[Harry Potter] Malfoid Stories

[Renko]

Thoughts:

source: @Liiveesama

 

[digcat]

Thoughts:

source: @Liiveesama

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Makes me want to read a fic about how she secretly loves movies.

 

[LordofBones]

Excellent, excellent, hahahaha! I look forward to more!

Though honestly, I do enjoy stories where more than Malfoy is genderbent. Yes I love the wholesomeness of Harry/Malfoid but what can I say? I grew up on silly anime harem shows.

Plus, the way Rowling wrote, most of the cast comes off as female in many ways, Harry himself. Shy Tomboy Ronnie, Big Sister Star Cedrica, and of course, Goth Dommy Mommy Snape are all rather appealing.

And Hermione as the flat nerd Harry doesn't notice holds here, too.

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According to Ginevra 'Ginny' Weasley:

Hermione - Titty Nerd, gets envious titty slaps.
Veronica - Titty Tomboy, gets envious titty slaps.
Lyra/Lucretia/Dracaena - Titty Brat, gets envious titty slaps.

Ginny: *hic* "Lookatcha, jush...jush shwinin' around doshe udders! Why docha' jush moo?!"
Ronnie: "Now, there's an idea..."

Also, this is Cho Chang Erasure. She's the Jade Beauty of the cast.

 

[digcat]

According to Ginevra 'Ginny' Weasley:

Hermione - Titty Nerd, gets envious titty slaps.
Veronica - Titty Tomboy, gets envious titty slaps.
Lyra/Lucretia/Dracaena - Titty Brat, gets envious titty slaps.

Ginny: *hic* "Lookatcha, jush...jush shwinin' around doshe udders! Why docha' jush moo?!"
Ronnie: "Now, there's an idea..."

Also, this is Cho Chang Erasure. She's the Jade Beauty of the cast.

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Makes me think of Ginny as Megumin bullying and titty slapping the other girls in Harry's harem.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

Makes me think of Ginny as Megumin bullying and titty slapping the other girls in Harry's harem.

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I dunno, I think it's funnier if it's Hermione doing it. Just her with her big bushy hair pouting and angrily slapping bigger titties.

You could genderbend Ginny into Virgil. The only boy of the Weasleys. He has a thing for older girls with big boobs.

 

[digcat]

I dunno, I think it's funnier if it's Hermione doing it. Just her with her big bushy hair pouting and angrily slapping bigger titties.

You could genderbend Ginny into Virgil. The only boy of the Weasleys. He has a thing for older girls with big boobs.

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That would also be great and with the way she treated Fleur in the books it would really be funny(to me anyway) if they got together.
That said i have seen some fics that calls Ginny out for the way she(and everyone else) behaved to Fleur but none that does the same for Hermione. Does anyone know of any.

 

[LordofBones]

I dunno, I think it's funnier if it's Hermione doing it. Just her with her big bushy hair pouting and angrily slapping bigger titties.

You could genderbend Ginny into Virgil. The only boy of the Weasleys. He has a thing for older girls with big boobs.

Click to shrink...

To be honest, Ginny fully expecting to grow into the busty tomboy archetype or subverting it into being the princess type to one-up Ron only to end up as the pettanko would be funny in itself, especially if Ron and Hermione were nothing special before puberty smacked them with a beater's bat.

Hermione: *stretching* "God, I wonder if Ronnie knows any support charms. A bra is just so uncomfortable in this heat..."
Ginny: *grinds teeth and seethes*

Malfoy, on the other hand, seethes because the know-it-all and the Weasel have effectively negated her best assets and leveled the playing field.

 

[Jack of Olives]

A different (and somewhat serious) take:
Content Warning: MtF transformation.

---​

The first time he'd met her had been during his stay at The Leaky Cauldron during the summer before his third year.

He'd just gotten into is room after a round of shopping for Hogwarts supplies, when he heard sound of the door closing behind him, followed by a latch clicking in place,

Whirling around in shock, he was surprised to find a blonde haired girl in a frilled dress who looked to be roughly his age. She was breathing heavily and staring at the door like there was a monster behind it (which in Harry's experience was depressingly likely). He then watched as she moved her head so that her ear was pressed against the room's door; still seemingly not having registered that she wasn't alone in the room.

It's then he heard the sound of heavy, quick, and purposeful footsteps coming from the hallway outside. They stopped for a long moment, as if whoever is out there was examining his surroundings, before continuing on; eventually fading as the being clearly decided it's prey(?) was elsewhere.

There was silence for another long moment, before the girl slowly let out a sigh of relief.

"Are-" Harry began.

Before he could go any further, she starts while letting out a strangled squeak. One that Harry would have called 'adorable', if not for the circumstances. She then whirled on him, wand drawn; only to freeze as she registered who she's looking at.

"-Are you alright, Miss?" Harry continued. "Do you need help?"

"P-potter!? I-... that is-" She began, her face; which had been pale with fright before, now going bright red.

"Don't worry about me." He quickly waved her off; having suspected that she was worried about having barged in on the 'Boy Who Lived'. "Do you need me to call an Auror?"

"No!" She half shouted, before wincing and repeating herself more quietly. "No. They... would only make things worse."

He frowned, but nodded; unfortunately knowing how that goes. "Alright. Is there any way I could help?"

She laughed; one that would have sounded haughty if not for the tinge of desperation in it. "The great Harry Potter; always eager to save the day, huh?"

He couldn't help but make a face at that. "I don't like seeing people in trouble; especially not when I can help."

"Yeah, well unfortunately there's nothing you can do to help me." She told him with a huff, turning her head to the side as she did. "Not unless you've somehow figured out how to convince a stubborn old man to change his mind."

At that, Harry couldn't help but let out a bark of laughter. "Believe me; if I knew how to do that my life would be much simpler."

She turned to him curiously for a moment, before realization finally seemed to strike. "Oh, right; Professor Snape."

"Among others." He agreeded with a sigh. "Seems like everyone had already decided who I was before I even got to Hogwarts."

She seemed to wince at that, before a grudgingly commiserating look appears on her face. "For what it's worth, I know what that's like."

He smiled slightly, causing her face to redden again.

He then paused, as he finally remembered his manners. "I'm sorry, I don't think we've properly met. I'm Harry Potter; Harry to my friends."

Another wince. "I'm... Lyra! Lyra Malfoy." She finally responded; a touch to quickly and with a noticable tremor in her voice.

"Nice to meet you, Lyra." He said; a bit surprised (mostly that he actually meant it). "Any relation to-"

"-I... don't want to talk about... them." She declared, turning her head to the side. "Suffice it to say; Father would rather I be like... Draco than myself."

"Is that why I haven't seen you around Hogwarts?"

"Father only wants Draco to be seen at Hogwarts." She explained with a scowl. "... or anywhere." She finishes.

"What about your mother?" Harry asks, before he can stop himself.

"I don't want to talk about it." Lyra repeats with a glare.

"Sorry, sorry!" The boy quickly says. "I just..."

"Just what?" She demanded with a raised eyebrow.

"I understand what it's like to be hated for not being what others want." He explained; not looking at her, and having thereby missed her full-body twitch at his words. "My muggle relatives would rather I be 'normal', most of Wizarding Brittan would rather I be some kind of gallant hero, and the rest would rather I not exist at all. Practically no one wants to just let me be me." He scowled. "And the worst thing is, everyone tells me that I should 'get over it' because 'I'm famous'. Like being famous ever did anything but make people expect things of me."

He turned back to see the blond girl staring at him open-mouthed; face red once-again.

Not that it lasted long, as she quickly turned away. "M-maybe you do understand." She declared, once more trying for a the haughty tone that Draco often uses. He couldn't help but find it oddly endearing. "At least partly, anyway."

"Anyway, sorry if I've made this awkward." He offered, a touch sheepishly.

"Only-" She begins, before a chiming noise echoed from somewhere on her person, causing her to blanch. "Ah- I- I need to be going."

"Oh, um..." Harry stammered, feeling his own cheeks heat up. "G-goodbye, then. It was nice meeting you."

"It was... tolerable meeting you as well." She agreed, once more trying to be haughty, but clearly anxious to leave. "Until we meet again."

And with that Lyra Malfoy runs out the door.

She had to find someplace to change back before the potion wore off People would talk if they saw Draco Malfoy in a dress and makeup, after all.

---​

AN: Surprise! (or perhaps not) 'Malfoid' via a classic (albeit trans) Draco.

Edit: on reflection, decided to add a Content Warning.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

Yeah, no.

 

[Jack of Olives]

Yeah, no.

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Eh, fair; you do you.

Edit: Apologies if this came off as passive-aggressive. This was not my intent >_<

 

[AndrewJTalon]

Eh, fair; you do you.

Click to shrink...

Fair, you do you.


---

The announcement went up on the notice board in the Entrance Hall on a Tuesday morning, written in Professor Flitwick's neat hand and already surrounded by a cluster of students before breakfast had properly ended. The Adventures of Merlin, it read. A Hogwarts production, generously funded by Lucius Malfoy in his capacity as a patron of the dramatic arts. Auditions would be held that weekend. The plot, such as it was, concerned Merlin's efforts to rescue the Lady Guinevere from the clutches of Morgan le Fay, with the timely assistance of King Arthur.

Harry had not auditioned. He had, in fact, been in the library at the time, attempting to finish an essay on Goblin rebellions while Ron complained about the length of it and Hermione annotated her own copy in the margins. When the cast list appeared two days later, his name was at the top of it in the same neat hand: Merlin. Beneath it, Ron Weasley as Arthur. Hermione Granger as Guinevere. Lyra Malfoy as Morgan le Fay. Cedric Diggory, in smaller letters, as the Dragon.

Hermione read the list twice, then a third time, as if the words might rearrange themselves under sufficient scrutiny. "I auditioned for Merlin!" she said. Her voice was very level. "I prepared a speech! I had notes on the historical inconsistencies! And they've given me the helpless captive!"

"You did say the source material was riddled with chauvinism," Ron offered, not entirely helpfully.

"That does not mean I wished to embody it!" She folded her arms. "I will play the part. I will play it properly. But I reserve the right to mutter about the structural problems between scenes!"

"What are you complaining about?" Harry asked, "I didn't even audition!"

"Well, well, well," Lyra laughed, walking up to Harry with a smirk, "I see we'll be on opposite sides in this play."

Harry scowled at her.

"Yeah? I didn't even want it!"

"But now you have it," Lyra smirked, and leaned forward. She grabbed his tie and pulled him close, their foreheads nearly touching. "So you'd better do your best, or I'll humiliate you in front of the entire school, Potter."

Potter glared back. He grabbed her hands, and pulled them away from his tie. Pink touched her ears and cheeks-Her eyes were wide.

"Don't worry-I will," he growled.

"G-Good," Lyra managed. She turned and walked off, Pansy and Daphne following her. Harry glared after her.

Hermione and Ron flanked him. Ron cleared his throat.

"You... Do realize there's a love scene between Merlin and Morgan, right?"

Harry's eyes widened and his cheeks went red.

"Wait, what?!"

Hermione sighed.

"Don't you do any of the assigned reading?"

 

[trashtaker]

Hermione kinda sus here.


Like she wants to shag with another girl?

 

[digcat]

Hermione read the list twice, then a third time, as if the words might rearrange themselves under sufficient scrutiny. "I auditioned for Merlin!" she said. Her voice was very level. "I prepared a speech! I had notes on the historical inconsistencies! And they've given me the helpless captive!"

Click to shrink...

Ron: Plus Merlin didn't have tits like you do as small as they are.
Harry: Don't worry Hermione i'm sure one day you won't have the body of a pre teen boy.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

The study room on the third floor smelled faintly of old wood and the lemon oil the house-elves used on the tables. A single floating lamp burned between them, its light warm against the cooler grey that filtered through the high, narrow window. Behind Ron and Hermione, a living portrait of jugglers and clowns conducted an ongoing war. One side hurled painted balls with theatrical fury; the other caught them and returned them with exaggerated dignity. Every so often the frame rattled when a particularly forceful toss struck the edge. Neither of them paid it much attention. They had grown used to the portrait's hostilities.

Ron had a doughnut in one hand and a half-finished essay on the Goblin rebellions in the other, a bag of more donuts resting on the table to his right. Sugar clung to his thumb. Hermione looked up and to her left from her notes, frowned at the doughnuts, and set her quill down with deliberate care.

"You are not supposed to bring food in here."

"I'm keeping my strength up," Ron said around a bite. Crumbs scattered onto his parchment. "Who knows what's going to happen this year?"

"What do you mean?"

He swallowed and gestured vaguely with the remaining half of the doughnut. "I mean we had that attack at the Quidditch World Cup, we've got a gigantic Triwizard Tournament where people might die, and apparently Malfoy fancies Harry. Things are mad. And on top of all that, somebody's probably going to try and kill him again."

The portrait's frame gave a small, indignant rattle as a paint rotary cannon opened up on the jugglers from the clown side. Hermione's mouth tightened. "Ron, surely you're just being paranoid—"

He stared at her. The doughnut hovered, forgotten. She flushed, looked down at her parchment, and mumbled something that might have been an apology.

"Well," she said, more clearly, "I mean… maybe it won't happen this year?"

Ron's expression did not change.Hermione sighed, the sound small in the quiet room.

"Oh, fine. You're right that there is a pattern."

"I'm right?"

"Yes, you're right."

"…Can I get that engraved? Forever?"

Hermione scowled.

"Shut up, Ron. It's just this one instance."

"It's still a win."

"It's not a competition," Hermione hissed. Ron smirked.

"Oh? Then why are you mad?"

"Hmph!"

The door opened hard enough to interrupt the portrait's latest exchange and there was a lull in the fighting as jugglers and clowns stared at the newcomer. Pansy Parkinson strode in, the hem of her robes snapping, and dropped into the chair across from them. She rapped her knuckles once on the tabletop. The sound was sharp.

"All right, Weasel. Granger."

"Hey," Ron protested.

"I don't like you, you don't like me, but Potter finally got some sense and we're not bloody squandering it. So. What's our game plan?"

Ron blinked. Sugar still clung to the corner of his mouth. "Game plan? For what?"

"Ugh. For the date."

"I mean… uh… well, you see, that was just a pr—"

Hermione's heel came down on his foot with decisive force. The impact traveled up his shin. Ron's hand flew to his mouth. The sound he made was not quite a yelp and not quite a curse, somewhere in between. Hermione picked up the remaining half of his doughnut—still warm, still shedding sugar—and pushed it between his teeth before he could recover his voice.

"Ron," she said, brightly, as if they were discussing the weather, "you should finish those before they get cold. You also shouldn't talk with your mouth full. Right?"

He stared at her over the doughnut, wounded and muffled, eyes wide with betrayal. He nodded because there was nothing else to do. The doughnut tasted suddenly of injustice. Hermione turned back to Pansy. Her smile was fixed and did not reach her eyes.

"Harry has prepared extensively for the date," she said. "He has a number of ideas that he will swap to depending on the situation."

Pansy's eyebrows rose. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Really? He's planned this?"

"Yes."

Hermione did not look at Ron. Ron looked at her anyway, doughnut compressed between his teeth, expression somewhere between outrage and awe. In the portrait, a paint ball completed its arc and struck a clown squarely in the painted nose. The clown did not react. He appeared to be sulking.

"I thought he made it up as he went along," Pansy said.

"He is a master of improvisation," Hermione explained, "but he's getting better at long-term planning."

"Finally. Honestly, how could he miss her hints for all this time?"

Ron mouthed "Hints?!" around the doughnut, but keen not to attract Hermione's wrath again, he wisely abstained from further comment.

"Some men require that you be more direct." Hermione's quill hovered over a fresh sheet of parchment she'd pulled from her bag. The nib trembled once, then steadied. "However, I can ensure a great date experience if you give us some information on Malfoy's preferences."

Pansy leaned back. The chair creaked. "Right. She will deny it to her dying breath if you ask, but she loves animals."

"The Buckbeak situation?" Hermione asked dryly. Pansy winced just a bit.

"She did try to get her father to reverse the decision, you know. She gave Hagrid an apology letter for it."

Hermione was quiet for a moment. The lamp hissed softly. She remembered the hippogriff's pen, the way Lyra had stood very still afterward, pale and tight around the mouth, not gloating. "…Yes. I suppose she did look mostly sad over it. If she'd gloated, I'd have knocked her teeth out."

Ron made a noise around the doughnut that might have been commentary on justice, or on Buckbeak, or on the general unfairness of having one's foot stomped in the middle of a study session. Pansy ignored him.

"Look, the point is, a stop at the pet shop wouldn't hurt. She won't buy anything, but she likes to cuddle. Keep in mind, though—she hates snakes."

Ron and Hermione both stared. The portrait's war paused again, as if the painted figures were listening. Ron swallowed his doughnut completely.

"What?" They both said.

"She does. Absolutely terrified of them. Why do you think she was so scared at the Dueling Club?"

Ron choked. He coughed, eyes watering, and managed, somehow, not to laugh out loud. The effort turned his ears red. Pansy's eyes narrowed to slits.

"And if you tell anyone, they'll never find your body, Weasley."

He swallowed audibly. "Not a soul. Not a soul."

"He's trustworthy," Hermione said. Her quill moved again. "Next?"

"She does want to go to Madam Puddifoot's. She would prefer a private booth, though. Most couples go there just to show off. She's fine with the mood of the place, but she doesn't want to be gawked at. Also, Potter should know: order her honey lemon cakes. Never almond cakes. She hates those."

Hermione wrote in small, precise lines. "No gawking. No almond cakes. Got it. Anything else?"

Pansy considered the ceiling for a moment. "Well. If Potter could wear green… she loves it when he's in green. Brings out his eyes."

Hermione's quill paused. Ink beaded at the tip. "She likes his eyes?"

"She goes on and on about them. Endlessly." Pansy rolled her own. "Day in, day out. 'Oh, if only he wore a green scarf he'd be so much more handsome.' Anyway. You got all that, or do you need me to repeat myself?"

"No, no. I've got it."

"Good." Pansy stood. She smoothed her robes with a brisk motion. "Pleasure doing business with you. And tell Potter if he screws this up, he's answering to me."

She left. The door closed with a decisive click. In the portrait, a clown successfully beaned a juggler with a painted ball and looked pleased with himself. The juggler retaliated by juggling three balls at once and unleashing them like a madchine gun into the clown's face, sending him falling into other clowns below into a messy, angry pile.

Ron turned to Hermione. Doughnut crumbs clung to his chin. His expression sat somewhere between betrayal and reluctant awe.

"…Hermione. You're not seriously considering this, are you? It was a prank."

Hermione capped her ink. She did not look up at once. The lamp hummed. Outside, the wind pressed harder against the window.

"Not to Malfoy, clearly."

Ron stared at her. "But… this is Malfoy. You know? The racist who called you Mudblood?"

"Yes." Hermione's voice was quiet. "I know. But looking back… I think she was so angry with me because she was jealous. That I was close to Harry."

Ron was silent for a moment. The portrait's war continued, muffled by glass and paint. "And… you can forgive that?"

"I mean, not the racism." She met his eyes at last. "But did you see the way she's been acting? Not… So much her? Maybe we can bring out more of that, instead of her being a brat."

"Or maybe she's just counter-pranking us."

"Do you really think she would do that, given her past? And besides… What do you think she'll do to us if she finds out it was a prank?"

Ron considered the table. Sugar glittered on the wood between them. "…Okay. Good point."

"Hmph," Hermione was smug, "One for me."

"I thought it wasn't a competition."

"It—it wasn't until you made it one."

"Sure, sure. Just because you were losing."

"I was not!"

 

[digcat]

Ron: I wonder if her tits will be as great as her mom.
Harry: If she does i'm getting a titty fuck and bj every day.

[Couldn't help myself.]

 

[Shunyata]

Damn now when we really think about it

Female Malfoy really makes the series better, like the Male version looks incomplete

I am really interested on how it would affect real world, like if HP was always written with Malfoid then I feel there would be alot more romance and more enemies to lovers examples in Pop Culture for kids and teen books as well, much more than we have. We wont just have long term friendship but slowburn romance as well

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

So the picture here is broken. But the rest is sounding like it's got some potential.

Click to shrink...

Good news, my 'Throwing the Game' picture on page 2 has been fixed.

Anyway, I promised Hermoine Slander so;

Warning: You thought the last one was dumb? Just wait until you see what is coming next.

Hermione Slander, CountvonBarnOwl Edition: Hermione Frees the House Elves

For Lyra Malfoy, headbands had become a utility rather than a fashion statement. In her first two years, she kept her hair pulled straight back - usually with said headband or a more-than-generous amount of hairspray - but a year ago, she had found letting her bangs droop over her forehead more to her liking. What followed were various correspondences with her mother, consultations with Crabbe & Goyle, and when family and the bodyguards did not work, older students and the literature that they preferred to read. The goal had been to figure out which length she should grow them out to, and how much of her face she could cover, and in what ways, if she wanted to blend looking classy, seductive, charming, and beautiful without looking slatternly, slow-witted, unkempt, or desperate.

But when she was studying said bangs would now fall into her face. Which meant breaking out the headbands again as a matter of practicality. Other matters of practicality included adjusting for how much more space at a table that a growing girl needed when she leaned over her books. Mother had not been wrong when she had said, "You'll be in your teens and then, boom," punctuating it with multicolored sparks from her hands. Not that such considerations would ever be a problem for some Gryffindors.

And speaking of that particularly ironing board-shaped annoyance, the mudblood had decided to take it upon herself to raise a ruckus about House-Elves. Now, as a matter of dignity, comportment, and manners, Lyra Malfoy did not concern herself whenever the mud went on a hollow crusade of moral self-indulgence trips in order to bolster their reputation or convince themselves of their own nonexistent adequacy, she had been raised better than that. But it did become personal when the littering of pamphlets and the inane chanting cut into her studies.

With her delicate features suitably creased, Lyra Malfoy contemplated methods of retaliation. Option A was dispatching one of the bodyguards to procure a troll pie and do something exceedingly juvenile with a levitation charm. Funny in the immediate term, but it had too many single points of failure and it would cause more long term problems than it would fix. So she discarded that one immediately. Option B involved direct confrontation. But Potter would doubtlessly intervene, 'dummy,' Lyra thought to herself. 'Doesn't he know that if he keeps stepping in so recklessly, my Father will hear about it?'

Lyra had hated Harry Potter for her first two years at Hogwarts. But she didn't actually want the idiot dead. She had to admit that to herself over the summer, after Father had told her in no uncertain terms that if Potter ever made her cry again, and he found out about it, then "one-and-three-eighths ounces of twofold cursed lead between the shoulder blades would succeed where the Dark Lord had inexplicably failed in Halloween of '81." That had forced Mother to step in and explain to a stunned and stammering Lyra that Father meant business, something that she and Severus had learned sometime after the incident with the hippogriff when Severus had been summoned to the Malfoy household to discuss reorienting vis-a-vis Potter in light of Lyra's own feelings.

That led to a very red-faced Lyra asking Mother in a tone far too loud to be polite, and probably costing her the last bit of banked childhood leniency in doing so, exactly why she and Father felt the need to tell Severus to pivot with the Idiot-Who-Lived. That made Mother dig out her old, variously tear-stained letters and one-by-one go through them to show exactly what she and her husband had come to believe changed in their daughter. And, truth be told, Lyra Malfoy could not disagree.

One very embarrassing admission in front of her vanity mirror later, Lyra promised herself that it was time to deal with about her feelings for Potter as not just a big girl, but a proper Pureblood lady, just as soon as the portraits that she kept in her room for advice stopped laughing.

Lyra Malfoy liked Harry Potter, Lyra Malfoy wanted Harry Potter, Lyra Malfoy could admit that (if only to herself). Ergo, of equal importance to getting his friend to pipe down was making sure that it was done in a way such that Potter would feel no need to continue rolling about in the stye out of pity.

The game, therefore, was to make sure that it looked like the Silly Girl - capital letters, per her Godfather - had merely run headlong into one of those points of impossible friction between the Magical and Muggle worlds due to her own obliviousness.

"Aha." She said as she took the S.P.E.W. pamphlet off of the treatise that she had been reading and began furiously scribbling onto a blank sheet of paper beside it. There was a turn of phrase guaranteed to extricate a House-Elf from any wizard or witch's service. The problem would be making the mud creature say it.

"Idea for camouflage?" Vincent Crabbe asked.

He and Gregory Goyle were a pair of long-armed gorillas for boys their age, and each with a sadistic streak a mile wide, but thanks to their families' relations with the Malfoy lineage, they had practically been raised from birth to be her bodyguards. Crabbe was the larger, swifter, and more academically inclined, with the lazier Goyle being only quasi-literate - meaning that Lyra had to basically spoon-feed him the answers to his homework and would have to come up with something to do Salazar Slytherin himself proud to get him through the O.W.L.s.

"No, but that is in the works." Lyra replied. Moody had shown them the Unforgivables on Friday, and Pull Out, Mister Weasley! - her Godfather had such a way with nicknames - had decided to comment that it was a requirement for being sorted into Slytherin to be slinging those spells from infancy. And while it went completely over the heads of the mud, and even a few halfbloods, the Weasleys were one of the twenty-eight. Meaning that, by itself and on its own merits, not even a Malfoy - but, perhaps a Black, Lyra mentally thanked her mother - could look down her nose at their bloodline. So while it was rather slanderous to insinuate that all Pureblooded Wizards and Witches came out as homicidal degenerates, he hadn't exactly been wrong when he put the notion that most scions of the real aristocratic families of the Wizarding World were familiarized with the Imperius, the Cruciatus, and Old Reliable in the home. Which, of course, would mean that to avoid further trouble or cause for scrutiny; Pureblood students had to - at least appear - as exceedingly studious and clever in order to not make any faux pas that would result in improper criminal suspicion.

Lyra instead told Goyle to go get the 'E' volume of a lowbrow encyclopedia from the Magical Creatures section, with two more books from the same place, as well as three N.E.W.T.-level books on Ancient Runes of relative obscurity, and instructed Crabbe to start practicing writing his DADA notes in a style that wasn't his own, and to get comfortable writing lightly.

Goyle returned, and, on a hand signal from Lyra, plopped the books down and mixed them up with the ones they already had. Lyra opened each as it came down while noting the authors' names and which pages covered the various ritual magics of the ancient societies from whence various runes had been adapted. Then she started scribbling the most pseudo-intellectual nonsense that she could think of and citing various names and pages while pointing out hidden meanings in the text that she might as well have had pulled from her decolletage, that the authors were certain that any witch or wizard of suitable intelligence and comportment would have no problem at all picking up.

She then slipped the paper under one of Crabbe's books and told him to copy all of the sections down on spare sheets. "Copy this first section here onto the pamphlet," she commanded, "I mostly care about the substance, but if you think of any high-flown jargon, use it. But don't be cute, you need to sound like a tired upperclassman without any patience."

Crabbe did. Stifling his laughter as best he could once he committed to the bit. 'Those cruel streaks could lead men to such wonderful creativity,' Lyra thought as she leaned over to help Gregory with his actual homework.

Lyra slid the pamphlet into the pages of the encyclopedia, and pressed it firm before closing the book and plopping two more on it, before passing them to Crabbe. Then the Slytherin students slithered out of the library well before closing time the baited book all returned in a jumble with the DADA treatises and textbooks that they had been making use of, and their notes, as well as Lyra's draft, in her bag.

Critical was making sure that they got out before the fifth through seventh-years were dragged bodily away from their extensive studying. But once their books were in the return bin, Lyra Malfoy considered her mission accomplished. She did not speak again until the trio hit the Slytherin common room.

"Now we wait..." Lyra muttered

--

A week later

--

Hermione Granger was elated with the progress that S.P.E.W. was making. So many Gryffindors had already joined. Some of them even after only being asked eight or nine times. Getting the other students to hand over their organizational dues required a bit more persistence, and progress was slower on that front. But she really felt like her efforts were coming around and starting to bear fruit. Why, just the other day a seventh-year Ravenclaw had coughed up his money and went back to his reading without telling her to "pound sand" in the way that so many of his Housemates had. That had been a relief, Hermione was starting to think that all of the Ravenclaws were elphophobic bigots like the Slytherins.

Hermoine understood how important studying for N.E.W.T.s was. Therefore, it logically followed that wizards and witches who also understood that necessity would be the likeliest place to find students sympathetic to the House-Elf cause. Hence, whenever she saw a busy-looking and physically exhausted sixth or seventh-year who was not wearing green, she made it her business to make sure that she sold each and every one of them on the idea, and to not let up until they plopped two sickles into her hand.

Even though it was becoming relatively difficult to find busy and exhausted sixth or seventh-years who were not wearing green. For whatever reason the upper-year Slytherins seemed to be out in force no matter where she went.

So many green-clad raccoon-eyed older students staring at her in silent contempt and disgust. Every upper-year she had met so far looked at her like she was a gnat, they all had that same condescending, tired stare that screamed 'Neither you nor anything you have to say or do could possibly be of any good or pertinent interest whatsoever.' That hurt. She was good, she was smart, she had important things to say.

Which brought her back to the library. There was something that she had missed. There always was. She just had to figure out what it was, and where. She had checked all of the books on magical creatures last Saturday, when she founded S.P.E.W. She had also read the entire H section on every encyclopedia and periodical that the library had on offer and...

Hermione had another idea.

What if there was more information on elves, generally, which would be under 'E' than there was on house elves, under 'H?' Hermione congratulated herself. She was a genius.

It was in the 'E' section of Edalread's Encyclopedia of the Eldritch Earth. A tad overblown a title for a publisher whose main goal it was clear, was to overwhelm and wow newcomers to the magical world, it made Hermione happy she missed it on her first go-round. 'But if it has anything useful, which could be corroborated...' she thought to herself, leafing through the pages.

When suddenly, one of her own pamphlets dropped out, having seemingly been pressed in between two pages in the first half of the 'El...' section.

Hermione took a moment to put her book down on a table before picking up the pamphlet. It was in an awkward, half-heavy hand that she didn't really recognize.

Written sideways across the pamphlet in dark ink along the margins was what began as a note. 'To anybody else who has already pitched in, tired, busy, I'll make it brief...' it said, before delving into a postulation for a theory about the nature of how different magical vows effect different magical beings.

While Hermione counted three misstatements and one outright error, the note seemed sincere, and onto something, before it ended on 'I'll leave more notes in my Ancient Runes study materials if I find the time between now and May.' Ancient Runes, Hermione was impressed. She really had found a lot of like-minded upperclassmen.

What she did not find, was the carefully guarded observation that her gait was under from the Slytherin table as she entered the Grand Hall the next day. Nor the smiling blonde Snake hiding behind her goblet.

--

October


--

"Right, we've waited long enough." Lyra declared when she realized that she, Crabbe, and Goyle had the Slytherin common room to themselves. She removed her left shoe and took out the left sole, letting a neatly folded piece of paper drop down. "Crabbe, copy, quickly. Section two, same as last time. As tired and angry as you can make a mud-blooded upstart sound. Same handwriting style as last time."

Crabbe took two spare sheets of paper before the writing style returned in enough form to satisfy the discerning eye of the Malfoy heiress before he presented the finished product. "Excellent." Lyra said, creasing the paper in two and dropping it into her bag. Then she returned the master copy to her shoe. "But I don't want any evidence." She said as she bent to retrieve Crabbe's spare papers and held one out to each side of herself. "Both of you, eat."

The command was delivered in a flat, authoritative tone just a hair above ordinary conversation. But Lyra channeled all of her presence into the order.

"Cheers, mate." Goyle said in response as he took a paper as he crumpled his paper up. "To your health." Crabbe responded, tapping his folded-into-eighths paper against Gregory's wad before each scarfed his half of the evidence in one go.

They trio got to the library early the next day, when the rest of the student body was too focused on breakfast to think or keep tabs on each other. And when the coast looked clear, Lyra took the paper from her bag and slid it into a seventh-year book in the Ancient Runes section before mixing back in with the trundling crowd.

The next time she knew that the fourth years would generally be in the library, she commandeered a table that had a good view of the Ancient Runes section. Bottles of polished glass, crystal, and various metal objects arranged in a particular order as she helped Goyle with his homework let her keep an eye on the Ancient Runes section. Lyra put forward the most maternal tone and vocabulary that she could as she explained why Gregory couldn't use Old Reliable as Counter-Curse, responding to his quip that "it was the last Counter-Curse that anybody ever needs," by telling him that the teachers wanted him to be more creative and less basic answers, answers that he had to think about, and try not to misspell. He bought that.

Then, she noticed, in the reflection of a silver bottle that she had on the table, someone was going toward the Ancient Runes section and leafing through books three years above her own. Thank Morgana, the bushy-haired mudblood hadn't lost the plot.

--

A minute later

--

Desperation pulled Hermione back to the Ancient Runes section once again. She had checked every textbook that she could get her hands on trying to reverse-engineer what sort of brainwave the upperclassman must have had, all the while trying to salvage the S.P.E.W.'s reputation after somebody, who she suspected to be a certain somebody's two older siblings, decided to create the Fellowship Unpleased with Cockatrice Killing as a joke, and somebody besides that - probably a Slytherin - who felt it necessary to found the Society for Preventing Lethifold-Objectifying Orgies from Going Extinct.

That one had to be a Slytherin, they demanded a whole Galleon for admittance and their pamphlet had stated outright that they made no promises that the treasurer wouldn't just pocket it, the fucking Pureblood.

That was, until a folded up paper fell out of the book. Hermione closed the book immediately and put it under her arm before bending down to pick up the paper and read it. And line by line, word by word, her anger melted into nothing.

She had to tell the others.

"See, Ron, I told you it was real." She said, triumphant, only to get an owlish blink as her only reward.

"Hermione, nobody ever doubted you after you showed us the pamphlet. What we didn't believe was that this upperclassman would find the time to ever write again." Harry clarified, as he sensed the friction between his friends about to turn into something.

"I still say it is just somebody in seventh year going barmy from staring at textbooks and off-gassing." Ron replied, deciding that Harry's efforts needed to be flung down and danced upon.

"RONALD!" Hermione shouted, rising to the bait and getting stares from every corner of the library before a ghost floated up through the floor in front of her.

"Shhh..." The translucent spirit said as Harry removed his glasses and pinched his nose. Hopefully his two best friends wouldn't stop speaking to each other... again.

Hermione then pulled the paper up and turned back for the Ancient Runes section, muttering something that harry didn't quite catch about ancient Celts, Fey, and most importantly to herself, footnotes and citations.

The next two hours passed in a blur for Harry and Ron as Hermione muttered about magical vows and binding contracts, going back and forth between two books and that strange note from an apparently sympathetic upperclassman who argued that the two sources misrepresented each other's claims completely. Harry merely dismissed it as academic jargon, and he had to shoot Ron a pointed look not to call it rubbish aloud.


--

The runup to the Yule Ball

--

Fate handed Lyra another boon before the Yule Ball.

Namely that Potter asked her out.

Ordianarily, Lyra would have been over the moon, and she was, secretly, until she found out that Harry was entirely motivated by settling a bet between himself and the Weasley twins.

She wouldn't confront him about it. She wouldn't let him know. No, would just have Crabbe copy another section of the note from her shoe, and then send him and Goyle off to hide it under the cover of a disillusionment spell while she and her unwitting husband-to-be - 'Down girl, not yet, Lyra. Not yet.' she reminded herself - distracted three schools worth of witches and wizards with her beauty.

She just had to make sure that Crabbe copied the array exactly.

--

March, 1995

--

Hermione Granger was fast approaching her breaking point. She was going to snap soon. She did not know what form it would take, but she knew it would take form in the coming days, that much was for certain. It would probably include tearing that awful, horrid Skeeter woman in half like a wet sponge. As a start. That much was certain. Using healing magic to bring someone back from the brink, or even hold them over it while breaking their body again and again... God, the sheer volume of letters since that she had received since the good-for-nothing bitch published that horrid lie. The beginning of this month taught her indeed that it was possible to hate another woman more than Malfoy.

And speaking of Malfoy, that skank had become oddly territorial and aggressive when it came to Harry in the wake of the Yule Ball. Not that she wasn't already, but sometimes she'd simply seize him in the hallway, and lead him off by the wrist. The arguments that rose out of their increased proximity to one another cut terribly into her studying time. And then the Triwizard Tournament task. Why couldn't Harry have just left her underwater? He had the chance for three-and-change years of Malfoy-less Hogwarts, and it slipped through his fingers. He probably regretted it though, from the way Malfoy had dragged him off of the field by the ear while screaming like the harridan she was. Harry would not be found again for another three hours, having apparently had his throat shouted down by the snooty pureblood, who was becoming far too handsy with Harry for Hermione's liking.

S.P.E.W. work was rapidly becoming her security blanket, a place into which she could channel her energies constructively, especially with the horrible treatment that Bartemius Crouch had been subjecting his elf to. Hermione did not know what the House Elf with the peculiar gait and perpetual stomach cramps meant when she said that he would Winky his Winky with Winky, and she could guess. Not that she wanted her imagination to travel too far in that direction.

Why couldn't that Skeeter woman do something useful, like break a story about how a ministry official was a House-Elf shagger? Wasn't that what the Prophet was for?

But even that was beginning to feel less and less safe, as her Mystery Compatriot was rapidly proving himself something close to her intellectual equal. His correspondences all pointed to texts that she had familiarized herself with. But they were written as though he hadn't read it. However, the volume and the content of his language, it was clear that even tired and irritable, he was intelligent, thoughtful, and trying to do the right thing. His honesty and credibility was beyond a doubt.

As she stormed into the Ancient Runes section of the library she noticed a raccoon-eyed and sunken-skinned Hufflepuff curse as he pulled a wad of paper from a book he was examining and toss it onto the floor. "Who keeps leaving this fucking junk in these books."

Hermione dove for the paper immediately and uncrumpled it. "Don't you realize what you're doing?" She hissed to him.

"Didn't I pay you elf-people to go away?" He replied. "Some of us want to pass our N.E.W.T.s!"

"For your information, Mister, one of my best supporters is taking Ancient Runes, likely in your class. And he found the time and the heart to help us." Hermione harumphed back at him.

The Hufflepuff regarded her, for a second, his eye twitching like Professor Snape's, "If this friend of yours wants a T on his exam, that's fine by me, I want an A." He snarled before walking through Hermione and toward a particularly stacked table.

'The nerve,' Hermione thought, did not appreciate the implication toward her unseen ally's scholarly competence, or that academic lowbrow's casual use of wandless magic to make himself intangible just to leave their conversation.

'Eureka! I've figured it out! I've been looking in the wrong places. I need Nordic runes not Celtic runes... So elementary...' Hermione skimmed the diatribe that seemed to somehow tie Celtic heroes to Norse gods, explaining that somewhere between Skadi and Scathatch the source that he had been tracing for ancient Geases had gotten him turned around. There were more supplemental notes included and obscure references to two authors who seemed to be in agreement on certain points - Hermione had read each of them, she knew - but subtly, according to these notes, they must have been wholly at odds with each other.

Was that what she wasn't seeing? She'd have to read the texts over again to internalize it.

But the words, the words on this paper. The vows that Frigg had extracted from all things but Mistletoe, never to harm Baldur. How Loki was restrained and poison dripped upon his brow until Ragnarok. The tale was all allegorical - probably - but it all meant something... 'Maybe it meant that Ron was right, and it was just exam nerves "making one of the seventh-years go completely potty,"' a small part of Hermione's brain whispered to her, before it was forcefully quashed.

This array, this circle. The Master Copy of the true contract that held force over all magically binding vows. In theory, this runic array, on a twelve inch wide stone circle, seven tenths of an inch thick, set upright over a building before sunrise would see all creatures within bound to fulfil whatever oath that the being who placed it there gave them. But, for S.P.E.W.'s purposes, were it to be placed upside down, when the sun set the properly prepared runes alight, and they could reflect across the lands surrounding the building, all creatures magically bonded to servitude therein would be free as the wind!

"HAHA!" Hermione shouted as she practically flew from the library and presumably getting a dirty look from the girl and boy leaning over both sides of their friend's homework at the table on her way out. She needed a stone plate.

Once the plate was procured, she began burning the array into the stone, beginning first with what looked like a large, lower-case 'i' near the top, and sharply forking the split near the end. The second row was easier, except for that pitchfork-symbol in the middle that looked like it had the bottom of its end split out and bent twice, but it definitely resembled something like Algiz, and a jaunty Ehwaz set together. The third line, the one that began with the backwards Burisaz and ended with an Eihwaz that was half-crowned with an inverted kauna was written in a semicircle, under the whole rest of it, like a smile.

Satisfied with her work, Hermione set crystals into each of the markings, and charmed the whole carven array to let the sun shine through the foci once it hit the plate from behind. Now, where was Ronald? She'd need help getting this to the top of the castle, and Harry was... indisposed... thanks to the Dark Lord's return. Hermione smiled to herself, nevertheless. Magical Britain was going to become a better place, and the House-Elves would surely repay her kindness of freeing them.

Not that she expected or demanded it from newly freed sentient beings of course... She just... understood the universal obligations of basic decency. Yes, that was it.

For instance, it would be rude of Ron to complain about it being two past midnight, not when they were on the cusp of such a monumental achievement.

--

July 1, 1995

--

Albus Dumbledore rose with the sun, when frustration and headache hit him full-force.


The year had been a disaster. A total disaster. He reached to his nightstand and popped a his first lemon drop of the day. He'd be downing another with his Irish coffee and dragon's blood, that had been sugared with eggs, fairy wings, mayonnaise, and lime. On days like these, when Headmaster of Hogwarts felt every second of his age, he needed a delicate alchemical cocktail of vile sludge to keep himself upright and moving. Thrice he cursed Gellert as he dressed, and thrice more than that, he cursed Tom.

A student, Cedric Diggory, was dead. The promising young Hufflepuff had everything taken away from him by Peter Pettigrew's Avada Kedavra. Voldemort was back, and he had dashed the protections that Lily Potter nee Evans had happily traded her life to forge around her son. The Ministry already wanted him out of the Wizengamot and that damned fool Fudge had a dementor kill their best lead before he could be questioned.

The often-talked-of Payback War that certain wizards in certain families whispered about when they thought word would not make it back to him was here. But right now, Albus Dumbledore had to say farewell to his students, and to Cedric Diggory.

Bereaved persons would have to be consoled, frightened students and families would have to be persuaded, the Ministry would have to be made the fool, and war plans needed to be drawn up. Truly this day could not get any worse.

Albus Dumbledore allowed himself to look out the window. He hoped that wherever Cedric Diggory had gone off to, that he would like the bright orange light of his farewell morning. Some students had even gone to the trouble of writing out in magic a memorial message for him in that selfsame orange across the fields.

That was what kindhearted Albus Dumbledore thought, until he read the words, in something that looked like someone had mixed cursive script with elder Futhark.

PACK UP YOUR SHIT,

KNIFE-EARS.

YOU'RE FIRED!

"No, nonononononononono... WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Albus Dumbledore screamed at the bright orange letters, each fifty feet high.

--

A few hours later

--

The grand hall was unusually dark for a Leaving Feast in on a summer morning. Most of the students were under orders to strictly wear black, and as it appeared, so were the teachers, There were a few dashes of red, blue, and green, and more than a few dashes of yellow here and there. But the mood was not exactly solemn. And the headmaster was a tad more incandescent than a few of the candles. Hagrid was about too, next to Dumbledore in full Hogwarts regalia and scowling in a way that Harry had thought he was physically incapable of, while Harry himself and a red-faced Ron had to pilot an inexplicably catatonic Hermione to her seat.

--

At the same time

--

Severus Snape was not having a good morning. Flopsy had thrown down her apron and punched him between the legs before resigning - he did not know until today that House-Elves could resign - in a huff. Then, he saw the prank emblazoned upon the castle grounds, as well as the flow of similarly hurt, disgusted, and insulted House-Elves sneering, snarling, and storming out of the castle, leaving a trail of discarded aprons, laundry, and hex-vandalized walls that read brightly colored profanity in their wake.

His first instinct, one that he had acted on, was to dock 200 points from Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley, each. Minerva had given him a dirty look over it, but he reminded her it wouldn't matter and that her House would more than make those points back the minute that Mr. Potter existed in Dumbledore's vicinity for more than a minute. Minerva actually had the gall to look hurt when he said that. But it forced him to think that maybe the row of the day wasn't Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley's fault for once.

Which was why he was here, tuning out Dumbledore's droning on and on about understanding, compassion, sensitivity toward different cultures, and other rubbish that a knife between the ribs on the tube tended to put out of one's head, whilst scanning the crowd of students with his occlumency. It was then that he caught wind of something bright blue from the Gryffindor table.

Hermione_Granger.exe has encountered a fatal error and stopped working. Would you like to restart? Y/N

No, no, she couldn't have. The Silly Girl was a muggleborn and clueless. It took decades to learn the the full breadth of derogatory language of the magical world. Severus himself had been an exception, he knew that. The sheer volume of knowledge on that front that had come from friendship with Lucius - who was both taught how to talk by, and inherited his sense of humor from, Abraxas Malfoy - and even he was reportedly rather selective about the company that he used that particular slur in front of.

Severus next narrowed his attention to his Goddaughter. Lyra's face betrayed nothing. Every muscle was arranged into the mathematically most appropriate expression possible for the occasion - as expected of Narcissa Black's daughter - but her mind...

Severus quietly pushed past Lyra's fantasies about herself and Mr. Potter in a pool, and found... Lyra's fantasies about graduating heavy with Mr. Potter's child... Lucius was going to have fun this summer.

Then he caught something else. Something from Tweedle-Larger, next to Lyra. The bodyguard was not doing nearly as well as his charge in diverting his mind from their apparent mischief. One interrupted study session becoming a protracted campaign of worming their way into a despised rival's confidence without giving up their identities all in an effort to sabotage a work of mid-teenage mania that she would have forgotten about over the summer. Well, the Silly Girl wouldn't be forgetting this colossal embarrassment. Nearly a dozen paragraphs of pseudo-academic salted nonsense crammed into notes slipped into advanced treatises in the library.

It was the oldest trick in the world, if you want to convince someone that you're on their side but showing them anything of yourself would make your deception obvious, you just held up a proverbial mirror. Jargon that the Silly Girl would likely use, in dead-drops where she would think to check, focused on a cause that she suddenly decided was her lifelong passion, questions of who?, and why?, would never come up.

Fifteen points, times three students was forty-five, minus the one thousand for making every House-Elf in Hogwarts quit in disgust put them down to negative nine-fifty-five, plus the four hundred that he docked from Mr. Weasley & Mr. Weasley that morning put the total points that Lyra and her bodyguards earned at negative five hundred and fifty-five. Plus fifty for dedication, fifty for intelligence, fifty for the valor, and fifty for the cunning demonstrated by each student in order to pull this plan off and get away cleanly put them back into the positives. Double the sum because he felt like it, and twenty more for Lyra being a good goddaughter and embarrassing one of Potter's companions - he could have used her when he was in school - and in the most Slytherin way possible, so another twenty five.

The one hundred and thirty five points weren't going to matter this year, not with the extra thousand points that Dumbledore had awarded Hufflepuff in memory of Cedric Diggory, nor the extra two thousand points that he had awarded to Gryffindor because Harry survived the Dark Lord, nor the extra five hundred points he got on top of it for winning the Triwizard Tournament.

But it felt nice working out next year's Slytherin Starting Advantage now, while things still felt a dash normal.

Severus was not Sybill Trelawny (Merlin be praised) but he had a very good idea what was to come.

---

So, what started off as a laugh about self-important girls making their whole lives about causes they only learned about a week ago ballooned into a 5,975 word novella tracking both Count's and the Wizarding World's descent into inane stupidity just to come up with a way for Hermione to plausibly drop a "Hard K" in connection with her activism.

It was a day and a half of work and an hour and a half of lost sleep, but I covered all of the plot points that I wanted to. Damn it, I still have Malfoid stories to tell based on my own insanity.

I want to write Malfoid finding out that the muggles abuse her beloved and reacting accordingly. Also if there are going to be more genderbends, Count needs help making up Snape nicknames for them.

Do I dare branch out into Sevara territory, and can I do so without turning the entire post into a bunch of France jokes.

Actually, that is how I would write it, Sevara and Lyra being two English women arguing about who is more French (and therefore who is less suitable) for Mr. Potter/Pottah.

I want to start on my ideas but i have to hold forth again on storytelling and writing again.

So that will be that.

 

[AndrewJTalon]

The Burrow's kitchen had gone quiet after the others drifted upstairs. Harry remained at the table with his hands around a mug he had not drunk from, and Molly, who had been wiping the same stretch of counter for longer than the counter required, set the cloth aside and looked at him.

"Lyra was... Very polite," Molly offered. Harry slowly nodded, eyes fixed on the mug.

"She... Really wants to make a good impression... After everything with her father and..." He trailed off. Molly was patient, rummaging about in the cupboard for a moment. Finally, Harry took a deep breath, let it out, and spoke:

"I'm sorry."

"For what, dear?"

The words stuck. He had rehearsed them on the trip to the Burrow over and over, and lost them somewhere between the gate and the door. "I just... That I don't love Ginny."

Molly did not answer at once. The clock on the wall ticked. Outside, a hen complained and was ignored.

"I care about her," Harry said, faster now, as if speed might make the rest less cruel. "Really. She's a good friend. One of the best I've got. But I don't feel that way about her. I haven't for a long time. I know it's... Kind of obvious but... I... I didn't want to say anything but I... I have to tell you."

Molly's look was tempered from years of dealing with children's confessions: Gentle but firm.

"Why?"

He stared at the tea. "You're my family, Mrs. Weasley. All of you are. If I don't marry Ginny, then we aren't a real family anymore. That's what I've been telling myself. When... When I marry Lyra, where does that leave us?"

Molly crossed the kitchen before he had finished. She drew him in with both arms, one hand firm between his shoulder blades, the other at the back of his head, and held him the way she held all her children when the world had been too large for them. He was taller than he had been at twelve. It did not matter.

"First," she said, against his hair, "call me Molly. And second, it would leave us exactly where we are. Family. Harry, you are my son in everything but blood. Do you honestly believe that changes if you are not my son-in-law?"

His hands had found the back of her cardigan. "Are you sure?"

"Completely." She did not loosen her hold. "All I have ever wanted is for you to be happy. There is no sense in marrying someone you do not love. It would not be fair to you, it would not be fair to Ginny, and it would not be fair to the rest of us. You deserve to be happy. Truly happy. Whoever that is with."

Something in him gave way. He bent into her shoulder and cried the way he had not allowed himself to cry in the hospital wing or at the funerals or in the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place, and Molly stayed where she was, one hand moving slowly over his hair, doing what she had always done best.

 

[digcat]

.So that will be that.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely loved it.

 

[SamuelAtomizer]

... Am I stupid? I thought Galfoy was Gay Malfoy?

 

[dwennon]

PACK UP YOUR SHIT,

KNIFE-EARS.

YOU'RE FIRED!

Click to shrink...

Hermione_Granger.exe has encountered a fatal error and stopped working. Would you like to restart? Y/N

Click to shrink...

Well, she fucked up. And I don't feel much pity towards her in this case. She could've stopped any time and couldn't help herself.

"Completely." She did not loosen her hold. "All I have ever wanted is for you to be happy. There is no sense in marrying someone you do not love. It would not be fair to you, it would not be fair to Ginny, and it would not be fair to the rest of us. You deserve to be happy. Truly happy. Whoever that is with."

Something in him gave way. He bent into her shoulder and cried the way he had not allowed himself to cry in the hospital wing or at the funerals or in the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place, and Molly stayed where she was, one hand moving slowly over his hair, doing what she had always done best.

Click to shrink...

It's nice to see something like this, especially after all of the years of bashing.

 

[digcat]

.It's nice to see something like this, especially after all of the years of bashing.

Click to shrink...

Yes that got old long ago and it's still going.

 

[Sub[0]]

... Am I stupid? I thought Galfoy was Gay Malfoy?

Click to shrink...

Galfoy as in Gyaru Malfoid

 

[Aleh]

... Am I stupid? I thought Galfoy was Gay Malfoy?

Click to shrink...

That'd be "Gayfoy."

Galfoy = "Gal Malfoy."

 

[CountvonBarnOwl]

Damn now when we really think about it

Female Malfoy really makes the series better, like the Male version looks incomplete

I am really interested on how it would affect real world, like if HP was always written with Malfoid then I feel there would be alot more romance and more enemies to lovers examples in Pop Culture for kids and teen books as well, much more than we have. We wont just have long term friendship but slowburn romance as well

Click to shrink...

Malfoid solves two big problems that the story of Harry Potter has.

Number 1 is that the whole message that they try to go for is undercut by the whole 'except for when the right kinds of people do it.' Caveat that both the first book and the whole story itself seem to end on.

Number 2 is that Draco, and all of the other male characters for that matter, act like prepubescent girls to one degree or another throughout the whole series.

Which for 1 and 2 is perfectly fine, they're still kids, but once the word for your age starts having the "-teen" hormonal changes have usually commenced, there is a bit of a step-up in expectations for your maturity and judgment (not by much, God knows I was a fucking idiot as a teenager, and anyone who doesn't tell you the same is lying to your face) and the neurochemical and physiological effects of there being two different sexes start becoming more noticeably visible, and the default expectation that you base 99.95% of your day-to-day interpersonal interactions around unless you are in college. It is as if every one of those alleged men is, deep down, the daughter of a rich professional or old-money patrician who realized too late in life that acting entirely on emotion and initial impulse is only a viable lifestyle choice when you have daddy's money as a cushion, that they have neither accomplished, nor created anything that is either wholly their own or wholly worthwhile, and that being sad about it and having a pity-party for yourself until somebody else comes along, changes and cleans up after you, and tells you that everything is alright, and that it is not actually your fault is a proper substitute for trying to fix your mistake or at the very least, admitting that you fucked up and trying again.

If I saw a guy in what? high school? acting that much like a girl under 12 in 2026, my first thought would be that he dates AI.

So that addresses the quote below. They do all come off as female, and I will go one step further and say that they come they also come off as possessing a worryingly narrow and specific psychological profile and background at that. Ever wonder why so many middle-aged men and women nowadays act like girls under 14? They grew up thinking this was an acceptable way to live in the real world.

Excellent, excellent, hahahaha! I look forward to more!

Though honestly, I do enjoy stories where more than Malfoy is genderbent. Yes I love the wholesomeness of Harry/Malfoid but what can I say? I grew up on silly anime harem shows.

Plus, the way Rowling wrote, most of the cast comes off as female in many ways, Harry himself. Shy Tomboy Ronnie, Big Sister Star Cedrica, and of course, Goth Dommy Mommy Snape are all rather appealing.

And Hermione as the flat nerd Harry doesn't notice holds here, too.

Click to shrink...

But where had I been? Oh yeah.

There were two problems.

One was the fact that grown men act like little girls and receive about as much consequences for doing so as the same.

The other was what I call 'The Caveat.'

I can't be the only one who noticed it.

You might have noticed how I lean into it in my own writings. The way that all of the old Pureblood families call Avada Kedavra 'Old Reliable.'

It comes from a hilarious fanfic I read called Seventh Horcrux. The plot of which being that when Voldemort makes a Horcrux, the piece of his soul that he attaches to an object retains his memories and personality up to that point. So, he basically Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Vs the memories and personality of Voldemort at age 55 onto baby Harry. So Harry grows up believing that he is Tom Riddle - he's not. But that doesn't stop him from using Voldie's favorite spell. It is his first response to seeing Quirrell by the Mirror of Erised.

And his duel with Voldemort in the graveyard begins as follows:

(We bowed, raised our wands, and began. "Avada Kedavra!"

The following fight can best be described as very green.) - Seventh Horcrux by EmeraldAshes - Chapter 9. Retrieved from AO3, October 11, 2026.

But I digress.

The big, big, big problem is that for all of her fine, bold talk about open-mindedness, in Rowling's world whether you're a good guy or a bad guy is determined by what a hat tells you when you're 11. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw = Good, Slytherin = Bad. Sure, she tries, and she tries very hard to say otherwise, and to say that she had said otherwise specifically on both the Doylist and Watsonian levels. Because when somebody tells us one thing and shows us another we apply Carl Jung.

"If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences—and infer the motivation." - C.G. Jung

In other words, if what someone says and what someone does don't match, or don't add up. Then it is reasonable to assume or suppose that either they did not mean what they said, or that they were lying.

We are told, early on that Slytherin only ever wins because of Snape's blatant favoritism. But then Dumbledore demonstrates that same blatant favoritism at the end of the book toward the Gryffindors in the feast hall. That is why the Dumbledore giving points out willy-nilly meme took off.

"Harry, Colin Creevey is a ghost now because of your tom-fuckery. To help you understand the severity of your decisions, I will only award Gryffindor with fifty points." (Two points to whoever can guess what greentext I am referencing.)

So everything that Rowling tried to teach the kids comes with an implied 'But it is okay if the right sort of people (we) do it.'

Because to reconcile what Rowling keeps saying is wrong with the fact that the people that she shows and tells us are in the right do it and profit from doing it because they did exactly what she told us not to do means that what she really must have wanted us to take away from her stories is that the action itself isn't morally wrong, it is the sort of person who benefits from the action that determines moral value.

So two people can do the exact same thing thing, under the exact same circumstances, and for the exact same reasons. But if S does it to G then it is wrong because S was the one to gain at G's expense and S is evil (as determined by some demographic sorting mechanism), but if G does the exact same thing to S under the exact same circumstances and for the exact same reasons, it is right. Because G is the good one.

You can kind of see how this lesson that underpins all others and countermands all others that would disagree with it both governs the Wizarding World (at least that which I recall of it) and created the mentality of the average BlueSky user.

Those of you who've had "I'M EMPATHETIC!" screamed at you, or threatened you with physical violence, on a college quad by someone with questionable hairstyle choices and even more questionable health and lifestyle choices, and is trying for an ESG degree, because you did not sufficiently grovel or inflate their ego over the course of a conversation know broadly what sort of person I am talking about.

But that is why I write the all of the Purebloods/Slytherins as unapologetic users of the Unforgivables. The mindset at play here that since no matter what you say or do, no matter what choices you make in your personal (as opposed to your political) life, and no matter how much the rent or the property taxes and the utility bills eat into your paycheck, the mud and the halfbloods are going to think you're some rich, racist agent of Voldemort, since you're going to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb anyway, why not become one for real?

There are two types of evil person.

The first is the Satanic, or Archetypal evil. This is a person who first and foremost hates their own impotence. Hates their own lack of success. Somebody whose life is without any real joy or meaning, and who tries to imitate those things, or at least try to lay claim to being just as valid as the people who have those things by tearing down others.

Can you tell what the first assumption that I make about a person who gets upset that I called Malfoid Malfoid is?

Number two is the exact opposite of that. #2 is intelligent, driven, competent, happy with him or herself. Somebody who knows exactly who he or she is, and who is perfectly at peace with that. It is just that his or her desires, goals, drive, and will all tend toward wrongdoing. #2 already has the success, the happiness, and the meaning bits down. It is just that their list of goals involves: getting drunk, shirking their duties, getting drunk again, cheating on their spouses, going AWOL to find a safe place to hide until the shooting stops, cheating at cards, having another gallop with somebody else's spouse, premeditated murder, scamming a provincial government out of tax revenue and billing them for it, doing their jobs lazily and imprecisely such that they will need to be done again so they can get paid twice, and so on...

Draco Malfoy in theory, stands in the position of an Arch-Cad who personifies what it means to be in category two.

But, I've turned this into enough of a Count diatribe on writing, and it is cutting into Payback War time, so to actually get to the point, I was watching a video,

Spoiler: This one to be exact.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkZ_RIP0XOs

about Malfoid.

It touches on a lot of the above points, and points out that, by having Malfoid as a bratty tsundere that grows to romantically love Harry in the way that she basically already acts like she would - were she a girl in form as well as function - a lot of the problems that came up as we sat with the writing would be non-issues.

---

Also, I realized that I did not have Snape come up with a pejorative nickname for Trelwany in my last, well, it was a bit more than a snippet.

So far I have:

Bottlecaps - a reference to the thickness of her glasses
The Fraud - because I don't recall how many people in the story actually believe Sybill isn't just snorting the tea leaves. - There's an idea for another snippet, Trelawny is the professor who hands out drugs in class, not Hagrid, Snape, or Sprout.

Sybill: "Now class, once you powder the crystals, and align them correctly, the symmetry and spacing of your lines will enable them to resonate with the lunar phase, so when you snort one the universe will sing the shape of things yet to pass into your brain."

Harry: "KHAW. Tight, tight, tight, yeah! Crystals, moon, whatever, Prof, just keep bringing me that... Also, Barty Crouch Junior is going to fake his death and try to get Cedric Diggory and I killed."

Above: A successful divinations class.

The Addict - From the above.
Cassandra - In case he actually believes her.
Sillier Girl - Funny because Hermione (who thinks Sybill is a quack) gets caught in the splash zone.

Floor's open.

 

[digcat]

Book Hermione

Spoiler

 

[AndrewJTalon]

---

So, what started off as a laugh about self-important girls making their whole lives about causes they only learned about a week ago ballooned into a 5,975 word novella tracking both Count's and the Wizarding World's descent into inane stupidity just to come up with a way for Hermione to plausibly drop a "Hard K" in connection with her activism.

It was a day and a half of work and an hour and a half of lost sleep, but I covered all of the plot points that I wanted to. Damn it, I still have Malfoid stories to tell based on my own insanity.

I want to write Malfoid finding out that the muggles abuse her beloved and reacting accordingly. Also if there are going to be more genderbends, Count needs help making up Snape nicknames for them.

Do I dare branch out into Sevara territory, and can I do so without turning the entire post into a bunch of France jokes.

Actually, that is how I would write it, Sevara and Lyra being two English women arguing about who is more French (and therefore who is less suitable) for Mr. Potter/Pottah.

I want to start on my ideas but i have to hold forth again on storytelling and writing again.

So that will be that.

Click to shrink...

Loved it. You have a talent for making the mundane seem extraordinary with your prose and the ridiculous even moreso. Thank you for this post.

I will admit I'm a bit torn. On one hand, Book!Hermione could be annoying but she grew into a decent human being.

On the other, Emma fucking Watson.

You made the right choice.

 

[krahe]

Thinking about it, after the War, Lucious, genderswapped or not, will be 'that racist grandparent'

"You filthy mudblood!"
"Excellent, Lili! Now, again and with more bite." Lucious coos with a delighted clap.

 

[celsiussy]

The genuinely baffling popularity Hermione enjoys can be boiled down to three things:

1) Emma Watson. Even then, she's more beautiful in the masculine 'girlboss' type of way that appeals to women than the neotenous way that appeals to men.

2) Rowling's insanely causally and morally disjointed writing, where the romantic issues can largely be boiled down to the old 'not like the other girls' and Rowling's constant, "I love Ron--no, I hate Ron--no, Ron is dumb and can suck it--men are stupid neanderthals--no, maybe I love Ron--actually, he can die in a car crash--" ad infinitum.

3) Steve Kloves, the screenwriter for the films, being a Hermione simp. Perhaps the only Hermione simp at a time when Ron was the most popular character bar none, which Rowling disliked. You can tell because even in the books he becomes increasingly more of a punching bag.

That's literally it. As much as I love the wrecking ball called Malfoid and think she's a wonder of the digital world, the building called 'Harry Potter franchise' was kinda made out of cardboard and was begging for a stiff breeze to knock it over.

 

[Reman Septim]

It is as if every one of those alleged men is, deep down, the daughter of a rich professional or old-money patrician who realized too late in life that acting entirely on emotion and initial impulse is only a viable lifestyle choice when you have daddy's money as a cushion, that they have neither accomplished, nor created anything that is either wholly their own or wholly worthwhile, and that being sad about it and having a pity-party for yourself until somebody else comes along, changes and cleans up after you, and tells you that everything is alright, and that it is not actually your fault is a proper substitute for trying to fix your mistake or at the very least, admitting that you fucked up and trying again.

Click to shrink...

I think this is what actually happened to James and Sirius after the Levicorpus prank on Severus.