What if instead of gilly weed Harry had showed up to the black lake challenge in muggle scuba gear like “like where’s your advanced magic now bitches? Got me a free fishing knife with this thing”
Honestly I just want an AU where Harry approached all his magical problems with muggle solutions. Nobody knows how to handle it because he’s supposed to be there learning magic but you know what, it fucking works.
Give me Harry Potter who is like fucking MacGuyver up in this shit, creating his own non-magical solutions to magical problems.
“Potter how did you get past the enchanted keys to the Sorcerer’s Stone?”
“I used a fucking net.”
“How did you get past the dragon?”
Harry shines a little red light on the wall “works on cats, why not a dragon”
“How did you get through the hedge maze?”
“Weed-b-gone, it’s like a pound. Nothing will ever grow there again”
It’s the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. The Dark Lord begins to prepare a spell to end Harry Potter’s life once and for all when….
Slytherins tend to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. They also have highly developed senses of self-preservation. This means that Slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done.
According to Albus Dumbledore, the qualities which Salazar valued in the students he chose included cleverness, resourcefulness, determination, and “a certain disregard for the rules.”
Slytherins tend to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. They also have highly developed senses of self-preservation. This means that Slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done.
one of the most important things to me about harry potter is its portrayal of happiness. in the harry potter world, happiness isn’t just a feeling—it’s a weapon. look at how harry and his friends fight: with riddikulus, laughter stymies a creature made of fear; with expecto patronum, the very memory of happiness beats back the grim forces of depression.
the weaponization of positivity stretches beyond that. fred and george weasley’s inventions, meant for laughter, turn into arms against umbridge’s regime. and after their departure from hogwarts, their joke shop becomes not only the single bright spot in diagon alley (literally & figuratively) but a hub of defensive magic. the whole weasleys’ wizard wheezes narrative serves as maybe the clearest example in the series that happiness can act as both shield and sword.
there is something deeply empowering in a depiction of happiness as something so tangible and usable. as a profoundly depressed person, i often feel myself scrounging for happy memories and clutching them close; i find myself grasping for laughter in the dark. the physicalization of expecto patronum is not a quantum leap from reality. the boggart’s laughter as combat fuel, the weasleys’ levity as not just a choice but a difficult and defiant one—it’s all familiar.
the series has its share of darkness, but it revels most in the light. it lets us believe that the act of joy is not small, trivial, or inconsequential. happiness is something not just to be lived—it is to be wielded, on your own behalf and the behalves of the people around you, to battle against the world’s heavier elements. harry potter teaches us this.
something we agreed we like about uncle vernon is that despite like, personally suffering at the hands of wizards pretty significantly (dudley’s tail, marge), vernon is like, always ready to fuck with wizards? like he is SO SCARED of them but he’s always ready to fight? please take this moment to imagine uncle vernon meeting voldemort
‘There’s no need to call me ‘Sir’, Professor’ is hands down the most savage thing Harry has ever said or done
Like I honestly don’t think JKR gave it the reaction it deserved. Ron would be cheering and high fiving everybody. Dean and Seamus would be hugging and crying. Neville would be screaming
People talk a lot about how Harry Potter taught them about friendship and bravery and love overcoming evil etc and of course I think that’s very important but like…
Harry Potter also taught an entire generation of kids that the news media can’t always be trusted to tell the truth, that the government can often be corrupt or incompetent, that the legal system isn’t always right, that the people in power don’t always have your best interests at heart. That bad things sometimes happen to good people, that your heroes aren’t always as perfect as you think they are, that even those with the best intentions can be wrong, that everyone can make mistakes and that often in order to make things right it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
…and I think in a way that’s every bit as important as the more positive messages.
October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (via 289thday)
fivepercent 