6:48pm August 2, 2015

things about Hufflepuffs #468

thingsabouthufflepuffs:

Hufflepuffs with animal allergies are quite likely to have a “pet” plant. 

This Hufflepuff with a severe cat allergy (as determined any time in my life I’ve ever been tested, as well as by the amount of Benadryl I go through)… still has a cat.  And I suspect that may actually be a weirdly Hufflepuff thing as well. 

Although I found out that actually unless your allergy is so severe as to be life-threatening, it can be more beneficial to keep the cat around and treat the aI still couldn’t breathe through my nose for the first several months of living around dogs.  And I lived around cats all my life, but not indoor cats until I grew up.  We found out I was allergic because when we brought the cats indoors, I’d fall asleep, so my mom had me tested.  I was furious at the doctor because I loved cats so much and because I was a kid and didn’t know that the doctor not telling me wouldn’t have made it go away. 

I had actual reason to be furious at an allergist as an adult who pretty much refused to treat me unless I “got rid of” my pets – and it turned out that the symptoms I had gone to see him for, weren’t even the result of allergies to begin with, but of a really bad lung infection that was mistaken for an asthma exacerbation that was being blamed on my allergies because what else was there to blame?  But at any rate, I did some research and the allergist’s recommendation to “get rid of” the cat apparently is not even considered best practice for people with allergies, even severe allergies, as long as they’re not life-threateningly severe allergies. 

Which mine aren’t and never have been – both skin and blood tests have consistently shown an allergic response to cat saliva that’s technically well into the severe range, but my actual physiological response to that isn’t to keel over and die or stop breathing, so I’m not in the category of people where “getting rid of” a cat would even make sense.  My allergies have actually been improved somewhat by living with a cat, which is one reason it’s not considered good to just avoid the animal you’re allergic to (unless it’s some kind of obscure animal you’re never going to see) – it just means your response will be more severe when you do come into contact with that animal.

So that (and the fact that I love Fey and would probably not mind living with her even if it somehow did shorten my lifespan somewhat, which there’s no evidence that it does at all even a little, mind you) is why I’m a Hufflepuff with a severe cat allergy who lives with a cat.  And even sits here typing this with this 16-year-old cat sitting on my chest with her fur right in my face, blocking the fan, on a hot day.  She’s lived with me ever since I moved out on my own for the first time, and she’s going to go on living with me until one or both of us dies.  She’s one of the closest friends I have in the entire world, and she knows things about me that nobody else knows.  I sometimes have a sneaking suspicion, however, that she thinks of me as sort of like a big, none-too-bright kitten who’s never had the decency to move out in her old age, and doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain and therefore has to be looked after all the time.  People always act like the cat is the “baby” in the relationship but I’m pretty sure the reverse is how Fey actually sees it (and I’m not arguing too hard, I call her Grandma Fey a lot of the time).

But I love the idea of pet plants.  Although I have plant allergies too, so that’s not necessarily going to work out any better.  I guess it depends on the plant – or the animal – and the person.

139 notes

2:03am June 20, 2015

mytardishaswings:

dammit-jim-im-a-blog:

greyyourwarden:

cascrieff:

one thing I never see anyone take into account is the fact that Hogwarts must be crawling with cats. you’re allowed to bring either a cat, an owl, or a toad. if we assume only 1/3 of the students bring cats with them, that’s still, like, HUNDREDS OF CATS.

#and how many of those cats were spayed or neutered??#are there rules about spaying/neutering your cat and when were those rules made if so?#do the teachers remember the ‘great kitten infestation of 65?#where they had not just hundreds of cats at hogwarts but HUNDREDS OF KITTENS#so many kittens the students come to hogwarts with a cat and come home with an armful of them#teachers are given kittens#mcgonagall walking into class carrying a kitten#kittens chasing after dumbledore’s robes in the great hall#playpens in the common rooms for kittens#kittens everywhere

WHAT IF MCGONAGALL TAUGHT MANNERS AND STUFF TO THE KITTENS AND THEY EVEN TRAINED THEM TO BE LIKE HELPERS. LIKE THEY COULD LEAD 1ST YEARS TO CLASS AND ALERT TEACHERS TO MISCHIEF OR RETRIEVE MADAME POMPFREY IN AN EMERGENCY

I am all for Professor McGonagal raising and training an army of cat TAs. 

167,997 notes

3:55am April 19, 2015

“‘Because…’ Lupin hesitated, ‘because these mapmakers would have wanted to lure you out of school. They’d think it extremely entertaining.’
‘Do you know them?’ Said Harry, impressed.
‘We’ve met.’ He said shortly.”

21,103 notes

8:01pm March 29, 2015

Meeting me Halfway to Reality

When I first came home from the hospital, I had no idea what was going on.  None.  I apparently pissed all over my friend’s couch without even noticing (and that was before I crapped all over it with full awareness and humiliation).  But even getting up to her apartment was a challenge, I kept hallucinating things in the windows, I thought everyone was looking at me pityingly, like “There’s the patient who never really goes home, they just drive her around in circles for awhile and drop her off at a replica of her friend’s home for a couple days to make her feel like she might come home, then they’ll take her right back because she can’t survive outside a hospital, been in there, what, fifty years now?!”

Have I mentioned I hate delirium?

Anyway I was hallucinating demons and thinking that my best staff, the most wonderful ones, were demons, and that my friend’s legs were going to fall off and that if we touched, it would kill both of us, and other fun things like that.  

So my friend and I collect Harry Potter wands.

And she’d gotten a holly wand, because Harry’s was made from holly.  And she knew that a lot of my hallucinations and delusions were centered around death because my dad just died, and that the symbolism of holly was all about life.  She’d accidentally gotten two instead of one, so she handed me one of them, and explained the symbolism, and told me to use it to protect myself if I saw anything weird going on.

And to my surprise later on, it worked!  It may not have been exactly what a psychiatrist would have you do, but giving me a means to fight back was exactly what I needed, in addition to (not just instead of) reminders that I was hallucinating things that weren’t real.

And having a means to fight back meant everything.  It gave me control when I had no control or rationality to fall back on.  I was so out of it for awhile that I literally don’t know what happened and what didn’t, for days at a time.  Like I can’t even piece together “This is the grain of truth, these are the hallucinations and delusions that formed around that grain of truth.”  It was all too realistic, in all five or six or seven or however many senses human beings are said to have these days.

I’m glad I’m home.

I’m glad I still have the wand. Plus my own two wands.  (One that may be ebony, another that is definitely madrone, both fit me extremely well.)

And…thanks to everyone’s determination to get me the wrong clamp, my tube just popped out a bit again and I had to do something painful and bloody to get it back in place.  Time to go back to my old ways of doing things – not the full dressing, but definitely a lot more tape.  Fuck.  If this lands me in the hospital I’m going to be mad, especially since they always blame me for things like this.  When it’s really the fact they won’t give me the right kind of clamp, and I need the right kind in order to function (too complicated to explain).

Anyway, if you ever have a friend who’s dealing with this kind of hallucinations or delusions, whether through delirium or psychosis or whatever else, you could do worse than using a combination of “This isn’t real, BUT…” and “…here’s how you can take action to protect yourself from the stuff that isn’t real.”  Wands aren’t a bad start.

26 notes

10:13pm December 10, 2014

albinwonderland:

if I’m crying about Hagrid at 5am I’m taking all of you with me

158,431 notes

9:24pm September 18, 2014

“

His rage was dreadful and yet Harry’s grief for Dobby seemed to diminish it, so that it became a distant storm that reached Harry from across a vast, silent ocean.

“I want to do it properly,” were the first words of which Harry was fully conscious of speaking. “Not by magic. Have you got a spade?”

And shortly afterward he had set to work, alone, digging the grave in the place that Bill had shown him at the end of the garden, between bushes. He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the manual work, glorying in the non-magic of it, for every drop of his sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had saved their lives.

His scar burned, but he was master of the pain; he felt it, yet was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now, while he mourned Dobby.

Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out … though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love… .

”

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Holy shit this is important in so many ways in so much of my life right now.  My friend just cut and pasted it for me because she thought I needed to read it right now.  

35 notes

8:55am September 16, 2014

fallingivy:

It bothered me that there were no Squibs allowed in Hogwarts. Fine, I can get that Squibs would not be able to do any wand magic, and would not be able to fly a broomstick. They still apparently possess enough innate magic to see the school and other magically hidden locations. Out of the classes at Hogwarts that the kids take, a Squib could take and benefit from the following classes: History of Magic, Astronomy, Divination, Care of Magical Creatures, Herbology, MUGGLE STUDIES, Potions (there will be little foolish wand-waving here), Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and partially theoretical classes on Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms.

That’s a long list of classes. And some of them are particularly upsetting to me because there’s stuff like History of Magic being left out- that’s their own history they’re being barred from learning. Since Squibs are often forced into the Muggle world, a Squib would make an ideal Muggle Studies teacher and would no doubt be able to teach a more realistic and informative class than someone going off of biased wizarding texts. Squib kids looking into living in the Muggle world would absolutely benefit from learning Muggle studies, especially if they’re from a mainly pureblood family who doesn’t venture out all too often.

And then there’s the rest of them! Arguably you could have a Squib gifted with prescience, and Divination is supposed to be a very accessible branch of magic. Squibs being excellent at taking care of magical plants and animals and making groundbreaking advancements, Squibs working in tandem with each other to breed different magical herbs for potions, Squib potion masters creating all sorts of amazing concoctions. Squibs working with muggleborns and using logic and science to advance magic theoretically, Squibs being huge pro-muggleborn/pro-muggle advocates, Squibs making star charts and Squibs going into the muggle world to use their healing potions in their jobs as nurses and doctors.

Squibs being so completely shut out of magical education was such a sore point for me in the books, especially viewing the treatment of our only prominent Squib- an angry, bitter, glorified janitor often at the mercy of brats with wands. I’m not justifying or endorsing his abusiveness at all, but this was an awful character to use to explore people without magic in a society that bases your worth on it. A lot of time Rowling seems to validate Wizarding prejudices more than she challenges them. While I really enjoy reading the headcanons about Hogwarts being very accessible to people with disabilities, I can’t bring myself to see that as the case with Squibs being treated as they are. 

It bothered me a lot too, because Squibs seemed so obviously to be disabled people.  And I really wanted to like Filch, but they made him into an asshole, using the bitter jealous cripple stereotype to great effect, which pissed me off too.

22,323 notes

11:21am August 31, 2014

ducktrainer:

saemiligr:

dear-monday:

So we know it’s JK’s headcanon that Dudley has a magical child, right? Imagine his kid starting to show signs of magic and Dudley remembering all the odd things that used to happen around Harry. Imagine his kid coming home from Hogwarts and being all, “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME UNCLE HARRY WAS FAMOUS?” Imagine Dudley reading up on Harry and finding out about all the stuff he did and all the things that happened to him and struggling to grasp how his scrawny, speccy cousin saved the wizarding world. Imagine Dudley, white-faced with terror at his first big family get-together with Harry, Hermione and all the remaining Weasleys. Imagine Mrs Weasley being decidedly cool towards him until he eats fifth helpings of everything she cooks and telling her that she’s the best cook he’s ever met. Imagine Dudley meeting Fleur. Imagine the others embarrassing Harry by telling Dudley stories about him. Imagine Dudley and Harry going down the pub together for beers. Imagine Harry still calling him Big D. Imagine Dudley cheerfully never dieting ever again and being fat and happy forever THE END.

This makes me absurdly happy

did they just made me happy about DUDLEY

125,715 notes

2:08pm August 28, 2014

fullofstoryshapes:

Neville as eventual headmaster is very important to me though.

Neville, who thanks to his enduring friendship with Luna sees the vital importance of fostering interhouse relationships, downplays the rivalries between the houses without lessening the importance of intrahouse unity by pushing the Quidditch Cup and House Cup as more friendly competition than all-consuming-must-be-won-enimity and introducing other means of emphasising house pride for those students who are not athletically or academically talented to the point where they feel as though they’re making an important contribution to their house.

Neville, who has so much goodness and kindness in him, having a zero tolerance policy for bullying, by staff or students, and serious punishments set down in official school policy for anyone caught bullying or intimidating a student for any reason.

Neville, who saw first hand just how vital it is, throwing the Ministry-approved DADA curriculum out the window and working with the DADA teacher to build a useful curriculum based on his two most useful years of DADA classes, those being third, under Lupin, and fifth, under Harry.

Neville, who understands how hard it is not to be One Of Those Kids, ruthlessly digging out any elitest groups like the Slug Club and disbanding them.

Neville, who understands that sometimes the teachers don’t choose as wisely as they ought, introducing a democratic system for prefect and Head Boy/Girl selection.

Neville, who knows what it is to be the bottom of the class, making a point of introducing a voluntary tutoring system for students who are in the same position he once found himself in - and making certain that it’s well known that had such a system been in place when he was at Hogwarts, he would certainly have availed of it.

Neville, who is a hero and a marvel and wonderful, brave man, fostering that same bravery and goodness in every one of his students, fighting to help them become the absolute best people they can be regardless of academic talent or world-saving ability.

Neville, who is everything that Albus Dumbledore was not, setting to rights so much of the wrong Dumbledore allowed and sometimes encouraged in Hogwarts.

34,117 notes

2:54am August 13, 2014

fallingivy:

It bothered me that there were no Squibs allowed in Hogwarts. Fine, I can get that Squibs would not be able to do any wand magic, and would not be able to fly a broomstick. They still apparently possess enough innate magic to see the school and other magically hidden locations. Out of the classes at Hogwarts that the kids take, a Squib could take and benefit from the following classes: History of Magic, Astronomy, Divination, Care of Magical Creatures, Herbology, MUGGLE STUDIES, Potions (there will be little foolish wand-waving here), Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and partially theoretical classes on Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms.

That’s a long list of classes. And some of them are particularly upsetting to me because there’s stuff like History of Magic being left out- that’s their own history they’re being barred from learning. Since Squibs are often forced into the Muggle world, a Squib would make an ideal Muggle Studies teacher and would no doubt be able to teach a more realistic and informative class than someone going off of biased wizarding texts. Squib kids looking into living in the Muggle world would absolutely benefit from learning Muggle studies, especially if they’re from a mainly pureblood family who doesn’t venture out all too often.

And then there’s the rest of them! Arguably you could have a Squib gifted with prescience, and Divination is supposed to be a very accessible branch of magic. Squibs being excellent at taking care of magical plants and animals and making groundbreaking advancements, Squibs working in tandem with each other to breed different magical herbs for potions, Squib potion masters creating all sorts of amazing concoctions. Squibs working with muggleborns and using logic and science to advance magic theoretically, Squibs being huge pro-muggleborn/pro-muggle advocates, Squibs making star charts and Squibs going into the muggle world to use their healing potions in their jobs as nurses and doctors.

Squibs being so completely shut out of magical education was such a sore point for me in the books, especially viewing the treatment of our only prominent Squib- an angry, bitter, glorified janitor often at the mercy of brats with wands. I’m not justifying or endorsing his abusiveness at all, but this was an awful character to use to explore people without magic in a society that bases your worth on it. A lot of time Rowling seems to validate Wizarding prejudices more than she challenges them. While I really enjoy reading the headcanons about Hogwarts being very accessible to people with disabilities, I can’t bring myself to see that as the case with Squibs being treated as they are. 

22,323 notes

11:33pm August 7, 2014

just-mindy:

apriki:

MARAUDERS, NO QUESTIONS ASKED. But since you did ask, let’s jump on that….

MARAUDERS: THE SERIES

Okay so - five seasons, BBC produced OR HBO in Game of Thrones style, keeping it British (JKR would insist, as she should). 12-14 episodes a season, potential Christmas special at the end of season 4. The first three seasons are MWPP’s fifth, sixth and seventh years, starting about midway through their 5th. 

The pilot uses Harry as a framing device - it’s needed to establish the world and time period etc etc - maybe in third year, when Snape is digging in to Papa Potter? Harry then walks along the Hogwarts corridors, thinking about his father, and everything Dumbledore and Lupin have said about him, until he finds himself in the trophy room looking at one of James’ Quidditch medals. Harry says “my dad didn’t strut”, and we close in on the medal…

….only to pan out on James, strutting along the same corridor. Remus, Sirius and Peter fall in, and we watch them as they head in to class. James is your typical asshole of a 15yo, eating an apple and accidentally bumping into people, only to grin and give them fingerguns instead of apologising as he keeps on walking. Remus has his nose in a book, Sirius is poking at his ear with a quill, and Peter’s trying get Sugar Quill residue off his fingers. They walk into Transfiguration, their usual boisterous selves, not noticing a red headed girl rolling her eyes and turning away from them to talk to her friends, or a skulking boy in a group of Slytherins behind her, glaring at them.

AND SO WE BEGIN.

Each of the first four seasons would use one of the Marauders as a viewpoint into the main plot:

• Season 1 - Peter, as he feels like he belongs less than the others, and his practical hero-worshipping of his friends means that he views them outside of his relationship with them, and is thus a good starting point for the viewer. Season one also introduces us to the Marauders era Slytherins, and we follow their story in a parallel to MWPP. Lily and Snape’s friendship, their subsequent fall out, and Snape’s further immersion into the Dark Arts are the season’s main subplot. Snape’s Worst Memory happens in about episode 9.
• Season 2 - Remus. Season 2 covers MWPP’s sixth year, as they grow older and the war outside of Hogwarts begins to impact more on their isolated world. Lily and James begin to become friends - well, she dislikes him less - and this impacts on Snape, who begins to write in the margins of his potions textbook. Sirius starts to feel more pressure from his family and moves out; this makes him wilder than ever, culminating in the Snape prank (about episode 11). This is filmed to be a cruel trick, and we see the full blow out afterwards between Sirius and Remus. Snape approaches Lily in the aftermath and attempts to tell her about Remus, villifying James in the process; she tells him that she knows about Remus, and that Snape cannot reveal the secret. The season ends with Remus and Sirius still at odds, although partially reconciled, and James saying he just assumed that Sirius would be moving in with him.
• Season 3 - This year focuses more on James, beginning when he and Sirius decide to crash a pureblood party at the Malfoy’s. They make their getaway, running past three girls, on Sirius’ new bike, which still has some…. kinks to be smoothed out - they almost fall out of the sky more than once. They return home to the news that James has been made Head Boy; Sirius thinks it’s the most hilarious news he’s ever heard, but James is determined to use the opportunity to get closer to Lily (“I am TELLING you she’s Head Girl, Padfoot!”) The gang head back to Hogwarts - crossing paths with Narcissa Black - who had seen them run out at the Malfoy’s - on the train station. She becomes our focus Slytherin character for the season. Lily and James’ romance takes a front position in this season, with the mending of the Sirius/Remus relationship as a subplot. The season also has flashbacks to the group’s younger years, focusing on the Animagus process.
• Season 4: TIME JUMP. We go forward two years into the middle of the war. I see the final two seasons as one whole arc, with the season 4 establishing the various dangers of the war and MWPP’s role in it - focusing on Sirius, as suspicion starts to take hold of the group and their lives get more and more perilous. Through Sirius we get the Regulus subplot and our view into the Death Eaters, following Snape, the Blacks and the Malfoys. Two of Lily and James’ “thrice defied” events happen throughout the season. Remus is sent undercover into the werewolf community and drifts apart from the Order, causing the others to confide in him less and less. Peter sees this and, in the season finale, meets up with a Death Eater.
• Season 5: We begin with the announcement of Lily’s pregnancy. The fighting gets worse - there are battles and disappearances every day, both sides begin to lose friends and mentors. Narcissa’s pregnancy is played out as a parallel to Lily; she and Lucius grow closer and begin to resent the influence of Voldemort on their lives. They strengthen as a family unit and at the end of the season decide to break away from their Death Eater friends (and family). The prophecy is told, Harry is born, Lily and James go into hiding. Sirius continues to fight in the war, becoming friends with the Prewett brothers and eventually witnessing their deaths, Snape becomes worried for Lily, makes the deal with Dumbledore, and begins sabotaging Death Eater missions he thinks may harm her, Karkaroff flees England, the Longbottoms announce that they’re expecting, Peter begins passing information on to Voldemort himself, Remus is thrown out of a werewolf meetup when they discover he’s a spy. 
• The season finale is two hours long. It begins with Harry’s first birthday - Bathilda Bagshot is present, and speaks of Grindlewald. The scene changes, and Sirius is sitting with Kingsley and a few other Order members - they’ve just heard the news of the McKinnons. Moody comes in with blood everywhere; he’s lost an eye. Sirius can’t stand to look at the blood and begins to walk out - then catches sight of Remus in the hall. He confronts Remus, asking where he’s been - Remus can’t say, under Dumbledore’s orders. They end up in a fist fight, beating each other senseless until they’re separated. They don’t speak again for fourteen years. It’s a cold day, and windy - Lily goes outide and pulls the clothes off the line before they can blow away. She and James decorate their cottage with jack o’ lanterns and streamers, and dress Harry up as a little Merlin in a purple gown. They eat Halloween dinner together, the three of them, and James jokes about how “it’s nothing on a Hogwarts feast - just you wait and see, Harry!” Lily goes to put Harry to bed - we watch as she changed him into his pyjamas, lays him in the crib and sings to him - until she’s cut off mid song by a blast downstairs. She’s at the door when she hears James scream, and then there’s a green flash of light, bright and cold, and she runs back to the crib, too choked with fear to even cry for her dead husband. A hooded man steps in the doorway, blocking out all the light. The screen is still black when we hear the revving of a motorcycle as it touches down on the ground. Sirius stands in front of the ruined house, and there are no words for the look on his face. He makes a sound - more animal than human - and before even knowing why, he starts forward, searching among the rubble. He hears a sound, and digs underneath the debris, forgetting his wand entirely, until he finds Harry, crying, the scar still bleeding. Sirius doesn’t know how long he stands there, holding the baby, until suddenly Hagrid is behind him, saying something about Dumbledore, and argues for a while but hands Harry over anyway, saying Hagrid can take the bike. It’s only then that Sirius thinks of Peter. Hagrid says something else, but Sirius doesn’t hear him, doesn’t hear anything - he Apparates, and he’s not even landed before he’s running, up and into Peter’s apartment, banging through the door and making things explode like he did when he was young and couldn’t control his magic. We follow Sirius through the confrontation with Peter and his arrest. Sirius is dragged away, laughing and crying manicallay, cut in a montage to parties and celebrations, random wizards and the Order, a thousand people cheering and smiling and all whispering “For him! The Boy who Lived! Harry Potter!” And, finally, a baby and a letter, lying side by side in front of a Surrey door.

66,861 notes