’s still a joke but mistreating Kreacher leads to this. She really just cannot nail down whether slavery is bad or not. Which, uh, that still shouldn’t be a hard question.

In this world, SPEW worked much better and Hermione’s kick-started real change. But that’s not the only or main reason Sirius treated Kreacher poorly. I do think we’d dig a little more into the ethics of “the good guys have to keep this being enslaved so he can’t betray them” though! Because holy shit that is some moral grayness to say the least!

But anyway, Sirius hated Kreacher because of the connection and the house-elf’s loyalty to his family, which he tried to reject as much as he could. And that’s fair- he disowned himself as a teenager and never would have returned to Grimmauld Place, or Kreacher, if there was any other option. But he takes this out on Kreacher and that’s a problem. Kreacher didn’t ask to be in this situation either, and has a lot less control over it than Sirius - yes, Sirius is in hiding and can’t leave the house without serious risk to himself or his friends and family. But Kreacher is literally magically enslaved to him. Their positions are not equivalent, and Sirius is so miserable that I don’t think he even makes the connection.

Maybe it’s a little better in this world, with better support and freedom and a family network, but it’s not enough.

So Sirius treats Kreacher poorly, and Kreacher retaliates. He sides with the Malfoys, who treat him well, even if they’re fully manipulating him to get him to betray the Order. He doesn’t care. He has no reason to care, no loyalty to the Order whatsoever. He’s just looking for something better, safer, kinder than what he’s got, and who could blame him.

Kreacher confirms Harry’s worst fears, and Harry’s captured by Umbridge before he can ask anything else. Not just Harry, but his closest friends, the remnants of the D.A. Hermione, Ron, Luna, Ginny, Neville - and Cho. Surprise! Because yeah, her friendship with Harry and agreement with his mission has stayed strong to the point that she’s still one of the core members of the D.A. So we’ve got seven, not six, all here together. We’ll see if that makes a difference.

Umbridge tries to interrogate Harry, Harry may or may not have passed a coded message on to Snape, and immediately following threats to torture him Umbridge reveals that she was behind Harry’s attack by dementors last summer. It’s always great to back up her role as an institutional evil with the knowledge that she, personally, is also choosing to be awful, and underline that she doesn’t actually care about the law, just what gives her power.

Hermione again saves the day, and we have to respect a plan that is “I don’t know how to fix this, but I can make it WAY WORSE in a different way!”

There are certain parts of Umbridge’s defeat by the centaurs that are very poetic, and others that are very uncomfortable. It’s great that her downfall is her racism, her belief in her ultimate power. Everything that she’s flaunted, that she’s used to cement her status this whole book, sends it all crashing down around her.

But that’s kind of where we’re going to end that. Because it’s never exactly explained what the centaurs do to her? They keep her captive for a time, and she’s horribly traumatized at the end of it after Dumbledore rescues her. That’s all we get. And okay, we literally just had Hermione telling Umbridge “hey, you can’t just torture people.” And I’m not doing that double standard today. We cannot have Umbridge threaten to torture Harry and be condemned by the narrative for that one fucking chapter before she gets tortured and it’s seen as karma!

And okay, fair enough, we don’t know for sure that Umbridge was tortured. But it sure wasn’t sunshine and rainbows and having a tea party in the Forbidden Forest! The books get away with this by leaving it extremely open ended. But it very clearly wasn’t good - and this is in a book series that is happy to spell out plenty of dark and painful things.

So here and now, the confrontation in the Forbidden Forest happens way faster and way more chaotically. She’s not swept off by centaurs, leaving Harry and Hermione with them, and then Grawp arrives on the scene. It all just sort of happens at once. Everyone scatters, Umbridge being chased off one way and our protagonists chased off another.

They regroup with their friends, the remnants of the D.A. having proved very definitively why it’s useful to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts. They attract the thestrals, and all seven of them fly on to the Department of Mysteries.

They’re faced with mazes and unknowns, dangers so bizarre that they’re unidentifiable as such. They are operating on so little information, just determination and hope and sheer teenage stubbornness. They all but wander through these halls of secrets, not even knowing what they’re looking for, but knowing they must find it nonetheless.

They don’t find Sirius - yet. They do find the prophecy.

Harry - uninformed, unwarned, left clueless in a misguided attempt to keep him safe - picks it up, and everything goes to shit. The trap is sprung, the ambush revealed. The Death Eaters attack, demanding the prophecy - an object Harry and his friends haven’t a chance of understanding, just know that if Voldemort wants it, he sure shouldn’t get it.

They fight back, and while they’re skilled at defense and capable of taking down foes their age with ease, seven teenagers are nothing against the force of Voldemort’s experienced Death Eaters. They scatter, fleeing further into the Department of Mysteries, hoping for something, anything, that can save them from this certain death they’ve stumbled into.

They put up a good fight, incapacitating and injuring Death Eaters as they can, but they’re at such a fundamental disadvantage. These are the good guys, and more than that, they’re children. They’re trying not to kill anyone. Their enemies have no such qualms. So they put up a good fight, and even take out a few Death Eaters, but it’s just too much for a group of scrappy teens.

First Hermione falls, then Luna, then Ron and Ginny and Cho. Harry runs to draw them away, to keep his friends safe at any cost, since they’re only after him. But it doesn’t work. Neville, brave as ever, tries to help but is no match for full adult witches and wizards, and Harry is faced with the prospect of handing over something clearly valuable and dangerous or watching his friend be tortured to death.

At the last second, just when all seems lost, the cavalry arrives. The Order of the Phoenix crashes the party, turning the tides from fully overwhelmed to at least a fair fight. The battle continues, growing more violent and chaotic with so many more moving pieces in the fray. There’s still no clear winning team, a battle of attrition with both sides taking heavy injuries.

The prophecy shatters, destroying the whole point of this fight, and Dumbledore appears. The tide finally begins to turn. Just barely too late.

This is, again, not that kind of fix-it.

Sirius has been isolated, trapped, under so much stress and pressure, feeling helpless. Even in this world, where he has Lupin and Petunia and a better support system, it’s still not enough. So given freedom, given action, given a chance to fight and confront the family he’s been trying to forget all year and do something that matters… he’s just a little too reckless, too cocky.

Sirius duels Bellatrix, laughing.

Sirius falls.

Harry snaps, chasing after Bellatrix. The one person who has been there for him unconditionally, who doesn’t keep secrets from him, who should have been his uncle in one life, his adoptive father in another, who he’s just barely had the chance to know and love in this one… is gone. And Harry watched it happen, knows exactly who is responsible.

Fifteen years old, mad with shock and grief, Harry fights and even tries to torture Bellatrix - to little effect. Even with the emotions swirling through him right now, he doesn’t have what it takes, the sheer hatred it takes to power an Unforgivable Curse. They’re called that for a reason. And while Bellatrix taunts him about his incapability and waits for Harry’s emotions to fully overcome him, Voldemort crashes the party as well.

Two of the greatest wizards of their age wage a duel in a government lobby next to a charity fountain, with works of magic the likes of which Harry has never seen devastating the room. And Voldemort may be good, but Dumbledore’s better, and in a last ditch effort Voldemort possesses Harry, torturing him, trying to force Dumbledore to kill them both.

And yet again, Voldemort is defeated by love - Harry’s love for Sirius, his incredible grief, overcoming the Dark Lord and forcing him away. Although not before the officials of the Ministry arrive on the scene, just in time to see the evil they’ve been denying for a year with their own eyes.

There is going to be fallout, so much political fallout, over Harry having been right the whole time and the Ministry’s year of attacks being exposed as unforgivable ignorance at best, intentional coverup and slander at worst. But none of that’s Harry’s problem right now. Harry returns to Dumbledore’s office at Hogwarts, to finally get some explanations.

Well, and to lose his mind and start trashing things, and I refuse to condemn him for this. Harry has been stressed and isolated and targeted and literally fucking tortured for the past nine months, and he is fifteen years old. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to deal with for an adult not dealing with hormones and high school on top of it all. And now one of the most important people in his life is dead, murdered tragically and avoidably and in front of him, the second time he’s seen such a death in a year.

Yeah, I think a little property destruction is a valid response.

And Dumbledore finally, finally, FINALLY explains everything. Why he’s been avoiding Harry, why he had Snape and not himself teach him Occlumency. And we and Harry finally start to see what’s been happening all along - that Dumbledore is flawed, that maybe he doesn’t always know what he’s doing.

Back at Christmas, when Harry hid away from everyone in a misguided attempt to protect them, and Ginny and Hermione knocked some sense into him, what did they tell him off for? For hiding away, for letting fear overtake reason, for choosing isolation over asking for help.

Exactly what Dumbledore did this entire year. He was afraid of Voldemort’s connection to Harry, how Voldemort might use that connection against him. So instead of telling Harry, of finding a solution, of doing anything other than what he did, his solution was to cut himself out of Harry’s life entirely.

And that was the wrong decision. He let fear rule him, overtake rationality. He made a mistake, and look at the cascade of events that happened. If he had stayed, if he hadn’t fully abandoned Harry, he could have trained him in Occlumency. Maybe then it would have worked, and Harry would have stopped having these visions. He never would have been lured to the Ministry, never would have put Sirius in danger at all. Even if he hadn’t done that, if Dumbledore had just explained what was happening, why he was staying distant, Harry would have still known he had an ally in his corner, an adult in power who could help, someone he could turn to if he was scared or confused. He would have been less stressed, more rational, more inclined to wait and ask questions than rush off immediately because he felt there was no one else who could do anything.

If he had done any of that, Sirius might still be alive. But he didn’t, so here we are.

And we’ve known this whole time that Dumbledore is not omnipotent, is not a perfect man, is figuring this out as he goes and has made some terrible mistakes - and will make more. But this is the first time Harry’s seeing it. And Dumbledore apologizes, admits wrongdoing, accepts fault for Sirius’s death and the pain Harry’s had to deal with this year. And that’s something. But it doesn’t fix it.

And Harry finally learns of the prophecy, the thing that’s secretly been shaping his life this entire time. And we yet agin see a major theme in this series come to the forefront: it is not who you are born that matters, not what you can do, but the choices you make. Even this prophecy, this prediction of the future and speaker of fate, is not definitive. Harry was not destined from birth to be the enemy of the Dark Lord, the instrument of Voldemort’s success or downfall. It could have been anyone who met a certain set of requirements, and then, once the time came, it could have been Harry… or it could have been Neville Longbottom.

Harry was not doomed from the start, and neither was Neville, and neither was Voldemort. But Voldemort heard part of the prophecy, and tried to complete it and ensure his victory, and instead set off a chain of events seven books long. He marked Harry as his equal, he chose his own destruction, and he locked himself and Harry into an inescapable struggle that would shape both their lives.

Voldemort picked Harry. He didn’t pick Neville, the pureblood; he picked Harry, the half-blood, the person like himself. It was not about his birth - or okay, it was a little bit. But Neville’s not a better foe for Voldemort because of his bloodline, his legacy. Voldemort saw Harry, as his parallel, as a greater threat and a greater need to be eliminated. And so he picked him and created his downfall through his own choices.

It’s all about choices. Not birth, not blood, not legacy or skills or anything else. At the end of the day, it is our choices who determine who we are.

That’s one of the most important messages this entire series has to say. Hold on to that as well.

So we reach the end of the school year yet again, a quiet and unremarkable wrapping-up after the confrontation at the Ministry. Things have been turned on their heads - everyone believes Harry, the Daily Prophet is publishing his interview, teachers have returned and Dumbledore is unraveling everything Umbridge instated.

Harry is mourning. He wanders, coping with yet another death of someone he loved, losing yet another fundamental member of his family. Sirius only got to be part of his life for two years. They got more time in the story, with his stays at Privet Drive, but it still was nowhere near enough. And he sadly doesn’t have enough people who understand what he’s going through - although really, with everything, who could?

But he has Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Luna and Neville and Cho, and that matters quite a lot. And when he gets back to King’s Cross, there’s the Order of the Phoenix, and at home, because it is truly his home, there’s the Dursleys.

Harry may be grieving, but he doesn’t have to do it alone.