we must unite inside her walls or we'll crumble from within
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overemotional: in defense of cho chang by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
27 Jun 2014
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Summary
Cho cried and she survived Pansy Parkinson's cruel jabs about a dead boy. She wept and she passed all her classes, kept up with Quidditch, watched fairweather friends scatter in the cold wind. She got very good at wordlessly summoning tissues and she joined the DA against her parents' wishes.
They had told her to behave, begged her, ordered her, as the threatening darknesses of the world clung close even inside Hogwarts, and Cho walked out to the little pub in Hogsmeade and wrote her name down on Hermione's list.
I hope someone in the DA told Cho that she ought to have been in Gryffindor.
I hope she laughed at them, hard.
Integrity. Truth. Honor. Dedication. These were the tenets of her House, of the blue and the bronze, the eagle called raven (called nerd, called stuck-up, called so many things that were not their names). Bravery was only one way to be a hero.
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naive: in defense of hannah abbott by dirgewithoutmusic for verbalpowers
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
07 Aug 2014
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When Voldemort had Cedric Diggory killed, he said this: kill the spare.
Hannah heard it whispered in the hallways, too, right behind "sheep" and "not smart/not brave/not cunning" and simply "Puff." Potions with Snape was always a treat. He hated Harry Potter, but the black and yellow earned his disdain. Even Flitwick sometimes sighed when Justin Finch-Fletchley just couldn't quite figure out a charm.
And Hannah, in her quiet, accustomed, burning way, fumed.
We are not spare parts.
You think we're your cast offs. You think we're the kids no other House wanted to take.
Well, here's a clue for you, suckers. This is a story about choice. The wand chooses the wizard but the wizard chooses the House. When that Hat goes on your head, it doesn't forbid you things, it offers them to you.
We are not your castoffs. We're just the kids who didn't choose you.
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silly: in defense of parvati patil (in memory of lavender brown) by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
02 Sep 2014
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The students of Dumbledore’s Army had many badges. A gold coin that called them first to lessons and then to war. Scar tissue that ran across the back of many of their hands. I must not tell lies.
Another: the sound of clacking footsteps on stone sent each and every one of them scattering, even years after. The only people bold enough to walk loudly were not safe.
Parvati went out on the anniversary of not the battle but the day she left Gryffindor Tower for the DA and the Room of Requirement. She bought a pair of heels, their red as loud as the sound they made on hard floors.
Dennis Creevey sent her Muggle sneakers for Christmas and she wore those when she needed to be stealthy (scuffed purple and white peeking out from beneath her robes) but she wore the heels on office days, interrogations, on nights out, because she wanted to be unafraid, because she wanted to be the scariest thing in the room.
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lost: in defense of ginny weasley by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
03 Sep 2014
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Or were they something else entirely, this trio who was not golden? They were the unchosen three: the discarded Horcrux and the last Weasley; the brave, broken backup Boy Who Lived; the loony girl who lost her shoes and had more friends in thestrals than in her common room.
Ginny rallied an army in the Room of Requirement with her mother’s knack for raised voices, Riddle’s smooth words, Harry’s agitated passion, and wondered if she was the hero of this story.
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ugly: in defense of pansy parkinson by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
20 Sep 2014
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“Why are you here?” Parvati asked Pansy once. People asked her a lot, when they found her in Flourish and Blotts, or at work on the Prophet. Their eyes raked her, looking for green, for silver, for venom. Sometimes she'd smile back and let them see the danger.
"Because I'm not fifteen anymore," said Pansy. "God, do you know what precious Potter Sr. got up to at school, the bully? But boys get to grow up to be men, you see, and us girls just grow up to be bitches."
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turncoat: in defense of andromeda tonks nee black by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
04 Oct 2014
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When her little cousin Sirius got disowned too, years later, Andromeda sent him a fruit basket.
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wallflower: in defense of susan bones by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
18 Oct 2014
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Summary
When she was small, Susie’s aunt Amelia had taken her to work whenever her parents asked her to babysit. She toddled around her office. When Susie was older, she got to sit under her aunt's desk in court and listen to her give out rulings, verdicts, decrees.
There was tradition there, scripts and structure, and Susie had felt herself lean into them, comforted, strengthened. Over the years, she saw so many ways the system could be corrupted. Umbridge used it like a blunt weapon and blood purists had snuck into it for years like burrowing termites, undermining the foundations, making it their own home.
When Susan Bones was twenty-three she would look across her steaming mug and the Ministry breakroom table, and see Hermione aching to burn it all down to ashes. Susan wanted to scour it to its roots, instead, wear it down to its rebar and concrete, and then rebuild from the old, worn foundations on up.
“Your parents died for you,” Susie told Harry Potter once. “My aunt died for this. Now either shut up and get me a fresh cup of coffee or try to drag me out of here before I finish this.”
But that was a war away. That was a childhood away from now.
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loony: in defense of luna lovegood by dirgewithoutmusic
Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
20 Dec 2014
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Summary
Sometimes your spells will go bad. She knew that.
Luna mounted the thestral to the Department of Mysteries. She put her name down for Dumbledore's Army. When they called her brave she smiled like she knew things that they didn't.
She knew what she was getting into. She knew what she was doing. She drifted because she'd decided to drift, because she thought the best way to live on this earth was to tread softly. No matter how much she liked wrapping herself in whimsy, this was not a whim. It was a choice.
When Harry was grieving Sirius, she took his hand. "Things have a way of coming back to you," she said, with no blankets to hide under, with no skipping rocks to hold in cold hands, to hurl away when they felt like they were holding her down.
Luna had loss living in the pit of her stomach, yes and always, but she was the only one who got to decide what to do with that. She went out to visit the thestrals with strips of steak in her bag and loved the way their sloping wings looked against the sky.
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