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Title: The Third Brother
Author: Evandar
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Ignotus Peverell/Albus Dumbledore, Harry/Ginny, Ignotus Peverell/Ginny
Warnings: Possession and necrophilia
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: In which all fairy tales are warnings and The Tale of Three Brothers is no different, and the origin of the Hallows is much Darker than Harry realised. Something deathly hitched a ride when Harry returned from Kings Cross, and it’s far too late to stop it.
A/N: This was written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hp_darkarts’s 2014 Horror Fest, for the prompt “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause” (Hamlet); When Harry returned from Kings Cross, something else hitched a ride. Many thanks to Sian for the beta and for not freaking out on me when this got weirder than I’d originally intended and thank you to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
writcraft for the excellent prompt. I hope you enjoy it.
The trees were close here, in the place where he’d died and lived again, and the branches above him rustled in unfelt breezes. Somewhere in the dark a fox screamed and he held out his hand – not his, the fingers were too thick to be his; short and stubby and attached to a square palm, but his for now – and felt something dark and cold fly into his grasp.
The thought that something was wrong curled in the back of his mind. He pushed it away. He knew what he was doing and it would all be better for this. It would all be better.
He was always tired these days, and pale, and more than once Hermione put her hand to his forehead – funny how she was willing to touch his scar now, when she never had been before – to check for a temperature and pulled away blank-faced.
“You’re a bit chilly, Harry. Are you sure you feel alright?”
He wasn’t sure, but he knew he had to feel alright. He’d just defeated the Dark Lord and people were looking at him as if he knew what they were supposed to be doing. “Yeah,” he told her and offered her a smile that probably looked as weak as it felt. “Just tired.”
Preservation spells only lasted for so long, though they had certainly advanced over the years. The shape in the tomb was sunken and shrivelled and wisps of long white hair came away in the stranger’s hand when he ran it over desiccated skin. There was magic here, so similar to that he’d wielded before, but that task was over and he had another purpose.
He lifted the wand from between skeletal fingers and leaned down to brush his lips over the dried husk of a once-great man, and slipped out his tongue to lick along exposed teeth. Yes, this is right, though the voice in his mind is screaming to stop – demanding why and please no – and he laughs into this kiss that feels oh so perfect -
- and he searched the next day for the Elder Wand that he could remember stealing, after vomiting and brushing his teeth so hard that his gums began to bleed. He breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t find it, and shoved the dream to the back of his mind. He was the Master of Death so it should do as he wanted, shouldn’t it? And he wanted it to stay buried with Dumbledore even though there was a tiny part of him, deep in the back of his mind, that thought the idea was hilarious.
He managed to summon up a grim smile from somewhere for the funerals, and watched the funeral processions while letting the speech wash over him. Hogwarts would always be a school, but in honour of the dead, it was going to be a cemetery now too. Tonks and Remus, Fred and Colin; he watched their coffins pass with sorrow and an aching emptiness in his chest and a growing horror at the twinge of arousal that flickered in his belly at the thought of them lying dead beneath him.
The image of Dumbledore in his dream, of dry skin crackling under his lips and fingers and the cold taste of death on his tongue, flashed through his mind and he turned away, closing his eyes and trying not to breathe in case he vomited again.
This isn’t right, he thought. There’s something wrong with me.
It’s too late, darling. This is everything you should have expected it to be.
Hermione worried her lip between her teeth and studied him closely. She didn’t believe him, he could tell, and he wanted to scream at her for it. After everything – after all that they’d been through together – she just didn’t want to know. The war was over and he was supposed to be normal now. That’s it. The end. Ron just looked slightly sick. Luna didn’t look at him at all; she gazed off towards the lake with a vacant expression, but she was the one who spoke.
“Fairy tales all have a basis in fact, you know, but they don’t often resemble it,” she said. “I never knew why Daddy thought the Tale of Three Brothers was a nice one.”
“I imagine the thought of being able to decide your own fate – of how to live and when to die – would be quite appealing to some people,” Hermione replied. “Didn’t Dumbledore say that it was ‘the next great adventure’? He must have thought so.”
He’d chosen to be murdered for the ‘greater good’ instead of withering away from Voldemort’s curse - but he’d withered away anyway, hadn’t he, and so deliciously; he prefers them when they’re dry and brittle instead of fetid and bloated and just past fresh - so he must have felt that way. Harry swallowed and nodded and pretended he couldn’t remember someth-one trembling and shaking from the rush of orgasm, wearing his body, and the droplets of come desecrating the body of his mentor shining silver in the moonlight. It’s too late, he thinks. Too late to even try.
“It’s not Voldemort, is it?” Ron asked. He sounded almost hopeful. “He had the wand for a while, right?”
The wand that Harry dreamt of stealing but hadn’t found. “I don’t think so,” he said. “This is – I don’t know.”
“It’s a warning,” Luna said. “All fairy tales are.”
He drew his Cloak around his new form and travelled down and down into the dark and it was all so delightfully familiar that he smiled and laughed with more delight than, he thought, this body had ever felt. He liked the body. He didn’t like the hands so much, he decided, as he trailed them along the stone wall, but he enjoyed the memories – this school was home and he knew it from the boy better than he ever knew it from his brothers’ tales – and the height so close to his own and the boy’s cock. You’d think he’d never used it, with how it responded so eagerly to his touch.
He trod the halls he was never allowed to see in life and with his hand to the stones he could feel the centuries of magic, of love and hate that had been poured into the very heart of this place. The Founders left their souls here, and he could feel those too – they were drawn to him as the ghosts were. He’d never have been lonely here, if he’d been allowed to come. If he hadn’t been locked away – his brothers’ deathly little weapon. He could feel the boy’s fear in the back of his mind, and he wondered if he’d realised quite what he’d done yet.
He laid himself down amongst the rats that swarmed in the dungeons. The school was damaged and open to the elements and the rats had come as they always did to such places. He held still as they squeaked and skittered over the body and let the chill of his magic seep from his flesh to theirs. To their fleas. Tiny claws scrabbled and fangs bit deep, and the Elder Wand burned cold between his fingers.
He would never be lonely here.
The Cloak felt wrong, he thought. It was the same as always, silky smooth and as light as air, but he could remember now what it was made of; could remember weaving it - with human hair, stolen from the piles of bodies left to rot in the gutters; too many dead for the town to cope with, and all the Muggles too afraid of their God’s punitive pestilence to do more than cart the bodies to the street or a nearby pit and pray that the buboes didn’t swell in their own pits - and showing it with pride to his brothers.
He wanted to burn it. No longer his father’s relic, it was something he’d created himself. Something evil - something to show his skill. His brothers were accomplished wizards both, but he had been born with the shadow of death clinging to him, and he’d had to do something to prove he was a worthy exchange for their mother’s life and their father’s grief - and Dark. Something that should be destroyed, like Voldemort had been, but something he knew he’d never be allowed to.
The thi-person in his head would never allow it, and Harry had seen him looking back at him from the mirror with eyes as bright and cold as stars. The Master of Death - necromancer, silly child - was inside of him and death was -so much stronger than life, and so beautiful; I can show you so much - inevitable.
He clutched the Cloak close and breathed in the smell of memories and felt his heart clench in his chest as elation that wasn’t his own soared through him.
He smiled at the bushy haired girl – Hermione, the body’s memories supplied – and joined her on the grass. The book with his story was on her lap, and her fingers were curled around the edge of the cover, white at the knuckles.
“It’s just a story, Harry,” she said and he could hear in her voice how much she wanted to believe it. “You’re probably just stressed. It’ll pass in time.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed, and stretched out his arms to study the hands he hated with their stubby fingers and unfamiliar scars. They were becoming more like his; already darkening round the nails and cold to the touch. They’d shrivel, eventually, and blacken – the price of his power – and they’d belong to him again.
The boy was sobbing still, in the back of his mind. He’d shrivel up too, eventually, but before that he’d see all the wonders Ignotus could show him – a thank you, perhaps, for his sacrifice.
Ginny was pale and shaking, feverishly hot in his arms as she pressed desperate kisses to his lips. He held her close, trailed fingers up her sides under her school blouse, and felt - a wave of disgust at the pounding of her heart - her breathing quicken. She ground down eagerly against him, trying to coax him further, but shoved herself back when his questing fingers brushed against something hard in the pit of her arm.
She climbed off his lap and straightened her skirt. “This was a mistake,” she said.
“Ginny?”
“Leave it, Harry,” she told him. “You don’t want me anymore.” She punctuated the statement with a wave of her hand towards his lap, where his cock lay limp in the confines of his trousers.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She’d died, the fiery little temptress, and now he wanted her so badly. Her grief-stricken family had taken so long by her bedside that her body was fully cooled when he spread the cloak over them both, and the first stiffness of rigor had passed. She was still fresh enough that she hadn’t started to swell or stink, and the boy’s – his cock hardened eagerly at the thought of having her.
He knelt between her thighs and pushed up the flimsy hospital gown they’d covered her in; drew her death-heavy legs around his waist and guided himself into her tight, cold cunt, honouring her last wishes with the body of the boy she’d died wanting.
He banished the traces of his seed and righted her little gown when he was done; flicking his wand to dispose of the evidence. It wouldn’t do for people to notice. One of the buboes in her armpit had burst, stinking and fetid, but such things were normal and to be expected under the circumstances. The people of this new time would see that soon enough. The pestilence was spreading once more, and the bodies would mount far higher than the gir- than Ginny Weasley – and he would have so many new friends to play with.
He tried to tell Hermione. Not what he’d done to Ginny, no; the disease. The plan. The Plague that was spreading through the castle. But his throat closed up, choking him on his own words, and when he fled to the bathroom – sick to his stomach from guilt and horror and Ginny – he saw none of himself in the face in the mirror.
”There’s no evidence, my dear,” his reflection said, and he could feel his lips moving around a voice that wasn’t his own. “It’s all just a dream.” He could see the lines of his own skull when he smiled, and the mad glint of silver in his eyes bright within in his own.
And as he vomited into the sink, he saw his fingertips had turned black. He closed his eyes as he retched, and when he opened them they were his own again – nails bitten down to the quick, and swollen slightly red with a mild infection earned by his habitual biting.
“Just a dream,” he told himself. “Just a dream.”
And when he straightened, he brushed his hair out of his eyes and freshened his breath with a spell before joining his friends in the corridor. Hermione offered him a small, sympathetic smile and took his hand between her own – frowning at the cold of his skin and the trick of the light that made his eyes look silvery-grey instead of green.
“It’s going to be okay, you know,” she said quietly.
He sighed softly and looked away. “Yes, I know.” He was making it all better now, all better; he’d have so many friends to play with he couldn’t possibly be lonely anymore.
He was so delightfully alive.
Author: Evandar
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Ignotus Peverell/Albus Dumbledore, Harry/Ginny, Ignotus Peverell/Ginny
Warnings: Possession and necrophilia
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: In which all fairy tales are warnings and The Tale of Three Brothers is no different, and the origin of the Hallows is much Darker than Harry realised. Something deathly hitched a ride when Harry returned from Kings Cross, and it’s far too late to stop it.
A/N: This was written for
hp_darkarts’s 2014 Horror Fest, for the prompt “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause” (Hamlet); When Harry returned from Kings Cross, something else hitched a ride. Many thanks to Sian for the beta and for not freaking out on me when this got weirder than I’d originally intended and thank you to writcraft for the excellent prompt. I hope you enjoy it.The trees were close here, in the place where he’d died and lived again, and the branches above him rustled in unfelt breezes. Somewhere in the dark a fox screamed and he held out his hand – not his, the fingers were too thick to be his; short and stubby and attached to a square palm, but his for now – and felt something dark and cold fly into his grasp.
The thought that something was wrong curled in the back of his mind. He pushed it away. He knew what he was doing and it would all be better for this. It would all be better.
He was always tired these days, and pale, and more than once Hermione put her hand to his forehead – funny how she was willing to touch his scar now, when she never had been before – to check for a temperature and pulled away blank-faced.
“You’re a bit chilly, Harry. Are you sure you feel alright?”
He wasn’t sure, but he knew he had to feel alright. He’d just defeated the Dark Lord and people were looking at him as if he knew what they were supposed to be doing. “Yeah,” he told her and offered her a smile that probably looked as weak as it felt. “Just tired.”
Preservation spells only lasted for so long, though they had certainly advanced over the years. The shape in the tomb was sunken and shrivelled and wisps of long white hair came away in the stranger’s hand when he ran it over desiccated skin. There was magic here, so similar to that he’d wielded before, but that task was over and he had another purpose.
He lifted the wand from between skeletal fingers and leaned down to brush his lips over the dried husk of a once-great man, and slipped out his tongue to lick along exposed teeth. Yes, this is right, though the voice in his mind is screaming to stop – demanding why and please no – and he laughs into this kiss that feels oh so perfect -
- and he searched the next day for the Elder Wand that he could remember stealing, after vomiting and brushing his teeth so hard that his gums began to bleed. He breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t find it, and shoved the dream to the back of his mind. He was the Master of Death so it should do as he wanted, shouldn’t it? And he wanted it to stay buried with Dumbledore even though there was a tiny part of him, deep in the back of his mind, that thought the idea was hilarious.
He managed to summon up a grim smile from somewhere for the funerals, and watched the funeral processions while letting the speech wash over him. Hogwarts would always be a school, but in honour of the dead, it was going to be a cemetery now too. Tonks and Remus, Fred and Colin; he watched their coffins pass with sorrow and an aching emptiness in his chest and a growing horror at the twinge of arousal that flickered in his belly at the thought of them lying dead beneath him.
The image of Dumbledore in his dream, of dry skin crackling under his lips and fingers and the cold taste of death on his tongue, flashed through his mind and he turned away, closing his eyes and trying not to breathe in case he vomited again.
This isn’t right, he thought. There’s something wrong with me.
It’s too late, darling. This is everything you should have expected it to be.
Hermione worried her lip between her teeth and studied him closely. She didn’t believe him, he could tell, and he wanted to scream at her for it. After everything – after all that they’d been through together – she just didn’t want to know. The war was over and he was supposed to be normal now. That’s it. The end. Ron just looked slightly sick. Luna didn’t look at him at all; she gazed off towards the lake with a vacant expression, but she was the one who spoke.
“Fairy tales all have a basis in fact, you know, but they don’t often resemble it,” she said. “I never knew why Daddy thought the Tale of Three Brothers was a nice one.”
“I imagine the thought of being able to decide your own fate – of how to live and when to die – would be quite appealing to some people,” Hermione replied. “Didn’t Dumbledore say that it was ‘the next great adventure’? He must have thought so.”
He’d chosen to be murdered for the ‘greater good’ instead of withering away from Voldemort’s curse - but he’d withered away anyway, hadn’t he, and so deliciously; he prefers them when they’re dry and brittle instead of fetid and bloated and just past fresh - so he must have felt that way. Harry swallowed and nodded and pretended he couldn’t remember someth-one trembling and shaking from the rush of orgasm, wearing his body, and the droplets of come desecrating the body of his mentor shining silver in the moonlight. It’s too late, he thinks. Too late to even try.
“It’s not Voldemort, is it?” Ron asked. He sounded almost hopeful. “He had the wand for a while, right?”
The wand that Harry dreamt of stealing but hadn’t found. “I don’t think so,” he said. “This is – I don’t know.”
“It’s a warning,” Luna said. “All fairy tales are.”
He drew his Cloak around his new form and travelled down and down into the dark and it was all so delightfully familiar that he smiled and laughed with more delight than, he thought, this body had ever felt. He liked the body. He didn’t like the hands so much, he decided, as he trailed them along the stone wall, but he enjoyed the memories – this school was home and he knew it from the boy better than he ever knew it from his brothers’ tales – and the height so close to his own and the boy’s cock. You’d think he’d never used it, with how it responded so eagerly to his touch.
He trod the halls he was never allowed to see in life and with his hand to the stones he could feel the centuries of magic, of love and hate that had been poured into the very heart of this place. The Founders left their souls here, and he could feel those too – they were drawn to him as the ghosts were. He’d never have been lonely here, if he’d been allowed to come. If he hadn’t been locked away – his brothers’ deathly little weapon. He could feel the boy’s fear in the back of his mind, and he wondered if he’d realised quite what he’d done yet.
He laid himself down amongst the rats that swarmed in the dungeons. The school was damaged and open to the elements and the rats had come as they always did to such places. He held still as they squeaked and skittered over the body and let the chill of his magic seep from his flesh to theirs. To their fleas. Tiny claws scrabbled and fangs bit deep, and the Elder Wand burned cold between his fingers.
He would never be lonely here.
The Cloak felt wrong, he thought. It was the same as always, silky smooth and as light as air, but he could remember now what it was made of; could remember weaving it - with human hair, stolen from the piles of bodies left to rot in the gutters; too many dead for the town to cope with, and all the Muggles too afraid of their God’s punitive pestilence to do more than cart the bodies to the street or a nearby pit and pray that the buboes didn’t swell in their own pits - and showing it with pride to his brothers.
He wanted to burn it. No longer his father’s relic, it was something he’d created himself. Something evil - something to show his skill. His brothers were accomplished wizards both, but he had been born with the shadow of death clinging to him, and he’d had to do something to prove he was a worthy exchange for their mother’s life and their father’s grief - and Dark. Something that should be destroyed, like Voldemort had been, but something he knew he’d never be allowed to.
The thi-person in his head would never allow it, and Harry had seen him looking back at him from the mirror with eyes as bright and cold as stars. The Master of Death - necromancer, silly child - was inside of him and death was -so much stronger than life, and so beautiful; I can show you so much - inevitable.
He clutched the Cloak close and breathed in the smell of memories and felt his heart clench in his chest as elation that wasn’t his own soared through him.
He smiled at the bushy haired girl – Hermione, the body’s memories supplied – and joined her on the grass. The book with his story was on her lap, and her fingers were curled around the edge of the cover, white at the knuckles.
“It’s just a story, Harry,” she said and he could hear in her voice how much she wanted to believe it. “You’re probably just stressed. It’ll pass in time.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed, and stretched out his arms to study the hands he hated with their stubby fingers and unfamiliar scars. They were becoming more like his; already darkening round the nails and cold to the touch. They’d shrivel, eventually, and blacken – the price of his power – and they’d belong to him again.
The boy was sobbing still, in the back of his mind. He’d shrivel up too, eventually, but before that he’d see all the wonders Ignotus could show him – a thank you, perhaps, for his sacrifice.
Ginny was pale and shaking, feverishly hot in his arms as she pressed desperate kisses to his lips. He held her close, trailed fingers up her sides under her school blouse, and felt - a wave of disgust at the pounding of her heart - her breathing quicken. She ground down eagerly against him, trying to coax him further, but shoved herself back when his questing fingers brushed against something hard in the pit of her arm.
She climbed off his lap and straightened her skirt. “This was a mistake,” she said.
“Ginny?”
“Leave it, Harry,” she told him. “You don’t want me anymore.” She punctuated the statement with a wave of her hand towards his lap, where his cock lay limp in the confines of his trousers.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She’d died, the fiery little temptress, and now he wanted her so badly. Her grief-stricken family had taken so long by her bedside that her body was fully cooled when he spread the cloak over them both, and the first stiffness of rigor had passed. She was still fresh enough that she hadn’t started to swell or stink, and the boy’s – his cock hardened eagerly at the thought of having her.
He knelt between her thighs and pushed up the flimsy hospital gown they’d covered her in; drew her death-heavy legs around his waist and guided himself into her tight, cold cunt, honouring her last wishes with the body of the boy she’d died wanting.
He banished the traces of his seed and righted her little gown when he was done; flicking his wand to dispose of the evidence. It wouldn’t do for people to notice. One of the buboes in her armpit had burst, stinking and fetid, but such things were normal and to be expected under the circumstances. The people of this new time would see that soon enough. The pestilence was spreading once more, and the bodies would mount far higher than the gir- than Ginny Weasley – and he would have so many new friends to play with.
He tried to tell Hermione. Not what he’d done to Ginny, no; the disease. The plan. The Plague that was spreading through the castle. But his throat closed up, choking him on his own words, and when he fled to the bathroom – sick to his stomach from guilt and horror and Ginny – he saw none of himself in the face in the mirror.
”There’s no evidence, my dear,” his reflection said, and he could feel his lips moving around a voice that wasn’t his own. “It’s all just a dream.” He could see the lines of his own skull when he smiled, and the mad glint of silver in his eyes bright within in his own.
And as he vomited into the sink, he saw his fingertips had turned black. He closed his eyes as he retched, and when he opened them they were his own again – nails bitten down to the quick, and swollen slightly red with a mild infection earned by his habitual biting.
“Just a dream,” he told himself. “Just a dream.”
And when he straightened, he brushed his hair out of his eyes and freshened his breath with a spell before joining his friends in the corridor. Hermione offered him a small, sympathetic smile and took his hand between her own – frowning at the cold of his skin and the trick of the light that made his eyes look silvery-grey instead of green.
“It’s going to be okay, you know,” she said quietly.
He sighed softly and looked away. “Yes, I know.” He was making it all better now, all better; he’d have so many friends to play with he couldn’t possibly be lonely anymore.
He was so delightfully alive.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-19 08:50 pm (UTC)From:Scary, how well your idea that the third brother was a necromancer, fits. And possession... Harry is a good target for it, isn't he?
In many ways this read like the start of a zombie apocalypse. And some way it is.
Poor Harry. He never could win... (on the other hand, imagine if Voldemort had become MoD. Who would've won control over that artificial body?)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-19 10:32 pm (UTC)From:Yikes. <.<'
That said, it fit horribly well with what I had down for Ignotus' backstory. This is the fic that spawned the idea that he was a necromancer (I just couldn't admit it before; anonymous fest and all) and first gave me room to explore that headcanon. Three Wishes is like a happier version, or something.
Harry is a good target for possession, and I liked the idea in the prompt that being brought back had had an affect on him. In this case, bringing Ignotus back with him, but the idea that he wasn't unaffected by it is a really good one IMHO. Something to explore more? (And Ignotus totally would have won against Voldemort too. His soul isn't split into pieces or damaged - he's just fucked up on several levels - so it would have more innate power. Besides, who knows how Voldemort's new body was made. It involved a corpse, so maybe it was a form of necromancy - Ignotus' speciality.)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-20 02:47 pm (UTC)From:Congrats to your first text that included necrophilia and "worked". XD But seriously, the scene with Dumbledore was horrifyingly great.
And now the idea doesn't want to leave my mind... ^^ Still playing around with it. I even wrote a second beginning, just to test the feeling. ^^"
I think Voldemort had at least some defences against this. Occlumeny *cough* Also I wonder about the soul of a Necomancer that goes this far - is it really possible that it takes no damage? Can souls rot?
... more topics to think about.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-20 05:07 pm (UTC)From:Go on, write it. You know you want to... Lol, a second beginning sounds very promising.
Good point about the Occlumency. It'd kind of forgotten that... *blushes* I think it's implied, though, that the Killing Curse is what splits your soul while the Dark Arts just corrupt. So Ignotus would be corrupted - heavily - but not broken apart and frayed.
Rotting would be interesting. Hmm... I do think that there are different types of damage the soul can sustain, like part of the madness that comes from being around Dementors for too long may come from having your soul nibbled as they feed from your happy emotions.
We do come up with some subjects, don't we.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-23 10:32 am (UTC)From::) I love Occlumency, because in HP it was ridiculously underdefined. Seriously. What IS it?
Dumbledore I think mentioned the splitting souls thing. But was it with every time you kill or just when you create a Horcrux? I think the Horcrux creation just made the piece bigger?
Let's say Ignotus soul is rotting, then maybe Dementors drain a soul until nothing is left.
So very happy subjects too. ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-23 12:23 pm (UTC)From:Occlumency is really badly described. I mean, the 'clear your mind' stuff reminds me of meditation, but...that's not the most practical thing to do when someone's aiming spells at your head ala Snape (he could just be a really bad teacher, though). Doing it before bedtime makes sense, though, so...yeah. Who knows?
I do subscribe to the theory that more people than just Snape and Dumbledore know it, and that Dumbledore chose Snape purely because he had a reason to be in the school.I thought it was every time you killed, but - if you didn't use the death to make a Horcrux - the soul eventually healed itself over again, while if you did make one then the split was permanent. Of course, that could just be me mistaking headcanon for canon again. It happens sometimes...
We're such cheery people XD But hey, at least the subjects are interesting.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-24 07:05 pm (UTC)From:Moody for example knew it for sure.
I always thought that Dumbledore wanted to use the Occlumency lessons as a way for Snape to bond a bit more with Harry. After all, he knew he would die and to set up Snape as a more trustworthy person would be a good move.
There is of course also the factor, that with Snape Harry had a more pressing need to learn.
Mh, yeah, I went with that explanation for a long time too. But I'm also not sure it really his canon and not fanon ...
Exactly. :p So many new ideas!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-24 11:48 pm (UTC)From:I'm not entirely on Harry's side in this, because he's seriously antagonistic to Snape in the later books, but he didn't start it. Snape did. And Snape's also a mind-bogglingly awful teacher (made to work in dubious conditions for the sake of an oath he was pressured to make after making some terrible mistakes as a teenager while he was trying to correct those mistakes for entirely the wrong reasons. I'll shut up now.) Harry, in OotP, is nowhere near emotionally or mentally stable. He's not in a position to be the responsible one and learn only to get away from Snape (although it's mentioned that he tries, but gets distracted because he's curious) and he shouldn't have to be.
The point is, if that was Dumbledore's idea, then he took the one person out of a wide selection of trusted individuals who had the most antagonistic relationship with Harry and then gave him free-reign on the kid's psyche. And expected it to go well. Frankly, that's dumb as shit.
/rant I have opinions. Many, many opinions about the teaching standards at Hogwarts. Very few of them are good.
I think for that one we'd have to do a bit of rereading. It's an interesting topic, though, so it might just be worth it XD And just think of all the discussions and fic it could spawn!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 09:52 am (UTC)From:Harry didn't start it, no. He was 11 years old, and Snape was as mean as he could be.
He'll never understand why Dumbledore forced him to work as a teacher. Oh sure, he could've done worse and what Snape did as a DE was certainly horrible. But what about the children?
I can only agree with you about Harry. He would've deserved a better teacher.
Very dumb. I would love to know what he really thought about, when deciding to force Snape and Harry together for even more lessons.
Hogwarts has a few good teachers. :/ That said Snape is not one of them. Or most Defense against Dark Arts teachers. Seriously, Lockhart was awful.
Maybe you find more clues in your rereads. ^^ There are some scattered through the books. I always thought it most interesting how similar Voldemort and Harry are - down to their very looks in Book 2.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 05:32 pm (UTC)From:The decision to make him a teacher - ostensibly to keep him under Dumbledore's eye/close enough to pass for a spy to Voldemort - would be good if you took the children out of the equation. None of them deserve a teacher like Snape. He's so bad he's a child's worst fear, for heaven's sake. There is nothing in the world that can make that okay.
It does have a few good ones. McGonagall springs to mind. Sprout, Flitwick. Even Slughorn - the lesson we see with him is, actually, pretty good. It's just that the conditions for the teaching are poor. The good teachers they have also have other responsibilities (Head of House, Deputy Headmistress) which means that they don't have extra staff for those roles, which - taking into account the number of named staff and the size of the student body - means that Hogwarts is hugely understaffed and that the teachers are either organised to an impossible degree, disorganised to the point where the inmates are running the asylum, or in possession of Time Turners.
I thought (when I first read the books) that the similarities between Harry and Voldemort were leading up to a "Luke, I am your father" moment. That said (and I'm kind of glad they didn't go that way) the similarities are still fascinating. (Though I did read one fic that played on there being similarities between Harry and Grindelwald, which was pretty interesting.)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 08:46 pm (UTC)From:I think Slughorn was a good teacher, yes. Slug Club was a grey area, but as a teacher itself he did well.
I've wondered how McGonagall manages her job. She can't have any hours of the day left.
There have been calculations of the student body, but most say around 1000 pupils. So How many teachers were there? 10? Let's cound Pomfrey, Filch and Madam Pince as well, so maybe 13.
Personally I think they've time turners. :D Wouldn't that be awesome if all the pupils would realise that the teacher's room is in reality the room their teachers use to travel back in time?
*laugh* I thought the same, but it had been done too often, hadn't it? I actually think by now, that either the interbreeding in all pureblood families was really strong, or maybe the horcrux influenced him. After all, all the "you look like your father" stuff was always a bit strange. It was probably more said because he's an orphan than fact.I mean his father had been dead for a while, and even longer since he he was 11.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 10:26 pm (UTC)From:The Slug Club was definitely dubious, but Slughorn himself was cool. That first lesson? Actually motivating his students to do their best, right from the start? Good teaching, right there.
Put relatively, when I worked in a school, I taught for 25hours of the 40 I worked weekly, and I had 300-ish students spread out over two year groups. Those other 15 hours were spent marking, writing/editing exams, and planning lessons. I then had to go home and do the same for at least another two hours every night. (I also had private students coming to me for tutoring, but let's stick with the school kids for now.) So that's (roughly) 50 hours a week for 300 students, and my other duties as a staff member were minimal. I had gate duty once a week (another hour added on) and I had to attend assemblies (another five hours). 56hours for 300 students.
Transfiguration (for example) is a compulsory subject for the first five years of school, and presumably a popular one for NEWTs as well and McGonagall is the only teacher for that subject. She has compulsory meal times (at least, it's implied that they're compulsory from Harry's POV because the staff are always there during meals), staff meetings, Head of House duties (that are never fully explained) and Deputy Head duties, which will involve a hell of a lot of paperwork and organisation all on their own. We know she sends the letters out. She's also going to be involved with the Governors, making sure the other teachers are happy/have planned their lessons/sorted their own damn paperwork, the school budget, maintenance... That workload is insane. She must get negative hours sleep and be held upright by nerves of steel and caffeine.
But yesssss. Teachers with Time Turners, OMG. I need it.
Ah, but doesn't Voldemort look like his Muggle father and not his magical mother? You can't blame the inbreeding for that...Possibly the Horcrux? I think, though, that it could be that Harry (and everyone around him) was looking for similarities. Harry never knew his parents; their friends/colleagues/enemies lost them very young. They're all going to be searching for that connection.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-30 05:48 pm (UTC)From:Especially the 10 points to Longbottom for standing up against his friends. That was just salt into a wound. (not that Neville didn't deserve them, but really...?) Especially considering that most didn't know/ believe what happened with Quirrel.
56hours for 300 students, sounds realistically. I only tutor kids and I usually need 1 hour to prepare for 3 hours lessons. Even though it's only one child and I have nothing else to do.
It's probably popular for NEWTS, yes, after all it's probably needed for most jobs.
Teachers with Time Turners, our very own personal head canon now. ^^ It so explains why Hermione got one so easily too.
Who says the Evans and the Riddles aren't related? ;)
I think that everyone was looking for similarities between Harry and James, just like Tom Riddle was looking for similarities between him and Harry.
Though let's say the similarities between TR/HP are not an accident. So, what cosmic reason could be there? Dark Lord needs Light Lord? Soulbrothers? Harry is the reborn good parts of his soul that he sacrificed during the years? So many possibilities...
no subject
Date: 2014-05-30 08:30 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, my private tutoring worked out roughly at three hours per one hour lesson too. You're a teacher/tutor too? What's your subject?
Along with Potions, Charms, Herbology, Defence...all the core subjects, all of which have one, poor teacher for all seven years.
I feel like we've created something beautiful <3 It does explain Hermione. I can imagine some of the teachers objecting to her getting one, though - it can't be good for you to use it constantly. All those extra hours would add up.
There's nothing to say there isn't ;)
It could be something along the lines of the old soulmate myth (not necessarily romantic), where individual souls were divided between two bodies. So Harry could literally be Voldemort's other half - his cosmic twin born fifty years too late. (Could the Weasley twins, who seem to be able to communicate non-verbally, have something similar?)
no subject
Date: 2014-06-01 11:21 pm (UTC)From:I just to it at the side to help immigrant kids and to increase my income a bit. ^^" Nothin really professional, but I teach usually German, and if I'm asked I do help with English and Math up to a certain grade.
One can feel really bad for them, right? Let's say each pupil has 2 lessons a week... well, in the years 1 - 5 it's always 2 houses together, while 6 and 7 it's all 4 houses. So that would make a load of: (5*2*2)+(2*2)= 24 teaching hours a week. Add a third of the time as preparation and you're very neatly at 32 hours a week.
But it seems that *Every* teacher has an additional task as well.
WEll, they can use the extra hourse for sleep?
I love to think that they might truly be soulmates. XD Wouldn't that be interesting? Are their repercussions of killing your own soulmate? In Voldmort's case obviously yes.
Actually, let's say Voldemort was born with a twin. Who would know? After all the mother died, and if there was another tiny, dead baby, it would've been deposed fast.
And Harry is said twin reborn... ;)