Before the Hogwarts Express, some young wizards and witches made their way to Hogwarts on broomsticks and in enchanted carriages
There are other fractional platforms at King’s Cross station. Try 7 1/2 for a trip to wizard-only villages in Europe.
It took five and a half minutes for the Sorting Hat to decide whether to place Minerva McGonagall in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw
Several Hogwarts students have caused mayhem at King’s Cross by dropping suitcases full of newt spleens or biting spellbooks all over the Muggle Station.
Peeves the poltergeist caused a three-day evacuation of Hogwarts in 1876 after escaping a trap set for him armed with several dangerous weapons.
The one exception to the general magical aversion to Muggle technology is cars. Even the Ministry of Magic owns a fleet, modified with various useful charms.
Many wizards were unhappy with the invention of the Muggle-like Knight Bus, and refused to use it when it first hit the streets.
Headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts can teach their magical portrait to act and behave exactly like themselves.
Sir Cadogan’s most famous encounter was with the Wyvern of Wye, a dragon-like creature, whom he accidentally killed with his broken wand.
Only one non-magical person has ever managed to get as far as the Hogwarts Sorting Hat before being exposed as a Squib.
Of the Eleven wizarding schools in the world, the African school of Uagadou is the only one to select pupils by Dream Messenger, leaving a token in the child’s hand whilst they sleep.
The 1809 Quidditch World Cup final turned into a human versus tree battle when one of the players managed to jinx an entire forest to attack the stadium.
The Hufflepuff ghost, the Fat Friar, was executed after senior churchman became suspicious of his ability to cure the pox by poking peasants with a stick.
Every year St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries treats at least one injury caused by homemade Floo powder.
Before she became a teacher at Hogwarts, Minerva McGonagall used to work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic.
Part of the process of becoming an Animagus requires you to carry a leaf from a Mandrake in your mouth for an entire month.
A Dark wizard called Raczidian was devoured by maggots that appeared from his wand when he unsuccessfully attempted to cast the Patronus Charm.
Any part of a person’s body can be added to the Polyjuice Potion to allow the consumer to take their form, including hair, toenail clippings, dandruff or worse…
Remus Lupin’s father, Lyall, was a world-renowned authority on magical creatures like poltergeists and Boggarts.
It took 167 Memory Charms and the largest mass Concelment Charm ever performed in Britain to modify a muggle steam engine and create the Hogwarts Express.
Students from the Russian Wizarding school, Koldovstoretz, play a version of Quidditch where they fly on entire, uprooted trees instead of broomsticks.
Yes, these are all canon. Thought I’d type it up to have it as a text reference. Enjoyyy.
I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE FACTS!
(n.b. naturally, remus lupin’s dad was also called “wolf.” nothing like tempting fate for two generations in a row, huh?)
ugh okay but now i want a squib who did make it through hogwarts;
a squib who spent her childhood pretending to magically start accidental fires with the lighter up her sleeve; who got her bemused little sister to grow her hair long overnight after a bad trim; a squib who shook all through shopping at diagon alley and who was so relieved that her parents were almost suspicious when they said that there wasn’t enough money that year to get her a new wand from ollivander’s– she’d have to take great-aunt jenny’s hand-me-down, eight and a half inches of oak and unicorn hair;
a squib who made it to platform 9 ¾, who made friends with some shy kid in the back of the express, who made it across the lake and up the stairs and through the great hall doors and by the great long tables and onto the wobbly old stool–
until the hat drops over her eyes
well what do we have here?
she’s got a forged hogwarts letter with penmanship that’s perfect down to the ink splatter; she’s got a complicated string of owls, only half of them forged, from parents to administration to ministry that’s so complicated her name ended up on the first year roll call anyway. she’s got ten arguments, four pleas, and one smothered threat on the tip of her mental tongue for why the house that comes out of this hat’s brim better not be squib
she’s got a lighter up her sleeve and an eight and a half inch wand in her belt that will never, ever work for her.
well, says the hat, better be slytherin then
she finds the room of requirement in her second week, because she has always been a hallway-pacer, her head always ringing with i want i want i need i need i will do this. the room of requirement gives her books of muggle magic tricks, sleight of hand, chemical ways to turn ‘water’ into ‘wine.‘
she bribes another first-year slytherin to wingardium leviosa her feathers in flitwick’s class. her shy friend from the train, a hufflepuff and a muggleborn, buys her a new lighter for christmas without being asked. when a gryffindor finds her scrubbing at tears in the back of the library and guesses what’s the matter (he’s seen her classwork), she tells him the story, tells him what it’s like to be denied a whole world because they think different means broken– she expects him to tattle, but instead the gryff transfigures her needles for the rest of her academic career; and she whispers hints to him when his black thumb keeps making him fail herbology.
(the first thing she’d said, when she realized he’d guessed her secret, had been ‘you should’ve been in ravenclaw’ and he had looked at her gravely until she apologized)
the room of requirement gives her books and books on potions, arithmancy, herbology– these things are not about magic. these things are not about power that lives in your bones. she knows power, knows the way sparks fly from her little sister’s wand when they take her to ollivanders, knows the way it flicks under her quill when she practices mcgonagall’s signature and sends home disciplinary letters to the parents of every student who ever bullied her friend from the train.
she waters nightshade and re-pots mandrakes, can tell poisonous mushrooms from magical (…also poisonous) ones by a glance. she drops in just the right amount of unicorn horn powder in potions class (.025 g more than the instructions suggest) and when making sleeping draught stirs for half a stir extra.
this is about power that you make.
she studies and invents, schemes and lies and excels. she holds potions tutoring in the slytherin common room when her friend from the train suggests it, then moves it to the room of requirement after it gets too large and someone stains the green-and-silver upholstery. (her arithmancy sessions are much less well attended).
she keeps her lighter, her little packets of carefully measured powder, her jokeshop tricks up her sleeve–she keeps the names of people who she can trust, who she can call on for distraction, for help, for a needed lie on the tip of her tongue–she keeps her gryffindor’s heavy wand and quick wit close at hand; keeps her hufflepuff’s steady patience closer; keeps her own bright improvisations at her fingertips.
her bemused little sister ends up in ravenclaw, and they all eat at the hufflepuff table for breakfast because (she says) slytherins weren’t meant to follow rules and because (her sister says) how stupid is this seating thing and because (her shy friend says) didn’t you hear the hat? helga said she’d take them all, so hold your tongue, macmillian, scoot over, and pass my friends here the hashbrowns.
when she graduates, she heads for the ministry. she has plans, and she has brave, smart, true, cunning friends to back her up.
power should never be something born into your bones.
@ink-splotch I read your latest Harry Potter story and melted a little (lot) inside. I knew I had to draw something because this story just made me so happy. Thank you so much for writing. Everyone please go read all of these stories immediately!!!!
Dude this is so fantastic! I love their faces, and thank you for keeping Duds plump 🙂 (Link to fic here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10566861 an AU where Dudley’s the orphan left on Lily and James’s doorstep)
Things I like to keep in mind when writing Harry:
1. Cupboard under the stairs.
2. He doesn’t actually like that many people.
3. But he’d die for them anyway and not really think twice about it.
4. No one ever listens. No one ever helps. He stopped expecting them to way before the series starts. But he doesn’t start raging and shouting about it until book five, when it’s not just him but the whole world in danger now.
5. He keeps trying to find a dad, but they keep dying on him, and then he ends up in their shoes.
6. Snarky as hell
Things I keep in mind when writing Ron Weasley:
1. His motivations are personal, not heroic or moral, which does not mean he doesn’t do heroic things.
2. He’s Harry’s best friend. They like each other. He’s one of Hermione’s best friends. They also like each other.
3. He’s one of the most fun characters to parallel with minor antagonists:
3a. Ex. Draco Malfoy– the purebloods raised in wizardry, with parents who love them, the heirs of a long heavy legacy of two Houses, the Hat barely touching their heads before Sorting.
3b. Ex. Petunia Evans Dursley– he’s a superior example of how to balance your bitterness, jealousy, and love for your siblings, both blood and not.
4. He beat frickin’ McGonagall at wizard’s chess at age eleven. This child is not stupid.
5. He assessed the situation, considered the options, and then stood still and let a giant enchanted queen violently take him down in order to win that game, at age eleven. This child is brave, loyal, and tough as hell.
Say what you will about how Harry Potter increases in complexity and darkness as it progresses but I think JKR sets the tone of the series pretty well when she has Dumbledore play ding-dong-ditch with a baby in the first chapter
Bill had his eye on adventure, and Charlie had his eye on dragons. Percy was the one who was watching their parents, who saw the worried creases deepen around Molly’s eyes even when she was smiling, looking at another letter from Hogwarts, another list of things they couldn’t afford. He was the one who saw how Arthur laughed off the jibes of coworkers a little too heartily, brushing teasing away with jovial vigor that belied knowledge of the barbed truth behind the joke.
And everyone knew Bill would be gone as soon as he graduated, and there weren’t a surplus of dragons in Ottery St. Catchpole, so Charlie would be off as well. Which made Percy the eldest by default, and he knew that he would have to live up to the title. The Weasley family name would rest on his shoulders, and he would be a good role model for the twins (god knows they needed it) and for Ron and little Ginny.
He imagined bringing home a crew of builders who brick by brick would make the Burrow stand tall and proud again. Molly would cry, and Arthur would be laugh and tease her, but he’d clap Percy on the shoulder and they’d both know.
It just didn’t say because Harry is very unobservant.
Dude, not even. Someone did a tally of how many times Harry comments on the attractiveness of a male character (Tom Riddle and Cedric mostly) vs. Ginny or Cho, his purported love interests. It’s not even close. He’s very observant. I’ll put money on “Harry grew up in a bigoted household and legit doesn’t have vocabulary for what his emotions keep doing when he sees pretty boys.”
Ron Weasley offered the stranger sitting next to him on the train half his sandwich even though it was all he had.
Ron Weasley sacrificed himself for the good of Harry and Hermione at age eleven because even then he thought they were more important than he was, and the ones worth saving.
Ron Weasley was Harry Potter’s first friend and the first thing Harry ever had resembling a family.
Ron Weasley lived in a cramped house and wore hand me down robes and he didn’t even think twice about offering his room and food and family to Harry every break.
Ron Weasley took care of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger when they were too busy taking care of the rest of the world to worry about themselves.
Ron Weasley stood on broken bones when he was thirteen years old, to tell a man infamous for murder that if he planned on killing his best mate, he would have to go through him first.
Ron Weasley was the person Harry would miss most in the world.
Ron Weasley was a pureblood wizard who, from a very young age, devoted his life to abolishing blood status, even if he didn’t quite understand his own privilege.
Ron Weasley gave Dobby his own clothes and socks to be buried in, because he understood how important it would have been to him.
Ron Weasley thought about saving the house elves when everyone else forgot.
If you don’t love Ron Weasley, The Boy Who Cared, I don’t know what books you read but they weren’t the same ones I did.
Cheloneuniverse 