I Have A Lot Of Feelings About This Scene. Because From Harry's POV At This Point Obviously Snape Is

No but seriously why is Lily’s patronus so unnecessarily gendered?

JKR said this in a interview in 2007:

Question: James patronus is a stag and lilys a doe is that a coincidence? J.K. Rowling: No, the Patronus often mutates to take the image of the love of one's life (because they so often become the 'happy thought' that generates a Patronus).

I’m assuming it was Lily’s patronus that changed not James because he already had a stag animagus at 15 and the only other person we know both their patronus and animagus form is Mcgonagall and they are both cats. So if Lily's patronus changed to be “the image of the love of her life” why is it a doe not a stag? How is a doe the image of James? Snape's patronus is apparently the "image of lily" and it appears as a doe instead of a stag to match his respective gender. What is going on?

(also guys im looking for a watsonian reason. I know the real answer is JKR's adherence to the gender binary)

tfw you realize your boss and mentor is a fucking idiot

TRUCY AND JINXIE?????? OMG THEY ARE SO UNDERRATED

day 2: please be gentle ♡

(femslashfeb prompt list)

A reasoning behind the stolen photo

I’m not gonna lie, it surprises me that this bit is seen with so much contempt by so many people. Specially because it’s the reasons are so clear. This scene happens after Dumbledore’s death (at least that’s how it’s implied in the text, since all the other memories are in chronological order):

He took part of a letter and half of a photograph, both from Lily. And he’s crying. He was a complete mess after killing Dumbledore, the only person who really knew him, and that’s very clear in the rest of the text:

It’s even referenced in the Cursed Child (bless Scorpius Malfoy for being the only person who stopped to think about how he must have felt then).

So, he’d just had to kill his only friend (so to speak, the only meaningful relationship he had in which he could be himself), was completely alone, hated by the very people he was trying to protect, knowing that all this would lead to the death of the person he swore to keep safe, that he would be the one to tell him that, that he hardly had hope of coming out of this alive…

He was looking for strength. A reminder of why he had to keep going on, to keep fighting. He went to Grimmauld Place, even if it was a huge risk, looking for comfort and he found it in a letter and picture of his best friend… Honestly, thinking this is stalker behavior is such a reach I can’t even process…

I wont be active a lot this month do have this !!

HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN THIS BEFORE HOLY SHIT WHAT AN INCREDIBLE SNAPE ANALYSIS

Let me get this straight:

Severus Snape, who's probably one of the most fleshed out characters in the franchise is reduced to an obsessive friendzoned stalker but Regulus Black, who's a literal one note character is given depth and personality??

Am I tripping on acid or something??

harry’s never played in the snow before

parent severus au

Comic expressing some of my Kirby universe headcanons (Part 1)

something endearing about Snape

Something i’ve been kind of mulling over and thinking about in regards to Snape– and which I find frustrating, but endearing– is how… he is continually disadvantaged and disregarded by systems of power and persons of authority… but he chooses to work within their framework, anyways. 

Snape is Lawful-neutral, to his own detriment. Hear me out.

Like, as a student, he gets bullied. It’s 4 against 1, and he’d have a hard time picking them off if he wanted to go a more aggressive or lethal route. In any case, he tends to be reactionary, rather than necessarily going out of his way to find and attack them… So, he tries to get them expelled, because that would be a way to remove all 4 of his threats at once, and it’s not as if they don’t consistently break the rules… Shouldn’t people who break the rules and mistreat others be punished? So when he’s almost lead to his death at the Shrieking Shack, he appeals to the system of authority (of whom Dumbledore is the purveyor, in this case) with what he feels is a pretty airtight case against his bullies… 

…and he gets written off, and blackmailed into keeping his mouth shut.

If it were me, that kind of slap in the face would ensure i never respected another authority figure again in my life tbh. The Law and the gods that govern it would be dead to me. Anyways…

Being a werewolf does not inherently make Lupin a bad person. But being a good person does not make Lupin inherently safe. The point is: when you transform into a werewolf, you lose control of yourself, and that can result in you killing, maiming, or infecting other people. Lupin knows this. He’s known it for over 20 years,

As of 1993, there was this great new discovery: the Wolfsbane Potion, which helps to curb the effects of lycanthropy, right? It’s super expensive and super hard to make, but it’s an effective way to mitigate the more vicious effects of a transformation– it turns the drinker into a harmless wolf, rather than a werewolf, at the time of the full moon. A wolf, who is easier to control or subdue if one is confronted with it, and who seems to retain some semblence of control during the transformation (Lupin having described himself as curling up in his office during his transformations).

You may be thinking that wolfsbane potion is the closest thing to a preventative  that the Wizarding World has circa 1993, and you’d be right. It’s not a cure, and people who drink it can still infect others, but damn, it makes it way more manageable.

We know that Severus, on more than one occasion, goes out of his way to give Lupin his potion (whether Lupin continually forgets to take it, or purposefully “forgets” to take it as a small power play/intimidation game against Snape is up for interpretation). Either way, we know that Lupin regularly forgets to take the life-changing potion unless prompted, which kind of makes him out as reckless. A timebomb. 

Severus, who is not only a virtuoso on the Dark Arts and all that it entails (and thus, academically, very informed on the dangers that (non-medicated) Werewolves pose), is also intimately and personally aware of the threat Lupin poses to a school full of children as well as the staff, because of his experience in the 70s. Snape brings all of this up to Dumbledore… 

…who repeatedly dismisses his well-founded and logical fears. 

Snape is still beholden to Dumbledore’s insistance that he keep his mouth shut. Which he does for most of the year. The very explicit parameters of the system are: do not tell anyone that Lupin is a werewolf. 

So, being the logical thinker that Snape is, he looks for (and finds) a way to achieve his desired outcome (informing people that Lupin is a werewolf) in a way that does work within those parameters. He can’t tell anyone outright that Lupin is a werewolf, but like… what if someone figured it out on their own?

Then we have Snape in the Shrieking Shack with the kids, Sirius, and Lupin. 

Harry, in the moment after Black disarmed them all, straight-up wanted to kill Sirius. He gets his wand back, and he is about to fucking murder this guy, until crookshanks sits over his heart.

Snape comes up the stairs to the 2nd floor of the shack, right? He’s wearing the Invisibility cloak. No one knows he’s there or hears him coming. He could have killed Sirius in an instant, without anyone knowing. He could kill Sirius AND Lupin if he wanted to, and dump the corpses on the ministry steps, and convince the minister that he had deduced that they were working together months ago. 

He could easily explain to the minister that he knew they were childhood friends, that Lupin started working at Hogwarts at the exact same time Black “wanted to infiltrate” Hogwarts, and that his speculations were dismissed. He could say all of this with the kids and Dumbledore to corroborate his story (since he arrives at the Shrieking Shack BEFORE the kids get the low-down on Pettigrew) and he would STILL get his order of Merlin (maybe 2?) But instead of killing them… 

…he disarms and restrains them. 

He’s like “Yeah, I’m handing you off to the Dementors, dickhead” but it’s important to remember… he disarms them, restrains them, and is willing to turn them over to the “authorities.” Even though, at this point, he whole-heartedly believes that 1. Black is a murderer, who killed like 23 people, and who broke out of wizard prison and 2. Lupin, a werewolf who has consistently not taken his potion and whom Snape believes has conspired to kill him in the past, is aiding and abetting said murderer… Severus Snape does not take the law into his own hands. He’s not about Vigilante Justice.

And… he gets disarmed, thrown against a wall, and almost ends up attacked by a werewolf for it later. heh

This is just up to the first 3 books, because i just finished re-reading them, but i’m certain there are more examples of these types of exchange in subsequent books. In any case, I love how the books have this consistent theme of “Harry distrusts authority, disrespects it, and challenges the system,” that’s all very good. 

But i also love that Severus Snape, the dude that everyone argues is super unfair, petty, spiteful, etc… attempts to use strategic thinking to operate within the paramaters of these systems, and tries to maintain respect for these systems, and consistently gets his ass handed to him for it. I love you, you lawful-neutral dumbass. 

oh noo severus you spilled your red ink everywhere