Minerva McGonagall:
Well, usually when a person shakes their head, they mean 'no.' So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans
Minerva McGonagall:
I wonder, how you can expect to gain an idea of my usual teaching methods if you continue to interrupt me? You see, I do not generally permit people to talk when I am talking.
Minerva McGonagall:
I should have made my meaning plainer. He has achieved high marks in all Defense Against the Dark Arts tests set by a competent teacher.
Minerva McGonagall:
Are you quite sure you wouldn't like a cough drop, Dolores?
I love how Harry just genuinely likes Luna. Not in a romantic way, but in a “I don’t know how or why but I get you and you get me and I’d be honored to call you a friend and if anyone messes with you I’ll wallop them” kind of a way. I think he just marvels at her level of don’t give a fuck and her absolute sense of self. And then he and Ginny partially name their daughter after her (Lily Luna) and that to me is just fucking precious.
You have to at least ship their friendship.
It’s because Luna leaves him alone. Harry feels upset? Luna talks about her newest theory on whatever magical creature she believes exists. He feels down and depressed? Luna distracts him by talking about Amazon river spirits. Luna gives Harry what he needs, in that she reminds him he is not the center of the universe. That’s what he wants. Harry never wanted to be the savior of the Wizarding World. He never wanted any of it, and he hates that his parents died for a prophecy about him, and he hates thinking about his miserable childhood.
Everyone else keeps accidentally reminding Harry of who he has to be.
Luna is so absorbed in knowing she never once cares about his name as a legend. He’s Harry, her nice friend who holds her shoes for her when she wants to walk barefoot in the woods so she doesn’t startle the moss-people.And he never complains about her oddities, like so many people, and she appreciates that. And for him, she’s Luna, the friend who just needs him to hold her shoes for her. Luna never wants anything from him but for Harry to hold her things and listen to her talk and give his own input to her theories, mad as they might be at times. When Harry is with Luna, it’s always these quiet, content moments. She’s a bit mad, yeah, but she gets him. And he gets her.
Harry will fight anyone who calls her “Loony Lovegood”. Even though she doesn’t care, he does.
yeah but tbh mcgonagall loved the marauders. she loved harry. i can’t think of a woman in the entire series (excluding molly ofc) who was more of a mother than mcgongagall to harry. we talk about father figures all the time but she loved harry, he performed an unforgiveable curse for her. like i’m p sure she winked at james sirius potter when she dropped the hat onto his head, sent a letter back to his parents to tell them she was delighted to be welcoming another potter into gryffindor.
basically mcgonagall was damn pleased to see james sirius potter on her list of letters.
They have a beginning a middle and an end, just like anyone else, but not in that order.
He forgets her name on the third day of school their first year, when they are partnered up in Herbology, and he blushes a bright pink and says,
“’m sorry, I know it’s a flower. I remember that.”
And she pretends like she forgot his name too, but she really hasn’t, because he had something about him that opposed forgetting.
And that was how it started, but it wasn’t the beginning.
She likes the freckles on his nose, and his warm eyes and the way he laughs at everything, just to be nice. She thinks he’s a kinder, warmer version of the boy he lets everyone see.
He likes the way she lets their elbows knock together when they are sit together in Transfiguration, even if seating was assigned. He thinks she doesn’t mind sitting next to him as much as she pretends to.
And that is Chapter twelve, Part Two, and it ends with her spilling ink on his notes and him wearing it like warpaint. Ink across his cheekbones and ink on the tip of his nose.
When they are fifteen, she sometimes sits with him in the common room, Marlene McKinnon on her left and Sirius Black on her right, with an arm slung around her shoulders and a joke on the tip of his tongue.
And that is their prologue, when she is friendly with James, and friends with Sirius, and that is all the difference.
They walk to class together, and James offers to carry her bags, so she offers to carry his. That is how they started swapping book bags. It isn’t hard to go from book bags to actual books, to coffee, and then to jokes and secret handshakes. So James starts waking up earlier on Saturdays, and Lily starts staying up later on Friday nights, and neither of them is really sure why, except those few extra hours are worth it.
And that is how it ends.
When Lily goes to kiss him on the cheek on a Sunday afternoon, he jerks his head back like a startled animal, and she can’t stop laughing, her forehead on his shoulder, his cheeks flushed pink like that first day.
And that is somewhere in the middle, sandwiched between the end and the beginning, a jumble of dares and library visits and quiet laughter in the middle of class.
The Halloween Party their seventh year is the thirty seventh chapter and takes up a very little amount of time and a whole lot of space.
She dresses up as him, and he goes as her, and nobody gets it, but they laugh themselves dizzy in the corner, and he props his feet up on the coffee table while she tells him stories, and his face hurts from smiling when he kisses her goodnight, and it is their first kiss, but nothing is chronological order anymore.
Chapter fifty five is another Halloween night, with a baby boy, and a knock on the door, and scream that split the air.
Harry is their epilogue, beautiful and brave and alone.
They have a beginning, and a middle and an end, just like anyone else, but not in that order.
Remus Lupin fell asleep on the Quidditch bleachers in their second year. James Potter and Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew woke him up, and they propped him up all the way up the stairs.
Remus Lupin fell asleep in the middle of Charms class. Peter Pettigrew took notes for the both of them all class and woke him up with a shoulder tap and a smile.
Remus Lupin fell asleep on the moving staircase in fifth year, and Lily Evans laughed so loudly she woke him up. He insisted he was just resting his eyes for a minute. They walked back to the common room together, and he threw an arm around her shoulder and they both pretended it wasn’t because he was too weak to walk on his own.
Remus Lupin fell asleep in the common room, late in sixth year, and Sirius Black found him curled up on the couch with his Muggle book open on his chest. Sirius took the blankets off both their beds, because Moony got cold so easily, and dropped them over the other boy. He picked up his book and put it on the coffee table.
Remus Lupin fall asleep in the library, on top of his schoolwork in seventh year, and James, who was quite a bit taller than the other boy at this point, lifted him up and carried him to to their dorm room as gently as possible, grinning at his friend and shaking his head. He put him in his bed and turned off the light, heading outside, now late for the Quidditch practice he was supposed to be coaching.
Remus Lupin falls asleep on the Hogwarts Express, like he always used to do. No one wakes him. No one covers him.
He is woken by the cold rush of his worst memories and a face that looks too familiar and far too young.
Look me in the eyes and tell me that was necessary
My mom and I were watching Prisoner of Azkaban tonight and we got the the scene with the boggart in Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Probably the first week of school. Here’s precious cinnamon roll Remus Lupin, back at Hogwarts after over a decade, but as a professor this time. Alone this time. His best friends are dead. The one that killed them has escaped from prison, hunting down their little boy. The Marauders are dead and gone.
But when he asks Frank & Alice’s boy what he’s most afraid of, the poor sap says “Professor Snape.”
And then Remus is 15 again and Sirius and James are snickering over his shoulder.
“Ay Moony, let’s see Snivellus in a dress!!”
No, he’s an authority figure now. So is Snape. Professor Snape. They have to treat each other with respect. He can’t let old grudges-
“I want you to imagine Professor Snape in your grandmother’s clothes,” he whispers to Neville, stifling a smile.
“Riddikulus!”
Snape tumbles out of the cupboard with a little red handbag and a stuffed vulture on his head.
Remus almost feels Sirius clap him on the back and he allows himself a deep, roaring laugh with the Marauders for the first time in 12 years. “Knew you still had it in you, Moony.”
For a split second he sees James’ smug grin out of the corner of his eye, but then he blinks and it’s only Harry.
Ron’s just like ‘srsly tho, we’ve been dealing with this shit since 1st year. Dude’ll be fine, you watch. He’s gonna be walkin in those doors in like three seconds carrying a flock of unicorns he saved from an acromantula’
carrying a flock of unicorns he saved from an acromantula
Think about this for a moment. Think about how hard it must have been for him to say those words.
‘He’s not your son.’
Like no no no, Molly, this is my Harry. My kid. James and Lily’s son from his appearance right down to the way he writes the alphabet and protects his enemies. I’ve known the kid literally since he was born. I know what James and Lily wanted for him. They’d want him to know what he’s getting into. They’d want him to know that we trust him. And Lily would skin me alive if I let her son face the “chosen one” scenario without knowing what it means. James and Lily Potter gave their lives as a result of this Prophecy and you’re telling me they would want to keep him in the dark? He is my godson, Molly. I would do anything to keep him safe. I’m the one Harry wrote to nearly every day for months and I know what he needs. I know what happened in the damned graveyard. I know what Harry’s been through and I know what his parents would want us to do. HE’S. NOT. YOUR. SON.
‘He’s not your son,’ said Sirius quietly.
Sirius is canonically the sort of person who’d get increasingly louder and angrier over the course of an argument. But no. Molly wants Harry to be a child. Her child. And all he can think of is Lily. Her grit. Her principles. The way she’d have laid the truth out before Harry and then taken him out to a Quidditch game or something.
He never gets to say any of that. There’s Molly’s below-the-belt Azkaban taunt and Sirius just retreats into his guilt about not actually being there for Harry… not being able to protect him last year… not keeping James and Lily safe.
Can you imagine what it must have been like growing up for George and Fred. Notice how I said George and Fred because we always call them ‘Fred and George’ as if they were one person - just like their mum. Their own family couldn’t tell them apart. They didn’t have perfect grades like Percy. They weren’t as cool as Bill or Charlie. They weren’t the youngest male like Ron and they obviously weren’t female like Ginny. So they created a niche for themselves - The Pranksters. Because if people weren’t even going to bother to tell them apart then they were going to make people pay attention by pranking people and acting out. Then some scruffy looking boy in their younger brother’s year (ickle Harrikins) can tell them apart.
There’s a reason George Weasley and Fred Weasley never pranked Harry Potter - because he’s the only one that bothered to try.
I SWEAR I WILL REBLOG THIS EVERY TIME BECAUSE OF THE TEARS WELLING UP IN MY SOUL
I like to thing that George and Fred thought of Harry as their little brother too way before Harry had any romantic interest in Ginny.
but like do you ever think about the actual practicalities of creating the marauders map??? like shit, accurately drawing up just a normal map of a normal castle would take hours upon hours of work, especially for four teenagers who have like…… no idea what they’re doing. they basically taught themselves to be cartographers, for fun, when they were teenagers…… if that isn’t the most nerdy af thing you’ve ever heard idk what is. add to that the fact that its Hogwarts with moving staircases, hidden corridors, secret passage ways behind tapestries and portraits, disappearing doors….. thats like…. a ridiculous amount of work, and thats not even taking into account all of the complicated magic they had to research and learn in order to track people and to disguise the map and to have it insult people on their behalf. not only did they have to explore every inch of the castle whilst taking notes, they must have spent countless hours at the library reading and sketching and researching, and then there’s the whole casually becoming animagi thing. YEAH they were like… Raucous Youths who were forever getting into trouble and showing off and pulling stupid pranks and generally being the Marauders™ but they must also have had like….. a ridiculous amount of single-minded determination and stubbornness and just unwavering devotion to helping their friend/getting away with shit and honestly. its a terrifying combination.
