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It’s a simple as this: on the off chance agents get vacations they also take them to goodfic. Just makes, too much sense.

I think I will have to adopt Madhros, if he doesn't belong to someone already.

I definitely didn't forget this. Nope. No sirree.

No lilacs; most of the ones here already came and went, too.

My towel is hanging on its hook at home, and the one my clients have loaned me for my current house-sit is on a towel rack. ^_^

And since I think we all collectively forgot May 4, a belated May the Fourth be with you all!

~Neshomeh

I hadn't encountered the original version of this meme before; it's quite absurd! Unfortunately, a lot of the absurdity gets lost in the transition to the PPC, since I'm already used to agents having unusual/inferior weapons. But it's still a fun reference. I can't say whether the Founding Fathers or the Flowers are being worse represented by what the stories claim they "intended," but I bet Building Maintenance is more displeased than either! Oh, and excellent substitution with that Roomba!

—doctorlit owns a toy Cerberus for home defense, and he's sure it will be very effective if anyone ever crosses the threshold

A cute little story! I like that Mitsuki was willing to shift her potential career to something new to support her family, but didn’t have to give up her interests, either. And indeed, let boys be beautiful, too!

A couple grammar notes:
Hazama Mitsuki was an unmatched beauty, a fact she was very aware.
“very aware of.”

Our baby has received blessing from the moon,
Either “received a blessing from” or “received blessings from”

—doctorlit received a blessing from an ant yesterday, and it's still itching this morning

ad to an Acceptable and Fine Amount of Consequences

Okay, I know ultimately Hermione is the one who chose to publicly reveal the situations with Regulus, but boy, did the adults in the Order not do themselves any favors, giving her the Office Space treatment. (“The Office Space treatment” is my nickname for when multiple authority figures all come down on someone to repeat the same criticism about a single mistake the someone made, based on the scene in Office Space where three supervisors lecture their employee for a harmless paperwork error in quick succession, where once would have sufficed.) They all know how strong-willed and defiant Hermione is; they should have known ragging on her about her potential decision was going to set her mind more strongly, and maybe make her do it sooner, too. Grown-ups just don’t understand! And I’m right there with Hermione, being a young person wanting to fix problems, and it feels like all the adults in the campaign are focusing everywhere except on the actual problems! It makes it all the easier for me to sympathize with her, and understand her decision . . . and all the more horrified at the absolute pile of train wrecks she’s inflicted onto her society as a result! With Gaunt influencing the Dementors to “strike” to bust his Knights out of Azkaban, and to provide a pretense for Thicknesse dropping out (under the Imperius again?), this is easily going to shift the polling data in a way Hermione didn’t foresee, at the worst possible time for Regulus to see a decline in support. Additionally, she’s completely demolished the ties between her own friend group, and outed herself to Umbridge, and potentially sent Umbridge on the trail of other students who haven’t actually done anything involved with the gossip pamphlets. Still, I stand by her anger and her desire to improve the world; they are good, and justified! Plus, the silver lining here is that it looks like the Order’s main focus is discovering the cause of all the missing Muggles at Silveryholt, which likely hasn’t been affected by Hermione at all; if anything, her interference in the political aims of Regulus is going to serve as a distraction for Gaunt to pay less attention to Silveryholt. I don’t know if the Slytherin basilisk is public knowledge in this timeline, but I hope the Order can discover it (safely) either way, and make Gaunt face consequences for, you know. Feeding people to it!

Okay, I can’t put this off any longer: I was right the first time about Hermione being Polixenes?! I should have stuck to my guns! I forget now whatever it was that made me dismiss Hermione, but I remember being so sure it couldn’t be her any more . . . whatever act she put up, it was convincing! Man, blast it, I was so close and then veered off . . . I really convinced myself Fred and George were spending their off time doing extra writing work? What is wrong with me!?

Oh, I really enjoyed the scene where Jenni went full FicPsych on Sirius! Nice to see her dipping into her AU self’s talent pool, and it looks like the man really needed it, too. Good for her! And good for him!

—doctorlit feels like Hermione’s dad reminding her to study is like another parent reminding their child to breathe air

Just wanted to let y’all know that despite leaving the discord server, I will still be involved in the community on here!! I will do by best to participate in events and now that I’m on summer break, my goal is to write something! (not PPC related, rather my own story)

see y’all around :>

-HC

She is quite a charming woman.

They rise heads up, heads up high!

(And don't forget your towels!)

Hermione Granger deals with the fallout of the latest issue of Lady Polixenes. This is another two-parter of someone else's POV, and Hermione's POV this year is particularly fraught, so read at your own discretion!

Warning: Hermione exhibits some signs of complex post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from Umbridge's abusive vendetta against her, and lashes out at the people around her as a result. She also experiences flashbacks to traumatic incidents, including Astoria attacking her in 2nd year, and Umbridge's detentions. Also, Dowager Lady Black calls her the m-word.

The detail of Lily being sponsored by the Princes was first brought up in either year 1 or 2. James had wanted to sponsor her, too, but Lily chose Severina because they were childhood friends, and that formed the basis of James' hatred of Severina. The Mary Macdonald incident was alluded to in year 4, too, when they were listing out crimes committed by the Knights of Camelot. I think in this instance it was probably a sort of initiation rite for the Knights given how Severina appeared to have been traumatised by it (standing back and doing nothing, something she also did back when she was young and her grandfather--well, that's a story for another time).

Severina's allowing her anxieties over what would happen if Harry's shields are too weak affect her ability to teach him, plus I don't even think she knows how to go about teaching a complete novice how to do this thing. Nesh and I worked out Occlumency to be sort of done in layers:

• The basic level is building a wall between your thoughts and the thoughts of family members on your familial bond. That’s something most mages learn as kids. Harry doesn’t know this because he was raised Muggle.
• Then you have to learn to clear your mind at will when someone tries to barge in on your thoughts.
• Then you learn to construct a false set of memories, expanding it into an entire different “self” or backstory if needed.
• And then finally more advanced trickery like false memories on top of false memories, etc

And advanced Legilimens learn to spot telltales of tampered-with memories, or false memory palaces.

But essentially the whole thing comes down to effective compartmentalisation and being able to modify your memories in order to lie under Veritaserum/memory-pulling. Things that this Harry in particular isn't really good at because he's open-hearted and not very interested in duplicity, because he wasn't raised in an abusive household. That being said, Severina was definitely the wrong person to teach him because she's invested in him enough to freak out about him not immediately grasping the basics, like how SOME parents freak out every time they're in a car with their kid so the kid has to get a driving tutor instead! Ask me how I know :P

Hermione was overdue for an activism L that doesn't imply that wizards think slavery is fun and cool and that house-elves enjoy being slaves. :P That's all I really have to say about what she's doing. Alex Hirsch put it best when he said that the inability of the left to distinguish between an imperfect ally and an enemy would lead to our downfall!

Interesting theory on Babbling! You'll see in several more chapters if that's correct.

Haha, Draco can't help it, he was being too nice, he had to insult something soon and it might as well be grilled cheese. :P

And re: your speculation... well, you'll know in the next chapter!

This is the first year I haven't seen a single flowering lilac today. They came earlier in the month and have blown away like the ashes of the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road.

"... and a hard-boiled egg!"

hS

Happy 25th of May to all who celebrate!

*distributes sprigs of lilac*

In lieu of their originally planned mission, or the new non-Sue-killing photographic mission I'm currently writing for them, I have for some reason decided that the first thing published for Tolin and Finola (besides being in my Permission request two whole years ago) will be their version of the home defense musket copypasta.

Warnings for destructive fire/explosives, aka blacklist item 9 (censored) and general violence (not censored).

Tolin owns a musket for home defense, since that’s what the Flowers intended.

Four Sues break into his response center.

“What in the blazes?” he says, grabbing his Brodie helmet and Baker rifle.

Tolin blows a golf ball-sized hole through the first Sue, and she’s dead on the spot. He draws his pistol on the second Sue, but misses her entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors’ Roomba instead.

He has to resort to poking Finola, who is sleeping on the top bunk.

“Shpxva’ Sues,” she says, "> BL 9

Tolin affixes his bayonet and charges the last glittery rapscallion. She bleeds out waiting on the DIA to arrive, since HQ is impossible to navigate.

Just as the Flowers intended.

(Definitely not canon)

I did say they needed to take the pen away from Uncle Rusty... this was a Steven Moffat episode, and it kind of showed.

(As an aside, I didn't realise until yesterday that Moffat was also responsible for Sherlock. Kind of makes more sense of why people went off him so hard - they weren't just looking at his Doctor Who run.)

I actually find it quite funny that the philosophy of the series is now very clearly "this thing is controversial in America right now, here's a Time Lord to tell you which side is dumb and/or evil". I'm not overly surprised, mind you - Russell T. Davies has always done this (for example, Torchwood went out of its way repeatedly to explain that there is no afterlife) - but it's funny that they've done it just after going live on Disney+. (I will note that as far as I can tell, the production is still 100% BBC - Disney are only distributing.)

(Of course the show has always been "moralistic", so to speak: the second ever story was about Space Fascists and their nuclear weapons. THEY TALK LIKE THIS AND LOVE TO EX-TER-MIN-ATE.)

hS

On that count, he really does just like to be beautiful 🤭 he's been beauty-conscious since a young age, and is subsequently taught beauty care by his mother. You're spot-on however on the fact he has a strong sense of honor and responsibility, especially towards his loved ones. The lad is a yamato nadeshiko to the bone, you see.

I find this both funny and rather cute: Kaguya appears vain on the outside, because of how he grooms and comports himself all the time, but his speech in this chapter made me realize that he isn’t really doing it for his own sake. He’s done it to maintain his school’s social order, to preserve the image of his parents’ hotel, and to protect Momoka’s reputation. And even now, when Kaguya is dangerously ill, he’s still only thinking about Momoka, not himself. He’s actually a very complex character, and I think Inasuke has finally noticed that as well, since he appealed to Kaguya using Momoka’s feelings, instead of his own. I hope this is the start of a much healthier relationship between the two!

I’m not too sure that the nursing staff of Medical would lock patients in like that? Feels a little weird, although I suppose if Kaguya has been consistently trying to escape, they might have resorted to locking the door to keep him safe. Just so long as it’s a special case, and not the standard operating procedure!

I very much love the exorcism scene! I love the idea that, because the shrine was the closest thing to canon featured in the fic, that the ground around it basically became canon source material, and was able to defeat the character replacements on contact. Very unique and fun!

A new word you taught me today: UV mapping!

—doctorlit is selfless like Kaguya. More selfless than Kaguya actually, because he doesn’t waste time on all that pointless self-care. Remember, it takes fewer muscles to slouch!

Leo and Taki make a fun pair. They remind me of me and my supervisor in Small Mammals, actually. Leo is like me, wanting to get as much done as possible, and finding things like cleaning my house and social niceties boring and pointless. And Taki’s version of “hurrying” being “walking slightly faster” is like my supervisor, who has no motivation beyond getting the bare minimum done, and constantly complaining he doesn’t have enough time to get everything done, even though he’ll sit outside the building smoking and watching TikTok videos for 10 straight minutes, multiple times a day! Anyway, I bet the version of Leo in the Department of Efficiency timeline has a real good time . . .

So, Naomi didn’t quite make it out alive in the end. She was a sympathetic figure, but I guess her reliance on control and forcing the world into the shape she wanted got in the way of learning how to resolve a story in a satisfying way, which ultimately returned her to the PPC’s radar and blocked her from being able to fight off Leo and Taki. Alas! Looks like she’s back in some unformed word salad now, so perhaps she’ll find a way to reform as a better character someday?

Applied Sciences certainly seems to attract the most physically outlandish agents, doesn’t it? I must ask, is Gazebo a dire gazebo? Also, it looks like Gazebo was about to say she helped Leo with a “quest for revenge.” Did Leo know Naomi in some way? Or does that just mean Leo was getting revenge for Naomi surviving her encounter with Kaito and Tanner?

Congratulations on getting through your first mission!

New word you taught me: “noogenesis”

One nitpick:
I ask (the Simpsons cast, not the voices . . .)
I think Simpsons here should be italicized, if I’m reading this correctly as “the cast of the show” rather than the specific family with surname “Simpson.”

—doctorlit wonders if he’s so out of touch; no, it’s the children who are wrong

Oh, Lily was actually sponsored by the Prince family? Interesting detail; that probably made it all the worse for her when Severina started spiraling into bad places, and frankly, worse places than Severus did. I had forgotten about the Mary Macdonald incident from canon, but it definitely feels like the event was significantly worse in this timeline. Severina has a LOT to atone for, so I can see why she wanted to be Harry’s Occlumency teacher, although I’m somehow more frustrated with her efforts than Severus’s, despite the similar structure. I have a feeling Liu is giving Draco a bit more actual instruction than just, “I’m going to pew pew your brain, try and stop me!” Like, both Harry and Severina acknowledge that Harry is starting with less experience than he should, so maybe some actual teaching would be helpful here? I was, however, amused that Harry’s surface-level thoughts are basically, “Oops, All Boyfriend.” Don’t do puberty, kids, those hormones will really get you! (Oh, and speaking of Liu, I am in deep love with him and Jenni distributing contraband books to Hogwarts students, partly because it's such a glorious concept on its nose, partly because it’s in direct defiance of Umbridge, and partly because the unpublished book I’m reading through for Rosie right now features characters distributing contraband books! “If I had a nickel for every . . .”)

But speaking of Umbridge, we’ve had a lovely break from her, but she’s back on the page now, and Hogwarts is feeling bleak. Banning children from hugging or holding hands is not psychologically healthy in any way! And Hermione is losing it. While there’s a degree of fun in seeing her start rebelling against the system of rules and discipline she normally honors, it’s also a bit worrying to see her change so much. I understand why she went to Polixenes to expose the situation with the vassal bonds, but oh boy, she may have just handed Silverstream the win for Minister there. Nothing to do but watch what happens . . .

With Umbridge’s weird reaction to Professor Babbling’s wardstone dating project (which sounds extremely fun and cool, by the way, would read a whole story about that), I can actually buy that “conspiracy theory” about Binns being kept as a history teacher because his poor delivery makes the students less likely to question the Ministry’s actions and beliefs. The detail about Babbling’s long lifespan is intriguing. I doubt she’s a ghost; it feels more likely, considering what she teaches, that she did something involving runes that preserved some imprint of herself in the room that’s able to linger and interact with people beyond her own death. She might be something like the “shades” produced from the Resurrection Stone, and keeps the lighting low so people can’t tell that her colors are “washed out.” Although if she’s been physically accompanying Draco into the Chamber of Secrets, I suppose that annihilates that theory!

I’ll have you know, when I read Draco criticizing the “plebian cheese sandwiches,” I was having a perfectly filling clearance pizza crust with mozzarella melted all over it. There was no need for Draco to insult my very normal adult meal like that! (That wasn’t my whole dinner, of course. I had gummy bears, too.)

(For anyone other than Lily reading, I do recommend butting out now, because I think I’m about to accurately identify Lady Polixenes at the end of this paragraph. You have been warned!) That really is a top-quality little essay that Polixenes published at the end of this chapter. Very engaging, very swaying, I agree wholeheartedly. I wonder if Polixenes always rights essays of such quality for schoolwork, because they’re not exactly known for their academic performance. Maybe it’s just a matter of the right motivation? Let’s look at our list of clues so far:
-Polixenes feels no duty to uphold Pureblood or Circle social mores
-Polixenes chafes under Umbridge’s authority
-Polixenes has access to all kinds of gossip from around the school
-Polixenes is familiar with Muggle literature, specifically 1984
-Polixenes may be using the title “Lady” partly to obfuscate their actual gender identity
The last point is pure supposition on Ron’s part, and doesn’t eliminate anyone out of the students or staff. The first two points are also very broad, especially since the Inquisitorial Squad appears to be anonymous in this timeline. The third point is a bit of a null data point, since we have no idea who Fred and George have given or sold extendable ears to at this point, so just about any students could be abusing one of those (except Harry, since his status as the point-of-view character means we-the-reader know he hasn’t been spending time on an illicit printing press. The most unique thing we know is 1984. There are, of course, plenty of Muggleborn and Half-Blood students who may have encountered Muggle literature at home&mdas;heck, Draco probably isn’t the only Pureblood who’s been sneaking some himself! However, there’s only one character who’s been explicitly stated to be reading 1984, isn’t there? Or rather, a pair of characters, and one of them even quoted from it this very chapter (after I had arrived at this conclusion, for the record!). So, let’s reexamine our list:
-the Weasley family had their social status and wealth taken away due to Circle of Avalon politics
-the twins chafe under most authority, really, and were famously, militantly opposed to Umbridge in canon
-the twins are themselves the supply of extendable ears, and have the most access to the product
-the twins were reading 1984 this year, and George quoted “wrongthink thoughtcrime” in conversation this chapter
-Not only was Ron right about “Lady” being a misleading title in the publications, but so was the pronoun “I.” What better way for a pair of male authors to hide their identities than to present themselves as a single woman?
Lady Polixenes is actually Fred and George Weasley! (And if I’m wrong this time, I’m truly giving up.)

—doctorlit still finds the existence of Babbling Beverage to be one of the weirder inventions in the Wizarding World

I have read, and enjoyed it. I liked Kaguya's discussion of his backstory with Momoka.

--Ls

They spent last season playing "Where's Sauron?"; it would be an extremely bad move to try it again just from a crass marketing standpoint, let alone a writing one.

I have some hope that season two will attempt to correct for some of seasons one's flaws, though I remain skeptical. At the very least, I'll watch so I can be mad at it for the right reasons instead of whatever vitriol gets spewed by the people who're using it as a cover for real-world bigotry. That drives me up the wall more than anything the show has done!

~Neshomeh, recognizing that everything has been political since forever.

It's not without issues (the kid's behavior is strange and the ending is played more optimistic than it ought to be IMO), but it's a smaller, more character-driven story with a more serious tone, which I tend to prefer.

This season is really wearing its thoughts on its sleeve so far: anti-capitalism, anti-war, and anti–blind faith in this case. That's fine with me since I agree with them, but the first bit is a little weird coming from Disney. They talk a good game, but do they put their money where their mouse is? {= P

~Neshomeh

In which Momoka faces a big dilemma, and Kaguya is still desperate during his Medical stay.

are possibly him getting bits of his memory back of 2nd year. That, or he's dreaming about one of the Healers. But it isn't Bellatrix, mostly because Bellatrix is in exile in France at this time.