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

10:42pm April 5, 2015

prokopetz:

Random Headcanon: The reason the Wizarding World in Harry Potter uses such arse-backwards technology isn’t cultural elitism. (Well, not entirely.) Rather, it’s because if you enchant anything more complicated than a screwdriver, it tends to become sentient over time. Devices that use electricity are particularly bad for this, and almost always “wake up” eventually. Arthur Weasley’s car going rogue and running off to live in a forest is actually a fairly favourable outcome; the students still tell horror stories about what happened to the guy who smuggled in (and subsequently enchanted) a digital wristwatch.

I always figured it was just because you didn’t need all the extra tech when your own technology is magic. Like who needs airplanes when you have broomsticks and magic carpets? Not the best example but you know what I mean. So the adoption of Muggle technology is naturally slower and on an as needed basis. This can lead to snobbery but the snobbery isn’t the origin of this issue, just one possible result of it.  

59,603 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

8:45pm July 12, 2014

Some old rambling about Hogwarts houses, found on my hard drive.

I was talking with Anne today.  As usual, when we aren’t the same, we’re weirdly complementary:

Anne is a Ravenpuff with some Gryffindor tendencies.

I’m a Gryfflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies.

Both of us can appreciate the better parts of Slytherin, but simply aren’t very Slytherin at all.

I see myself as…

I’m Hufflepuff at the core.  There are times in my life when that would have shamed me to the bone, but I’ve learned to be proud of it.  I used to think it made me weak.  I used to think that caring about people, caring about fairness, made me pathetic and weak and stupid.  I used to think that it held me back in situations where my peers could do things I couldn’t, or where I’d do the same things and end up all night crying.  I used to hate when my mom would call me tender-hearted.   I tried to be tough, but I’m not.  No, I am tough, but I’m not tough in that way.  I’m tough in a way that comes from the heart because from the heart is the only way I can operate honestly.  And that’s why I’m a Hufflepuff, deep down, always.

My friends call me Neville.  As in, several friends who don’t even know each other have independently called me Neville.  He’s a fellow Gryfflepuff who learned courage late.  I’ve learned an immense amount of courage by going through absolute hell.  I’ve learned more Gryffindor traits, like sticking myself out there as the target that anyone can shoot at.  Taking one for the team, as Anne put it, is one of my Gryffindor tendencies.  I’ll put myself out there knowing that people can try to hurt me, but doing it because it seems the right thing to do at the time.

My primary motivations in life are all Hufflepuff, though.  Embarrassingly so, sometimes.  And I have all the weaknesses that come with being a Hufflepuff too.

I have never trusted loyalty.  My friends try to convince me that loyalty isn’t always a bad thing.  But I have come to realize that I have the kind of loyalty that can be a bad thing.  The kind that makes you stick up for a friend even when you know in your heart of hearts that your friend has done wrong.  This tendency in myself has always ashamed me, and I spend a lot of time fighting it.  This may be the dark side of Hufflepuff.   We are loyal to our friends, even to a fault.  I used to spend so much time dissing this kind of loyalty that I didn’t realize the reason it bothered me so much was because I saw it so strongly within myself.

My Gryffindor traits are clearly secondary.

By which I mean…

I have a friend who’s 100% Gryffindor, like she’s the prototype of Gryffindor.  If there’s a battle, she will be out in the front, wand waving wildly, taking curses so that other people don’t have to.  She thrives on that kind of thing.  She doesn’t have to gear herself up, that’s just who she is and what she does.  And she’s amazing at both strategy and tactics when it comes to battle.

Me… I may sometimes find myself in the same place, doing the same thing.  But it’s reluctant, and motivated differently.  Battle doesn’t excite me the way it excites her.  I don’t enjoy it.  I see it as a means to an end.  Sometimes a necessary one.  Sometimes you have to stick your neck out.  But I always have to prepare myself, I always have to put myself in the mindset of not being afraid.  Because my first response is always flight or freeze, never fight.

I’m a hard worker.  I have always been a hard worker.  If I had my druthers, I would do hard work in the background.  The way my life has propelled me has not allowed that to be my role, most of the time.  I’ve felt like I’ve been forced into the limelight whether I want it or not, and I’ve had to deal with the consequences.  (As such, I identified a lot with Harry Potter sometimes.  I’m nowhere near as famous as he was, but the issues are the same, just on a smaller scale.  My ex refers to my stalkers as ‘Rita Skeeter types’.)  

But then Cedric ended up in the limelight too, and he was a Hufflepuff.  There’s nothing about being a Hufflepuff that says you always have to be in the background doing unacknowledged hard work.  It’s just something that Hufflepuffs are known for being good at.

My dream, when I first moved out on my own, was to be a gardener or something.  To have a tiny house on someone’s land, with an Internet connection and not much stuff.  And to unobtrusively take care of their grounds while they did whatever the hell they wanted and didn’t interact with me much.  That sort of thing was my dream job:  Stay in the background, do basic physical work, get paid just enough to get what you need, don’t interact with anyone much, live my life.  It was an unrealistic dream, but I loved it just the same.  I was kind of doing something like it – living in a tiny apartment off of my neighbor’s house, working in her garden when she couldn’t and I wished I could make it a career, but my body was falling apart and I couldn’t.

Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs tend to share a strong sense of justice and fair play.  And that is something I have always had.  Something that, when a childhood neighbor was asked to describe my personality, she wrote that I had an intense sense of justice and could not understand anyone who didn’t.  

I think there’s a different flavor it takes in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff though, just like Hufflepuff and Slytherin loyalty have both commonalities and differences.

My sense of justice is based on my tender-heartedness.  It’s based on my squishy weak parts that care about people too much.  Not that Gryffindors don’t care about people, but they’ll more often get wrapped up in causes for their own sake, too.  These are of course just generalizations.

And as far as generalizations go.

J. K. Rowling has made it clear that every House has people in it who would seem to fit in another house.  Percy Weasley seems like a Slytherin, Neville Longbottom seems like a Hufflepuff, Hermione Granger seems like a Ravenclaw, but they are all in Gryffindor for specific reasons of their own, and those specific reasons have less to do with their talents and innate abilities, and more to do with their core values, or with life lessons that they need to learn, or choices they have made.  So there is no House that doesn’t have people with strong traits from every single other House, in that House.  No matter how much the other House may seem at first to be an opposite.

(For some reason, people have trouble imagining Slytherpuffs.  But there’s plenty out there.)

I think as a child I would have wanted badly to be Gryffndor or Ravenclaw, but would have been sorted into Hufflepuff because that’s where I most needed to be.  Hufflepuff not only reflects my strongest values about the world, but it would have made me stop being ashamed of who I was, and helped build me into who I was, rather than who I wasn’t.  

Having to learn to be who I was, and stop trying to be what I wasn’t, was a major theme of the time period in my life when I would’ve been being sorted.  In particular, I was losing my academic skills and growing into a whole other set of skills that nobody talked about because nobody really measures those skills.  And I think that trying to end up in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw would’ve resulted in the Hat gently but firmly putting me into Hufflepuff, just as my life was tending to go at that point in time.

I was in a situation where I was “sorted into Ravenclaw” so to speak against my will, by means of gifted programs.  Gifted programs assume that everyone there is a Ravenclaw just because they tested well at some point on a standardized test.  I was expected to fit in because I had high test scores.  But I did not fit in.  In fact, I was bullied worse there than I was anywhere else.  And when Ravenclaws turn bully, they are scary because they use that amazing mind of theirs to invent horrible ways of hurting you.   Unfortunately, the programs encouraged a kind of amorality that only made it easier for the bullies to take hold and frighten off all the decent people.  And there were plenty of decent people who had the Ravenclaw love of learning and truly belonged in Ravenclaw, and some of them were targeted by bullies as well.  But those of us most likely to be targeted were those with disabilities and those who weren’t really Ravenclaws at heart.

When I say I’m not a Ravenclaw at heart, I don’t mean that I’m not a nerd.  I’m a nerd.  I enjoy learning.  And I’m a quick learner in some areas, even still.  But learning is not one of my higher values in life.  It doesn’t sustain me.  If I lost all my nerdiness and lost all my intellectual skills (and I’ve already lost more of them than people might guess, and only regained some, yay brain damage) I feel like I would still be myself.  These aren’t things that define the core of who I am.  They are attributes I can take or leave.

I think in order to be a Ravenclaw, I would have to have more than Ravenclaw-esque talents.  I would have to really put certain kinds of learning first in my life.  I would have to value them strongly in a way that I don’t.  Plus I think I’d be stuck outside the Common Room door all day long, I’m terrible, generally, with that kind of question.  

I also know that I would not fit in, in Ravenclaw.  I don’t fit in, in groups of people where wit, learning, and intellect are considered the best things.  I know people who do fit in, in those places, and that’s great.  For them.  I’m not one of them.  I can’t fit in.  In fact, trying to fit in, in those settings, has always turned into an embarrassing disaster.  There’s a big disconnect between me and them, everyone senses it, and things get awkward.  It’s not that I can’t have Ravenclaw friends and get along with them, but when I’m in an all-Ravenclaw environment, even when people are trying to be friendly, it just doesn’t work out.  I don’t even know exactly why.  It just doesn’t.

I still have analytical, intellectual skills that would make Ravenclaw maybe want to take me.  But I wouldn’t be taken there, because the Hat is smarter than an standardized testing machine.  The Hat would see wherever I belonged, and put me there, instead.

I have not much in the way of Slytherin traits.  I can be mildly ambitious, but so can anyone.  I love their common room, I think it’s second only to the Hufflepuff common room.  But I’m not very ambitious, and I don’t have many of the other traits officially or unofficially given to Slytherins.

I actually sometimes think it’s cool when I run into a Slytherin woman.  Women aren’t supposed to be ambitious in this society.  I know a woman I’m 99% sure is Slytherin.  She’s ambitious, not exactly a people person, she looks out for herself, she’s got a touch of arrogance.  But somehow, those things work for her.  She’s going into a field where she’s going to need all the ambition and arrogance she can get, just to survive the training.  And I think she can do it.  And I think it’s really cool that she’s like this as a woman, when women get so much shit for being ambitious or arrogant.  Not that all Slytherins are ambitious and arrogant, but she is, and she makes it work for her.  I like her.

Just as I have strong traits from both Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, Anne has strong traits of both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.  I think on balance she might be a Ravenclaw with strong Hufflepuff tendencies.  She’s a classic nerd in a very beautiful way, she seems capable of creating practically anything with her hands as soon as she learns how to do it, she’s got a voracious appetite for information, and she’s an engineer.  And while I share many of those traits, for her they seem more central to her personality and values than they are to mine. I can’t explain the difference, but it’s there, even though the two of us are nearly identical in so many ways.

She also has Hufflepuff traits and values, of course, but they’re wrapped around the Ravenclaw values from the outside, the same way my Gryffindor values are wrapped around my Hufflepuff values.  She cares a lot about people, about fairness, about hard work done well in the background.  She would make a good Hufflepuff if she didn’t make a slightly better Ravenclaw.  In fact, I could see her going either way at different points in her life.

And she has Gryffindor traits, but like my Ravenclaw traits, they’re not as strong as her main two Houses.  I can really see a difference between the degree to which I’m willing to put myself out in the way of harm for a cause, and the degree to which she is willing to do so.  I’m not judging her for this, mind you — we need all types in this world.  But I do see a difference.  I’ve been in situations where she’s told me she’d never have done something risky that I’d done without even thinking of the consequences.

But she’s no coward.  In fact, she hates the idea of cowardice so much that she’s allowed herself to be goaded into things by the threat of being considered a coward.  There are ways in which she’s braver than I am, even though I put myself out there more than she does.  

And like me, she’s just… not very Slytherin, although I would suspect she likes the common room and the visual aesthetic as much as I do.  

So I’m Hufflepuff at the core, with Gryffindor wrapped closely around it, and a fair number of Ravenclaw traits, with not much Slytherin.  And Anne is probably Ravenclaw at the core, with Hufflepuff wrapped closely around it, and a fair number of Gryffindor traits, with not much Slytherin.  And combined together, as we often are, we make a really cool team.

Oh I forgot to mention that Anne has the most kick-ass Slytherin cat I’ve ever heard of.  Her name is Nikki, and she’s a purebred Siamese.  She embodies something I’ve seen in a lot of Slytherins, which is that she is good but she is not nice.  She would choose voluntarily to be in Slytherin, because she would see it as being to her advantage.  She guards the house from foes both visible and invisible, and takes her guard duty deadly seriously.  Woe to anyone who thinks it’s cute or funny.

Interestingly, she is extremely similar to my cat, Fey.  The only difference?  Fey is Gryffindor.  One of my friends says that Gryffindors and Slytherins are far more similar than either one is likely to admit.  But Fey and Nikki have such similar body language it’s a shock sometimes to watch Nikki interacting with people, and seeing Fey’s body language on such a different-looking cat.  

Anne’s Hufflepuff cat is named Brodie.  He’s amazing.  All her cats are amazing. But Brodie has better social skills than any cat I’ve ever seen.  He was the first to be able to make friends with Nikki, which he accomplished by unfailing politeness and observance of any and all boundaries that Nikki was willing to set.  And he’s kind of the glue that binds their whole cat family together.  He is quiet and shy in a lot of ways, and he has the most expressive ears of any cat I’ve ever seen.  He’ll be sitting there seemingly not saying anything, but his ears will be twitching out all these patterns that clearly have meaning to him and the cats around him.  He’s incredibly polite.  And oh so very subtle, so subtle that you could overlook him if you weren’t careful.

Coraline is Anne’s Ravenclaw cat.  She’s the one who figures out puzzles the fastest, and is always looking for new ways to learn and new ways to physically manipulate her environment.  She’s curious about everything and has to explore and find things out.  

And Shadow is Gryffindor.  He’s pure fire.  Sometimes he looks like a glowing piece of amber.  Sometimes he looks like liquified sunlight.  Sometimes he looks like molten lava.  But always fire.  He’s not the kind of misdirected, squashed up fire that leads to angry outbursts.  He’s the kind of wide-open, well-connected fire that leads to intensity and passion and beauty and creativity and warmth and goodness.  The kind of fire I’ve only recently been able to discover in myself.  Cats often have an affinity for sunlight, and Shadow has more of one than I’ve ever seen.  Sometimes I swear he is sunlight in liquid form, that just happens to be shaped like a big black cat.

I find it interesting that with four cats, Anne managed to end up with one for each House, and it’s not even slightly ambiguous in which House each cat belongs. 

I also find it interesting that with all our similarities, Anne and I have different Houses.  And yet the way our different Houses fit together is almost like an interlocking set of patterns.  Two strong ones wrapped around each other, both sharing a Hufflepuff in that part, and then one weaker one, one practically nonexistent.  We seem to complement each other very well: Gryfflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies and Ravenpuff with some Gryffindor tendencies.  Although I say “Gryfflepuff” and “Ravenpuff”, though, when really each of us does have one central House, I think, not two.  It’s just that we each also seem to have a very near runner-up in a second house, and that has to be acknowledged.

24 notes

2:20pm July 12, 2014

This has been said, but it should be said again.

344 notes

2:02am July 12, 2014

stardustandzombiebites:

Harry Potter Headcanon:
When the Death Eaters took over Hogwarts, a lot of the things done in defiance of them were able to happen through the people involved acting out of character for their houses. For example, the Carrows, assuming the Ravenclaws to be the brains behind the operations, do random dorm checks in hope of catching them, when in fact it is the Gryffindors doing all the planning. Them assuming that it is the Gryffindoors doing all the legwork and setting up watches outside their dorms and controlling where the Gryffindor students can be during the day, while the Hufflepuffs, who everyone assumes to be pacifists, are the ones sneaking through the school. The Carrows thinking that the Hufflepuffs are having things smuggled in through the kitchens, when in fact it is the Ravenclaws smuggling things in through the Room of Requirement.

33 notes

1:19am July 12, 2014

ivorytowermind:

dominique-inique-inique:

everybody seems to think ravenclaw is a quiet place to read but i quite disagree

i mean maybe the fact that it’s so light and airy is because they need to be able to open the windows when jack blows something up while experimenting with charms in the corner

and the prefects always have their hands full because fights regularly break out over the fact that ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc is not a legitimate argument, diana!’ and ‘i can’t believe you think dorabella’s star maps are more accurate than mine! what kind of friend are you?’

and then of course there’s the divide between the ravenclaws that revere the old schools of learning and the brash new-world-new-rules ravenclaws that say ‘fuck you!’ to all magical conventions. and man, those prank wars are dangerous (especially when professor flitwick not only fails to stop them, but decides to join in on the fun)

i mean come on it’s a house of knowledge seekers that probably love to argue and theorize and experiment and have a certain amount of pride in their intelligence. things never go smoothly when you’ve got approximately 80 people all trying to be the smartest person in the room

#that’s not to say they don’t admire and respect each other #or enjoy working together because all ravenclaws are different #and some really really love being right #and some delight in being proved wrong because changing your worldview is ever so EXCITING #there is a certain amount of ego involved in considering yourself a genius #and there’s a certain amount of disdain for genius that exists in those that ‘humbly’ #proclaim themselves truthseekers #and then there are those that proclaim that there IS NO TRUTH #i mean come on ravenclaw is a mess let’s all face it

#and then there are the Ravenclaws that go through existential crises every other week because of things they’re reading#WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE HAVE POTIONS HOMEWORK#I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER OTHER MEANS OF TORTURE ARE ACTUALLY MORE ETHICAL THAN THE CRUCIATUS#AND IF NOT THEN WHY ARE THEY LEGAL#or#I AM CALLING OFF QUIDDITCH PRACTICE TODAY BECAUSE I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHY QUIDDITCH IS DIVIDED BY HOUSES#or I CAN’T GO TO RUNES BECAUSE I AM TOO UPSET ABOUT WITCH HUNTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES#IMAGINE WHAT THAT WOULD BE LIKE JUST IMAGINE IT#or BUT WHY IS OUR CURRENCY SO ILLOGICAL CAN’T WE FIX IT#or HOW DOES MAGIC GET PASSED DOWN BUT THEN ALSO APPEAR AT RANDOM NOBODY CAN EXPLAIN IT#IS IT IN OUR BODIES OR IN OUR MINDS OR WHAT#(just calm down and come to transfiguration okay)#I WILL NOT CALM DOWN AND I WILL NOT COME TO TRANSFIGURATION#IF YOU VANISH A THING AND CONJURE IT AGAIN IS IT THE SAME MATTER#IS IT THE SAME ESSENCE#(it’s okay. just vanish the pincushion)#IT’S NOT OKAY

22,636 notes

7:05pm July 8, 2014

dreamslessordinary:

princess-sparklemullet:

so sometimes i think about harry potter being in the aurors and like

he’d never really thought about child protective services, muggle or otherwise, cause it’d never been relevant, right? like when he was a miserable kid he just thought that was what it was like being an orphan. but then he sees cases come through the department where parents are murdered and there’s kids sitting in their waiting room with copies of the quibbler and water waiting while an auror sits down with a family tree and tries to find whatever relatives this kid might have in the wizarding world, going back maybe even five generations to find anyone living and vaguely related to this child to drop them off with

and he goes to shit apartments in diagon alley after noise complaints and finds children who are black and blue with hexed, bleeding skin who insist they were just playing with a weasley’s wizard wheeze, no really mr. potter

and he thinks about how merope gaunt stumbled into a muggle orphanage and left them a child who would grow up learning fear was the key to harmony, and becoming a god meant safety

and really, how was the headmaster of a school the person who made the call about where he ended up, how was the system so haphazard that a man who wouldn’t be part of his life for another ten years got to make the biggest decision of his life

harry thinks about his cupboard

and then harry potter sits down with hermione and ron and neville (cause of course neville would want a stake in this) and says, “we need to change the wizarding world again.”

and they do.

#the anti-cupboard league#molly weasley knits sweaters with every letter of the alphabet

68,318 notes

3:33pm July 6, 2014

misterracoon:

roachpatrol:

yeah seriously tell us how wizardry’s done in the new world tell me how the wizards from france and spain and britain stamped out the brujos and the medicine men and set up their own schools tell me what the fuck the british raj did to fucking india because the patel twins are going to school in scotland and what are they told about their history, tell me about native american kids learning to say wingardium leviosa with hate in their hearts and tell me about wizarding rabbis bickering about whether you can use potions on the sabbath tell me about the slaves on their ships with their wands broken, mouthing curses in the dark tell me about the runaways that made it with garter snakes wrapped around their wrists that told them when they tasted dogs in the distance, tell me about the underground railroad and abolitionists with unbreakable vows and home-spun invisibility cloaks and disilusionments, using obliviate, using imperio, knowing that they served a higher justice, tell me about what happened to black wizards in the fifties, about what gates they were storming in the sixties tell me about queer wizards taking love potions every morning in their coffee to stay married to their husbands and their wives because what else could they do?

the world only begins and ends with straight white christians if you don’t bother looking any farther than that and too many people don’t and i am tired, tired, tired

Oh. 

49,516 notes

3:14am June 29, 2014

things about Hufflepuffs #364

madeofpatterns:

thingsabouthufflepuffs:

Hufflepuffs tend to help their Slytherin friends be more comfortable with physical affection. They especially like to hug their Slythie friends for slightly longer than the snake would like. The Slytherins get used to it, but seeing them just a tad bit uncomfortable at first often makes the badgers smile.

This isn’t actually a good thing, at all. 

But it seems like the kind of mistake a lot of Hufflepuffs probably make.

Holy crap yeah it’s a little creepy, honestly.  But yes, it’s a very Hufflepuff mistake.  Especially that they’d think this was “helping”. Eurrgh.

On a side note…

For some reason… when the “things about Hufflepuffs” thing first came out, most of the submissions were things that even if they weren’t exactly me, I could relate to them.  And then somewhere along the way, they all became things about being a rampant extrovert who loves parties and hugs and doing things together all the time, and I stopped identifying with much about them at all.  I don’t know what’s changed exactly, other than that maybe everyone submitting stuff is following each other’s lead.

I miss stuff I could identify with, though.

I’m a highly introverted Hufflepuff.  And I’m still as Hufflepuff as it’s possible to get.  I still have all the same values and traits as any Hufflepuff out there (even the ones that can be bad, like excessive loyalty), I just really like my space and prefer to be alone a lot of the time.  I love people, I absolutely love people, but I don’t love socializing in large groups, and sometimes I don’t want to socialize at all.

I’m the sort of Hufflepuff who would go around the castle making clue hunts for other people to follow, and leaving little presents for random people to find in strange locations.  But who would hide in my dorm room if there was a party in the common room, which everyone lately seems to be saying would be happening all the time, which would be seriously unpleasant for me because I like our common room and would love to spend time there without lots of parties going on constantly.

I’d love to see more introverted Hufflepuff headcanons, autistic Hufflepuff headcanons, etc.

399 notes

9:54pm June 12, 2014

featherwriter:

I’m probably the last person you might expect to come up with Harry Potter headcanons, but I thought one up recently that I’m really quite proud of. Because what if there’s these students who get up there under the Sorting Hat and all they can think is “I have to be in the same house as my friend. My friend needs me with them, we have to stay together. I don’t care where I go so long as I’m there to help them.”

So, the Hat just thinks back at them. “Well, that’s a very loyal mindset that you have there. I think you’re a Hufflepuff.”

And the student just feels so desperate at this—which is of course the test after all—and says “No please you can’t put me in Hufflepuff! You have to put me their house! I can adapt, I swear! I’ll make it work!”

Which means of course that the Hat knows they’re ready for this and tells them: “Okay, here is the deal. You’re a Hufflepuff, but I’m placing you undercover in your friend’s house to stay with them and protect them.” The Hat calls out their “house” but the student knows deep down what house they’re really in, and the Hufflepuff Prefects know what just happened and they feel proud that there’s another stealth Hufflepuff out there, because the undercover members of their house are thought of as some of the strongest.

The student goes over to sit with their new table, ready to protect and help their friend and they’ll go move into the dorm, but after everyone goes to bed the Hufflepuff Prefects come and introduce them to their real house late at night. They get a special scarf that will change to their real Hufflepuff colors in special situations and are shown the secret passages into the Hufflepuff common room. And they meet the few other stealth Hufflepuffs in other houses, and the ones that are hiding in the same house as them give them tips for how to blend in among their fake house and the older undercover members look out for the younger ones.

All of Hufflepuff house knows about the stealth members, but they never let the other houses in on it, of course. It’s the great secret of the Hufflepuff house. They’re also all really respectful to anyone who managed to get a stealth member to bond with them and those students often don’t realize why the Hufflepuffs are always so nice to them, though they maybe figure it’s “just a Hufflepuff thing.”

And there’s a standing rule that there is one exception to the secret keeping rule: the stealth member can tell the person that they’ve gone undercover for what’s going on, but only if they figure it out. Because slowly, over time, their friend might realize that this loyal, protective friend doesn’t really fit in with the house they’re both in and might figure it out. 

Okay, this was really a lot longer and more rambly than I was expecting, but yeah, stealth Hufflepuffs are a thing that should exist.

1,911 notes

3:26am June 2, 2014

theshoutingslytherin:

• Slytherins and Hufflepuffs having some of the closest and friendliest inter-House relationships
• Slytherins helping their Hufflepuff friends to get what they want without getting stepped on
• Hufflepuffs calming their Slytherin friends down when they get too angry or go too far
• Slytherins delighting in the confusion of the more biased Gryffindors who can’t believe that Hufflepuffs are friends with Slytherins
• Hufflepuffs fiercely defending their Slytherin friends when someone calls them a Death Eater
• Slytherins exacting terrible revenge on people who mess with their Hufflepuff buddies
• Slytherins aggressively protecting the younger Hufflepuff students from bullying and fights
• JUST
• SLYTHERIN/HUFFLEPUFF RELATIONSHIPS

3,965 notes

8:34pm May 18, 2014

things about Hufflepuffs #324

thingsabouthufflepuffs:

Unbeknownst to even those friends from other Houses that are closest to ‘puffs, there is a second secret door that opens at the entrance to the common room.  If you tap out the rhythm of “Hufflepuffs in History” on the middle barrel of the second row, the door will instead open to reveal a well-lit reading nook that is lined with shelves, all containing biographies and autobiographies of famous Hufflepuffs.  Most aren’t even included in the main circulation library, because some ‘puffs prefer that their work go unattributed, as they have greater goals in mind than notoriety.

166 notes

11:46am May 17, 2014

slytheringirls:

Slytherin girls helping other students sneak into the different common rooms, so that they can have mixed houses sleepovers on weekends.

Or older students showing the younger ones the Room of Requirement, so that they can have a place to go when they don’t wanna be in the common rooms and muggleborn students using that room to show the others what a Tv is and showing them classic movies owo

43 notes

5:15am April 4, 2014

nopantsparade:

Idris Elba as Godric Gryffindor

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Salazar Slytherin

Tatiana Maslany as Helga Hufflepuff

Zoe Saldana as Rowena Ravenclaw

162 notes