Subject: Even if Magical Rome did actually exist in canon...
Author:
Posted on: 2022-10-19 19:29:24 UTC
... Potterverse Sergio would still likely have very little to do with it, as as I said he would be more likely a muggle, not a wizard. As per what we know of Wizarding Italy in canon... very little. it exists, it has a Quidditch team, and... that's it.
Back in September, Nesh, Zing, and I posted bits of Jacques, Jenni, and Liu Siyuan in a Pureblood Culture AU setting.
Since then, I got carried away with figuring out how the AU would impact Harry's time at Hogwarts, and am now writing it out. Jenni, Jacques, and Liu Siyuan will also still factor into it as fairly major players, so I'm plugging it here since it could be read as a deep undercover mission to destabilise the Pureblood Culture AU genre.
It's on anonymous, since I've been posting instalments on an anon forum. Once the thing is complete, I'll probably de-anon then.
Harry hosts Ron for Christmas, plus Ron and Hermione meet Harry's Muggle friends.
We go back to Hogwarts next chapter!
So, sorry for the late reply, but I was rather uncomfortable with the political discussion because while the discussed parallels weren’t things I agree with per se, they seemed rather close to being strawmen of those beliefs.
As for Purityworld, I had a thought:
It’s pointless.
See, Purityworld is kinda supposed to be based on a past world, right? So...why not just set your story in the Past!Potterverse? The whole thing is pointless, because you could just set it in the past!
—Ls
There's also fics in the series that have Harry time travelling to the past to get with younger versions of Voldemort, so it's pretty clear the original timelines in canon are still accepted. Plus, one of the requirements for being a Most Ancient House is having 750+ years of history with no marriages to Muggles (or, presumably, Muggle-borns).
Given how wizards in canon already dress several centuries out of style, it's clear Pureblood Culture enthusiasts assume their social mores are also out of style.
If you're uncomfortable with the fic, I can respect your decision not to read it further. I did warn at the start of the fic that it would deal with topics that can be difficult for some people. Your political experience is not the same as other people's, so calling strawmen for something other people have experienced is a little disingenuous, but I'm not going to engage with you on this topic further.
I could much more believably buy a Jane Austen-like Wizarding World if the story was set in the 1800s or so. Without all the Mother Magic gibberish, I would definitely read Pride and Prejudice + Magic.
Oh, and I haven’t been reading because I don’t have the time. I’d like to get caught up at some point, because what you’ve written is definitely a goodfic.
—Ls
I agree with you on that--and I'd add that Jane Austen's female characters are definitely more feminist than the way fem!Harry and friends are portrayed in this. It feels like Purityworld made no attempt to understand either Harry Potter or Jane Austen.
Thank you for clarifying. It was not easy to parse the true intent of your statement.
After all the weird social etiquette stuff, I'm glad the Hogwarts students had a chance to just hang out for a while and be kids, and that Harry's Muggle friends got to join in as well! Ron was especially cute reacting to some of the technology he encountered, plus the "normal" haircut on Rose. Although boy oh boy, if there's one undeniably good thing about the Wizarding World, it's the fact that wizards can't turn into screen addicts, with no television or internet around. I wonder if that tends to become a problem for the wizard members in mixed wizard-Muggle families . . . I definitely felt a teeny bit of dread when Ron started fixating on the tv. : (
I liked the little detail of wizard chess sets being more or less cooperative based on their familiarity with the players. Feels very much like it fits the product and the universe! Also, yay, Jenny's crew are getting more involved in the narrative!
—today doctorlit learned that jelly babies are apparently a real candy in Britain, and not something made up for Doctor Who, yeah?
Harry mentioned it in the books too, that his new set didn't trust him.
As for the screen addicts, I'm sure there's a wizarding equivalent. Dumbledore did mention people wasting away in front of the Mirror of Erised, so.... mirror addicts? Wizarding portrait addicts? Ron's just fascinated by what's new and very very different, so don't worry too much.
I do enjoy writing Ron's reactions to the Muggle world! He's hilarious.
Thanks for reading!
There's always something cathartic in a character like Harry, who has no family left and no friends before Hogwarts in canon, have a proper Christmas with friends and at least some family!
Ron amazed at Muggle stuff was fun, and I really like where you're goign with havign Harry have two Muggle friends, a boy and a girl like his wizarding friends. Compare, contrast, they're all people anyway. Clever.
Of course, the little bits of Pureblood traditions that made it in still put me on edge, but it was done neatly. Lily mentions them off-handedly when it makes sense, and not only they're chilling for what they are, but it's also chilling how the definitely more progressive than the norm Lily thinks that they are normal! Perfect use of Mubggle-backgroudn Harry here, he's just as confused as we are.
I love writing nice things happening to Harry. He should have more nice things happening to him.
Yes, and honestly when I first thought up his Muggle friends' names I was thinking of paralleling Ron and Hermione, too. In my head Gary has an entire mop of dark curls like Hermione (though my Hermione has more afro-textured hair than just plain curly), while Rose... I mean, that's the name of Ron and Hermione's daughter in canon! -coughs in foreshadowing-
Also, she's blonde because she looks a bit like Rose Tyler in my head :P
Yes, Lily's rather casual treatment of some of the Pureblood culture is sorta... well, it was normal for her for a long time. And it's important to have the outside perspective weighing in to remind us that it's not normal.
Thank you for reading!
I haven't been commenting very hard (on anything, really, I've been kinda keeping up with Shirayuki's stuff but I feel obligated to say something intelligent if I comment and I can't find the motivation), but I have been following, and this is some really good plotting! The choice to leave in some of the boys-and-girls joking struck me as... odd, though? I could just be being a grumpy old dog again, though, CONSTANT VIGILANCE tends to make you paranoid. I trust you to handle everything well, anyway, just wanted to put my mind at ease. That said, the point about James dying because his family helped fund the anti-misogyny potion was every bit as slimy and evil as this world should be, and Professor Greengrass just gets worse and worse and worse. And to think, this is only a taste of what's in store for us in Year 5... can't wait to freeze Umbridge's house with dry ice! I like that Ron gets to do and know stuff, too, he's definitely sorely lacking in that in fics.
Since you've written the whole first year, is there a consistent upload schedule right now?
Glad to hear you're reading it -- no pressure to comment always, of course. But I do appreciate them!
Hermione being friends with two boys will definitely come back to bite her, but she wouldn't be Hermione if she's gonna let that stop her from being friends with Harry and Ron!
Yes, Umbridge is going to be quite the piece of work in year 5 :P
What fics don't seem to get about Ron (mostly thanks to the films dumbing him down) is that he's the one who has practical experience of growing up in the Wizarding world, compared to Hermione who only knows things from books. So yeah, of course he'd get to know stuff and do things! Especially here, where he offers insights into what Purityworld is like for normal wizards and witches, aka people who aren't as deep into the Mother Magic culty stuff as, say, Malfoy. Also, I just love making Ron react to Muggle things, which you'll get to see next chapter.
I've been posting scenes on a Dreamwidth anonmeme and then updating the chapter on AO3 once I get to the last scene of each chapter. So the next chapter should be up in a couple days, depending on how quickly the anonmeme moves to a new post. So if you want to keep abreast of the AO3 chapter update, you can follow it on fail_fandomanon. Here's the latest scene, for example.
I had to suffer through dance lesson sessions at school, too, but at least that was a misguided attempt at forced exercise, and not some classist bullcrap. Oh, and Professor Greengrass can go, like, die in several woodchippers, I guess. Caning a student for not dancing well? Dang lady, Count Olaf would find you cruel!
Aha! aha! AHA! aha! Ah. Ha. I was wondering what the explanation would be for James's death in this timeline, since Mr. Marvoldelo Just-a-Gaunt is a politician. And as we all know, politicians only kill people through austerity measures, not direct murder. But now I see that it was James's connection to this anti-misogyny potion that put him in harm's way . . . I love reading new chapters of this and peeling back more layers of this story!
I love the idea of Harry hanging out with both his canon wizard friends and his Muggle OC friends! For attempting to condemn the worldview of the Death Eaters, Rowling sure didn't involve many Muggles in the originals series!
—doctorlit is sorry he took so long to respond to this, but Halloween weekend was a VERY busy one
Though goodness, Purityworld!Umbridge is going to be a real piece of work, too...
I did square dancing in school, and iirc that's because Henry Ford is a racist little POS, so, you know, the classist bullcrap isn't that far off the mark for some schools' compulsory dancing curricula.
James and Lily have quite a complicated relationship in this AU! They didn't start out very well, but at least by the time James died his heart was in the right place.
Yeah, it's honestly a miracle Harry didn't turn out anti-Muggle in canon given the Muggles that raised him. But I'm glad to give him stronger ties to the Muggle world in this -- it's meant to be the escape to him that Hogwarts was for him in canon.
It's partly just page time bias; Umbridge had two novels to work in, while Greengrass has had just a couple scenes. But Greengrass is ultimately only contributing to social propaganda, and doesn't wield a whole lot of power outside the school structure, whereas Umbridge was representing a corrupt government, and wielded power on a much higher structural level . . . Plus, while Greengrass caning Hermione made me angry, it really can't touch Umbridge's cursed quill . . . Not much can . . .
That thing about Muggle life being an escape from Hogwarts . . . Wow. That's a reversal that hits hard, especially in a fantasy series that is, itself, escapist for us-the-audience. (And incidentally, parallels his son not enjoying Hogwarts during Cursed Child. Interesting!)
—doctorlit finished Cursed Child this week, and enjoyed it more thanexpected, given its reputation
And I imagine this Umbridge will also make Greengrass look like a walk in the park.
It says something about this Wizarding world that Harry sees the Muggle world as a good thing/return to normalcy. I mean, Purityworld is just stuck in one of those bad Jane Austen Regency Romance ripoffs...
Less Pureblood nastiness here, which was appreciated! A nice breather chapter, that also developed the plot. I just love how you tied in the Plot-Important Potion to the Potters' potion making businesses, the Potters' potion manifacturing went criminally unmentioned in the books.
Unfortunately, me having just finished an aircraft dogfight-heavy story arc means I keep reading Enchanted Quadrille as Enchanted Esquadrille... the later being French for "squadron". I am now imagining a quartet of very disgruntled fighter pilots being forced to play music for some stuck-up wizards.
I... think the potions manufacturing thing went unmentioned in the books since she hadn't really thought too deeply about it until later? Maybe? Since you'd figure that people would make more jokes at Harry about being the heir to Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and yet having that for a hairstyle.
Oh no, the poor pilots!
The updates are speedy because I finished writing the first year last week :P
Harry and Aunt Sevvy touch base after his first Quidditch game.
Dang, Lily, this chapter really makes me want to go find a cat to pet! : )
It's nice seeing more of Sev, here. Without Lily in the room, she's much more laid back and relaxed. I do find it funny that Harry still accuses Sev of enchanting his broom, but either lets it drop or gets too distracted to hear an explanation for what really happened. So much of the original series is centered around Snape keeping secrets; I'm really curious to see how you're going to write around that!
"For some people, the world is only ever divided in two. The gain of one side is viewed as the loss of another."
Aaaaaaah. Again, jeeze, such a reflection of real world culture. And again, it's a very Dumbledorian line, despite not being spoken by the man himself. (Also, this text box doesn't recognize "Dumbledorian" as a typo, despite the fact that I very literally made it up just now? What!?)
(I keep saying "you write lines like Dumbledore" as code for "you write lines that remind me of some of the good, wise lines Rowling writes," but without wanting to sound like I'm saying "you write like Mean TERF Lady" so just understand when I say it, it's a compliment that you're emulating the better parts of canon, not that I'm trying to shove you in a box with her or anything.)
—doctorlit, neurotic that his compliments don't get taken the wrong way
Unfortunately the community cat I feed hates being petted. :P
I don't think Harry suspected Sev of wanting to hurt him. He's just relaying Hermione's suspicions, since Sev's the one openly chanting while the real culprit was doing it nonverbally. Which is why he drops it, because he doesn't actually believe she did it.
By faking Lily and Harry's deaths, Sev's open act of defiance against Gaunt does make her more closely aligned with Harry (or, more precisely, Lily). But since this Harry has more than one parent figure/mentor, the secrets sort of... get diffused amongst them? If there is a very big secret that Sev would rather die first than admit to Harry, though, it's probably her ongoing feelings for Lily. :P Even if everyone else saw it the moment she helped Lily escape.
Similarly, the Dumbledorian lines get diffused out, too. I feel like fandom gives Dumbledore way too much credit for his hand in orchestrating Harry's years at Hogwarts in canon; in this one Harry's just some guy whose mum is the bigger target for Gaunt's ire. So he's not the only one Harry can turn to for nuggets of wisdom!
And thank you for the compliment! The deeper I get into this, the more I feel like it's not just skewering the fanon AU but also some of the worse parts of the canon. I want to bring out more of the original sentiment of fighting against bigotry! It's very clearly needed in Purityworld :P
A bit short, perhaps, but iI dare say it helped put Severina firmly into the good guys here. Not that I suspected otherwise, of course, but it is nice to see Distaff Piton be more open instead of having him be vindicated as the Undercover One All Along at the very end after being a royal PITA for Harry for seven full books.
And I have a suspect I know who J is...
I'm doing this thing where I skip over all parts of the story that would just be rehashing canon, showing only scenes that the AU would have changed. It helps keep my interest because I don't need to retell something that went pretty much the same as it did in the books!
And yes, Aunt Sev is definitely more openly aligned with Harry and Lily (mostly Lily)! But she will still have to face the consequences of declaring her allegiance so openly given her past before she helped Lily go into hiding, and it will complicate her relationship with the Potters as the years go by. I do plan on her hitting the same major plot points that Snape did, but the change in Harry's dynamic with her will make those plot points resonate differently, I think.
You made a wonderful job at describing an absolutely disgusting world - you managed to make Professor Greengrass' first lesson a much creepier version than Snape's one. (I kinda like this Snape- Sorry, Severina though. I think she encompasses perfectly what Snape would've been to the Potter family if Lily survived in canon)
The dressing style of the wizardry nobility, though, looked nothing short of ridicolous to me. But tha'ts alright, it got a chuckle out of me, and it really drove the point across just like the rest. In just a few chapters, you managed to paint a great image of how medieval a Pureblood AU is - cringey when badfic, truly horrifying when done well in the gritty detaiils (of which there haven't been much yet, but your implying work was great).
I'm intrigued on how yo plan to use your Agents though, and the idea of a "deep undercover mission to destabilise the Pureblood Culture AU genre" really got me interested. Definitely following this.
Oh, and if Jenny, Jacques and Liu need backup they're free to ask around. A certain retired couple and a certain whimsical DoSAT techie would love to help. Well, more like one of the three would really enjoy putting down stuck-up Pureblood supremacists with very muggle, very non-magical lead.
I'm glad you enjoy Sev! And yes, Greengrass is... certainly A Character hahaha
Yeah, it's very medieval -- technically Regency, since the original fics read like if someone tried to smash Harry Potter and Jane Austen together without understanding how either work, but I'm being pedantic hahaha
Jenni's already shown up on her Chocolate Frog card! And Jacques and Liu Siyuan -- Ryan Liu in this AU -- are set to show up in later years. I feel like I call it deep undercover because they're functioning like natives to the canon and they aren't going to make any references to HQ or any of that (I don't even think they have knowledge of the PPC -- Jenni might, since she's Jenni, but she's not going to talk about that on screen :P while Ryan and Jacques are just Potterverse AU versions of themselves), but they are in the story to help the protagonists take down the system. So they're not going to suddenly make references to the PPC or call for backup from HQ.
I mean, if you have existing Potterverse variations of your agents, I could have them cameo, but otherwise there'll be no call for backup since it's not really a mission in a traditional sense, but rather in a meta sense (since PPC missions deconstruct what's wrong with a given badfic, but this one is deconstructing an entire genre of fic).
But thank you for the offer!
And that's an even more interesting take on the "undercover" part - an AU version of your characters nested into the story itself to subvert it. Sure, that would be OCs meddling with canon characters... but to fix a more heinous crime against canon.
And no, I don't have Potterverse AU versions of my characters to lend you, I'm afraid. Sergio is definitely the non-magical member of my classic trio, so he would definitely be a Muggle in this setting. Not really getting a single feet in Hogwarts I'm afraid, especially not in such a purity-obseessed setting XD And witch Nikki would surely be an outcast here for loving a Muggle, which could be interesting for the setting but again she wouldn't really be allowed near Hogwarts either. (And that's discounting the fact that, as an Italian and a Japanese, they likely would have no reason to meddle with the British wizarding world.) And Corolla would likey not exist in such a setting. Being a whimsical, silly technomagical sentient construct is simply too ingrained in her character, there is no AU human version of her. Period.
However, this reminded me that I actually had toyed in the past with the idea of sending Sergio, Nikki and Sergio's sister Kathleen in some kind of long undercover assignment in Hogwards. Not part of TWWA, mind you (though at least Hogwarts did make it into the Unraveled World), but either somehow as part of the canon timeline, or as part of an unspecified alternate timeline as I wanted it to take part over multiple years, but at the same time that's... well, a lot of years to simply take off my characters' lives XD
I did get to the point I actually did some wandlore research to find the wands the would probably chose my characters, though. Here's them for those curious:
Sergio: Pine, Phoenix feather, 13 inches 3/4, Pliant Nikki: Cherry, Dragon heart string, 13 inches 1/4, Quite Flexible Kath: Acacia, Dragon heart string, 13 inches 1/2, Slightly Flexible
And, for the heck of it, I also decided those Corolla and Ami would get, though they would have no part in this:
Corolla: Dogwood, Dragon heart string, 14 inches, Springy Ami: Oak, Unicorn hair, 10 inches 1/4, Swishy
And I had also decided that, while Sergio and Nikki would be sorted in Gryffindor (of course, since that's the Designated Brave Hero House), Kathleen would be sorted into Slytherin instead. And try to subvert the "Slytherin House is only for the baf guys" stigma, since that was a bit of a subpar writing choice to have roughly 1/4 of Hogwarts be implied to be outright bad guys in the making. However, like most of my sillier plot bunnies, this never got anywhere.
Yeah, the whole Slytherins are evil thing is just exhausting and leads to nonsense like Pureblood Culture. Lots of these fics have good Slytherins where the only "good" thing about them is that they're not actively joining up with Voldemort. But they still are snobby and racist!
Interesting stuff about Sergio and Nikki (and Kathleen)! Yeah, there's not really space. Nikki probably would go to Mahoutokoro, idk what Sergio does because the two flavours of European wizard are apparently French and German/vaguely Slavic. (There's also a Russian school but Durmstrang's got Bulgarians so....)
ETA forgot that the Purityworld author had a fic where fem!James' parents were on holiday to "Magical Rome" and there's apparently some couturier called Olympus in "Wizarding Italy" in their worldbuilding post. Yes. Olympus.
... Potterverse Sergio would still likely have very little to do with it, as as I said he would be more likely a muggle, not a wizard. As per what we know of Wizarding Italy in canon... very little. it exists, it has a Quidditch team, and... that's it.
I'm more 🤔 about Purityworld!Wizarding Italy having a couturier named after the Greek mountain of the gods, haha.
Some of the Ancient Roman gods were literally copied from the Greek ones, so I'm afraid someone just went "If Jupiter is Zeus, then the ancient romans must have had Olympus as well! My reference will be clever!"
The Hermione Arc. Hope you enjoy! (Looking especially at you, doc ;P)
“I am interested in the magical world,” retorted Harry, brows furrowing. “I just don’t see why it has to have all of these extra rules and layers.”
Harry has a very good point. I don't see why, either.
Cooking and house-elves, eesh. Cooking my own food is something I love doing, and it makes me happy that I can throw things together that actually taste decent. It's also a family thing. Most of my folks are good cooks, and I suppose it's something of a tradition that I want to continue.
That's all I have for now. I am very behind on reading this.
In the books, house-elves do work at Hogwarts, but you're right, cooking for yourself can be very rewarding! It can also be very frustrating when you mess things up, though. I'm glad to hear you like to cook. It's a very good life skill to have!
Take your time in reading! It's a long, harrowing chapter.
Now I get more of what you and doc were talking about. Though I’m not quite sure why y’all were comparing things to modern politics so much.
Anyway, I wonder if the Culture class or whatever it’s called is a replacement for Muggle Studies. If it isn’t, I imagine that Pureblood Culture!Muggle Studies wouldn’t be a very accurate or fair class at all.
—Ls
In terms of modern politics, the Purebloods' obsession with making more magic babies has some real-world parallels. The Pureblood Culture obsession with girls' chastity has a direct real-world parallel. And Hermione's pressure to become the model minority "New Blood" rather than be relegated to the subjugated minority "Mudblood" parallels the model minority myth because... it does. When you try to assimilate into a group that otherwise hates your kind, you police yourself for any deviation from the norm because if the group finds out you're deviant, they will throw you back in with the subjugated minority. I know this because I've lived it, watching the perceptions of Chinese-Americans fall from rich studious nerds to plague rats. I did not speak Chinese for most of 2020 because of that.
You don't have to think too much about this and simply just read the fic for what it is -- a rewrite of the Potter books that takes a popular fanon worldbuilding to logical extremes, but I did put in the research into how to make this world work, and I like it when Doc uncovers the research :P
There's also a Muggle Studies class, but you're right, it's very inaccurate! Jacques frequently got into fights with the professor when he took the subject.
~Lily, who is Not Angry, just trying to explain!
I barely know where to begin. Obviously, the pureblood stuff in the other chapters bothered me, but this chapter, seeing it all from someone who's trying to conform . . . Hermione is losing herself. She doesn't deserve this. No one deserves this. And her conversation with Farley shows what a catch-22 the whole situation is—literally, choose between your own health, or adapting quickly enough to win acceptance. Win acceptance during semester one at age eleven. Ugh. Honestly, the whole scenario just sickening: Hogwarts having a class that's just social control propaganda; a genealogy text named Nature's Nobility; the fact that Grindelwald, a known genocidal mass murderer, supported the pureblood nonsense, yet no one thinks to examine that connection. And the whole "New Blood" situation shows how irrational the entire mindset is to begin with; if a Muggleborn can be made "as good as a Pureblood" by some ritual, then pure blood can't actually mean anything, right? I guess it depends on what was in that potion. I am very skeeved out by the potion, and very glad Hermione didn't drink the Kool-Aid potion. "You’re not like the other Muggleborns." Gross. Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross.
Putting all that baggage aside, it was interesting to see Pansy and Lavender getting along better with Hermione than in canon, though elements of their "proper" personalities definitely seep through at times; Pansy in particular is probably mostly acting. I also got thrown for a loop when the Chamber of Secrets was mentioned as a widely known location; I had forgotten that Voldemort is just another guy in this timeline, so no basilisk, no Myrtle, no secrecy to be found here. (Actually, since the chamber isn't secret, and contains no secrets, shouldn't it just be called the Chamber of Brickwork now?) But then I got thrown for another loop when the troll showed up later, because I assumed Quirrell would be a good guy in this timeline, but I guess either he or Gaunt are still after the Philosopher's Stone? (You don't have to answer that.) I must say, while my sense of dread was rising and rising as the initiation drew closer, the end of the chapter made me feel much, much better. Seeing Hermione finally realize that it was nearly cult-o'clock, and then have her lie and disparage the ceremony to protect Harry and Ron, and then leave with them . . . yeah, made me feel a lot better for her, that's all.
Other minor changes I reacted to here:
-Poor Filch. Like he didn't face enough prejudice in the canon timeline. At least Dumbledore is still the type of guy to give a Squib a job!
-Ugh. Of course Percy would be even worse in this timeline. He's like Hermione, with his need to feel accepted . . .
-Oh, but I like Sophie Roper, though! yes, girl, question that arbitrary status quo! She's got my vote for Minister of magic, when she grows up! (Didn't realize she was canon until I searched her name just now, but I'm glad you used her as a mouthpiece for a tiny fraction of the questions I would love to ask the idiots in this society!)
-I love your "stone, cloak, wand" Wizard variant of rock, paper, scissors. I reckon stone and cloak are identical to rock and paper, but wand must be one or two pointed fingers, rather than the V-shape for scissors?
-Aaaaaand great to see Hogwarts still prioritizes winning at Sportsball over enforcement of safety rules, even in this twisted alternate society. Just like real life schools!
—doctorlit gonna go bingewatch She-Hulk now
Customs and Etiquette class & Volumnia Greengrass is riffing off of a Purityworld fic where a Lady Greengrass bullies Hermione in class for not conforming to Purityworld standards. (Apparently that fic is in reference to yet another fic which has a Professor Corrin Greengrass who also teaches social control disguised as History of Magic, so I'm parodying two Professor Greengrasses with one stone!)
Nature's Nobility is a canon text -- not a textbook, mind you, but still a book that's beloved of Walburga "FILTHY BLOOD TRAITORS MUCKING UP THE HOUSE OF MY ANCESTORS" Black. Grindelwald's support of the Old Ways is pretty notable, but the Old Ways were detached from associations with him in the years after the Global Wizarding War because Britain needed to repopulate, and the more moderate Pureblood families (like the Potters -- and the Malfoys! who historically have been known to hobnob with Muggles as long as they're rich and powerful!) acknowledged that they do need to incorporate half-bloods and Muggleborns into their system in order to prevent inbreeding -- hence the New Blood system. You'll see how just-a-dude Voldemort plays into that as the years progress!
And yes, New Bloods versus Mudbloods is pretty much the model minority myth. :P It does ultimately show that blood doesn't really matter, but you have to assimilate into a system that hates you for who you are, or you'll be ostracised.
The potion is just something that induces euphoria, so you feel like you're having a religious experience. As Nesh put it, having a hallucination of Mother Magic is too tricky because hallucinations can differ and it'd ruin the whole setup. A vague euphoria that can be ascribed to the presence of Mother Magic is much more potent!
Yeah, the Chamber of Secrets is not so secret in this one, though it's still hidden from the average layperson through the use of Parseltongue. No Very Big Danger Noodle, since Slytherin was using the Chamber for his creepy little rituals with his disciples instead, but Myrtle... you'll have to wait and see.
The Philosopher's Stone plot is still going to happen, but the object being sought after and who is seeking it...... is a surprise ;)
I'm glad you enjoyed seeing Hermione come to her senses! And getting a little revenge, too.
-Yeah, poor Filch. :( He's honestly even more justified in being mean in this timeline, isn't he :P
-Yeah, Percy got suckered in. We'll see how well that goes for him...
-Sophie Roper is indeed a very minor canon character who only seems to exist in notes!
-Wand is one pointed finger, in my head. And I don't think I'm the first one to do this -- I've seen this in other fics, too.
-Hogwarts sure has its priorities! :P
Again, thanks for reading!
I'm getting a double dose of Wizarding World alternate timelines right now, because I happen to be in the middle of Cursed Child right now. (Which gave me Unpleasant Feelings when the sweets trolley witch appeared in your story; I'm never going to feel normal reading scenes with her appearing ever again. Thanks, playwrights!)
There's something inherently unpleasant about reading these sorts of genetics-based supremacy cultures in fiction, partly because it's such an alien concept for real life, and because it's . . . not quite alien enough in real life. But I can still respect all the world-building that's gone into this, and all the choices that had to be made about what, and who, would be different. You've put the classism on excellent display, and all the rich Pureblood cretins and their attitudes are appropriately cringey and insulting. I see that Draco is still very Draco, but uh. Uh. Hermione though. Like . . . I understand the logic, Hermione was very rules-oriented in book one, and quick to absorb new concepts, but to read her slipping straight into and accepting this culture that inherently devalues her as a human being was painful to read. (Or, to quote my hastily typed out notes while I was reading, "Hermione no no hormone what did they do why would they doo this ") I hope she still makes, uh, "the right friends" before all is said and done. I am curious about the substitution of Zabini and Nott for Crabbe and Goyle. I know the latter two are Pureblood, so I'm not sure why they've been swapped out? Unless this Draco just has better taste, like, it's objectively an improvement. Oh, and just to tack this onto the paragraph about classism: the line "I’m sure you’ll be able to separate the people who want to be friends with Lord Potter from the people who want to be friends with Harry," is just a great, great line. Very OG Dumbledore!
Severina seems to be Snape. Is this a case of "alternate timeline, therefore a chromosome went different," or is she just trans for some pre-emptive grave spinning? : ) With Sevvy taking over Hagrid's role of delivering the Hogwarts letter, I love the contrast between Hagrid's iconic and uplifting "Yer a wizard, Harry," and Sevvy's short and impatient variation. It makes it all the better that Harry himself still delivers his own self-disparaging "but I'm just Harry." Didn't expect Crookshanks, of all characters, to have such an altered timeline, but hey, more cat is always good, because cats are good! (Also, side note about Hagrid: I love that you're just Not Bothering with his accent. As . . . one of the voice actors on a Lindsay Ellis video, I don't know who, said, "You don't have to write the accent in, Joanne, we get that you hate poor people.")
Hell yeah, Jenny says "women's rights," even in a weird classist AU. J-Ro is the only chocolate frog card worth collecting. "Allegoric Alley" is such a perfect and wonderful name construction! It was a bit disappointing we didn't get more of those alley names in canon; perhaps I will headcanon that Allegoric exists! "The Book Wyrm" is also a great one, and also I wish to shop there, take me there right now.
One maybe typo?
Aunt Sevvy surveyed her through narrowed, dark eyes.
She's looking at Harry here, so it should be "him." Or maybe it was meant to be "through her narrowed, dark eyes"?
So yeah, I'm filled with anticipation and dread to see what further horrors this story will unfold. Neat!
—doctorlit does not apologize for calling Nurse Robinson "J-Ro"
I have no idea what the trolley witch does in CC and maybe I don't wish to find out hahaha. (The only thing I care about from CC is that Albus is in Slytherin and is best friends with Scorpius :P)
Draco is indeed very Draco! He's very fun to write and I have some paradigm-rocking in store for him.
Hermione -- yeah. I always got the feeling that when she first found out she was a witch, she had this drive to prove herself worthy of being a witch, because no one in her family has ever had magic. She also wanted friends -- Ron pointing out she had none and causing her to cry all afternoon in the bathroom told me she didn't really fit in with Muggle friends as well. (Bookishness to the point of pedantry can be offputting with kids, ask me how I know! ;P) So with her, I want to do a balancing act between assimilation and pride in her roots. The next chapter is going to be her POV, anyway, and you'll see whether or not she makes the right friends then!
Also, she's acting like that because the Pureblood nutters lovebombed her before she got to Harry and Ron's compartment. She wants to fit in and say the right things; she doesn't know that what she's saying is BS just yet.
Zabini and Nott being substituted for Crabbe and Goyle here is part of Malfoy wanting to put his best foot forward in attempting to sway Harry to the Pureblood side. Nott is also Heir to a Most Ancient House and Zabini is just... handsome, lol. Crabbe and Goyle will still be used as bodyguards later, but this is a purely superficial decision for this one moment.
Yes, Lily appears to be taking more of a Dumbledore role here. Especially since Voldemort Marvolo Gaunt isn't batshit insane Dark Lord (but is still quite evil in the ways a politician can be), so there isn't really a prophecy out there to take him down.
Severina is indeed Snape. She's cisswapped, but we're planning to use that as a critique of JKR: she has bobbed hair like regular Snape, which by Purityworld standards is a masculine haircut, so you can imagine what James Potter would say to that. So you're not off the mark!
There's a theory that Crookshanks is the cat that Harry terrorised with his first broom in Lily's letter. I'm using that theory haha
Yeah, not bothering with writing out that accent. It's annoying and classist.
Yes! Jenni, Jacques, and LSY (going by Ryan) are going to be major players later on, since they're there in Marauders era. Allegoric Alley is actually riffing off of the Purityworld author's "Leisure Alley", which we felt was too like the name you'd give a red light district than the high-class shopping street it claimed to be.
Thanks for catching the typo! And I look forward to sharing the rest of first year with you! :)
. . . glancing through all the first-year Purebloods like, "Gotta change up the party for this task, don't need any strength checks . . . hm, too short, too angry, charisma stat too low . . . oh, but Blaise is a looker, he'll do . . . just need one more PC with nice baseline stats . . ."
Hah hah, the trolley witch, I'm gonna say it:
Never heard that Crookshanks theory before, but it's just the kind of theory I like! Poor Crookshanks; hopefully he forgives Harry!
"Leisure Alley?" No, no, that doesn't fit the scheme at all. It's leisurely, not leisurally. Allegoric is a definite improvement, there!
—doctorlit, still rooting for Hermione to turn out Okay
Honestly it sounds like she's turned into the wizarding version of HAL-9000 hahahaha
Yeah, the trolley witch isn't going to go postal on anyone in this rewrite :P
Hahahahahaha Draco picking his party to go seduce Harry to the Pureblood Cult convince Harry to be his friend. Thanks, that's this rewrite's canon now.
Yeah, they think Crookshanks had met Peter before, so that's why he has such a grudge against Scabbers. And kneazles can live for a long time, so that's how he was in the Magical Menagerie for so long.
Right? My other thought was to use "majestically", but "majestick alley" looks like an innuendo hahahahah.
Whenever you open a reply window, there's a sentence under the text box that contains a link to "the formatting guide," which you can open in a new tab.
To spell it out in words (since posting the actual code would turn into a spoiler and not show you the code), it's:
opening-bracket the description of what you're spoiling closing-bracketopening-parenthesispound-symbollowercase-s opening-quotation-markthe words you want spoiledclosing-quotation-markclosing-parenthesis
. . . Yeah, uh, just open the formatting guide in a new tab.
(For the record, brackets are these: [] and the pound symbol is #.)
—doctorlit, helpful, but in a tardy way, and, perhaps, in an unhelpful way, and, perhaps, in a way with too many commas,
For a while, it was just giving me a link and I had to use the html version for spoilers. But it seems to have been resolved!
—Ls
Tried to leave a comment on Ao3 too, but not sure if it worked. Gonna try again later. XD
I will definitely be reading more! It's not a genre of AUs I'm that familiar with, but I still can't wait to read a glorious deconstruction of it. It's a very nice blend of familiar and something new and fresh, so it really works to keep me invested. The mystery is established well.
So nice to see Lily in a parenting role instead of Harry being with the Dursleys. And I smiled when Jenni made an appearance!
I actually talked about it on the Board a couple times: here and here. Nesh's reply in the thread leading from the 2nd one has the link to the worldbuilding being spoofed used for this AU.
I'm also glad to be taking the time to explore Lily as a parent, and all the little changes that occur because of that! I reckoned that, given what a nightmare regency dystopia this Wizarding world is, Harry deserves a safe space with his mum.
It’s very interesting (also, kill off Crookshanks and I will fill your house with sand. XD)
I have no plans to kill Crookshanks.
I don’t know why you’d need to say that it’s undercover mission or anything, I’m perfectly happy to read a well-written-but-irrelevant-to-the-PPC plug!
Anyways...I really liked the way you’ve written Harry. He seems huggable. Did you know that there’s a scientific measure of huggability Though for some reason, the name “Severina” really bothers me. It just seems like one of those general fanfic “adding -ina makes a name feminine!” ideas. Oh well.
—Ls
I mean, well, some people might be more interested in Jenni, Jacques, and LSY mucking with the Potterverse in that way!
Severine is an actual name, so it's more of an Anglicisation of that? But honestly, it's riffing off of the horrible names for Fem!Harry that the Purityworld Author has done: Hathiel, Heloise, Hortensia, etc...
Though I do recall a certain “Legolina” from one of Yuki’s missions. shudder Probably why Severina rubbed me the wrong way.
—Ls, Not Angry
i.e. that dwarf lady in the Amazon series whose name is basically Thorin's sister's with an -a tacked on. Whut.
... -a appears to be one way Old Norse (on which Tolkien based most of his dwarf names) forms feminine names. In this case Dis might be taken from a suffix meaning 'sister', so Disa would be Mrs. Sister. Still not a great name, I admit.
(This makes it one of the better newly-coined names in Rings of Power. "Elanor 'Nori' Brandyfoot" is probably the worst, for all I like the character.)
hS, always here for Tolkien nomenclature
...what’re the worse ones, and why?
—Ls has not seen Rings of Power, or any Tolkien adaptations at all, for that matter
Elanor "Nori" Brandyfoot is something of a masterclass in how not to do names.
Her first name is a flower, which is appropriate for a proto-Hobbit; but it's a very special flower which only grows hundreds of miles west of where she lives. None of her people can ever have encountered the elanor flower of Lothlorien; when Sam Gamgee uses it for his daughter thousands of years later, he is the first Hobbit ever to do so.
Her nickname is a canonical dwarven name. Dori and Nori are two of the dwarves in The Hobbit. I don't get why you'd do this.
Brandy-, in Hobbit names, comes from the Brandywine river, which is itself a corruption of the elvish Baranduin. We literally know which Hobbit first used it - Gorhendad Oldbuck, who changed his name to Brandybuck after moving over the Brandywine. This river is even further from Nori's people than Lothlorien is.
-foot appears in a number of canonical Hobbit surnames (Proudfoot, Puddifoot, Lightfoot, Twofoot, Whitfoot, and the racial name Harfoot), but always with a literal meaning - Puddifoot, for example, means puddle-foot, because the family lives in a marsh. What does Brandyfoot mean? Do they bathe their feet in expensive alcohol?
Besides which, Tolkien strongly implies that Hobbits didn't even have surnames until fairly late. The Shire was founded by Marcho and Blanco, no surnames. The great families acquired them a while before LotR, but for example Sam's wife Rose Cotton? Her grandfather was the first to use that surname, adapting it from his father's given name Cotman.
(Her friends and relatives have much more sensible forenames, and their surnames are more acceptable too - Proudfellow, for example. It's still a bit mix-and-match from the family trees, but in a more sensible way.)
The other names that really stand out are Bronwyn and Theo, a mother and son in future Gondor/Mordor (it's a bit vague). Bronwyn is a very distinctively Welsh name, while Theo is a Germanic nickname. They don't fit together, and they give off a vibe of 'these sound vaguely like Eowyn and Theoden, they'll do'.
hS
A future character is revealed to be named Corina or something. Even bigger whut.
In her case, that was just a casting name - the character is actually named Earien, which is perfectly good Quenya (Sea-daughter).
hS
if she's from a culture where Quenya names are used (coughcoughlauracoughcough)
She's Numenorean, and of a family which canonically would use Quenya names. (I think there's only one Adunaic name being used right now anyway, but the point is hers fits.)
Though the Elves do keep talking Quenya when they should by rights be using Sindarin. Given that Tolkien had them do the same thing in LOTR, I can forgive that.
hS
You know what, when I was little, I used to want to be a princess and all that. But now I just think it would be a lot of work and too much etiquette.
Also, Malfoy is still the same old annoying Malfoy who would probably be done some good by getting whacked with a Beater's bat.
“Is being raised in the old ways shorthand for looking like a prat?” applauds
Don't worry, Malfoy gets punched later. He's set to undergo a pretty complicated emotional arc (from his perspective, anyway).