harry potter au where dumbledore is replaced by ron swanson
“Son, did you or did you not place your name in this stupid fire cup?”
“Welcome back to school, children. This year, your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher will be this woman from the Ministry of Magic. Why the government is interfering in the affairs of a private institution is beyond me. If you have any complaints, please do not bring them to me. End of speech.”
I totally knew someone was going to send this. So. Have some CLV spinoffs and snippets that idk will ever show up in the main fic.
1. Angst
“Let me come with you,” Orion pleads, casting his mind
around for a good argument, any argument, to make Hadrian relent. “I can help you hunt those- those
Horcruxes. I know I’m still in school
but I’m good with magic, and I’m a werewolf!
I can help!”
Hadrian stares at him for a long, strained minute before
nodding once. “Fine. But I’m leaving
tomorrow.”
Orion doesn’t know how he didn’t hear the lie. He wakes up in the morning and Hadrian is
gone, and he isn’t even really surprised. He realizes Hadrian left him behind for his own good, for his own
safety, for his parents who will go out of their minds if Orion really disappeared
on some crazy adventure to destroy the Dark Lord, but none of that prevents him from feeling the
sting of betrayal, and for the first time since they became friends, he wishes Hadrian would stop protecting him.
2. AU (somehow this one turned out a lot more Neville-oriented than I planned)
“So you’re the Boy Who Lived?” Curious green eyes study an anxious Neville closely before shrugging, not at all impressed the way all the other
children his grandmother’s made him meet have been. “I’m Hadrian Potter.” He pulls another boy
forward, same age as the two of them but he sticks to Hadrian’s side, and the
tilt of his chin is defiant as he looks Neville straight in the eye. “This is
my cousin, Orion. Someone’s already told you he’s a werewolf, right? And
probably all the horror stories that go with it? So we can skip all that and
I’ll just tell you one thing – you hurt him in any way and no one will ever
find your body.”
Hadrian Potter is shorter than Neville, smaller too,
his hair is fluffy and messy and fall into his eyes, and while Neville is chubby, at least he isn’t as delicate-looking as Hadrian. The other boy could not look more harmless if
he tried, and yet, somehow, Neville has no doubt he’s telling the absolute
truth, and if Neville hurts Orion, Hadrian will find a way to get rid of
Neville so that even Gran won’t be
able to find him.
But before Neville can figure out how to respond, Orion elbows Hadrian, who returns it with a swift fierce
glance, one that Orion rolls his eyes at but also makes him smile, and Neville
feels a pang of envy because he doesn’t have anybody like that. He doesn’t have
friends, period, not really. And then they’re both staring at him again, and
Neville ducks his head and hastily blurts out, “I don’t- I mean, Gran told me
about werewolves and- and Orion-” And she didn’t seem too pleased about Neville
interacting with one but she didn’t tell him not to either. “-and I don’t- I
don’t care!”
Which might be a lie because what Gran told him made him nervous,
but people make him nervous anyway, in fact sometimes getting out of bed in the morning makes him nervous, so
Neville figures they’re all about the same thing, and he’ll just have to fight
through it the same way he always has everything else.
His answer seems to satisfy the two boys a little at least, although Orion still doesn’t talk to him, and Hadrian gives him another stare like he’s trying to pick out any dishonest bits in Neville’s expression. But they both relax, which is more than Neville can say, right up until Hadrian suggests, “Right then. I guess you’re okay. Wanna go play Hungry Hungry Hippos?”
Neville instantly brightens because nobody’s ever offered to play with him before, they usually just want to know if Neville’s defeated any dragons like in the storybooks or if he remembers Voldemort, and they’re always disappointed when he says no.
Although-
“What’s Hungry Hungry Hippos?” Neville asks, bracing himself for a scoff, but he doesn’t get one, and it’s Orion who tells him quietly, “Muggle game. It’s fun, and easy to learn. Aunt Lily- Hadrian’s mum, bought it for us last month.”
“You’ll like it,” Hadrian promises, leading the way to what Neville assumes is one of their bedrooms. “And if you don’t, we can always play something else.”
It’s the start of a beautiful friendship.
3. Crack
Hadrian is Alpha, which means if Orion doesn’t bite, he gets belly rubs. Alpha gives the best belly rubs in the world.
4. Future fic
They’re both thirty-two, Hadrian going on forty, Orion going on thirty-three, and where the former goes, Orion still follows. Aunt Lily was a little worried about that when they were younger (”But isn’t there something you want to do? A career you want to go into? University perhaps?”), and Orion suspects that at least part of the reason Hadrian applied to the Draíocht Academy in Ireland was so that Orion could explore various fields of study to his heart’s content (and they both ended up enjoying their five years there so Orion can’t complain), but his dad understood, and his father understood even more, that instinct is so very intrinsic to a werewolf’s nature, and that once they’ve found Pack, there really isn’t anywhere else they’d rather be, because nowhere else would be as good. If Orion wants to learn, he can always pick up a book.
And here they are, over a decade down the road, and they’re still together, in more than one sense of the word, travelling the world the way Orion has always – on some level – known Hadrian wanted to do, without the urgent threat of a Dark Lord hanging over his head, and Hadrian’s long since given up on asking if Orion is sure he doesn’t want to do something else. Travelling appeals to Orion too, and not just because of Hadrian. There’s so much to see out there, to learn, to experience – he can’t imagine why anyone would want to stay shut up in an office all day.
They stay in spacious hotels smack in the middle of a huge city or cozy magical tents tucked in the midst of a jungle or quaint little inns that are sometimes haunted by ghosts. Somewhere along the way, they pick up a cockblocking kneazle that wrinkles its nose at Orion and serves as a possessive scarf for Hadrian, and Orion learns to live with it.
They visit home at least a few times a year, and they’re always punctual for Yule. Sometimes, they get an extra travel companion for a couple months, when Severus wants potion ingredients for some research project, or Gabrielle gets a week off from training for her next skating competition, or Luna just because.
Orion doesn’t mind. He’s known all of them long enough to consider them friends or at least friendly acquaintances, and he’s not quite as reticent as he used to be, not when he’s living a happier life than a lot of people can claim.
And at night, on occasion, lying curled up beside Hadrian, he thinks back to a fourteen-year-old boy who never in a million years thought he would have anything close to what Orion has now.
5. First time (dancing)
“Still hate balls?” Orion enquires as they fall into step with the beat of a waltz, switching easily yet again from male to female roles for this dance and letting Hadrian lead.
“I suppose it could be worse,” Hadrian allows, but he’s grinning, and it’s genuine even with the lingering bags under his eyes and the thinness that came with not enough regular meals during wartime. Nobody fought harder than Hadrian, and it shows, even weeks after Voldemort was defeated.
The song ends. Another begins. They switch it up again so that Orion is leading this time, and the smooth transition is somewhat astonishing considering they’ve never danced together before.
“Still not my favourite activity though, even if you are by far my favourite partner,” Hadrian mutters, and Orion starts feeling distinctly hot under his collar. He catches Hadrian’s eye, huffing exasperatedly when the Hufflepuff smiles knowingly at him. Somehow, it manages to calm Orion down instead of embarrassing him further.
“Buffet table after this one?” Orion offers as they spin past another pair, and he barks out a laugh at the relieved look he gets in reply.
6. Fluff
“I can see why you’re a Gryffindor,” Hadrian murmurs, tipping his head back just enough to meet Orion’s gaze, somehow challenging and terrified at the same time.
Orion just frowns harder and makes no move to get up from where he boldly straddled Hadrian’s lap not a minute ago and kissed him.
“You said to wait until Voldemort was dead,” Orion reminds him in steely tones. “He’s been dead three years now. You said to wait a few years. I turned twenty as of six hours ago. You said to wait to make sure I wasn’t confusing gratitude with love.” His pale cheeks flush but he doesn’t look away. “I’ve loved you since I was fifteen. I had an entire year and a half before that to get the whole gratitude issue out of the way, so I can say with absolute certainty that I still love you, and that isn’t going to change. Now do you have any other excuses to throw at me? Or-” He swallows. “Or you could just tell me that you don’t feel the same-”
He shuts up when Hadrian presses both a whisper of a sigh and then a firm kiss against his lips, hands coming up to frame his face, and he’s rigid for all of two seconds before he practically melts with relief.
“Only if you’re sure,” Hadrian says once he pulls back, serious in a way he rarely is, but focused so much on Orion, like there’s no one more important, and how can Orion possibly not love him back when Hadrian’s been looking at him like that – knowingly or not – since before Orion even finished his final year at Hogwarts?
Orion hauls him back in for another kiss. “I’m sure. Now kiss me again before my dad knocks down the door with a camera.”
Their next kiss is full of a quiet easy laughter that Orion will never get tired of.
7. Humor
Honestly, Hadrian isn’t that much older than his circle of friends. But sometimes, he still gets mocked and called ‘old man’ whenever they want to be funny. His friends either need a new sense of humour, or he needs new friends.
8. Hurt/Comfort
Orion doesn’t know how to comfort people, not really. He has zero experience doing it after all. But he’s a werewolf with even less qualms about murder than his father – who is mostly genial and kind and diplomatic and patient but still has all the killer instincts of the beast inside him – and when Bellatrix Lestrange manages to hold a Crucio on Hadrian long enough to make him – of all people – scream, Orion calmly carries Hadrian to safety, calmly ensures the best healers are tending to him, calmly waits until they assure him that Hadrian would be alright, and then he promptly disappears for the next three weeks.
He doesn’t return home until he can lay the bloody carcass of Voldemort’s most fanatical follower at Hadrian’s feet.
I will never forgive them for cutting out this scene.
Tumblr app doesn’t show this gif set but I already know what it is. No need to hesitate to reblog.
And he did this just before a road trip, stuck in the car with his parents asking what he was thinking.
The look of utter defiance Dudley gives Vernon as he steps over the fence though
And how he does it really slowly as well as if to say “What you gonna do about it huh?”
The phone rings. It was an absurd wedding gift from his father in-law, and one which much to Harry’s surprise, had actually worked when he’d plugged it into the landline. Arthur had taken to phoning him on it, just for the pure novelty of the thing—though how they’d managed to get a BT engineer out to the Burrow without causing an incident, Harry doesn’t know. He’s not sure he wants to.
“Hello?”
“Uhm,, is this…is this the Potter residence?”
There’s a beat of silence as Harry adjusts the receiver against his ear, not quite sure he’s heard who he thinks he has. “…Dudley?”
“Yea…uhm, Harry?”
“Dudley.” Harry repeats numbly, turning to look at Ginny who is looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. “Uh…Christ, Dudley, hi how did…how did you find this number?”
There’s another beat of silence and the crackle of static that might have been a sigh or simply just the line breaking up. “Hi, sorry I know you probably…sorry this was stupid. I uh, I put your name in the computer and this was the only thing that came up.”
“Oh.” Harry breathes, still trying to recover his equilibrium. Ten minutes ago he’d been using his wand to clear away dinner, he’d been getting ready to sit down and read through some reports before putting the kids to bed, and now somehow, he’s talking to his muggle cousin who he hasn’t seen since… “How, how are you?”
“Good, yea” Dudley replies, seeming to rally, “You?”
“Yea, uh, doing well…”
The conversation lasts maybe a half hour, faltering and awkward. But they’re going for a coffee at the end of the week and Harry supposes…that’s…that’s a thing that is happening.
*
“Harry…”
Harry turns and looks up, and looks up some more at the looming figure blocking out the light.
“Dudley,” he says, standing up and hoping the pang of something awful doesn’t show on his face. For a moment he thought he’d been looking at Vernon. “It’s good to see you.”
Dudley gives him a look that says he clearly knows Harry is lying, but is thankful for being humored. “You too, you’re looking good…”
They pass the first few minutes with awkward pleasantries and even more awkward silences. But it’s…nice would be too strong a word, but it’s not bad either. He even manages to get a smile out of him when he calls him Big D, the other man shaking his head with a self depreciating eye roll.
“Dad died,” Dudley says after a while, and Harry feels an icy hot flash go down his spine, curdling in his gut.
“Oh,” he says, not quite sure how he’s supposed to feel about that, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Dudley snorts into his coffee. “Somehow I doubt it.” and it’s not accusing, but Harry still can’t help but feel like he should defend himself. The words they locked me in a cupboard are on the cusp of his tongue but Dudley gets there before him. “There’s a lot of things…looking back…lot of things…” and it’s not an apology, not really. “Took me a long time to realize certain things weren’t right…too long.”
Harry nods at that, because yes, it had also taken him a long time too to understand the full of extent of what had gone on in 4 Privet Drive. He still doesn’t like tight spaces.
“You realize things though, when you have kids,” Dudley carries on, shaking his head, “Like they’re just kids, how can you do that to a kid? They need you for everything.”
And Harry can relate to that too. Lily is three and Ginny is pregnant again and James already has an alarming alacrity for finding trouble and with or without magic Harry doesn’t have enough hands to deal with it all. But he loves it, and he loves them, and the thought of anyone ever treating his children the way he remembers his first eleven years of life is enough to make the electric lights over their head flicker.
“You’ve got kids?”
“Two,” Harry says, “third one on the way. You?”
“Nice. Just the one, so far.” He hands over his phone, the image of a bright young girl with dark skin and tight ringlet curls staring back at him from the grasp of Dudley’s arms. “Effie.” He smiles ruefully at Harry’s obvious surprise. “Dad wasn’t too happy about that either.”
“She’s gorgeous.” Harry says, handing the phone back and pulling out his own wallet to reveal the moving pictures inside.
Dudley flinches a bit at that, but he guffaws broadly when he spies James. “Cor, he don’t half look like you. No glasses though.”
“No,” Harry says, pushing his own glasses back up his nose. “He’s got his mother’s eyes, thankfully.”
“Actually, Harry, there was something I was hoping we could…talk about.”
And ah, there it is. “What about?”
“It’s…it’s about Effie…”
And when he’s done talking Harry just wants to lean back and laugh and laugh and laugh, because of course Vernon Dursley’s granddaughter is a witch, of course she is. But he doesn’t, because Dudley is doing the one thing he can think of to try and help his child, and Harry can’t fault him for that.
*
They keep in touch after that. Christmas cards, postcards—gifts for the kids on birthdays. The year Effie turns eleven—the same as James—Harry drops a casually long thought out text into the familial void.
“Diagon A this weekend, if you’re up for it?”
The text comes back quickly, a little too quickly for the way Dudders pecks at his phone whenever Harry has seen him typing. “Snds gd, 1st pint on u 😉 – Big D 🍺🍺🍺👌👍”
It’ll be painfully awkward, it always is. But it’s something.
I can never understand how Snape apologetics can stand up for him when he CANONICALLY does this shit.
I can maybe, maybe, understand those who haven’t read the books standing up for him, because honestly the movies don’t cover all the horrible stuff he does. But those who have read the books and still stick up for him baffle me.
I mean, you don’t see anyone sticking up for the Dursley’s or Umbridge, when they do the same stuff to Harry as Snape. How is Snape any different?
I was extremely disappointed when it was revealed that Snape was actually “a good guy”. The Snape of DH didn’t match the Snape from the beginning of the story in a rather ridiculous way. I remember being one of the only one of my friends that was hoping that Snape would in fact be evil in DH. DH ended up being such a disappointment and I really felt so detached from what had started off as such an incredibly strong story.
From the beginning, Neville is hugely intimidated by Snape. Snape bullies him relentlessly, insulting him in front of his peers and even other teachers. As a result, Neville is a completely incompetent Potions brewer. It’s stated outright that Snape made Neville’s performance significantly worse.
To be fair, Neville isn’t particularly talented in any of his
other classes either. But I genuinely think Potions could have been one of Neville’s best subjects.
Think about how much Herbology and Potions have in common.
Both subjects:
involve methodical work
don’t require actual wandwork
must be done in a specific order, where doing it wrong will lead
to safety issues and disaster (extracting something from a dangerous
plant vs. brewing a potion)
require a high comfort level with gross/weird substances
are highly tactile
involve plants/plant-based ingredients
So a good Potions teacher would have looked at Neville and said, “if
you can be good at Herbology, then you can be good at Potions. You
already know that Valerian root is used as a sleep aid, now we’re going
to use it in a dreamless sleep potion.”
But that didn’t happen.
So I really really really hope that at some point in his adult life, Neville realized that Potions might not be so awful after all.
Do you know what I haven’t seen anybody make a theory on?
Why the Ministry was all buddy-buddy with the Golden Trio during the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Oh, sure, it wasn’t explicit, but if you read between the lines—
Fudge himself granted Harry a pardon for doing underage magic.
The Ministry allowed a young teenager to gain possession of a valuable artifact (the timeturner) for her own personal gain.
And do you honestly think the Weasleys just happened to win this random raffle that gave them a bunch of money? Isn’t it more likely that the Ministry just set it up as a way to make them happy?
The only thing I can think of is that they wanted to make these three happy because they knew they were at the center of the Ministry’s huge screwup the year before (Hermione was petrified, Ginny (aka: Ron’s sister) was taken, and Harry was nearly killed trying to save them all.) The Ministry constantly pointed fingers but didn’t do anything to help and multiple children/teenagers nearly died as a result. So during the summer, they discreetly interacted with these children/teenagers, doing them favors to make them subconsciously like the Ministry, enough so that they don’t rise up and revolt.
Huh. I took canon at it’s word that they let Harry off easy for Marge because they were worried about Sirius Black being after him, and I’ve long assume that someone (Dumbledore) rigged the sweepstakes (and possibly suggested seeing Bill in Egypt specifically, a hot sunny place, rather than Charlie in Romania) to help Ginny recover.
But I never considered Hermione’s time-turner as being related, before, and you know, I can see that. And if they didn’t think she was going to drop any of her classes, they might’ve considered it as multiple-years of insurance, “make a fuss about the petrifaction and we revoke time-turner privileges”.
I wonder if the Ministry meddled with Colin, Justin, and Penelope as well?
(would they even care about Filch making a fuss over Mrs. Norris?)
fact-checking hp fic against the first book never fails to be completely worthwhile, you get reminded of the most incredible stupid details
Ron,
however, was to be working with Hermione Granger. It was hard to tell
whether Ron or Hermione was angrier about this. She hadn’t spoken to
either of them since the day Harry’s broomstick had arrived.
like hermione granger was so mad at harry and ron over the broomstick harry got from mcgonnagal in the third week that she didn’t talk to either of them until halloween. that’s five weeks. harry and ron went and saved a girl from a mountain troll that they not only disliked, but who disliked them back so intensely she wouldn’t talk to them for the entire fucking month of october and a week of the previous september.
this says something nice about what good boys harry and ron are. but it also says something really impressive about how serious goddamn businesshermione goddamn granger’s anger is, was, and presumably always will be.
tbh the most unrealistic thing in harry potter is when mrs weasley in the first book asks “now what’s the platform number?”
like this woman has been going to that school for seven years and then dropped kids off on the same place for nearly ten like why on earth would she forget the platform number
I still have the headcanon that Molly BAMF Weasley saw a scrawny underfed child with an owl who had no idea where he was going and looked lost and confused and was like, “Ah, yep, new son.” but didn’t want to scare him by outright approaching and asking if he needed help so she was just like, “MUGGLES, MUGGLES EVERYWHERE! DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE PLATFORM NUMBER TO WIZARD SCHOOL IS? WHAT’S THAT? NINE AND THREE QUARTERS? OH, YES, THAT’S RIGHT. THE PLATFORM NUMBER IS N I N E A N D T H R E E Q U A R T E R S!”
Of course seeing as how Harry isn’t the most observant bloke, she probably ushered her kids past him fifty times as different ones screamed the platform number until they finally got his attention.
With that being said, and I’m extremely sorry for taking over your post:
11:45:
They had just enough time to make it onto the platform, get their trunks loaded, and say their goodbyes. Molly ushered them all along, wishing that she could just Apparate them all onto the train and be done with it. There was too much to do, too much to say, too m—
All at once, she screeched to a halt. Percy crashed into her, causing the twins to snicker.
A tiny boy was being crossly turned away by a security guard. A boy whose ribs poked through his baggy shirt, whose glasses were broken, whose jaw was trembling as he tried to find his way. Well, surely she could be the person to guide him there? And did he…? Yes! He had an owl! He was one of them!
The poor child; he looked so lost.
Where were his parents?
Never mind, never mind. She would see to it that he would get on the train. But she had to be careful. She couldn’t startle him. He’d run off and that would be the end of it. No, no, they had to be crafty.
11:47 AM:
“Packed with Muggles of course,” Molly said loudly, ushering her very confused children past the boy. “What’s the platform number again?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Percy said. “Mother, how could you have forg—?”
It was George who nudged him as he understood what she was doing. She had done it before, after all, and she would do it again.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
The boy didn’t seem to notice them.
11:48 AM:
“Packed with Muggles of course,” said Molly again, marching her children past once more. “What’s the platform number?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Fred and George screamed in unison.
And still the boy remained lost.
11:49 AM:
“Mum,” Ron panted, tripping over himself as he ran to keep up with her. “Slow down!”
Molly ignored him as she practically flew past the poor boy. “Packed with Muggles of course! Now, what’s the platform number?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Ron bellowed.
11:50 AM:
Molly honestly didn’t care if her entire family missed the train and she had to set off across the UK herself like a mother leading a flock of ducklings: she was going to help this boy onto the bloody train.
She marched past him with a fiery determination and said, “Packed with Muggles of course!”
The boy looked up.
Yes! Okay, this was it, this was it, this was it. Play it cool. He was following them. Listening. Pretending not to.
They stopped.
“Now,” Molly said. “What’s the platform number?”
“Nine and three quarters,” piped Ginny.
Victory!
The next nine minutes were a whirlwind of chaos but they managed to get the boy through the barrier. At Molly’s insistence, Fred and George popped up and helped him get his trunk into the compartment. She handed Ron an extra sandwich and muttered, “Tell him that everywhere else was full.”
He dutifully nodded.
As the train took off, she waved to her children, including her newest one.
Bristling with pride, she began to head back to the Burrow. There was simply no time to waste. She had a jumper to knit.
If I ever don’t reblog this post – assume I’m dead
Cheloneuniverse 