In The Changeling, What Was It That Made The Hat Decide Slytherin Over Gryffindor? Do You Think It Was

In the changeling, what was it that made the hat decide Slytherin over Gryffindor? Do you think it was purely ginny and what being in Slytherin house would bring out in her and how necessary it would be, or did it sense the part of Voldemort’s soul she possessed like it did in Harry and what that might turn her into?

I made a very conscious decision to not have Ginny write or interact with the diary until after her sorting. I wanted to sorting to be about her, no about what would happen to her. Even more, I did want it woven in that the hat sorted her not just for who she could become, not just for her cunning and her ambition and ability to be ruthless, but what Hogwarts needed. The hat showed a lot of prescience throughout the books, and I think it’s totally reasonable to assert that the hat suspected troubled times were coming--Voldemort just having made an attempt to get back in his body a few months before, Harry Potter being at the school. The hat, having seen generation after generation go by, would know how essential unity would be to the survival of Hogwarts and the students within. I like to think Ginny’s sorting wasn’t out of character, but it was also a careful gambit on the part of the hat. It couldn’t know who she would become, but her potential, oh yes, that is where the hat’s strength lies. And what a choice it would become. 

Ykw Luke being Annabeth’s evil ex in mortal aus is so overdone.

He's her loser older brother. He only hangs out with the same 4-5 people despite half his college fancying him. He's the designated driver for Percy and Annabeth’s dates. He takes fencing classes. Thalia beat him to the shovel talk and he still holds a grudge to this day.

erm hi

I noticed the armistice series takes a lot of stuff from the movies as canon -- bellatrix bursting, hermione having mudblood scratched into her arm, etc. is your writing set in the movies or the books (thinking about differences like Neville vs Dobby giving harry gillyweed, pettigrew strangling himself, etc.)? Love your writing!

It’s pretty much set in the books, but occasionally things I liked in the movies, or just visuals from the movies (as I tend to be a very visual writer, seeing things happen in my head) showed up in the series too. But for major events, definitely from the books. (Such as Harry actually being in disguise at Bill and Fleur’s wedding and Voldemort not turning into weird, flaky ashes.)

do you think andromeda was a parlor girl?

I’ve always had it in my mind that Narcissa was a parlor girl. Then I got this ask and really started thinking about it. And I realized, yes, of course Andromeda was a parlor girl. And clearly Bellatrix wasn’t. Bellatrix never needed anyone but herself. She didn’t always know what she wanted, but she knew how to get it. From her parents, from the school, from the people around her and under her. She didn’t need sisters. She already had two,and while they had their uses, more would only get in the way. She had no interest in being beholden to anyone. (At least until the day she met a manwith powers she wanted, wanted, wanted and feared in equal measure.)

Andromeda yearned. Always had from a young age. And even when she wasn’t quite sure what it was she needed, she knew want. For a while she even let herself think that maybe Ted was what she wanted—the source and solution. But he was only a symptom, a point along the path that she truly wanted-escape. Without the sisterhood, she wasn’t sure she ever would have had the courage to take that step, to bind her life to Ted and leave everything else behind. (Only Ted ever felt like home, Ted and a cozy parlor tucked deep into the lowest spaces of Hogwarts. She loses both, in the end.) 

But like a proper Slytherin, she always knew what theultimate cost would be—for love, for her own choice, for freedom.

Of course in the end, she lost more than parents andsisters. She paid dearly for that taste of freedom and self-definition. She paid it and lived it and wouldn’t change it. There was no point in hoping for that anyway.

Narcissa was the one who was weak enough to hope. Ambition ran in her veins just as well as her sisters—the Black sisters were raised on ambition. She wasn’t as focused as Bella or as independent as Andromeda, but she still knew she had to mold the world to her vision. There was a moment when that view was broad and boundless, when Andromeda held her hand out and offered an invitation, a membership that could have shaped her world in fathomless ways.

Narcissa accepted, of course, because one never knew where membership could take one and open doors were often more useful than closed ones.

Only Narcissa shut down the possibilities offered by the sisterhood after watching her sister lose everything, get herself ostracized over a boy, a foolish choice. And so she closed her heart against her sister with strange and dangerous ideas, and a sisterhood that frightened her, that did not always know its place, and set her eyes on a path in the middle of her two tumultuous and churning sisters.

Andromeda might have married to escape, but Narcissa married to be exactly where she was. It was her right. To be admired and well cared for and perfectly in balance on top of a world of order and tradition. If the sisterhood taught her anything, it is her right to self-definition.

What her full potential as a sister could have been, no one will ever know. But there was the tiniest glimpse if you paid close enough attention, the moment she looked the Dark Lord in the eye and lied. Lied andremade the entire world in an instant. She made it hers.

my favorite boys are watching the sunset sky 💖