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Well, when it starts like this, you know you're in for a wild ride. Warning for (technically) violence.

One day Squall was eating cereals with zell with hot gods in their pockets. They took the hot dogs from their pockets and started eating them. "Zell said" Let's go to training center. "Squall said" well let's go my friend and squall smiled like a cactus. Then they walked to the tarinings center. Dangerous Funguar attacked them!. Squall tried to hit it but hit Zell instead. "Zell yelled" UAAAAAAAAAABSSSS!. And died.

You are on the way to see a pal, but oh no! Ere you see it, you go in an odd O the hue of the sky.

As you get out, you see you are in an ash-hue lab, not the way you were on at all. No pal is in the lab, but an Ivy in an off-red tee is by the tap.

Hi, you see the Ivy say. Are you new to the PPC? Let me say who we are. The PPC was set up so the Law of any old saw you see on your TV set and so on may not die. The Law is ace; to let it die is bad; to be why it is to die is the big bad.

As you do not run, the Ivy is not put off. She can yak, no lie. The PPC try to get rid of Sue, of Sex (if it is not in the Law), and of Mix-Ups. All can be bad for the Law, you see, and so bad for all. It is a big job for the lot of us.

And now, a job for you too! Rad to see you - or not see; I am the Ivy, I did not get an eye. So say, new kid: who are you? Who are your kin? Are you big or wee, old or a new bud? Go on, do not be shy!

~

Dun Gin and a Rag Inn is an RPG, but all you say can be no more than two add one of the ABC. I saw it on the Net on a day, and it was rad. I got a pic of it, all the law it has. See, you can get it too!

And, ta da! Now you are in it; all of you are one new kid. The Ivy is to get you a job in HQ. Say who you are, go on. The RPG has Elf, Orc, and Fey as kin, but you can say Imp, Bot, and so on, I'll get it to fit.

Go for it! It is fun, but see you do not go too far in the ABC - two and one is all you get.

hS

All I'll say on the matter of real life is: I wanted to write this for a reason. {= |

Re. Madam Pomfrey: Her character in the books seems to me that she's constantly frustrated by all the ways Hogwarts students find to hurt themselves. She can't control what happens outside the Hospital Wing, and she doesn't try—maybe she did at one point, but kids will be kids no matter what. So, she keeps to her own domain and rules it with an iron fist, exercising control where she can.

Here, in addition to kids being kids, she sees all the consequences of kids being deliberately kept in ignorance and is deliberately prevented from doing anything about it besides damage control. She can't be seen trying to interfere, or even expressing an opinion about it, because saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could cost her her job. Sure, she could make a stand on principle because it's the Right Thing To Do, but then she'd be sacked, and she might be replaced with someone who's actually drunk the Koolaid and would shame the kids on top of everything. How would that help?

Jenni is potentially dangerous to her because she's passionate, and passion at that age doesn't always stop to consider the repercussions of Doing The Right Thing. But Jenni has also managed to become a Prefect despite not having the full approval of her society, and while that's partly thanks to Dumbledore's progressive agenda, it's also thanks to Jenni knowing how to toe the line without quite crossing it. Encouraging her is still risky, but the odds of it paying off are pretty good.

Re. Nilly: I'm rather fond of her myself. {= ) I imagine her as the sort of "downstairs person" who is good enough at her job that she gets away with stepping out of "her place" on occasion. If she can best serve Hogwarts and Dumbledore by bending the rules (e.g., making herself seen to students, speaking her mind now and then), then that's what she'll do, and she won't feel bad about it!

Rather fond of the name Caper, too. Thanks! ^_^

~Neshomeh

Poor Sylvia! I’m glad Jenni was around to help her. Funny how an act of rebellion can so resemble giving someone help—or is it the other way around? And this story makes for a great “inciting incident” to start Jenni on her journey of rebellion. I was pleasantly surprised to see Madam Pomfrey encouraging Jenni, as well, even if her hands are a bit more tied on the matter.

Nilly is the character who really stole this show for me, though. I know house-elves feel obligated to help, but Nilly just feels like a lovely person. Funny how literal non-humans can be more empathetic about human anatomical pain than most of Sylvie’s culture! House-elves are better people than humans confirmed, house elf for Minister when? (Oh, and “Caper” has an excellent vibe for a house-elf name, especially one living with such a progressive family as the Robinsons!)

I’ll spare us all the tirade about how applicable this scenario is to real life, and how frustrating it is to observe people giving lip service to arbitrary social mores instead of just doing good things.

—doctorlit doesn’t bow and pray to neon gods

Oh my gosh, what a difference one Draco can make! I love the symbolism behind him using a traditionally Pureblood spell to contribute to Pettigrew’s capture, but setting it to a Muggleborn person’s bloodline for increased safety! (And I love that Buckbeak’s predatory instincts played a role as well!) And uh, WE CAUGHT HIM!? THE MAN IS CAPTURE?! I had given up hope, when Pettigrew got away the first time, that he was going to rejoin Gaunt, like in canon. But we have had a very productive time travel sequence, haven’t we? Buckbeak and presumably Sirius rescued, Pettigrew captured, Draco redeemed to his friends . . . Good stuff! THE RAT IS CAPCHORE!

I definitely recognized the Back to the Future reference the second I read it! (It helps that I just watched that trilogy for the first time about two months ago . . .)

—doctorlit would like to reiterate that THE MAN IS CAPUUTER

I still use it to follow game developers, and they show no signs of moving to any other site soon.

Very few "social media sites" of any age have actually gone down. Livejournal is still there; ProBoards is still there; even Myspace is still there. (The exception is Usenet, which got eaten by Yahoo.) I don't think there's much chance Twitter will actually vanish in the near future.

But it will be - it is - losing the people who make it worth using. I go on Twitter to read what the people I follow are writing; if they're not writing anything, I won't open the site any more, because why would I? That's how LJ died, for instance - too many friends drifted off it, so that it was no longer worth looking at daily.

That is already happening. The people I follow for long history threads have moved half their content to alternate sites - which means there's only half, or less than half, for me to read on Twitter. Artists are no longer bothering to post pictures. Bloggers are announcing their new blog posts elsewhere, and not writing up threads about them. Twitter is less of a one-stop shop for entertainment and news, and more something I check once or twice a day to see if the few people who are still fully there have said anything funny.

hS

There was a thread a while back in which similar claims were made, and... yeah, Twitter still exists.

These are temporary measures, and from what I call, several other websites, including Pintrest and Reddit, are also implementing something similar.

I doubt Twitter will go down.

-Ls

With the way Twitter is going right now, it'd be a miracle if it somehow managed to get back on its feet after all the changes it made.

It's such a haunted sound, but with a bit of royal elegance to it, as well. Almost has a Castlevania vibe to it!

Allow me to share the background music from the Sleeping Beauty setting in the Kingdom Hearts series, which is also gorgeous and spooky, but has a bit more of a sad vibe to it: "The Silent Forest"

Oh, also, the Sleeping Beauty suite from Epic Mickey is pretty too! The background melody contains a motif of "Once Upon a Dream," and the battle portion gets intense: "Dark Beauty Castle"

—doctorlit, enjoyer of Disney spin-off games

Get an earful of this spooky music

A limit for the number of tweets each account can view per day is introduced; this is classic shut-down preparation. Anyone with a Twitter account who wants to still view their tweets, I urge you to have them archived.

Harry and Draco make up, and Draco nearly wrecks the space-time continuum.

...it's the fact that Hagrid then backed down into flobberworms for months on end after and set the final exam on them. It's the fact that 4th year had been almost entirely on Blast-Ended Skrewts until Grubbly-Plank's classes introduced unicorns and other creatures, and then Grubbly-Plank was the one who taught them what they needed to know for the O.W.Ls in 5th year. It feels like Hagrid didn't look at previous COMC curriculum, or even just what creatures historically showed up on the O.W.Ls and planned accordingly to make sure, in spite of hippogriff mauling incidents, that the kids got through all the other creatures that they should be covering in 3rd year. Even Harry begrudgingly admits that Grubbly-Plank is a better teacher, and Hermione and the other Gryffindors think the same. Luna also says Hagrid's a bit of a joke when they first meet her, even though her entire shtick is weird magical creatures that either don't exist or that no one else likes. So the canon supports the argument that Hagrid is actually kind of a bad teacher even though he's nice.

(Like... Snape is also a bad teacher from what we see of him in class, compounded by his hatred of Harry, but you don't really have kids in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw calling him evil, and I also don't remember off the top of my head if people were saying Slughorn is better, outside of Harry's surprise at how easy Potions is in 6th year because he's using Snape's old textbook. So canon definitely treats Snape's bad pedagogy in a different way from Hagrid's bad pedagogy.)

In any case, Hagrid is clearly written to be some loveable dumb comic relief who causes more problems for Harry and friends to solve, starting with Norbert, then Aragog, then Buckbeak, then the Skrewts, then Grawp. His portrayal doesn't really give him much narrative dignity outside of that. I don't want to spoil what else I've got in store for him, but the goal is basically to get him away from dealing with students who clearly don't take him seriously as a teacher, and to give him ways to help the protagonists rather than cause more problems for them.

Basically it's not that kids shouldn't be challenged and put out of their comfort zones with magical creatures, it's that Hagrid as a teacher very notably lacks the flexibility to handle bad-outcome classes without having it derail his curriculum for the entire year, which means that any meaningful preparation for O.W.Ls ends up being done by his substitute anyway. And also, Hagrid's narrative purpose in the canon is to be nice but cause problems, with basically no sign of having learnt from his previous problems (I mean, come on, you're gonna give the class with Draco "Karen-in-training" Malfoy the responsibility of handling your dangerous experimental new creature?), and that's not what I want from him in my rewrite.

~Lily, also completely unbiased by her job

Those animals are a part of their culture, and learning about them, including safe practices, is part of the curriculum. So yeah, expose the kids early, let them learn to recognize what they can and can’t do around wild, magical animals, Malfoy. The idea that we can’t ever be out of our element, or in a situation we can’t fully control, is just some sheltered bourgeois nonsense.

But whatever, I guess thirteen-year-olds shouldn’t get mauled, or something, whatever.

—doctorlit, completely unbiased by his job

So yeah, it's going to be Professor Grubbly-Plank taking over the class itself, while Hagrid goes back to gamekeeping with some... you'll see what else he gets to do ;)

Another excellent way to "correct" canon while still having the necessary drama for a good story: have a "defeat" have actual realistic consequence, but use that to get a flimsy part of canon out of the way and get the character to focus on his actual strengths.

I suspect we're getting a differemt teacher for the subject next year, though?

Sugar, man? Frigging sugar?

Yeah, it was an offhand mention in the books that the potion tastes horrible but couldn't be adjusted for taste as sugar would render the whole potion ineffective. So sabotaging the potion instead of just having Lupin miss a dose felt like less people holding the idiot ball where the potion was concerned. I mean, it's not as if Sev was drinking the potion herself...

Sev modified Pettigrew’s memories . . . meaning to convince him that Lily and Harry were really dead, I imagine?

So Peter was originally the one to kill Harry and Lily, since Gaunt assumed Sev would jump at the chance to kill James. Sev finds out Lily (and Harry) were also marked for death, and she forces Peter to switch assignments with her. Peter kills James, and then tells Sirius that Sev was the one who killed all of the Potters. Sev finds Peter and modifies his memories to believe he was actually the one who killed all of the Potters. Gaunt basically gets the report, then, that Peter had gone a bit zealous and wiped out the Potters entirely, and so he has further use for Peter by asking him to spy on the Weasleys.

So then Peter fakes his death (which is how Lupin finds his clothes and finger at the Point of Despair) and goes off to hide as a rat with the Weasleys. Roll ahead to 1991 and suddenly Lily and Harry are alive again, so Peter figures out that Sev modified his memories to make him think he killed all of the Potters. Hence his revenge plot. He's definitely got... more initiative... than the canon version! But then again, this variation of Peter is basically a blackpilled incel, so...

The concrete slab of chocolate in the Hospital Wing is actually a detail from the books, iirc...

(I think maybe you meant bl10 on this chapter’s warning?)

I did, womp womp.

Sounds like he convinced Lucius to get the Wizengamot to commute Buckbeak’s sentence, to release?

Yeah, he had a fight with Lucius over the spring holidays over Buckbeak, using Harry's rationale that killing Buckbeak wouldn't make Hagrid's class any safer, therefore their beef is with Hagrid, not Buckbeak. Which, I mean, given how Hagrid's classes turned out in the books... dude's a nice guy, but his pedagogical skills need work. It's clear he misjudges how dangerous certain creatures are, because his bigger size and strength gives him extra hardiness against dangerous creatures--tiny frail kids and teenagers can't handle these monsters in the same way, and his inability to see that hampers his judgement on what's appropriate in class. An entire year of Flobberworms is way too much; followed by a year of an experimental monstrosity like the Blast-Ended Skrewts, and it's a miracle Harry got Exceeds Expectations on his Care of Magical Creatures O.W.L.

In any case, I think Hagrid's strengths (pun intended?) lie more in diplomacy with the creatures of the Forbidden Forest. He's best friends with the leader of the Acromantula colony, and at least in this verse he's Dumbledore's envoy with the Centaur herd, too. So I want to strengthen that side of him, rather than insist he's a good teacher when he objectively, even by the book characters' admissions, isn't.

They're cool as heck but their uniforms _{(did I mention this school has more than two uniform types?)} use such an obnoxious shade of green that I'm tempted to declare it a canon instance of a Sue color.

17
Noooooooooo. No. We were so close, we were doing so well. Sugar, man? Frigging sugar? I don’t like this Pettigrew, he is too smart. My only consolation is that Gaunt is already alive, so Pettigrew can’t do anything as drastic as resurrecting Voldemort. Dirty little . . . rat.

18
Sev modified Pettigrew’s memories . . . meaning to convince him that Lily and Harry were really dead, I imagine? It’s almost nice to know Pettigrew was targeting her for specific revenge, and not just carrying on his schoolyard bullying as an adult . . .

Okay, Madam Pomfrey keeping absolute concrete slabs of chocolate in the Hospital Wing, and having to hardcore chisel edible pieces out of it to use as medicine, is the most amazing mental image. It makes sense Hogwarts would have loaded up on chocolate this year because of the Dementors, but wow. Good thing Scotland has a fairly cool climate!

19
(I think maybe you meant bl10 on this chapter’s warning?)

Heh. I love the scene in the common room, purely because it displays the disconnect between the experiences of the main characters and everybody else’s. This night, the golden trio experienced a bitten hand, a broken leg, numerous wooden fisticuffs, a showdown with a dark wizard, and a very unusual way of losing a pet. The other Gryffindor students? Partying. Partying in the dorm room. Life goes on, even when the protagonists are facing life and death situations!

Wow, so Draco really was there to help. Sounds like he convinced Lucius to get the Wizengamot to commute Buckbeak’s sentence, to release? Nice! And now he’s gotten wrapped up with the time travelers. That explains why he was still outside when Pettigrew escaped! I’m curious to see how this plays out now . . .

—doctorlit, transforming under the light of a full bookshelf

Hey, Helena got her fruits back! It’s kind of a fun idea, doing “tour interludes” of canons, though it might have been fun to see Helena’s and Sheen’s reactions to the designs of the other dorms, as well, even if only briefly. Diasomnia definitely looks wayyyyyy cool, though, and I’m not just saying that because Maleficent is my favorite Disney villain. Man, I want to tour there, feel the cold of the castle walls, feel the glow of those green-flamed candles, touch the thorns . . . touch them, I say! . . . Did I mention Maleficent is my favorite Disney villain?

I appreciate that Fáelán didn’t buy into the narrative of his species being superior/gifted. I like a character who gets told they’re special from birth, and just kind of . . . chooses Not That? Not sure I have the right words for it right now, but I respect the guy. I wish he didn’t see himself as “not normal,” though, that’s no way to psychological health! Normal varies by culture, and it’s rarely a negative thing to be different. Plus, of course, his species is native to that canon, so he’s certainly no Suvian!

—now shall you deal with doctorlit, oh prince, and all the powers of hell

...I really think the explanation that makes the most sense is a meta one, in that the "Loki" or "Spider-Man" arcs are the most interesting fictionally.

Yeah, this is just wild speculation.

-Ls

I think the thing you're thinking of is probably in the unlabelled cupboard behind the cloakroom (unless I moved the label and that's now part of the cloakroom). It's dark and cluttered, easy to lose things in. I actually tweaked the line mentioning that to make it more obvious, because I skipped over it myself on the last reread.

I treat this book like a TV murder mystery - it's fun to be able to partially solve it, but you don't want to get the whole thing five minutes in. There's at least one show which consistently uses the gimmick that the murder didn't happen when you think it did - which is fine, except a) we all know that now, and b) sometimes only one person's alibi is time-dependent. Kind of gives it away. (There's also another one where it's consistently the most innocent and sympathetic suspect Wot Dun It; we were getting the right person 80%+ of the time. Not great.)

I really, really want to either write or read Miss Ellis' books. Ceridwen the Myrddina, the three Edwardian children she hangs out with, and little Ddraig are incredible characters to imagine. But I felt a Nesbit pastiche would be a bit much for me; maybe in a few years.

(I did actually write a Ceridwen solo version of "A Dragon at Castell-y-Bere" as a short story in one of my NaNos. It got eaten by Google though.)

hS