Yes, Hufflepuff Zuko is still ongoing. I’m just very busy with school right now, and only noodling away at pretty much any fannish project I’ve got going. But you know what, Hufflepuff Zuko could use a Five Headcanons post.
1. Andromeda and Narcissa don’t know about Zuko and Azula. Bellatrix of course told neither of them, and the Ministry didn’t inform either of them either. The day Andromeda finds out about her niece and nephew is not going to be pretty.
2. This experience is going to be part of Zuko’s impetus for his quest to do something about the shambles Wizarding social services are in, seriously.
3. Andromeda finds out through Teddy, who is only a few years younger than Zuko and Azula, and has run into them a few times. He becomes good friends with Yue in his last couple of years of school, and it kind of hits him one day, oh yeah, her brother and guardian is uh, my cousin… Maybe I should let my grandmother know?
4. Narcissa never reaches out to Zuko. After a certain point, he figures she pretty much has to know about him, since he’s something of a public figure, and his marriage to Mai was a scandal in pureblood circles, but she never reaches out to her half-blood nephew with his severely tainted linage. After he goes into politics, Draco does however try to arrange a lunch. He stops trying to ingratiate himself after Zuko’s political leanings become clear.
5. There are still living Lestranges out there, but their position on the twins have always been that they are illegitimate, not related to the Lestranges, and have no right to the name. This isn’t exactly untrue, and they don’t seem like very nice people anyway, so Zuko never pursues it.
5 more Headcanons on Fire Prince Sokka and Water Tribe Azula?
Also known as the Akanna and Prince Sozin AU, continued from here: [Link], [Link], and [Link].
1. Culturally, the current climate of the Fire Nation is one of transition. Until recently, arranged marriages were the norm for the nobility, but more and more the ideal is becoming marriages that the parties choose themselves… provided both parties are still a good political match. This is the Royal Fire Academy for Girls’ primary selling point. They will take the girls of your acceptably noble family, educate them in arts, culture, battle tactics, the managing of a noble house, etiquette, etc., but most of all, they will be invited with her class to gatherings where she will meet young men of their own social standing in a sheltered, chaperoned, curated setting. It’s at one of these gatherings that six year old roommates Mai and Ty Lee first meet the princes.
2. Zuko and Mai are both grave and polite, and uncomfortable, and they do not click. Ty Lee and Sozin on the other hand… This is a tremendous coup for the young Ty Lee, though of course she doesn’t see it that way. Ty Lee and Sozin quickly become fast friends, and all the adults assume that one day the two will marry. Inevitably, they will eventually try to date, break up, and remain close. When they first meet Suki and abruptly find themselves falling for the same girl, many things become clear for Ty Lee. Anyway, this friendship keeps Mai and Zuko in the same orbit, and someday the Academy will get to say that the Firelord and Firelady met at one of their gatherings.
3. With Ozai favoring neither of his children, and blatantly attempting to produce another attempted heir, politics in the Fire Nation court is more of a life-threatening gamble than ever. Cozying up to the princes risks angering Ozai, and Ozai… Of course there are still women and their families willing to marry the Firelord, but many women and their families have realized what should be obvious to all, that the Firelord is dangerous, deadly, and unpleasable. His first wife bore him two healthy sons, one a bending prodigy, and he had her banished. He has killed two wives for miscarriages. At the time the Avatar awakens, he is married to a twenty year old, less than half his age.
4. Incidentally, she survives the war, probably because Zuko and Sozin conquer Ba Sing Se, causing Ozai to focus his attention on them as possibly worthy heirs after all.
5. Sozin hits something of a firebending block when he’s twelve. Suddenly the fear of failure, the idea that he even could fail with regards to bending, that Zuko has known his whole life, catches up to him. It takes him years to regain his inventiveness and confidence, and willingness to experiment, and his joy in bending.
Alternate universe wherein Toph and Mai meet first. (I was thinking that it was a way to gain favor and hopefully not be attacked by the fire nation on the part of the Bei Fong parents and a business and supplies deal on the part of Mai’s parents.) Whether this becomes ToMai, Maiko, or ToMaiKo, I’ll leave up to you. Five Headcannons?
1. Mai’s father has been angling for a position in the colonial government for most of his career. It’s the best place for an old blood noble, with next to no money left to his name to make a fortune. While Mai is in school, his wife stays with her in the Fire Nation capital, and Mai usually spends her breaks with the Princess. But this time is different. Her father has just been appointed governor of Omashu, and on the way, he wants to bring her with him to negotiate with the family of a wealthy collaborator.
2. The Bei Fong estate is beautiful, and immense, and Mai can see her father actually vibrating with envy. She can see the glint in her mother’s eye as she schemes to find a way to wrest everything she sees out of the hands of an Earth Kingdom family. It’s hard for Mai to summon up any emotion other than vague disgust and boredom.
3. At dinner, her father speaks openly of her friendship with the princess, and their family’s old Fire Nation lineage, hinting that he might be willing to marry her to a wealthy Earth Kingdom man after the conquest. So long as he isn’t a bender of course. Mai decides she can’t deal with him anymore and slips away from the table, and out to the garden. That’s where she meets a little girl in the silks and finery of an Earth Kingdom noble.
4. “You’re wearing a lot of knives,” the girl says. “Are you an assassin?” “How did you know about my knives?” Mai shoots back. They talk about shitty families and being bored, and running away, and when she has to go back inside, she ignores her father’s lecture, thinking.
5. In less than a month, she and the girl will face off against each other, and she will spend many a silent night after Azula and Ty Lee have gone to sleep, pondering their conversation.
Do you have an AU where there’s at least a decade worth age gap between Zuko and Azula?
I do not in fact.
1. The first thing to do with an AU like this is to decide which of the Fire sibs I am going to base everybody else’s ages and certain key events on. And the answer is Zuko’s, which means the war comes to an end when Azula is only six years old.
2. Azula is a newborn when her mother is banished, and for the first six years of her life, she is fed her father’s subtle insinuations that Ursa never understood him, and she never would have understood what a prize, what a treasure Azula is. Yet in spite of Ozai’s efforts, Azula is acutely aware of the loss of her mother, and that it’s Zuko’s fault, that for the sake of her worthless brother, her mother left her as a baby. She bitterly resents him for this, even after he is banished too and she finds herself missing him with an unexpected vehemence.
3. Speaking of Zuko’s banishment, three year old Azula is in the audience that day, and she watches her father set fire to her brother’s face. She is close enough to smell the cooking flesh. She screams and buries her face in her uncle’s chest, and sobs, not even sure why she’s crying. Isn’t it just Zuko? Isn’t it just her worthless failure of a brother? Part of it is the shock of course, at the violence, and the sheer horror of it, but underneath that is the sudden instinctive knowledge that if Ozai is willing to do that to his son, then he would be willing to do it to his daughter. Any sense of safety she had before vanishes with her brother.
4. for weeks, Azula refuses to leave her room. She refuses to speak to her father, and she hides from her nannies. They have to force her into the bathtub and pin her down to brush her hair, and when they pick her up and carry her out of the room to her father, she bites the hand of one of her nannies hard enough to draw blood. Ozai snaps at her that if she wants her brother back that much, when she’s Firelord she can allow him home, but her brother will just disappoint her. Eventually though, Azula calms down. Ozai’s patience and hope is rewarded when Azula reveals herself to be a firebending protegy, and as she begins to show the first glimmers of the cunning and strategic ruthlessness her father if anything prizes more highly than simple firebending.
5. And then her world collapses around her again. Somehow Zuko sneaks into the royal palace of Ba Sing Se, and used the confusion of the Avatar’s visit to conquer the city and capture the Avatar, and he’s coming home.
Could we have more of that combustion man au?
Continued from here: [Link] and here: [Link]
1. Zuko is not stupid. He has known for years what his father wants from him. He has known that if he goes along with it, in a decade or so, he could become head Fire Sage, and that someday, he would be the one to crown his sister Firelord. He understands this.
2. He doesn’t know what to do now. He has been captured and he knows there is no hope of rescue. He has no idea what to do with the life and the choices he has right now. It wouldn’t be so bad, he supposes, asking Chief Arnook for asylum, as Arnook has told him over and over he can. He could build a life here. It’s not like he has a life back home in the Fire Nation waiting for him. He wouldn’t have to worry about going home and trying to fight, and figure out what he should become, and if he even wants out of the trap his father has set for him. It could be so easy. But instead he’s just frozen and silent.
3. Back in the Fire Nation Ozai reacts to his brother’s disappearance with rage. He orders his brother’s apprehension and return to the Fire Nation. His brother is not well, he tells the nation through gritted teeth. He should have been in a hospital, but Ozai softheartedly tried to have him treated in the palace. Sadly his condition makes him dangerous. Fire Nation soldiers should take no risks when attempting to capture him and return him home.
4. Pakku fills Iroh in on how his nephew has been doing. He tells him that Zuko is well cared for and safe, and Iroh tells him to his shame that he is unable to ensure the same for him. But he also tells Iroh about Zuko’s total silence and blank expression, and about the way that Arnook says he just sits there. He doesn’t tell Iroh that Arnook tries to dote on the boy as a way to stave off mourning for his daughter, or the lost look the Chief has described in his eyes sometimes when he thinks no one is looking at him.
5. Pakku also tells Iroh that Zuko is not well guarded. He has made no attempts to escape, so there is no real point, especially since Arnook is reluctant to keep him prisoner at all. Iroh goes to his nephew’s room, wakes him up, takes him by the hand and leads him down to his boat, and they set a course for the open sea.
5 hc + au combustion bender zuko? i loved your first post <3
Continued from here: [Link]
1. Iroh hasn’t seen his nephew since he left to lead the siege of Ba Sing Se more than eight years ago, more than half of Zuko’s life. Zuko disappeared from court to train as a combustion bender before Iroh returned. He has no idea what the boy even looks like anymore. But still when Pakku sends word to him asking if he knows who the young man captured by the Northern Water Tribe who tried to defend the moon could be, Iroh knows it has to be Zuko and he sneaks away from court to go find his nephew and rescue him.
2. Zuko is well treated in the North, kept in a pleasant room with good food and a comfortable bed, much more comfortable than his own quarters back in the Fire Temple, or on Zhao’s ship. He stood against his own people to defend the moon, and if he had succeeded, the Northern Princess would have lived. If he were to ask for asylum, he would have it without question. But he doesn’t speak. He has a vow of silence, but he knows that’s only an excuse. He can’t even begin the process of finding the words to say, or any words at all.
3. He is visited often by the Avatar and his companions. At first Arnook hopes that children his own age will draw the strange young man out of his shell and get him talking, but to no avail. He remains stubbornly silent.
4.Yet Aang continues to come. With his shaved head and third eye tattoo, he reminds the young Avatar of his own people, and even though he knows this resemblance is illusory, that the firebender is no more an Air Nomad than Katara or Sokka, or any of the other fragments of family he will gather to himself, he can’t help it. He still goes to see him every day, to talk to him, and try to make him laugh. Last week he made him smile. That’s something. A small victory. but a victory none the less.
5. A small steamboat slips past the Northern Water Tribe defenses and docks in a hidden harbor outside the fortress. The old man who enters the fortress under the cover of darkness goes straight for the home of Master Pakku, who wakes with an old friend’s hand on his shoulder, and a finger to his lips.
5 hcs for an au where zuko is a combustionbender?
Not going to lie, I read this as “Constitution bender” at first and am now terribly disappointed I don’t get to write some kind of ridiculous lawyers AU with elderly LoK era Zuko as a Supreme Court Justice.
1. So combustion bending is heavily implied to be a learned skill, and one typically associated with a certain amount of ritual. So how does a prince end up in this kind of ritualized training? He doesn’t discover a proclivity for edged weapons. Maybe Iroh sent him something other than a knife. Instead, as Zuko’s life after his mother’s sudden disappearance grew bleaker, he searched for some other useful, worthwhile skill to make up for his complete inadequacy in comparison to his sister in standard firebending. He hits on combustion bending almost by accident.
2. Ozai is overjoyed. Sending Zuko off to study a specialized form of bending is a handy way to get rid of him for a while, and with any luck, he’ll discover a vocation, or be manipulated into discovering a vocation and become a combustion monk or a Fire Sage. So this is what happens to Zuko instead of scarring and banishment.
3. Zhao holds the honor of being the first Fire Nation officer to be tasked with hunting the Avatar, and he gets all the toys. He asks for a combustion bender, and he gets one. Unfortunately, or probably very fortunately, Zuko is under a vow of silence at the time, so he spends a lot of time glaring at Zhao’s back instead of shouting exactly what he thinks of his new commander to the man’s face, and getting himself in a duel.
4. Zuko is still a prince, and at least half the reason Zhao wants him around is to have a baby royal as witness to his exploits. So he brings Zuko with him to the North Pole, and takes him on the land expedition to kill the moon. Effectively this means he takes Iroh’s place. In the lessons he has taken from the Fire Sages in the hopes that he could be persuaded become one himself, he got to hear a lot about balance and the spirits, and how doing something like destroying the moon is a terrible idea and also blasphemy, and he turns on Zhao, breaking his vow of silence to stumble his way through explaining this.
5. After Zhao kills the moon spirit and the Avatar joins with the ocean spirit, Zuko takes on Zhao and is winning when the ocean spirit hauls Zhao away. This very public fight gets Zuko captured and taken before Chief Arnook and the Avatar. They try to piece together his identity, and figure out what to do with him, but Zuko isn’t saying a word. Literally. He’s back to that whole vow of silence thing.
I’m not sure if it was intentional from the start, (probably not lol) but I really like that in the beginning of the series Zuko is JACKED and after being malnourished for several months he leaned down quite a bit
Yes Nonny, and I think we can be confident that it was absolutely intentional!
I’m putting my answer under a cut, because this is a very image heavy post. All screenshots come from the wonderful Piandao.org.
Continuation on Regent Ursa AU?
Continued from here: [Link]
1. As I alluded to in the previous Regent Ursa post, Ursa is an imperialist. As kind and loving a mother as she is, she was raised in the imperial Fire Nation system and has never really had a reason to question it. She has never met a non-Fire person, and it doesn’t occur to her to wonder how the war affects the conquered. So the war continues apace. And Zuko and Azula are educated to continue the war in their turn. Many of Azula’s lessons focus on getting her to aim her cruelty at acceptable targets. This is something Iroh quietly seeks to rectify with only marginal success.
2. Iroh sneaks both Zuko and Azula into the war meeting when they are thirteen and eleven. He hopes it will be instructive for them. He intends for them to see and be horrified by the tactics used. And Zuko at least is. He still stands up for the Fire Nation soldiers. Only it’s not Zuko who is punished. Ursa has Iroh banished, while Iroh insists that the young Firelord had every right to be there anyway. In truth, it’s just an excuse to get him and his meddling away from her children.
3. This is of course a miscalculation. And Iroh not at court is an Iroh out from under her eye, and an Iroh sufficiently recovered from his crushing grief to plot, at that. He heads straight to the Order of the White Lotus with a plan to kidnap the young Firelord and his sister.
4. As Zuko reaches his fourteenth birthday, Ursa focuses more and more attention on educating him in the skills he will need soon when he takes power. He now has his own invitation to the war meetings, and she expects him to spend time with her as she conducts royal business, and as he receives lessons in governence, Ursa becomes ever more painfully aware that these are lessons she never received, and skills she as a ruler does not possess. She intends to see Azula educated in these skills as well, but Azula is younger and doesn’t have a looming deadline upon which she will have a nation to run. So Ursa doesn’t rush her ahead of Zuko as Ozai might. Go on. Guess how Azula perceives this.
5. Yeah this is when Ursa proposes that the Earth Kingdom, an exciting and exotic land, might be a fitting place for Azula to rule in her brother’s name someday. She never wants Azula to feel like she is less loved or less worthy, even if her brother is already Firelord.
Cheloneuniverse 