Subject: Heirs of Avalon, Year Six: The Maiden's Kiss!
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Posted on: 2024-11-05 00:44:10 UTC
In which the Malfoys didn't realise that the leopards would come to eat THEIR faces...
And, of course, to all US Boarders: have you voted yet?
BL11 warning for the implications of what's happening to Draco at Cygnet Lodge, plus an upsetting announcement at the end regarding his Bonding contract.
A bit of a shorter review than usual. I’m staying at my parents’ house while I recover from a surgery, and I’m stuck typing on my phone, which I hate!
Ah man, Mr. Weasley lost his job? That sucks, especially with that big family to feed. But I’m glad his interest in Muggle technology has provided him another employment option; working in a garage feels very appropriate for his character!
Are we shipping Fred/Tonks for real now? I remember one of the twins was flirting with her during the Malfoy-Weasley games, but I wasn’t sure how serious that was meant to be. I definitely approve, though; they would be a good match, and closer to Tonks’s age than Lupin is. No offense to Lupin!
The attention being paid to the Lindenhill courtship retreat feels uncomfortably like a reality show, like The Bachelor. Very weird! Let strangers kiss in peace, people! Also, from the conversation about Gideon and Mary having a baby: the wizarding community does know that pregnancy can occur outside of a Bond, right? It feels like they have to know that, since Muggles have children, but the way Ron and Ginny are speculating about Mary’s pregnancy makes me question . . .
I know Patronuses aren’t solid objects, so I know they weren’t actually taking space in the car, but I’m still amused by the mental image of Ron and Ginny in the backseat with a huge, glowing horse and stag towering around them.
Man, seeing Gaunt shrinking the government’s ability to serve its community by closing down elements that he doesn’t personally value, and stocking the remaining positions with like-minded loyalists who are motivated by personal ambition rather than actually doing their jobs . . . What a dangerous thing to do! It’s a good thing no country needs to worry about seeing that happen in real life!
: (
Christ.
So, when I saw the newspaper headline about the Malfoy Bond getting bought out by the Lestrange family, my immediate assumption is that Draco was getting betrothed to Delphini, and was super-grossed out, because they’re cousins, and she’s still a preteen, I think? But no, you made it even worse than that how dare you? I am so ultra-grossed now. Tear this whole society down, and let teenagers go back to banging unrelated teenagers, as Jesus intended.
Some possible typos?
. . . that you were mad at Ron for paying more attention to Lavender than her . . .
Since Harry is addressing Hermione, I think that final pronoun should be “you”?
. . . underage drink driving . . .
“drunk driving,” unless this is a Bri’ish expression?
It says it Gaunt brokered the deal . . .
That “it” can go.
—Dad used to eat spaghetti sandwiches, and doctorlit tried one once. They’re not that bad!
Harry discusses inheritances at Gringotts and meets Lord Slughorn at Chrysomallos Club.
BL9 for a brief mention of arson.
I’m actually a bit sad to see Dudley and Petunia go. Like Harry says, he had seen such a turnaround in his relationship with Dudley, and even Petunia was starting to act a bit more protectively towards him. I’m also sad I won’t get to see the two of them trying to keep Kingsley and Hestia remotely normal on their very first plane ride, surrounded by Muggles! But there’s still some tasty irony in Petunia needing to rely on wizards to save her from wizards. I also enjoyed seeing Dudley using Petunia’s fear of magic to help persuade her into the inconvenient but safe choice; he knew what was right, and he knew his mom, and he used the tools at his disposal to make it happen. Oh, also, I don’t read the warnings at the start of the chapter to avoid spoilers, and wow was that a curveball of an implication! I definitely didn’t get that sense from the Florida conversation during the actual chapter . . . I can only hope Dudley has gotten enough exposure to Harry’s positive masculinity to inoculate him against being too close to Trump . . .
I had a total “I see what you did there” moment when Bogrod commented on “extra inheritances you’d be eligible to collect.” All those fics where Harry becomes head of twenty different family lines . . . It’s crazy that Goldensnout’s scam convinces people they could inherit anything from Mother Magic, but it was nice to hear Bogrod state openly that she doesn’t actually exist. It must feel so weird for the goblins in this timeline to watch the humans bending over backwards for that whole silly religion!
Man, Regulus really did have a fantastic plan going. He must have felt so frustrated watching the teenagers slowly dismantle it all last year. Great job breaking everything, teenagers! Enjoy your brand new, worstest timeline!
Your Professor Slughorn has an even stronger Mycroft Holmes vibe than the canon version, so it’s appropriate you’ve given him a spiritual successor to the Diogenes Club. I love the description you give of the place, and all the people and activities taking place inside. It really feels like the perfect marriage of wealth, leisure, and the desire for making social connections that Slughorn values so much. I think I would despise being in a place like that in person, but it’s nice to visit on-page!
There’s a repeated word in this sentence:
If you didn’t know his father’s name, you’d never would have guessed . . .
—doctorlit fearfully looks forward to Vernon Dursley fulfilling his new role as Trump’s attorney general
...given that people are feeling badly about all the horrible stuff coming out of Florida these days, and how in the 90s that would've been the heyday of Dumptruck and friends' time down in Mar-a-Lago (like... the 90s are when Jeff Epstein's ascending the rungs of the finance world). Vernon was mentioned to have been golfing in Palm Beach with the Masons, after all. My beta reader and I also joked about how coincidental it was that Ivanka would've been around the same age as Harry and Dudley, haha. Yeah, it was a shame this new Dudley and Petunia had to go, but it made the most sense given the consequences of what Petunia did.
Yes! I'm so glad to have a chance to poke at the Gringotts inheritance tests! I mean... why Gringotts, lol. They're a bank! If you're going to the bank to get a blood test to see if you're eligible for other people's inheritances, your bank's running a scam and needs to get investigated! The Goblins think the wizard drama is hilarious. They're not gonna intervene; wizards throwing down over fake inheritances is the height of free entertainment! And note how Bogrod immediately pushed for Harry to open another account for Kreacher... the bank always wins! :P
It's a lot more fun to write about a grownup plan going completely off the rails because Harry and friends mucked it up than Harry and friends coming up with some stupid plan that somehow manages to outsmart the grownups. That's all I have to say about Regulus wingmanning Harry, haha.
Chrysomallos is based off a Purityworld fic's club called the Golden Fleece, but updated a bit to reflect how an actual upscale society club like White's worked. I mean, it is a little bit more equitable than the Muggle equivalents given the lack of barring women from membership, but it does still discriminate in other ways...
BL7 warning, sort of, for a scene right after everyone at the party sings Happy Birthday to Harry. Also additional warnings for: teenage dirtbag antics, underage drinking, underage drug use (only potions and potion ingredients), accidental love potion dosing, references to underage sex, drug overdoses, references to IRL crimes and terrorist attacks (the 1996 Manchester bombing, the Dunblane Massacre, the kidnapping of Sabine Dardenne, and the Atlanta Olympics bombings), and car-related injuries.
Oh man, it actually feels like we’ve moved into Deathly Hallows early, with the Dementor fog and general attacks against Muggles. But that makes sense, since both years open on “Tom” taking control of the government. It also has me agreeing with an uncomfortable amount of things coming out of Petunia Dursley’s mouth, which feels rather odd, but the lady is right; Gaunt should face accountability for his crimes, and Purityworld child marriages are gross and weird. (Also, I didn’t catch the foreshadowing behind “if I ever see that man down here in Little Whinging” until a second glance-through, but wow, is it striking now!) And it really is lovely to read Harry getting along with Dudley, and even with Petunia somewhat, even while they remain recognizably themselves. Dudley really needed a positive male role model to show him how to have normal conversations with women, too, because he’s sounding a little on the incel side at a few points in this chapter . . . Not too fond of him calling Rose “chavvy” either, after looking it up!
I was getting ready to ask if Charmaine is meant to be that waitress character who only appeared in the films, but that got answered when she was shown inside Treats. Which leads us into . . . the party sequence. Oh, Lily, the party was painful to read. Last month, I was at a Halloween party with a bunch of drunk twenty-somethings, and it was soooo awkward, and reading the party scene took me straight back there. Pre-bonding potion Charmaine was even acting towards Harry in a very similar manner to the way one of those twenty-somethings was acting towards me . . . Though to Charmaine’s credit, she didn’t have an existing boyfriend in the room with Harry . . . ANYWAY during the McDonald’s conversation, I totally identified Piers’ description of the “drug” as a potion (though I misidentified the color and effect as Felix Felicis at the time, whoops!), and let me tell you, the idea of magic potions getting slipped to Muggle partygoers, when Muggle doctors have no idea how to treat the effects, is actually a pretty horrifying concept! I’m honestly surprised Gaunt isn’t having the Ministry deal with the problem more considering it threatens to expose the Wizarding World on a wide, public scale. Then again, the original Voldemort eventually wanted to subjugate Muggle civilization, so maybe Gaunt just doesn’t care if Muggles find out at this point? I’m really curious to see where this plotline goes, and to find out if these potion/drugs are being planted by well-meaning party wizards, or if it’s actually a Gaunt plot to sow more chaos across the Muggle UK.
Harry sure has an interesting idea of “laying low,” doesn’t he? “Mom hid me at my cousin’s house to keep Gaunt from finding out where I am; guess I’ll use the owl mail 20 times and then post the address all over the most heavily used transport system on the island.” I’m shocked it took Gaunt until the Trace on underage magic to find Harry, quite frankly! But that leads to me needing to discuss how Aunt Petunia ran over the most powerful wizard in the world with her sensible middle-class car, hello? Lily, you can’t do this to me, Lily, I can’t breathe if I’m laughing that hard, Lily! I love everything about it, from the deed being done by Petunia, of all characters, to Gaunt having so little interest in Muggle technology that it didn’t even dawn on him to not stand behind a running vehicle, to him getting knocked the f out by blunt force trauma, for all the good his magical power did him. And of course, the icing, the frosting, the cherry on top: his unconscious body getting stuffed in the f-ing cupboard under the stairs. Which technically has no particular meaning in this timeline, but we know. We know
Thank you, Lily. This was an amazing and enjoyable chapter!
I think there’s a word missing from this sentence:
. . . considering how they had been responsible installing the despotic Madam Umbridge . . .
Also, I think “lighting-in-a-bottle” was meant to be “lightning?” Unless this a variation on the phrase I haven’t encountered before.
—doctorlit appreciates that he’s become good enough friends with his twenty-something coworkers to be invited to their parties, but their parties aren’t really doctorlit parties. Listening to the karaoke was fun, though.
--though I did have fun at karaoke nomikais in Japan! But that's because I like karaoke, haha.
Actually, there were already Dementor attacks and all these things in the opening of the 6th book. Dementor attacks, the Bones and Vance murders, and the Brockdale Bridge were all in the 1st chapter of book 6 as well. The only thing I changed was the giant attack in the West Country, explained away as a "freak hurricane". I turned that one into the sleepwalker's fog, aka Dementor fog. It seemed like something Gaunt would do to punish the part of the country that mostly voted against him.
I had planned for Petunia to run over Gaunt with a car from about the very earliest parts of the planning stage, since I just thought it was really funny to have this intimidating, powerful wizard get taken out by something so mundane. It just dovetailed really well with the Dot stuff from year 4: Ali escaped, his dad started investigating, Gaunt has his dad killed for investigating, Ali opens a can of Streisand effect on Gaunt. 1996 was another time when the Troubles started up again after a period of ceasefire, so the Riddle stuff and the increased terror attacks in Britain plus the Atlanta Olympics bombing all melded together to make Petunia one hell of a true crime fan. And then it made perfect sense for her to intercede on her family member's behalf on a Known Criminal.
Yeah, I reckoned Dudley needed some positive male influence, too, hence Harry helping him wingman! It's part of a longer subversion of Harry's sudden "Quidditch-toned muscles" from fics, where Dudley helped Harry get swole in exchange for pulling advice. I don't think there's a lot of bulking-up for Seeker, where you're supposed to be fast and lithe...
The party was fun to write and much less fun to experience IRL, haha! You'll hear more on the distribution of potions as party drugs as a subplot through the year... But I can definitely say that Gaunt isn't cracking down on it because he doesn't care about Muggles, and in his estimation, it's better if they all got poisoned by potions... Similarly, that's why he's not prowling BBS boards (which iirc were pretty niche in the 90s, pre-social media and all) for Harry, either! Going full Muggle has its benefits of being overlooked by folks like Gaunt :P
Thanks for catching the typo!
Of course, the fic manages to come across like it thought being skinny was some kind of moral imperative (sigh), and it was horrible for plenty of other reasons. Just not quite in that way.
--Ls
That sort of party is my worst nightmare. I can think of situations to be in that I would hate more, but crowded + sensory overload + no boundaries is kind of a perfect Venn diagram of "things that put Neshomeh on edge," and I never got the impression that you're less introverted than I am. {X D
~Neshomeh
Once I realized she was being more "friendly" than just friendly, I avoided sitting down for the rest of my stay, so she couldn't sit next to me again. My biggest concern was if her also-drinking boyfriend noticed what was happening, and started a scene. But towards the end, she started trying to get a crowd of us to guess what Harry Potter tattoo she wanted. She said it was the single quote most associated with the series, but none of us were getting in (including me, with the sober brain). She got frustrated that I, of all people, wasn't getting it, and came over and whispered (very close) in my ear, "It's the thing with Snape and Lily," and I realized she was referring to "Always." (It's an important and wonderful scene, but not the first "signature phrase" that comes to mind for HP!) She walked away after that, and her boyfriend came over and said, "You've got to help me out, what is it?" So I explained the scene to him, so he could "guess" correctly once he tracked her down. Which hopefully at least communicated to him that I wasn't trying to "steal yo girl," and that I wanted them to stay together as a couple? I may be assigning this particular moment too much significance in my head, but it was really the only opportunity I had to do anything about the situation . . .
Eventually, when I felt I had "socialized enough," I made my exit, hours before the party was scheduled to end. I gave the coworker who threw the party a (normal) goodbye hug, and then the particular young lady I've been talking about (who's also a friend and former coworker) a goodbye hug, but this hug ended with her trailing her hand down my chest . . . and then I drove home. So yeah, it was awkward, it was not my kind of scene, but I survived? I'm questioning if I want to go to the party-throwing coworker's usual New Year's party this December, though, since the former coworker will likely be there, and be drunk again . . .
(Not to make it sound like the entire party was a negative experience, I did enjoy listening to the karaoke singers. The twenty-five-year-old who was hitting on me does have a good singing voice!)
—doctorlit wingmanning by quoting children's literature is oddly on brand, though
There are probably EDM remixes of their songs, though.
--Ls
Oooooh dear. This year’s title is “the Maiden’s Kiss.” Now I’m going to spend most of the year wondering if that’s in reference to an actual magical kiss between Harry and Draco, or if there’s some twist, or metaphor, or—or something else sneaky going on . . .
Wow, we are right out the gate with that “purge” that got teased at the end of last year! Pettigrew, Avery and Karkoaroff aren’t going to be missed—heck, I was almost jubilant to see Avery go, despite the tone of the scene; bye bye, creeper—but it’s interesting to see the metal arm that was Pettigrew’s in canon has become Bellatrix’s in this timeline. I think the implication is that Bellatrix tried to execute Peter, but Peter fought back and managed to cut off Bella’s arm? And then, while Narcissa was using the Bond to keep Bella from bleeding out, Gaunt did whatever weird sacrifice ritual and removed Peter’s arm and used it in some way to produce the metal one for Bella? (And if Bella is Gaunt’s second-in-command, won the fight, and got a metal arm, does make her the Winner Soldier god I’m sorryyyyyyy) Also, I love how Gaunt refers to Peter’s body as a “new form.” A bit of Voldemort’s weird obsession over death leaking in, I think!
Hm. When Severina says she was manipulating Hermione, does that mean just verbal manipulation, or was she actually using a potion on Hermione? I’m only asking because Hermione went so far off the rails last year, but of course that also could just be a natural response to the torture . . . Either way, I appreciated Severina using her “token spell” to execute Karkaroff! But most of all, I love that Narcissa is already starting to drift towards her "feeling Harry's heartbeat in the Forbidden Forest" moment, as she starts to see that Pureblood Supremacy, and her family's safety, aren't necessarily compatible!
It's going to be a hell of a year! or four
—doctorlit is saving his Maiden’s Kiss for when the right book comes along
If you read the tags, then you'll see that actual magical snogging is going to be involved :P
Actually, Bellatrix lost her arm to Gaunt's fire spell back in the Atrium. Narcissa was trying to stabilise her until Gaunt showed up to fix what he broke, and Gaunt decided to, yes, more or less transmute Peter's magic and life force into Bellatrix's Winter Soldier arm. So, haha, yes, that Winter Soldier thing was on purpose!
Severina is exaggerating a tiny bit for the sake of her cover. She was the one who told Hermione that the Order was trying to bring her back in line after she discovered Regulus' secrets, and thus shoved her right into publishing the expose. So yes, Hermione going off the rails was entirely Hermione, but Severina did hasten along her turning on the Order.
It certainly is going to be a hell of four a year!