death to capslock

Dumbledore and the spy in the Order: shiny new theory

2025-09-02T16:59:38Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

I had an idea which might explain a few of the more frustrating bits about the Order’s failure to catch the spy and the whole Godric's Hollow fiasco. Help me poke it to see if it holds up!

On November 1, 1981, Dumbledore might have concluded that my Prank Redux theory was the correct one. But what did he think before that?

My first spy in the Order theory was that maybe (despite them pretending 1996 was Remus's first werewolf spy rodeo) Dumbledore had in fact gotten Remus into Greyback's pack as a spy during VoldWar I, had him leak some genuine information to sell his cover, and assumed that information filtered back to Voldemort and accounted for enough of the Order's problems that there needn't be a real spy in the Order. This isn't impossible, but it is flimsy.

But suppose Dumbledore thought James was the spy. ( Read more... )

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Why did the Order only threaten the Dursleys after Harry's fifth year?

2025-03-08T19:28:13Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Many readers have wondered why none of the adults who care about Harry confronted the Dursleys during his first five years at Hogwarts. What suddenly made them take action in 1996 when they hadn’t seen a need before? ( Read more... )

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The 1981 Sirius vs. Peter Showdown

2025-02-08T04:47:02Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

As much as it has to recommend it, the idea that Sirius threw a curse and Peter blocked it and detonated his own exploding curse a split-second later, convincing both witnesses and Sirius himself that Sirius had killed Peter, requires awfully good timing. Which we can’t rule out: when Remus transformed in PoA, we saw Peter seize the opportunity immediately, without hesitation, to transform and escape. He does have quick reflexes.

But what about this?

Peter yells, “Lily and James! How could you!”

The very absurdity of the accusation makes Sirius pause for just the briefest “WTF? Is he mad? Could we both have been set up by someone else? Wait, no, he’s the Secret-Keeper.” He sees that Peter is scrabbling for something behind his back, raises his own wand…

…and then, before he’s actually fired off his curse, the street blows up.

What do you know, Moody was right. It is dangerous to keep your wand in your back pocket. Wormy’s lost a lot more than a buttock, though! Sirius breaks down in hysterical laughter.

When the Hit Wizards and Aurors show up, he’s still laughing. He doesn’t defend himself, because why bother? He doesn’t need to hunt down Peter for revenge; Peter’s taken care of that for him. Voldeort is dead..ish? Whatever, gone, no more need to worry about him. Dumbledore won’t let him raise Harry, who has relatives and doesn’t need him. Lily is dead. James is dead. What’s left to live for? And in a way, Wormy was right. Sirius agreed to the Secret-Keeper switch, maybe even thought of it in the first place. His overconfidence and downright stupid oversight in not realizing Wormy was the traitor delivered his friends into Voldemort’s hands. It kind of is his fault that they’re dead. Maybe he deserves Azkaban.

Thoughts?

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Who were the most important Death Eaters during the first war?

2024-03-10T03:44:58Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

If Lucius, Bellatrix, or Severus weren’t among the most important Death Eaters during the first war, then who was? ( Read more... )

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Prophecy What-Ifs (What would the Demons do?) Part 1

2023-07-29T14:09:25Z

Posted by: oryx_leucoryx

I have been toying with the scenarios here for a long time, but got stuck in ways I could not resolve. So I decided to start posting and see if members of this list can help develop them.

In a previous post I claimed that Harry's luck in winning over Voldemort and surviving came from the work of the Prophecy Demons, hypothesized to be capricious mini-deities who run certain aspects of the Potterverse, especially those that have to do with 'ancient magic', the more mystical aspects of Potterverse magic. Others have proposed that one way these Demons interfere in events is by sending prophecies and then manipulating the fortunes of people who make choices based on knowledge of said prophecies. The rule is that a prophecy that is heard may come true in more than one way, and it ends up unrolling such that both those that seek to benefit from the prophecy coming true and those who seek to avert it fair badly, and it turns out the best line of action is always to do nothing at all based on the prophecy (but who can withstand the temptation?)

In this series I would like to try to work out how events would have turned out had one factor been different: In this case, had Severus Snape decided against reporting the overheard prophecy to Voldemort.

Terri Testing has a fic on her LiveJournal named 'Levicorpus' that starts this out: Severus realizes expecting to benefit from reporting a prophecy is a terrible move that could bite him and those he cares about, so instead he decides to Obliviate a small segment of his memory, just the overheard prophecy, before he goes back to Voldemort to report his failure to get a teaching job. In her fic the first consequence of this choice is Lily using a contraceptive charm in time to prevent Harry from being conceived, though of course, an alternative consequence might have been that Lily's pregnancy lasted a few days longer and Harry was born in early August instead - both scenarios are compatible with the Demons deciding not to punish Severus with the responsibility for Lily's death. In the discussion one idea that came up was that Severus realized he wanted Voldemort vanquished, in which case his most likely option would be to work with the DMLE somehow, with them being the legitimate anti-Voldemort force.

So here are some ideas I had to continue this scenario. There are many holes that need filling, and you are all invited to contribute.

Albus, expecting Severus to deliver the prophecy, would still hire Sybil as in canon, and would report the prophecy to the Department of Mysteries. Where Death Eater Rookwood works. In canon he probably never reported anything about the prophecy to Voldemort prior to the Godric's Hollow attack (or if he did, then for whatever reason Tom was convinced the fragment he heard from Severus was enough for his plans), but in this scenario luck might intervene. Rookwood might alert Tom to the fact that there is a new prophecy record labeled 'Dark Lord and ?' that only the Dark Lord himself can remove from the shelf. The date of the record would match the date of Severus' failed job interview. If Tom were to interrogate Severus he might find that Severus saw Albus going to meet with Sybil and was caught by Aberforth. He might at some point think the prophecy was delivered there, despite the fact that Severus retained no memory of that happening. So if Tom wants to know the contents of the prophecy his options are - go himself to the Department of Mysteries (he might try some other options first, such as possessing someone else, or he might try going there in disguise), or perhaps getting at Sybil (during summer break, when she is out of school?) or Aberforthn (Albus is clearly out of the question, I'm pretty sure). I think the Aberforth option is the only one that has the chance of delivering only part of the prophecy (without the 'and the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal' part), and I fear for his eventual fate if that's how Tom decides to access the contents of the prophecy. If Tom hears the entire prophecy, would he still feel confident to attack the prophesied one? Is there a scenario where he gets the prophecy record (or Sybil) but still hears only part of the prophecy? Hmm. In the DOM battle, when prophecy records break we don't hear the entire prophecies do we? So maybe Voldemort gets the Prophecy record, but the Demons intervene to have him drop it, so he only hears a select part of it? (I am warming up to this scenario - frustrated Dark Lord with nobody to blame but himself.)

If Tom decides to act to avert the prophecy his most likely candidate in this AU would be Neville. We can't assume a scenario involving the Longbottoms would evolve the same as the canon scenario involving the Potters, because these are different people with different circumstances. Frank and Alice were trained Aurors, and whatever we think of Frank, there is no basis to assume he was part of a closed group that had been hiding things from Albus since school days. Frank and Alice were likely very close to Moody, who in turn was Albus' right-hand man and chief of operations within the Order. (He stands next to Albus in the photo, he runs the rota for guarding the DOM in OOTP, he runs Harry's removal from 4PD in OOTP and DH.) So the Longbottoms would be more likely to follow whatever plan Albus proposes for their safety. Also, as trained Aurors they would be more disciplined in sticking to whichever line of action is chosen. And Tom's spy within the Order is still Peter, who is not close to the Longbottoms and has no influence on them. So if Albus proposes to be their Secret Keeper they would take the offer and stick to it.

In that case the Demons would be somewhat limited, but there is still a way for the protection of the Longbottoms to be compromised: We know that the death of the Secret Keeper turns all those who know the Secret into Secret Keepers. So if the Demons want to give Tom an opening to attempt at averting the prophecy they can get Albus to die. It can be just a simple medical issue, unrelated to the war. (In which case the Elder Wand ends up masterless.) Or it could happen in a way that is more causally related to his role in letting the prophecy out - any ideas? Suddenly all the Longbottoms' close friends and family, whoever they had requested to be included in the knowledge of their secret, can reveal their location if they are captured and interrogated by Tom, or if a DE holds onto them as they Apparate to the Longbottom home - plenty of scenarios where the Longbottoms can be attacked by surprise despite following best security practices as known to them.

Back to Severus: Let's say he starts spying on Tom and the Death Eaters for the Ministry. I expect Crouch's DMLE to be more pragmatic than Albus in utilizing Severus' information, including the existence of the Dark Mark, so perhaps some arrests of DEs happen earlier than in canon, and at least while Tom exists in his original body these DEs are less likely to be able to talk their way out of Azkaban, the way Bella did at some point in canon (unless she managed to blackmail Crouch with a threat that someone was going to expose his son?).

At some point Tom would want Severus to apply for the DADA position at Hogwarts once more. Goal number one would be to obtain the sword of Gryffindor for Tom's last intended Horcrux. This likely happens while Albus is still alive. Albus would know that Tom has a collection of ancient wizarding objects (though he still has no idea what for) so if he suspects that DE Severus is after the sword he would find a way to let Severus steal a fake sword. It is possible that after getting the (fake) sword Tom would assign Severus to kill Albus (which would in turn release the Secret of the Longbottoms' location), and either this happens (making Severus the unknowing master of the Elder Wand) or Severus is somehow suspected in Albus' death regardless of his actual responsibility - either scenario would force him to leave the school. (Which scenario do the Demons prefer? I think Severus should be in their good books for his choice to suppress the prophecy, so perhaps they wouldn't push him too hard to rip his soul) I hope he can clear his name or at least avoid a prison sentence, because there is so much he can do via the Ministry (and I really don't want him in Azkaban, please no!). We see in Igor's hearing that Crouch was more than willing to cut deals with known murderers if it served him, so I see an opening for Severus here, even if he does serve some time (or perhaps Crouch avoids his imprisonment but holds it over Severus' head as a threat, sounds like him?)

With an intended Horcrux object and access to the Longbottoms Tom would plan his attack - probably shortly after Albus' death, while both Hogwarts and the Order are still in a state of confusion. I do not know what would cause him to give one or both of the Longbottoms a chance to sacrifice themselves and how that takes place rather than the 2 of them dying while dueling in a 'fair' fight, but somehow Neville ends up as a child-Horcrux, marked as Tom's equal, while Tom discorporates. Without Albus around to interfere, Neville is raised by his remaining relatives. (Does Wizarding Britain celebrate Neville Longbottom Day, or is it Frank and Alice Longbottom Day?)

OK, what do you think? Does this make sense? Any ideas for improvements?

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How magical are magical beings?

2023-05-13T19:48:06Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Inspired by Red Hen’s “History of Magic” essay, in which she hypothesizes the following:

Magical ability in humans is an aberration.

We see this partly in the way that the flow of children’s magic is impacted and bursts out at unpredictable intervals.

We see further support in the fact that no other magical species experiences such magical outbursts, needs wands, or suffers from the hypothetical Dark Arts-induced dementia.

Now, I don’t think I can categorically disprove any of these. On the other hand, there are alternative possibilities. I addressed the question of whether human magic is an aberration in “Heritability of Potterverse Magic.” (Short answer: not exactly. Wizards are extreme outliers, but their abilities are due to rare combinations of rare alleles of magic-related genes all humans have in some form.) And I provided an alternative to the “impacted flow” theory in “Magical Outbursts.”

Now I have questions about Point #3. Namely, do we know that the no other species has magical outbursts or Dark Arts-induced dementia? ( Read more... )

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TV show reboot

2023-04-13T04:49:56Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

They haven't even finished with the Fantastic Beasts franchise, and already the books are getting a reboot, this time as a TV series. It will supposedly be "authentic to the original books." Whatever that means. JKR will be an executive producer, so maybe "authentic to what she intended to write or imagines she wrote."

I can't help but be morbidly curious. Will the Dursleys be blond? Will the reboot stick all the adults in robes instead of vaguely bohemian but mostly normal clothes? Will the Marauders generation look their ages instead of 20-30 years older? Will we get Dudley hiding in fear behind Vernon instead of eating cake, the full story of the prank, SPEW, the full set of Pensieve memories, Marietta's scarring, and Harry gleefully hexing Filch twice while his schoolmates look on and laugh? Will we get full-on flashbacks for some of the historical scenes? Will authenticity mean putting in the bits JKR totally meant to write but didn't, like the Slytherins triumphantly returning to fight? Will we get bonus material from the "ghost plots" that didn't make it into the books, like the backstory about Dean's father?

And, of course, will Harry have his mother's eyes for real this time? Since apparently that was important enough to yap about for seven whole books/eight movies...

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Resolving the wrong story problem

2023-03-20T00:00:37Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Film Crit Hulk’s essay “Black Widow and the Latent Last Act Blues” has some interesting thoughts about story beginnings and endings and how they work together to provide catharsis. (I haven’t yet seen Black Widow, but the essay makes sense anyway, so don’t worry if you haven’t either unless you care about spoilers.) He thinks the beginning of the movie is pretty great in isolation, but doesn’t properly set up the end, which makes the emotional resolutions at the end feel tacked-on and lackluster.

“that’s supposed to be the big lesson that’s at the heart of everything, right? And we genuinely do get the sentiment / fallout of it, but we’re still missing the most important thing that makes us care for it. Because there isn’t that first act thing where we experience the heartbreak of that along with them. […] ‘What is the thing they can do at the end of the movie that they couldn’t do at the beginning?’”

And this helped me crystalize one of my main problems with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now, there are a lot of problems with that book. The one I’m going to focus on here is Harry’s resigned march to his death. There are a lot of problems with this scene too — and I think one of them is that it wasn’t set up properly.

This is where one of the main themes of the whole series reaches its climax: that you have to accept death, not try to fight it forever. But…did Harry need to learn that lesson? ( Read more... )

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Prank Redux: Voldemort Edition

2023-02-18T03:12:01Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

I was re-reading Terri’s analysis of how strange it is that Crouch threw Sirius in prison without interrogating him and had a thought. Leave Crouch aside for today. Let’s take another look at Dumbledore.

Terri suggested that Dumbledore quickly realized (possibly via Moody, whom canon strongly suggests to be a Legilimens) that Sirius wasn’t the Dark Lord’s right-hand man. That in fact, he felt horrifically guilty about James’s death and must have betrayed the Potters inadvertently somehow. This meant he couldn’t provide juicy Death Eater intel, and was either so reckless or so gullible or both that he was a greater danger to his own side — not to mention Muggle bystanders — than many actual Death Eaters. Plus, Dumbledore hardly wanted Sirius spilling the Order of the Phoenix’s secrets to Crouch. So while it was technically unjustified, the world would be safer if Dumbledore let Crouch throw Sirius in Azkaban without interrogation or trial.

But how could Sirius have betrayed his friends inadvertently? Was he duped? Why attack Peter, if so? Dumbledore isn’t the kind of person to throw up his hands and go, “Oh well, I guess we’ll never know.” He’d have had a theory. Which was…?

Let’s back up and consider why Dumbledore found it easy to believe Sirius was a deadly loose canon in the first place. Probably any number of minor incidents, but what’s the biggie?

The Prank. The time Sirius tricked an enemy into taking action he thought would hurt the Marauders but which was, in fact, a trap. One which used Sirius’s friend as both bait and weapon.

Is that what Dumbledore thought happened on Halloween too? ( Read more... )

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Magical outbursts

2023-02-06T03:08:53Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Why do magical children stop having spontaneous outbursts of magic once they start Hogwarts?

A popular theory is that wizards build up a magical “charge” over time, and regularly performing magic drains that “charge” so it doesn’t burst out once it reaches critical levels. See Terri’s ”Reasonable Restrictions” for one description, including an analysis of the timing of Harry’s outbreaks compared to whether he’d done anything magically draining near the end of the school year. I believe Rowling also made some mushy statements that might support this model.

But I don’t trust Rowling’s explanations and it’s useful to reevaluate things “everyone knows” occasionally, so here’s an alternate possibility. ( Read more... )

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How did Dumbledore track down Slughorn?

2022-12-21T01:42:13Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Slughorn lived on the run for a year, never staying anywhere more than a week. Voldemort and the Death Eaters weren't able to track him down.

But Dumbledore was.

How? Does he place undetectable tracking enchantments on outgoing staff just in case he ever needs to reel them in?

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Peter's flight to Albania

2022-11-05T01:34:15Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Why did Peter go to Albania and restore Voldemort to power instead of, you know, running away? Why not find a distant corner of the globe where no one would recognize him and where the long arm of Dumbledore didn’t reach and live in relative peace?

Well. Remember what Remus said while literally rolling up his sleeves to murder Peter?

“You should have realized, Peter […] If Voldemort didn’t kill you, we would.”

What would Peter be thinking once he got far enough away to catch his breath?

“Uh-oh, Dumbledore might actually believe Moony and Padfoot and the kids when they tell him I’m still alive and the real traitor. What if he clears Padfoot’s name, or at least helps him escape? Won’t that leave Padfoot at liberty to hunt me down? And it’s almost the summer holiday—Moony will be able to join the hunt in a couple of weeks. And no one’s taught DADA two years in a row in my lifetime, and where else is he going to get a job now? I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for those two. If I’m lucky. They might actually find me! What options does that leave me?”

You’d think that working for Voldemort is such a terrible job that living on the run while fearing every shadow is a big black dog doesn’t sound that bad by comparison. There’s no Cruciatus, as long as he doesn’t get caught. On the other hand, Sirius is the guy who tricked a fellow student he didn’t like into entering a tunnel with a werewolf. And none of the Marauders ever actually confirmed that Remus wasn’t a willing participant in that plan. Why was he rolling up his sleeves in the Shrieking Shack if he was only planning a quick, clean death? Maybe Peter sincerely believed that whatever Sirius and Remus would do to him was so terrible, and living in fear of it so unbearable, that Voldemort didn’t automatically look like the worst choice.

And why didn’t Dumbledore send Sirius after Peter? Um. I’m sure we would all like to think that Sirius, unlike Quirrell, would be protected by plot armor if he ended up in Albania and would never return to Britain with a spiffy new turban. Or a motorcycle helmet and a sudden obsession with traffic safety. But…well, would you want a Voldemort with all of Sirius’s cleverness and skill at nasty curses to draw on? Me neither.

How he convinced Sirius not to hunt Peter is another question. Though did Sirius know Voldemort was in Albania? Maybe Dumbledore, ah, neglected to mention that, and Sirius was grimly hunting tropical islands for rats between replying to Harry’s letter and drinking rum.

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What became of other victims of Fenrir?

2022-10-23T23:51:40Z

Posted by: oryx_leucoryx

We are told Fenrir Greyback made a point of attacking children. In April 1997 (Lexicon timeline) Hermione was surprised to learn that he had killed his recent victim (the 5 year old brother of the Montgomery sisters). This was after she had been reading the Daily Prophet for over a year, and as killing by a werewolf is the kind of news the Prophet would be inclined to report there must not have been such events over this time. So what became of all the children that Fenrir turned since the 1960s? My guess is that if Albus learned one thing from Sirius' 'prank' it was that his arrangements for Remus' safety were not quite as great as he had thought (though he had no idea how utterly useless the Marauders had made them to be). So while he let Remus keep attending without strengthening the protections against his transformed form, he avoided enrolling any other werewolf children, and all those children ended up being homeschooled (or not-schooled, as the case may have been). In DH chapter 11 Remus says that while Hogwarts education hadn't been compulsory previously almost all wizarding children in its catchment area attended. If the fan theory that Remus made his living most of his adult life as tutor to homeschooled wizarding children, I'm guessing many of his students were in fact fellow werewolves.

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Harry's Luck

2022-10-14T02:34:19Z

Posted by: oryx_leucoryx

In Terri's essay Dumble's (mis) conceptions about Godric's Hollow: James's and Lily's roles she showed how finally in June 1995 Albus realized one of his mistakes: That what protected Harry at Godric's Hollow wasn't a magical shield against the Killing Curse but an unusual level of luck that was conferred upon Harry by his parents' sacrificial deaths, and that this protection continues even after Tom used Harry's blood in the formation of his new body, whereas the protection from Tom's direct touch and direct spell-casting ended. In this essay I would like to explore some more aspects where luck was involved (and was likely necessary) in the events surrounding Harry, and what the impact of those lucky events were in the end. This is unlikely to be a comprehensive list, and anyone is welcome to add to it.( Read more... )

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Voldemort's favorite Death Eaters

2022-09-10T19:23:07Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

A lot of fanon assumes that because Lucius, Severus, and Bellatrix are very important during the second war, they must have been so during the first. Lucius was especially trusted and valued because Voldemort gave him the diary and told him so much about it. Similarly, Bellatrix was exceptionally trusted and important because he told her all about the Horcrux he gave her to guard. Severus was important because he got assigned a special mission at Hogwarts. But does any of that that hold up? ( Not very well, in my opinion. )

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Smoke and Magic Mirrors

2022-08-30T22:49:57Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

How much power wizards have over both Muggles and each other seems wildly inconsistent. They can call up their counterparts in another country to make that country’s president “forget” an important scheduled call to another world leader — but when they have to arrange security for a major sporting event, they can’t get a handful of Muggles to take a vacation from their campground jobs and instead rely on a few overworked wizards to repeatedly Obliviate the Muggles. They detect any spells performed in Muggle areas instantly and send wizards to take the perpetrators into custody while they’re still laughing (Sirius), or send hypersonic owls with warning letters to underage wizards noting which spell was performed at what time, down to the minute—except when the spell is performed by a wizard younger than eleven, in which case they don’t even send Obliviators. Or when it’s Apparition (Dumbledore in Little Whinging, Mundungus in Little Whinging, Dumbledore and Harry into Buddleigh Babberton…), because no one notices people magically appearing or disappearing into thin air. Or when there’s a massive battle over suburban Surrey before the Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry. Or when the magic involves a charmed object. I’m sure we could find a lot more examples.

But the inconsistencies might make more sense if we look at wizarding control and surveillance as mostly smoke and mirrors. ( Read more... )

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How to claim your imported comments on Dreamwidth

2022-04-27T19:46:23Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Technical post for anyone who's interested!

Since we imported this community from LiveJournal, your comments show up as OpenID comments, like this: exampleuser@livejournal.com.

What is OpenID? Basically, it's a service several sites, including those derived from LJ, use to let you comment using the credentials for just one of them: e.g., you can comment on DW using your LJ log-in. For a longer and more accurate explanation, here's the DW FAQ page on OpenID.

If you have a Dreamwidth account, you can "claim" your OpenID comments so that they'll now be directly linked to your DW account and you will never need the credentials of another site to manage them. You can edit them and do whatever else you can do to comments you make while logged into your DW account, your user icon will show up, etc.

Here are the Dreamwidth instructions for claiming your OpenID comments on Dreamwidth.

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Who pays Frank Bryce?

2022-04-08T21:07:17Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

I somehow forgot that the omniscient narrator in the first chapter of Goblet of Fire explicitly tells us that the mysterious rich man who now owns the Riddle House pays Frank Bryce to stay on as gardener. Why bother with the gardening, if Voldemort is otherwise happy to let the house fall to ruins? Does he want Frank around just in case he needs a scapegoat again someday? Seems like he could find one easily enough without paying for decades of unappreciated gardening.

And what funds is he using, exactly? Did he open a Muggle bank account and use it to launder money from stuff he's stolen over the decades, and Frank's wages are peanuts compared to how much Voldemort has accrued by now? Or does he make one of his followers do it?

Hey, maybe that's how Lucius really made the connection between Tom Riddle and Voldemort. What Dobby overheard was Lucius telling Narcissa that he finally figured out how to look up Muggle property records and he's got this horrible suspicion all of a sudden... I was coming around to the idea that Lucius actually didn't know until Dumbledore told him, and Dobby overheard that years ago when Lucius's father-in-law Cygnus was talking about it to one of Narcissa's other relatives, the elder Rosier, while everyone was over for a house party. (Separately from the conversation about "terrible things" he overheard the summer of 1992.) Dobby would have loved knowing that, and knowing that Lucius didn't know. But Voldemort underestimating a Malfoy's practical skills once again works too.

But back to the original question: why? Is Voldemort just obsessed with having the perfect lawn?

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If the books were set in the 1930s...

2022-03-19T00:23:19Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Now that we have this shiny new Dreamwidth edition of DTCL, I thought we ought to inaugurate it with shiny new content! Well, it's new, anyway. Good comments might make it shiny ;-)

So, thought experiment time! One of Jodel’s Red Hen essays noted that if Rowling wanted half-baked WWII parallels, the series might work better if it were actually set between World Wars. The series already has a sense of “past-ness” (jolly good boarding school romps, Molly Weasley knitting and talking about “scarlet women”), and we hardly spend any time in the Muggle world anyway, so brief mentions of Muggle technology could easily be changed to accommodate a 1930s setting. But that's just a couple of surface details. What else would have to change, and would it work? ( Read more... )

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deathtocapslock @ 2022-03-13T09:54:00

2022-03-13T09:54:00Z

Posted by: merrymelody.livejournal.com

We're all backed up at dreamwidth, should the worst happen to LJ. Thanks gingerbred for the kind tuition!

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DTCL community backup

2022-03-11T18:42:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

There is a chance that sites hosted in Russia won't be accessible from outside Russia at some point in the near future. LiveJournal is hosted in Russia. Not in Russia: me, and probably a lot of other DTCL members.

So it's a good time to think about backing up LJ journals and communities.

To preserve "snapshots" of posts for future viewing, you can save the URLs into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. This means that if someone has links to posts but they stop working, they can plug the URLs into the Wayback Machine instead and still read them that way. I've run some DTCL URLs through there when I remembered (including the calendar navigation pages), but I'm sure there a lot that have not been captured. If there are any posts you want to save in the Wayback Machine, go for it!

For backing up your own LJ, there are a few LJ-clone sites you can export it to, if you haven't already. I think Dreamwidth is the most-used and best-maintained one right now. Here's their page on importing from Livejournal to Dreamwidth and a guide to Dreamwidth for LiveJournal users.

And here are a couple of dw_maintenance posts about current conditions for importing your LJ into Dreamwidth:

2022-03-10
2022-03-11

I am not the DTCL owner and so can't import it to another site. It's been pretty quiet here the past couple of years and I don't know if there's enough interest in keeping it going on another site anyway, but if everyone thinks it's a good idea, it would be possible to import the community into Dreamwidth for preservation's sake at least as long as our community owner is in a position to do that right now.

I'm also on Dreamwidth as Sunnyskywalker, so if any of you are or will be on Dreamwidth too, you can find me there. I'm on Archive of Our Own as Sunnyskywalker too.

Please feel free to post links to your own Dreamwidth, GreatestJournal, AO3, etc. accounts in the comments so everyone can connect with people they'd like to keep following!

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Since he didn't blame the mailer daemon...

2022-02-19T21:53:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Prisoner of Azkaban does a good impression of being one of the best-constructed books of the series, as long as you are willing to smile and nod at time-travel shenanigans (which you pretty much have to in any book where time travel appears). But these gaping chasms keep opening up every time I poke at it. For example, Sirius and the mail.

He apparently has no trouble using a friendly cat to draw funds from his bank account so he can mail-order an expensive racing broom. Magic Amazon must be great. (Just one tap with your wand! Except it must be even easier, since cats don't carry wands...) Fine, maybe that the goblins facilitated this because helping a wanted criminal was a great opportunity to subvert wizarding desires or something.

But it never occurred to Sirius to send Dumbledore or Remus a letter saying that Peter was the real Secret-Keeper all along, is a rat Animagus, and is now in hiding as the Weasley boy's pet, which Sirius realized when he saw the rat's picture in the Daily Prophet? ( Read more... )

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The Cunning-Man and the Hopping Pot

2022-01-29T09:18:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

Even before the Statute of Secrecy, there was pressure from both the magical and Muggle worlds against being publicly known as a witch or wizard. However, lots of magical families probably made their livings by performing minor magics for their neighbors. They couldn’t all be re-trained at once even if the wizarding world could immediately create jobs for them. Which they couldn’t. Restructuring the economy to the point where fully separating from the Muggle world was remotely possible must have taken time. How were village practitioners to support themselves until then?

Well, probably many of them called themselves cunning-folk rather than witches. Cunning-folk were often considered different from witches, and in fact one of their main services was providing protection against witchcraft. They also helped find lost things, magically discovered the identities of thieves, healed injuries and illnesses, made love potions and charms, and other such services. Cunning-folk were often literate, and they could make pretty good money.
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Allies the Order never made

2022-01-22T10:39:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

We hear of several Order members’ missions—mostly unsuccessful—to convince various groups not to join Voldemort, and perhaps fight him instead. Remus tries “reasoned argument” with the werewolves, Hagrid and Maxime give gifts to the Gurg of the giants, and Charlie maybe talks to his dragon-handler friends. Dumbledore himself has apparently been talking to the centaurs for several years, judging by the way Firenze has surprisingly detailed information about the philosopher’s stone trap and the identity of the unicorn-killer.

There’s an interesting omission here. Did anyone try to negotiate with the goblins?
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Friendly with the local barman

2021-12-04T19:31:00Z

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

One bit in the memory of Voldemort's job interview that has always bothered me is Dumbledore's statement that he knows which Death Eaters are waiting at the Hog's Head because he's friendly with the local barman. Voldemort has just returned to Britain, no doubt planning terrible things...and Dumbledore immediately outs his brother as a spy? WTF? And then Voldemort continues to let his followers gather in the spy's pub?

I'm sure you could make a good story out of a Cold War-esque game where Voldemort is sending his followers in with false information to mislead Dumbledore while Dumbledore tries to filter out the misinformation to get at the real information they inadvertently reveal, and they both know the other knows... But it seems odd for Dumbledore to choose that option instead of trying to maintain his spy's cover first.

There's another possibility: maybe Aberforth wasn't the barman yet. Maybe the proprietor at the time was a Voldemort sympathizer, or at least a potential one, and Dumbledore wanted to oust them so he could put his own agent in place. Either he tricked or coerced them into telling him about the Death Eaters, or they wasn't involved and it was Willy Widdershins or his predecessor hiding under a veil who really reported to Dumbledore.

Voldemort shouldn't be so easy to manipulate that he immediately believed the proprietor was Dumbledore's agent. But the suspicion might have grown over time, no doubt nurtured by other "clues" Dumbledore helpfully planted, until Voldemort decided it was time the proprietor found a new job. (Possibly that job was "inferius.")

And he should have been deeply suspicious when Aberforth Dumbledore took over the pub, no matter how public the brothers' estrangement was. Aberforth couldn't just indignantly protest his hatred of Albus and all his works and give the Death Eaters a load of intelligence to prove his loyalties--that would be too much, too soon. But letting a few things slip over time, and griping about his brother just often enough to sound natural (well, it was--he just secretly hated Voldemort even more), and Dumbledore deliberately not acting on information Voldemort deliberately leaked via Hog's Head patrons to make it look like he never got the intel, might eventually convince them that he was on their side, not his brother's. Or at least that he was genuinely neutral.

A third possibility is that Aberforth was already the barman, but not yet Dumbledore's spy--again, it would really have been Willy Widdershins reporting on the gathering. Instead, this was Dumbledore's overly-complicated scheme to force Aberforth into becoming his spy. ("If I get Voldemort to suspect him, the means Voldemort will use to try to get the truth will convince Aberforth that Voldemort is dangerous and must be opposed. He's smart enough to realize that the best way to do this is to convince Voldemort that he doesn't trust me or report to me, then turn around and report to me. I'm a genius!") But that's even more convoluted and risky than most of Dumbledore's usual plans. I think it works more smoothly if Aberforth wasn't the barman yet, and this was Step 1 in Operation: Trench Coat Goat.

No wonder Aberforth is so cynical about how many people his brother is willing to sacrifice.

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