Two Questions On The Girls And Women Of The Parlor: First, How Much Do They Know About What Happened

Two questions on the girls and women of the Parlor: First, how much do they know about what happened during the early books of Harry Potter? What does Theodora think happened to Quirrell, and just what was he trying to steal, for example. Second, will we ever see Harry interact with them after the relationship goes public?

That’s an interesting question. Because I seem to recall Dumbledore saying something to Harry like, what happened with Quirrell is a complete secret, so naturally everyone knows. So my take from that is that everyone knows about Voldemort being in the back of Quirrell’s head? I doubt anyone knew about the philosopher’s stone, really. And to judge from everyone’s reactions in the fifth book when Harry starts smart-mouthing Umbridge over Quirrell being an alright teacher except for having VOLDEMORT in the back of his head, I wonder if people ever really believed it? Or if they just kind of wrote it off? I think even the idea of Voldemort was so scary and the idea of war so foreign to most of these kids, it was easier to try to forget. Or assume it was an exaggeration.

As for Theodora, who would have been a fourth year at the time, I think she would be less likely to brush off the information as rumor. Like most things, she quietly collected it, thought about what it might mean for her and her future, and then carried on, ears always open for more. The fight against Voldemort wasn’t hers, but a thing to be navigated. Men could carry on destroying each other to their heart’s content as far as she was concerned.

Harry will get a chance to interact with the former Parlor girls. Though more Antonia than Theodora. Though now that you’ve put it in my head the idea is tantalizing! Especially if she tried to give Ginny another little ‘test’ of hers and Harry lost his shite over someone talking to her that way. Ha. That would be fun. As for Astoria…yes. Meaning Draco will more than likely drift back into Harry’s sphere. That will be fun. 

Ravenclaw: Are you two fighting ot flirting?

Slytherin and Gryffindor: Yes

Hi Annerb! Thanks for the Lucky series, and all your other Slytherin!Ginny work, which has been a delight and also helped me understand some things about myself. You mentioned using D/D alignment charts for Hogwarts houses. Could you please expand a bit on that, if that's alright?

Okay, so the D&D alignment charts have two main axes: lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/neutral/evil. (And full disclosure up front that I am not an expert at this at all. I just used it as guidelines and a starting point to help me think about the houses and formulate my general approach for writing The Changeling.)

Let’s look at the first. We can break it down very simplistically to these two ideas:

Lawful – creatures of habit Chaotic – unpredictable

Hufflepuffs and Slytherin are both creatures of habit, more tied to convention, tradition, and law. Gryffindors and Ravenclaw are not bound by tradition, and can be unpredictable, they are more likely to follow their whims.

Now, the second set is where things got a bit more sticky: good versus evil. Which I will admit, I refused to put any house in evil. That was kind of the whole point of The Changeling. I guess for me, individual action will be what puts someone in the evil category. But I still looked at Good versus Neutral.

Good – altruism, respect for all life, personal sacrifice for greater good Neutral – “have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.” (from this wiki)

To me, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindor both fall into ‘good.’ They put altruism above all things and support of ‘the good’ as a broad concept. Ravenclaw and Slytherin, while not being evil or against ‘good,’ do not necessarily see the same ‘greater good’ that the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff might. Their commitment is shaped by something else, in this case, personal relationships or webs of exchange. (Though I might argue that Ravenclaw are shaped by pursuit of knowledge/understanding above all else.) They are both more driven by ambition than altruism.

So we end up with:

Hufflepuff – lawful good (though you might be able to argue neutral good, altruism above law)

Gryffindor – chaotic good

Ravenclaw – chaotic neutral

Slytherin – lawful neutral

What I love with this, ultimately, is that some of the houses share an element in common, they are just shaped slightly different by their other alignment. Such as, Hufflepuff and Gryffindors both focus on the greater good, but Hufflepuffs do it through the lens of law and tradition and stability, while Gryffindors approach it through chaotic disregard for any tradition or law that gets in their way. Similarly, Hufflepuff and Slytherin are both bound by tradition and law, but Hufflepuff focuses on the greater good, while Slytherin focuses on the relationships that bind people together (whether blood or other connection).

But then you have the houses aligned to opposite corners from each other. Like with Slytherin and Gryffindor, and you can almost see how they speak a different language entirely. To the Slytherin, the Gryffindor are chaotic and have no respect for tradition and convention and are completely out of control, and to the Gryffindor, Slytherin are staid and boring and have giant sticks up their arses. To a Gryffindor, they only see Slytherin not supporting their vision of the greater good, and miss the web of relationships that ground their morality, which might lend itself towards a view of them as ‘evil’. And for a Slytherin, this Gryffindor ‘friend to all’ might seem like a lack of conviction, a caprice that shows no true deep forging of any kind of true relationship ties. They seem like giant faking hypocrites.

You also have Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw similarly oriented. To a Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff seems to lack imagination, interests, or deep commitments. To Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw are unpredictable and cold, and frankly frightening.

Ultimately when writing these houses, it’s realizing that none of them are wrong, they just view the world through different lenses. But also understanding how much perception plays into the ways these houses interact. How much they are all primed to misunderstand each other. But also how much they are set up to help each other. This really is where my understanding of what a unified DA could be in the final year of the war. And helped guide me for all the interactions between the houses.

(As a side note for the Armistice Series, I think a great example of perceptions being shaped by alignments is from in my head we do everything right, specifically how Harry perceived Ginny’s actions during her inquiry. He saw them as self-sacrifice for the greater good (his own alignment), whereas having been in Ginny’s head during the events, we know she wasn’t thinking about the greater good or noble self-sacrifice. She wasn’t thinking about what was right and good, she was thinking about the DA/her friends (her in-group), and what she was not willing to let them be subjected to. How she would use law and convention to protect herself and them as well. She never once was like “Oh, I’ll just let myself get chucked in jail to prove a point.” But that is exactly what Harry sees (and what he would probably do). It’s a fun little look into the different ways they approach things, and how it can lead to misunderstandings sometimes, but also most importantly that their outcomes are aligned, even if their approaches are not.)

🤭

I'm re-reading The Changeling (for the umpteenth time, no less) and I'm once again struck by your particular take on Occlumency and Legilimency. Is this something you can talk more about? I'm interested to hear how you came about it since it's more or less unique when compared to other fics I've read. Also, will we see Ginny using her skills again in the Armistice series?

I honestly hadn’t seen much about Occlumency or Legilimency other than what little we see in the books, so I had a lot of room to come up with my own ideas. (Even Fantastic Beasts hadn’t come out yet, Queenie’s Legilimency clearly very different from how I portrayed it.) It seemed to me that there were only three people in canon that we saw or suspected had these skills–Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort. That’s quite a group. So I thought about those people and I thought about how they had to be skills with a high cost or difficulty or why wouldn’t everyone want to be able to read minds? Also, we saw how much Harry struggled with Occlumency, and I think that wasn’t all just because Snape was a horrid teacher. Harry is a pretty open, impulsive person over all, and I don’t really see him ever mastering shielding his thoughts and emotions. His emotions are what drive him, for better or worse.

While Voldemort is just straight up evil and wouldn’t care about invading people’s trust or privacy, Snape was rather more protective in his use of the skills, basically, he was most concerned with saving his own ass. I find Dumbledore’s rather casual use of it throughout the books more interesting. If every time Harry thinks it feels like Dumbledore can see into him is actually Dumbledore using Legilimency, that’s quite a lot. I think it fits with Dumbledore’s characterization though. He’s someone who honestly believes in the greater good, just as much as an adult as he did as a young man with Grindelwald. And his willingness to put the greater good first is his greatest Achilles Heel, in my opinion. He has a good heart and blind spots a mile wide. And I think that just like a level of detachment from the individual pieces is required to be a good mastermind (for him to be willing to raise Harry knowing that more than likely he’ll have to die to serve the greater good), Legilimency requires that sort of detachment too. Can you imagine seeing inside people and being empathetic? It would drive you crazy. I think Dumbledore’s use of Legilimency fits in with his tendency to forget the human in the individual. He saw them as pieces with potential and often just seemed to hope for the best.

As for Ginny, she was already inclined toward Occlumency from her experience with Tom. She knows what it’s like to be a stranger in your own head. And she has the drive to never leave herself that vulnerable again. But I also wanted room to explore that our world often defaults to one way of viewing an approaching things, usually based on men’s views and histories. So I wanted there to be room for her to be different than Snape, but also realize that the one answer you are given in school is usually an incomplete one. Part of growing up is realizing how much of a constructed narrative you’ve been living in. So while building defensible barriers seemed a stereotypically masculine approach, I thought about how women are often forced to hide in plain sight, aren’t often given the right to openly fight and resist, and how blunt defense is not the only way to undermine. So the idea that Ginny might use her experience of compartmentalization to create an image of herself to please the intruder…that it might not even occur to the outsider to look for anything deeper, having had their assumptions so well fulfilled, well, isn’t that what women are trained to do all the time? To please and become a sight and an experience for others, while our true selves are hidden out of sight? There’s a cost though. Women often function as strangers to themselves. And they are never truly alone. Always performing. Even when completely alone.

As for Legilimency, again, I thought it had to have a high cost or people would just do it left and right, wouldn’t they? And I thought about what that cost would be. I like the idea that you can take, but you have to keep it. So, maybe you steal that bit of information from someone, but you also have to carry around their fears and wants and you will never be free of it. Dumbledore dealt with that by detaching himself, floating far above. Snape dealt with that by dehumanizing the people he used it on. If they were things, their feelings don’t matter. Ginny, again, subverting gender stereotypes, does neither. Which is fortunate, because I think she is in far too much danger of becoming the thing she fears (Tom) if she did that. Her tendency to shut down her emotions is when things fall apart the most for her. So Ginny’s refusal to dehumanize the people she takes from gives her a greater burden, but it keeps her human too. In fact, humanizing people is how she deals with it. But it’s also why she never uses it unless she absolutely has to.

As for her use of these things in the Armistice Series, I will say that she is rarely if ever not using Occlumency on some level (which is as much of a problem as it sounds like). She will consciously use Occlumency again. But we will only see her use Legilimency as a last resort. I don’t see that happening right away. But I doubt Harry will ever stay out of trouble long enough for her not to find it useful at some point. :)

I'm really surprised they've never done a body switching episode!!! that's a cartoon staple 🤌