Okay, friends, let’s talk about going to protests and weaponizing our whiteness, if in fact we are white.
You know what the protesters who marched with Dr. King wore? Their best. Their clergy stoles, their suits. If you’re a doctor or a nurse? Wear your scrubs. If you’re a parent? Wear your PTA shirt if it’s too hot for a suit. If you’re a student? Dress like you’re going to go volunteer somewhere nice, or wear a t-shirt that proclaims you a member of your high school band, your drama group, your church youth group. Whatever it is, make sure it’s right there with your white face.
This is literally the tactic of the people who marched with King in the 60s, and we need to bring it back, and bring it back HARD.
I do this all the time when I go to marches. I wear my cutest, least-offensive geeky t-shirt, crocs and black pants, or I wear my t-shirt that mentions my kid’s school district, or now I’ll wear the pink t-shirt that says I’m part of the Sisterhood at my shul. If it’s cold enough, I wear a cardigan and jeans and sit my ass in my wheelchair. (I need to anyway.) I put signs on my wheelchair that say things like ‘I love my trans daughter’ and ‘love for all trans children’ or something else that applies to the event. Dress like you are going to an interview if you can, or make yourself look like a parent going to pick up a gallon of milk at the corner store. Make yourself “respectable.” Use respectability politics and whiteness AS A WEAPON.
Fuck yes I will weaponize the fact that I look like a white soccer mom. And you should do this too if you can. Weaponize the fuck out of your whiteness. If you are disabled and comfortable with doing so, turn ableism on its head and weaponize it. Make it so that the cameras that WILL be pointed at you see your whiteness, see your status as a parent, see your status as a community member. See you in your wheelchair or with your cane. If you have privilege or a status that allows you to use it as a weapon or a shield, use it as a shield to defend others or a weapon to break through the bullshit.
This has a fair number of notes, so maybe it’s already been mentioned but …
The “Sunday Best” thing from the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s & 60s, or wearing markers of an assigned profession (e.g. scrubs) is an established tactic of social movements. They’re part of what Charles Tilly (one of the academic god father’s of social movement theory) called “WUNC” displays. WUNC can be broken down to:
worthiness: sober demeanor (!!!); neat clothing (!!!); presence of clergy, dignitaries, and mothers with children;
unity: matching badges, headbands, banners, or costumes (!!!); arching in ranks; singing and chanting;
numbers: headcounts, signatures on petitions, messages from constituents, filling streets;
commitment: braving bad weather; visible participation by the old and handicapped (!!!); resistance to repression; ostentatious sacrifice (!!!), subscription, and/or benefaction. (Tilly, 2004, pg. 4 – tumblr-style emphasis my own)
While I’m very much in support of anti-fascist protesting in whatever form it takes, especially when engaged in a counter-protest, one of the great tragedies of the American political climate right now is that we’ve really forgotten some of the biggest lessons of the Civil Rights Era. King didn’t trot out fresh-faced students, church women in big fancy hats, or the elderly and disabled without knowing what he was doing. He (and the other members of his affiliated organizations) knew that if the police were photographed using violent repression against a mother holding her child, or a student in slacks, a cardigan, and Buddy Holly glasses, it would go over very differently than if they were photographed beating up “unruly thugs”. Their presence alone would be notable to people locally, especially in the heat of the south. But so would photographs of repressive violence against “nice people” that would then get picked up by the national media, and maybe in markets that were more sensitive to racial oppression.
[And like, there are other factors as well. People also sometimes think the Civil Rights Era erupted spontaneously from Jim Crowe and segregation in the South, and those are giant factors (”depravation” and “grievance”, in jargon), but there were also legislative things and court rulings brewing since the 1920s (the NAACP had been trying Civil Rights cases, and looking for test cases over the years), and the Cold War meant that America needed to appear to be the perfect image of opportunity and equality (together these things manifest as an “opportunity structure”. again, jargon). Not to get to down on protest as its own thing, but the structuralists do have a bit of a point.]
… There are other types of anti-fascist counter-protesting that have developed in various ways through the years. And like, a big thing in social movement theory overall is that while there are common tactics (”protest repertoires” in jargon), historical contexts matter a lot and some groups will have to do more dramatic performances of the WUNC to get attention. There’s also the move revolutionary antifa-type riot mentality. I’m not gonna call that one wrong either, mind, but since the Civil Rights Movement was brought up, it should be noted that those two forms of protest differed intentionally.
Anyway, as someone turning in a dissertation on this in a couple of days, here’s some drive-by political-sociology. If you want to learn more about the research behind processes of social movements, where they succeeded, and where they failed, I totally recommend checking out:
Charles Tilly (2004) Social Movements 1768-2008,
Sidney Tarrow (2011) Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics,
Sidney Tarrow (1998) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
Frances Fox Piven & Richard A. Cloward (1988) Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail, (this is on the Civil Rights Era protests and the somewhat fraught legislative follow-up exactly)
McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001) The Dynamics of Contention
(McAdam has a quite well-regarded book on the Civil Rights Era specifically. I haven’t read it personally as it relates less to my regional context. However like, that’s worth noting and looking into. Also all of these are stodgey academic texts, but they’re not uncommon in university libraries, or even in some bookstores. They’re also all a bit old now and shouldn’t cost you a ton online.)
As a note – My point here isn’t to descend from the Ivory Tower of Academia and say “you people on the streets are doing this wrong!!1!”. Theory doesn’t always match up with Practice, and as noted by pretty much every notable theorist anyway… Context matters a TON. Not all movements will be able to use the same practices or performances. Sometimes their inaccessible, sometimes they just don’t have the cross-context appeal. It’s about experimentation and finding opportunity. To be clear, this isn’t about me telling folks how it should be done. Still, I think it’s worth sharing information when it’s available, especially if people who might not know are trying to draw specific links to historical cases. Social movement theorists have pretty much all agreed that WUNC displays (along with other factors like media diffusion) are super duper important and can be recognized in movements across historical contexts. I think it’s worth it for younger activists who might be looking for protest repertoires that work for their movement as it’s developing to take heed of the successes and failures of the past. Especially since a lot of it is either a) so much a part of history and culture that it doesn’t really get examined for its constituent bits, or b) has been mythologized to the point that it’s hard to look for really good popular historical information on its technical processes.
(If people have questions, feel free to DM me. I might be a little slow the next couple of days as I finish up proof-reading and checking all my citations but yeah. Let’s share knowledge and smash the fash.)
The Nazis of 2017 gained the ground they have with articles about how they were “dapper.” That was a political choice, and it worked. It snowed a lot of gullible goyim. People refused for almost a year to call “the alt-right” Nazis because they looked “like average white people.”
Nazis see their whiteness as a weapon already. Get yours out there and show them – they will never sway everyone. “If you have privilege or a status that allows you to use it as a weapon or a shield, use it as a shield to defend others or a weapon to break through the bullshit.”
Not someone who typically adds to an already long post, but I have done the whole dressing dapper af thing and it WORKS. A few years ago there was this big city council vote about an anti-discrimination ordinance that was going to be passed in my relatively progressive, but still very southern hometown. There were huge protests on both sides, both for and against the ordinance, with each side wearing a specific color (red was for, purple against) to show which side they supported. Most of the people against the ordinance were bussed in by hyper conservative churches and many didn’t even live in the town. It was a lot of old people and many of them wore nice clothing. I knew this would probably be the case, so I, being a southern girl at heart and knowing how these people work, broke out my crinoline and nicest red dress and perfect white gloves. I curled my hair and put on makeup and I showed my ass up to the protest. Made a point to be the picture of a perfect southern belle. And it threw the bigoted assholes for a serious loop. It was like they were short circuiting or something. They kept telling me how I reminded them of someone from their church or how pretty I looked and “how would a nice girl like you like a big cross dressing man in the ladies room???” which of course allowed me to explain, ever so nicely, that they were being bigoted assholes. And they Did Not Like that, because I was forcing them to look in the mirror, at someone who looks like them/someone they claim to be “protecting” and question their motives and beliefs. Seriously guys, it fucking works. Weaponize the fact that you look like the oppressor and throw it in their faces.
Bless this last comment.
say it again:
Weaponize the fact that you look like the oppressor and throw it in their faces.
I left my house in the middle of the night and walked to a bridge to jump. By the time I had walked all that way and was at the bridge. The effort to climb to a spot to jump didn’t seem worth it all of a sudden.
Browsing antique stores is always the most wild fucking time. I found an insanely cursed Sean Connery Barbie in my favorite antique store which is nothing new there are like 20 super cursed dolls in that store but they sell men’s flannels for $12 so
The antique store with like 50 pocket dimensions underneath it is playing “What A Feeling” from Flashdance. There’s a giant bloody wooden tooth hanging from chains. This is so surreal
FYI I was using bloody as in there is red splatters on the roots of the teeth not the expletive
Shaggy Rogers is here and he has a giant beard
There is a Greco Roman helmet in one of the the pocket dimensions on top of a typewriter
THERE IS SECRET LIBRARY ???????
People have definitely fucked up here. I can sense it.
This door doesn’t even wiggle there’s no way that lock is what’s keeping it closed
What the fuck
Y’all I’m gonna die going up this
This place is so terrifying im looking for bodies now
Trying to find exit. I’m actually starting to get anxious now.
Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Jules walked into silent hill
So I have absolutely been inside this specific antique store (unless this is a pocket dimension that exists in many places, the store I know of is in downtown tacoma, WA). It’s spooky as hell, you can’t ever find anyone working there (the one time I did find a clerk he looked like he hadn’t left this garbage mansion in years, his hair was ginger and way too long and way too crunchy), it’s always disturbingly quiet despite being on a main downtown street, and to leave you have to meditate on that desire to summon an exit less you be trapped forever. The floors are incredibly uneven with lots of ramps and rooms on a slope. The library is my favorite part. There’s chairs and shit hanging from the ceiling all over the place. There are several false doors and windows. The inside in undeniably larger than the outside. This place is filled with a miasthma of chaotic energy.
To heal your soul, I recommend going to Mad Hat Tea just around the corner which also has a very real Vibe but it is healing and calming to a magical degree. A classmate of mine said once she had a terrible cold and went to Mad Hat between classes and asked the woman to give her something good for colds, she drank it without question and immediately her cold was gone. Shit theres so many like, old-magic-aura areas in downtown Tacoma guys, it’s crazy.
Apparently Catch Me If You Can was going to include this con but they had to cancel the scene because when they tried to film it people kept walking up and trying to give Leo their money.
So a professor of mine used to work at a bank back in the day. She says one day a guy in professional attire and a clipboard shows up in a big moving truck. He says he’s from the home office and they’re changing all the chairs. He’s needs them to just load all their old chairs into his truck and later he’d be back with the replacements.
And that’s how they gave away their office furniture to a conman whose master plan was “Wear a tie and carry a clipboard.”
Looking professional is just a pass to do whatever the hell you want.
Put a suit on and you can get almost anywhere.
there’s more to it, look nice and ACT LIKE YOU BELONG. If you don’t look like you belong there, people will stop you.
this smacks of a chef i heard of that was tired to death that every single person ordered their eggs ‘over easy’, so asked the waitress to say ‘were out of over easy, we have plenty of scrambled’ and nobody questioned it
How low must your self image be to plan to rob a bank and all you take is some second hand chairs?
I 100% believe this was a former employee with a grudge.
Kid you not, this is how a sister store of mine got their entire dog treat bar stolen.
A couple of guys said they were with maintenance and they were there to replace the old bar with a new one and the employees were like “Seems legit” and they wheeled them out. The staff even helped them do it.
This is called a “Bavarian Fire Drill” and the trick to pulling it off is to have absolute confidence that it’s going to work. If you seem even the slightest bit nervous or hesitant, everyone will see right through it.
Case in point:
In 1906, a German con man named Wilhelm Voigt dressed up in a German Army captain’s uniform and entered the town of Köpenick claiming to be an “inspector” (inspector of what, he never specified). He managed to wrangle ten German soldiers and a sergeant into assisting him, ordered the local police to halt all telephone calls to Berlin for an hour, arrested the mayor and treasurer for nonexistent charges of crooked bookkeeping, and confiscated the town’s entire treasury complete with a receipt which he signed with his former jail director’s name. He only got caught (two weeks later) because his former cellmate blabbed, and was later pardoned by Kaiser Wilhelm II who found the whole thing hilarious.
That Kaiser is a definite bro.
This is why slytherins like to be fancy and professional looking
When you’re a trickster, it pays to be … low key.
I was hired to help test a security system once. I was sent in to a semi-large company and had to go through a list of certain objectives. My favorite one was “take something out of the building that is too big to hide on your body.“ I paired it with “get into a secured facility within the building.”
I walked in in my general business getup. Shirt, tie, jacket, nice pants, not quite “suit” because it was all just a little bit shabby and not exactly matching but not clashing. Nice briefcase. Clipboard.
Getting into the secured part was easy. Learned the name of the supervisor, told the security guard that “Cindy said they’d let me in without a problem on my first day. Something about the badges not being made fast enough.” Sure, no problem, go ahead.
Walked in, unhooked a PC tower, walked to the bathroom where I’d hidden a dolly earlier, went into a stall and changed into the outfit I’d had in the briefcase. It was what I’d consider workman’s clothes but a worker in an office, not like a construction worker.
Blue jeans, t-shirt, worker’s vest (low key), hat, good boots but 2nd hand.
Threw the tower on the mover’s dolly with a couple other things, stacked very slightly precariously but not likely to fall, walked over to the stairs leading down, and started going down to the way out, which I knew had a security guard on it.
As soon as I saw him see me I stumbled and yelled out. He came running over and helped stabilize everything. Helped me down the stairs. Held the door open for me and told me to “have a nice day” as I left. Never asked for my badge or even where I was going with the stuff.
Act like you know what you’re doing. Look like you belong. Be confident.
That’s 75% of it right there.
That is some Moist Von Lipwig bullshit right there and I am fucking delighted.
☆Aries: You like being able to say what you feel without worrying about hurting anyone’s feelings. Other moon signs can only dream of the confidence and drive that you have.
☆Taurus: You know that once you commit to something, you’ll have a hard time letting go, even if it’s no longer good for you. You won’t stop arguing until you have the last word.
☆Gemini: You want to experience everything and flourish with constant changes so you can get a taste of something new each day.
☆Cancer: Sometime your emotions are too raw for some people to handle. Even when you should be selfish you still find yourself putting other people first.
☆Leo: Sometimes it’s hard for you to take your own advice because maybe you don’t want to accept the truth. No matter how many times you claim that you don’t care you find yourself still thinking about the situation.
☆Virgo: You know that if you don’t let any of that hurt go it will destroy you + any happiness you’re trying to build. You can’t move forward until you make peace with where you’ve been.
☆Libra: It seems that life + love is always a battlefield with you. Sometimes you have to take that risk and hope the decision you made was the right one.
☆Scorpio: Sometimes it feels like your hands are tied but you know that surrendering isn’t an option. Most of the time you feel like no one understands you so your keep to yourself.
☆Sagittarius: As blunt as you can be there are things you should keep to yourself. No matter how many times someone tries to push your buttons you always try to show that you’re the better person in the end.
☆Capricorn: You know that whatever you’re going through right now you can get through it. It’ll only remind you of how strong you are and how you can handle whatever the world throws at you.
☆Aquarius: You know that some people are never going to be satisfied with what you do. No matter how much you’ve lost lately you have to remember that you’ve gained a new perspective and direction in life.
☆Pisces: Never let one bad experience change your whole perception of things. You know you can’t expect to much out of others there days so if you want something you know you have to get it yourself.
my problem with the ‘harry becomes lord of 2/¾/5 ancient noble houses’ trope is so unbelievably petty because its that fic writers don’t take it to the potential extreme. like, okay, you wanna make harry the bossest of bitches i get that, i understand, i have that urge too from time to time, but c’mon, be a little more creative about it please
so how about a fic where harry goes to gringotts after the fighting is all over to try to make peace with the goblin nation because this boy does not need more problems and after much hostility and some groveling and promises of future payments for damages caused a plucky goblin lass comes and shuffles harry into her tiny cube office to discuss the nature of his financial situation
(this is a grave insult among goblins. getting handled by a female, first of all, because they are supposedly less capable bankers, hello misogyny among other species, and because they consider anyone who needs help with his money to be lower than cave scum. harry doesn’t know about his. and if he did, he wouldn’t care because he does, desperately, need help)
and plucky goblin lass (who we will call PGL for short) brings out this MASSIVE tome of parchment and slams it down on her desk. a cloud of dust rises. harry sneezes and gets a terrible feeling. some of the parchment is mildewing. the stack is taller than his hand is wide. this can only end badly
PGL tells him that he’ll need to read the entire book to fully comprehend the new scope of his property and harry kind of weakly says “what??”
and it turns out that heyo, when the death eaters swore to follow voldemort with all their lives and souls and magic in their little racist hearts they actually swore a modified liege lord oath which also has the coincidental side effect of ceding all titles (and property connected to said titles) held to the lord in question too. haha how funny who knew
and that’s an ongoing thing. so voldemort was the de facto head of two dozen magical houses at the beginning of the war and he just picked up more as he gained more followers and he probably could have just voted himself and his crew into every position of the government and run the country like that if he cared to do it but voldemort was not about dat political life. he wanted change and he wanted it now. he wanted to MAKE AMERICA MAGICAL BRITAIN GREAT AGAIN. so he started a civil war and just never informed his loyal death eaters of that little fact because they didn’t need to know.
and you might think that gringotts vaults are tied into bloodlines but they’re really not. the malfoy family vault belongs to whoever is the current head of the malfoy family. normally, that’s a malfoy and his malfoy spawn becomes the next head and so it passes through the family, accumulating inherited wealth. it was a working system until voldemort got involved and exploited the ever-living hell out of it.
now this all becomes harry’s problem because it turns out that Right of Conquest is an actual thing. what was voldemort’s is now his and voldemort has has the time to accumulate A Metric Fuck Ton of stuff.
also connected to titles are votes in the wizengamot. and whoo boy, this is where harry’s problem becomes really really really problematic. because the noble families squabble over those votes like children, hoarding them and passing them down, occasionally trading them for advantageous marriages and such, but mostly jealously guarding them like the politcal gold they are. it’s such a bitterly tight-fisted market that any one family has ~maybe~ three or four votes.
and now harry bloody potter has a hundred of the things and a completely unintentional stranglehold on the government. whoops
and then hermione would shotput harry straight into the
wizengamot
against his protests and things would become so hilarious i just
some jerkass attempts to increase his own salary for doing basically nothing
“how about no,” harry and his hundred votes say.
somebody attempts to tighten restrictions on where magical creatures like vampires and werewolves can work
“how about no.” harry crosses his arms. “actually, how about we repeal those bullshit laws already in place that make it almost impossible for werewolves to get a job right now, hmmmm? and how about we put something in place to catch abusive owners of house elves? and make sure they get paid? and vacation days? and healthcare? actually how about we get healthcare for EVERYBODY HOW ABOUT T H A T?”
ten generations of purebloods cry out in horror. look upon him ye mighty and despair.
the years after voldemort’s defeat don’t go down in history as The Golden Era. in fact, thanks to harry bloody potter (and some incessant nudging by hermione granger), they go down as The Decade of Frankly Astonishing Strides Toward Equality *cough* enforced by a semi-plutocracy.
(all thanks to a third tier plot never really explored by a would-be dictator YOU’RE ALL WELCOME)
Omg this is beautiful.
Harry as an accidental Lord Vetinari, oh my god.
Harry dealing with that all these pureblood families outright hate him. They were loyal to the Dark Lord, loyal to blood supremacy, loyal to their own enrichment and empowerment via the casting down of others, and now here’s Harry Potter, who opposes all of these things, who killed the Dark Lord and vanquished their dreams: their new Lord and Master.
And they can’t do anything about it because not only is it a binding magical contract but it’s their tradition, their law, their way of doing things, and they can’t attack Harry without shattering their own foundations in the process; they can’t even really convey their dislike of Harry because it would be disloyal to their own House.
So, all these pureblood wizards from old families who both hate Harry Potter and everything he stands for but also as a point of honor are perversely proud of him. He’s a wizard; he’s a half-blood, but he’s also the scion of a House of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and he’s a powerful and talented wizard who vanquished the greatest Dark Lord history has ever seen. And he’s the Head of a dozen great and ancient wizarding Houses, he’s their Head of House so to speak, and they tie themselves in knots trying to figure out how to feel about him.
And the ones who don’t have a noble House, but only have their votes in the Wizengamot that Harry Potter owns, and you just don’t throw tradition out and start casting votes on your own inclination, well, they aren’t honor-bound and pride-bound to claim and embrace him, but they make their social standing from copying the greater Houses, and when their betters are quietly and gracefully saying “he’s a chaos-minded tyrant, but he’s our chaos-minded tyrant,” well, they buck up and agree.
Harry Potter, unlike Voldemort, isn’t lashing out at random or threatening to kill their children, so it’s sort of an improvement in many ways, even as they want to scream and throw things over all his reforms.
And after all, the old Houses value power. And Harry, above all, has power.
He goes down in pure-blood history as the Tyrant. The most powerful Lord their family lines have ever known. The man who reshaped their world. Elderly wizards tell their great-grandchildren long after his death that “I knew the Tyrant.” “I beheld him when my father took me to the Wizengamot, and he spoke to me.” “When I went to Hogwarts, he gave a guest lecture.” This far removed, at the end of their lives, the details of his rule are forgotten, the overturnings of tradition lost to history, and he is remembered with pride, even with adoration.
Their Tyrant. Their Lord. Harry Potter, the Greatest Wizard that Ever Lived.
(There are pictures of Harry at Hogwarts, at the Ministry, at St. Mungo’s, outside the Auror Office and in front of the Minister’s Office and in the entrance hall to the Wizengamot and in both the entrance hall and the Headmaster’s office at Hogwarts, and in every House he ruled. He wears stately robes and an impressive hat, gold jewelry, a beard (dark in some pictures, silver-shot in others, pure snowy white in still more, for he lived to be an old man himself, older than Dumbledore, older than Griselda Marchbanks, who lived to dance at his wedding), his glasses accentuating his brilliant green eyes, his scar more prominent in the pictures than it ever had been in life, surrounded with such trappings as the Sword of Gryffindor and the Elder Wand and a skull that purports to be that of Lord Voldemort.
Also at Hogwarts, in a back corridor next to a set of of dancing trolls and an overzealously combative knight, is a portrait commissioned by the executor of Harry Potter’s estate, in response to directions left in his will. This portrait depicts an eleven-year-old boy in brand-new wizard’s robes, with broken glasses and untidy hair that happens to cover his forehead. The portraits of his older selves go wrapped in the lofty dignity of the position he attained later in life; this child, filled with the untarnished wonder of the magical world, goes freely among the portraits with an anonymity Harry Potter never found in life, and loves it.)
GIVE ME THESE BOOKS.
HARRY POTTER AND THE ACCIDENTAL POLITICAL STRANGLEHOLD
IT GOT BETTER
“I’m going to grow a beard,” says Harry, looking through the mirror at about six days’ worth of stubble because in between Voldemort, the after-party, and the spectacular mess with the sociopolitical fallout of Voldemort’s downfall he hasn’t had time or energy to shave. “It might look more wizardly, eventually.”
Ron shrugs, eyeing Harry with what feels like an unusual sort of apathy. He’s spent the last six days kissing Hermione, and for the first time in several years there isn’t even a twinge of jealousy at his better-looking and more-famous best friend. “It might. Think Hermione’d like it if I grew a handlebar mustache?”
Harry says, diplomatically, “I think you should ask Hermione if she’d like that.”
“When she gets back.” Hermione’s in Australia, tracking down her parents and, presumably, explaining to two incendiarily furious Muggles why she rewrote their memories, sent them halfway around the world, and spent almost a year running through a war zone without them. Neither of them envy her the task. It also means that she hasn’t heard any of this; the Daily Prophet has suffered a truly impressive amount of magical vandalism in the past few days, much of it involving the sort of things that can be bought at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, and is taking a small hiatus while its staff writers and senior editors recover from the effects of multiple Bat Bogey Hexes per person.
Harry shrugs and turns away from the mirror. “So,” he says with some distaste. “Do I look like the Lord of seventeen Noble Houses?”
He doesn’t. He looks like a seventeen-year-old boy in a worn-out school robe made for someone several inches shorter and about ten kilos heavier, with wild hair that brushes his shoulders and what will perhaps someday be an impressive beard but currently looks like he’s forgotten to shave for several days. Ron thinks about the answer for a long moment. “Nope.”
Harry’s face splits into a relieved grin. “Oh, thank Merlin. I thought I was the only one who could see how much of a tosser I looked.”
“Nope. Plain as day.”
Harry looks one more time in the mirror, as though coming to a sort of peace with that he’ll probably never feel like a Lord. “Good,” is what he says.
–
That feeling lasts for all of a minute. Professor McGonagall intercepts him on the way down and drags him into her office, where she hands him a robe that hasn’t been dragged through multiple battles and a year-long camping trip, and a pair of shoes that aren’t falling apart. “I’m sure you don’t want any part of this, Harry, but you should try to look a bit more neat. It will show respect for your new position, which will make things a bit easier for you in the long run.
The shoes are leather, black, old-fashioned and fine. He has a moment’s thought of Dobby, polishing Lucius Malfoy’s boots in between being kicked, and bile rises in his throat. He puts the shoes on, and then the robe, which is not a school robe, but elegantly cut in some fine fabric, and it fits him. He finds himself standing up a bit straighter, and Professor McGonagall nods in approval. “That will do. Good luck, Mr. Potter.”
Another memory tickles at him, their conversation right after Dumbledore’s death, him declining to confide in her and her return to formality. “Harry,” he tells her.
“Harry,” she says, and gives him a hint of a smile.
–
The next person he runs into is Ginny, who runs up to him, hugs him, kisses him (Ron makes a coughing noise here, and is ignored), and steps back to look at him. “Don’t you look dashing,” she says, and Harry grins at her, feeling a bit more human. He wraps her up in a hug and is about to kiss her again when he’s hit about the head by a live chicken.
He lets go and flails about comically instead. Beside him, Ginny is doing the same thing, shoving the bird off him and in the direction of Ron, who is leaning against the wall guffawing. Ginny turns to yell down the hallway, “Just because you almost died doesn’t mean I won’t hex you!”
A pair of identical faces peek around the corner. “Good morning, dearest sister of mine!” Fred sings out, dramatically throwing one arm out towards the nearest sunlit window.
“Like our newest product?” George asks, coming up behind him; if they’re standing noticeably closer to each other than they would have done before, Harry doesn’t comment on it. He gets it.
“A chicken?” Harry asks, dubiously.
They both grin. “Not just any chicken,” says Fred.
“We started by improving our line of fake wands,” says George.
“So instead of rubber chickens and fish and parrots–”
“–They’d turn into real chickens–”
“–And squirrels–”
“–And ferrets,” George adds, and they all share a grin, knowing exactly who that particular fake wand is going to make its way to.
“But then we decided to go one further–”
“And make the spell triggered by kissing instead!”
Fred holds out what looks like a tiny, decorative egg. “We’re calling it the Cockblock, what do you think?”
Ginny smiles sweetly, though she’s toying with her wand in a way that has both brothers looking a tad wary. Then her smile turns full-on evil, and she says, “I think you should make a quill that turns into a really angry swan when someone uses it to write something untrue.”
Harry, sensing where she’s going with this, says, “Make it lime green.”
–
When he finally gets down to the Great Hall, Harry’s feeling a lot better about everything. It’s hard not to, with friends like he’s got.
The Great Hall is about two-thirds full. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner these days have all had their hours extended, to better serve the influx of families, refugees, repair workers, ministry officials and assorted others who have been in and out of Hogwarts quite a bit in the aftermath of battle.
As usual, all eyes turn to Harry as he comes in. As usual, several people detach themselves from their groups and conversations and start heading his way. As usual, he contemplates turning around and leaving rather than face an invasion of questions, requests, and unsolicited advice while he eats his French toast, but then he sees Draco Malfoy, hunched over a bowl of porridge with neither parents nor remaining sycophant in attendance, and with a polite smile to the converging adults and a silent astonishment at his own audacity he goes over and sits across from Draco.
Just as anticipated, everyone who wanted to talk to him finds themselves unwilling to interrupt somebody else’s conversation with him. At least if that somebody else is a Slytherin pureblood, and one of his new vassals.
Draco looks up. “Fuck do you want, my Lord?” Bitterness, underlaid with exhaustion, resignation, and months of despair.
Harry says, “Call me Potter, you tosspot.”
Draco’s lips twitch. Harry’s willing to bet it’s the closest thing to a smile to cross Draco’s face in months. But it’s gone almost instantly. “Can’t,” Draco says. “You’re my Head of House.”
“What, you didn’t have any problem disrespecting Snape last year.”
“Not that kind of Head of House. That’s just school. You’re head of my House, of the House of Malfoy, and that’s supposed to be my father!” This last is almost a snarl.
“And then you,” Harry reasons. “And then your kid.”
Draco nods. “And now it’s you instead, and you don’t give a shit for our traditions, or for blood, or for anything, and you look like you just escaped from Azkaban and I’ll bet somebody else chose that robe for you because you have the fashion sense of a coat rack.”
Harry giggles. Then he remembers he’s supposed to be eating breakfast here, and serves himself a slice of French toast from one of the platters. “Here I thought,” he says, looking at the traces of despair on Draco’s face, “that you were the one who just got out of Azkaban.”
Draco considers this. Harry pours his syrup and takes a bite while his longtime rival mulls this over. “Maybe, sort of,” Draco allows finally. “Still one prison to another.”
Harry frowns. That isn’t what he wants. Maybe for some of the nastier of Voldemort’s supporters, but for Draco? He casts about for something to offer that wouldn’t be rejected as empty comfort or held in contempt as though Harry were tossing him scraps.
“Maybe,” he repeats Draco’s word. At the other’s curious look, he says, “I could use someone to help me understand all this tradition and power I’ll be dealing with.” Draco looks at him, wary and yet obviously, keenly interested. Harry wonders when he got to be such an expert at reading Draco, who probably got actual lessons in not letting such things show.
Tradition, Harry thinks. Tradition, and power, or access to it. Influence. That’s what matters to pureblood Slytherins. That and lineage. He thinks back to the battle, to Draco’s mother lying to Voldemort in exchange for knowledge of her son’s survival; the image mingles momentarily with that of his own mother, standing before Voldemort, shielding him.
Family.
“For example,” Harry says, “If I adopt your firstborn as my heir to your House, do they become Head of it after me?”
The stunned widening of Draco’s eyes, the sudden blaze of naked hope, are shockingly intimate, and Harry almost nonchalantly busies himself pouring a cupful of orange juice.
“Yeah,” says Draco finally. "That … yeah.” A long, vaguely suspicious silence. “You’d do that?”
Harry nods. And feels like bursting with something like happiness when Draco straightens up, smiles genuinely, and says, “Well, then, you’ve got yourself an adviser. Have you considered growing a beard? Is that where you’re going with that?”
Harry nods, and is about to ask Draco’s advice on the matter when someone shrieks in the Entrance Hall.
“HARRY!” Hermione yells, standing in the doorway, rigid with shock but at the same time clearly missing a tension that’s been with her all year. “You’re a WHAT?!”
IT GOT BETTER.
@cywscross i feel like this is something you would like
This is all amazing. But especially “The Cockblock”. That is beautiful pun.
rip tumblr 