Hi Annerb! Thanks For The Lucky Series, And All Your Other Slytherin!Ginny Work, Which Has Been A Delight

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.)

Is the size of the Parlor in the Changeling (at least in Ginny's fifth year) about what it would be at any given period, or would it's size change based on the number of potential sisters? And as someone not super familiar with harry potter beyond the movies, how big is the population of Slytherin and Hogwarts in general supposed to be (or at least how big do you imagine it in the Changeling/Armistice)?

Well, I would say that The Parlor is not something with a quota to fill or anything. There aren’t a set number of spots to be filled, or a limit as to how many. One of my favorite things to think about in the magical world is that nothing is inert. Even the castle itself is a living being of sorts, something that adapts and changes to the needs of the students living there. Like, imagine all the magic and emotions and experiments all concentrated in that one space for millennia. The castle lives and breathes and adapts, and The Parlor space is no exception. If there were more girls who needed it, it would get bigger. If there was a smaller group of girls for a few years, it would become intimate and perfect for their needs. And since in the fic we saw both the Room of Requirement and The Parlor adapt to Ginny’s needs when she was in hiding her sixth year, allowing her direct access, I think it wouldn’t be completely beyond imagining that if there was a girl in another house that desperately needed it, that maybe other passages would open. Though, in my head, I probably think of the Sorting differently than most. I wonder sometimes if the Sorting is about predicting what the students might need, the possible paths forward for them, rather than an announcement of who they already are fully formed. It’s about who they could be. It’s about what the Sorting might make of them. (But also who they want to be, even if it’s bad for them. Freewill after all.)

As for the overall population of students, I think we are meant to believe that there are ten students in each house, so forty students in each grade, so 280 students. Though, honestly, the idea that there will be twenty boys and twenty girls exactly each year either means there is a larger population of wizarding children and only a specific quota of students get in (which, honestly, when Hagrid says in the first book that Harry’s name has been down for Hogwarts since he was born is a weird statement. If it’s open access, wouldn’t all kids’ names be down for Hogwarts who are magical?). Alternatively, there were five Gryffindor boys and five Gryffindor girls Harry’s year and we all just extrapolated that it must hold true for all other years/houses. Maybe it’s more variable than it appeared.

As for the Changeling verse, I went with the second interpretation (although the first makes more sense to me now, that there is limited admission at Hogwarts, and it allows us to imagine a larger world). Mostly because if Ginny went into Slytherin, are there only four Gryffindor girls her year? Or did she swap with someone? Also, I only gave Ginny three roommates (Bridget, Helena, and Smita). Laziness at that time, probably, but also me side-eyeing the Exactly Forty Magical Children Are Born Each Year In England (And Exactly Half and Half Boys and Girls)!!!

Hinny Alt files? Im going through withdrawals until you post the next chapter and will take any Hinny you can give

Ah ha! Oh, this file. Honestly, you know that this one is? This is the indulgent file where I wrote a ton of alternate scenes for The Changeling and Armistice. Like a bunch of, ‘well, what if Harry and Ginny had gotten together at this point in the story? what would that have looked like?’ What if in the middle of their huge row in the cloister, Harry had given into that urge to just lean over and kiss her? Or, what if in that final scene the night before the trio left for Australia, Harry had just leaned in a little closer and Ginny had thrown all fear aside and kissed him? You know, those kind of things. Here, have one in all it’s half-completed glory. I doubt I’ll ever do anything with these anyway.

To be honest, Ginny still isn’t sure herself why Harry agreed to do this. But watching him with Reiko, the way he looks so comfortable talking about something he clearly loves, it reminds her of the DA. She wonders if maybe Harry is missing it too.

He really is a great teacher. He’s patient and never condescending, and even Reiko seems grudgingly willing to admit that she learned a lot in the short half hour they spend together.

“Thanks, Harry,” Reiko says when they’re done, shaking his hand.

“Sure,” Harry says, smiling at her.

Reiko heads up towards the castle, pausing when Ginny doesn’t immediately follow.

“I’ll catch up with you,” Ginny says, waving her on.

“Sure,” Reiko says, looking between the two of them. “See you later.”

Once Reiko is gone, Ginny turns and smiles at Harry. “That was…really great. Thanks so much for doing this.”

Harry’s staring down at his feet, suddenly looking awkward. “No problem,” he says.

She touches his arm. “Seriously. It means a lot.” On impulse, she leans in and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. She pulls back, giving him an embarrassed smile. “See you later.”

She moves as if to go back up the castle, but his hand on her arm stops her. “Ginny.”

“Yeah?” she asks, turning back to look at him. There’s an expression on his face that inexplicably makes her want to squirm. She forces herself to stand still and wait.

“Hogsmeade,” he blurts.

“What about it?” The first trip is coming up in a few days.

“I thought maybe…”

Ginny leans forward, completely thrown to see Harry quite this flustered. “You thought?”

“You would like to go there. With me.” The words are kind of tumbled together, but she hears them distinctly all the same.

“With you,” she repeats.

He rubs at the back of his head. “Well, uh, yeah.”

“Like…a date?” she asks, just needing to be really clear on exactly what is happening, because her body feels a little funny.

His chin comes up, his shoulders squaring like he’s committing the idea. “Yeah.”

Ginny is so completely thrown by this that she does nothing more than stare at him for a long moment. She can feel her brain stuttering helplessly under the basic thought Harry wants to date me? Harry…likes me?

How has she missed this? How could she possibly have not noticed?

She doesn’t even get to consider her own feelings, because Harry pulls back away from her.

“It’s fine,” he says, giving her a brittle smile. “Forget I asked.”

And then he’s walking away from her.

She considers calling out after him, but honestly has no idea what she would say.

*     *    *

She doesn’t see Harry anywhere the next few days, like he has some secret way of knowing where she is at all times so he can avoid her. It’s disconcerting.

She uses the time to think it all through though, to consider the offer from all angles. To figure out what she would have said if he hadn’t walked off so quickly. It doesn’t take her that long, considering.

And Harry is still nowhere to be found.

Still, strategy has always been one of her strengths, so she settles in to wait.

On Saturday morning, she waits by the gates, stepping out on the path next to Harry as he passes. He nearly stumbles over his feet as he shoots her a comical look of surprise, and she really shouldn’t find that attractive, yet here she is.

“You never let me answer,” she says, as if their conversation has just been picked up after moments rather than days.

“I, uh,” he mumbles, giving Ron and Hermione panicked looks.

Ginny looks at her brother. “Do you think we could have a minute?”

They look at Harry and after a moment, he nods.

They walk off, Ron looking back at the multiple times. Ginny waits until they disappear around the corner.

“Like I said, you never let me answer.”

Harry has recovered himself, looking straight ahead with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “I think your expression spoke for itself,” he says.

“Did it? What exactly did I look like?”

“Appalled.”

“Probably more like…shocked.”

He glances over at her. “Is that better?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t do well with surprises. It takes me a while to,” she gestures at her head, “work things out.”

He frowns.

“I honestly had no idea you thought about me…that way. I’m just Ron’s annoying little sister.”

“You aren’t annoying,” he says. 

She looks at him, amused by his automatic defense of her. “Really?”

He sighs, starting back down the path. “Well, I’m finding you annoying right now, that’s for sure.”

She jogs to catch up, stepping across him, and he has to stumble to a stop to narrowly avoid running into her.

She smiles at him. “You really are just…” She shakes her head, not really able to put this feeling in her chest into words. She thinks she may want to say adorable, but isn’t sure how he’d take that in his current mood.

He blows out a breath. “I guess it’s too much to hope you’d be kind enough to just forget I ever asked.”

“Don’t be stupid, Harry,” she says. “I’m rarely kind.”

With that, she starts down the path, looking back at him and waiting for him to follow.

They walk the rest of the way to the village in silence.

 …

She basically spends the rest of the day near him, talking with Neville and Luna, submitting herself to confused glances from Ron and something almost a little smug from Hermione.

At the end of the day, he walks her back up to the castle. When they near the gates, she turns to him. “This was fun.”

He still looks like has no idea what the hell just happened.

She thinks Harry is maybe one of those people who only gets it when he’s hit over the head with something. So she decides to kiss him. It’s little more than a brush of her lips against the corner of his mouth because he’s kind of tall and hard to reach.

He lets out a small sound of surprise, but she’s pulling back before he can react. He looks stunned, but also pleased, his hand lifting to touch where she kissed him.

“Yes, by the way,” she says back over her shoulder as she walks away.

“What?” he calls after her.

“My answer. It was yes.”

Smiling to herself, she heads back into the castle.

If you have time, I'd love more insight into Harry's thought process related to these lines in "pick it up": "Is that as bad as it looks? he wants to ask. Only the truth is, a large part of him just doesn’t want to know." "He hasn’t really thought about what she meant by everything. Hasn’t particularly wanted to." Do you think his not wanting to know was related to what was going on at that point in time or that it's more on an ongoing thing?

One of the things that has been interesting to play with in the ArmisticeSeries is the ways people approach and react to trauma–both their own and thatof the people around them. Harry and Ginny in particular make a really starkpoint of contrast when it comes to this.

First, when it comes to trauma that they themselves have experienced, theypretty much have the exact opposite reaction. Take, for example, Harry at theForbidden Forest. Just weeks after having to walk into that forest and faceVoldemort, after dying and having one of the most traumatic experiences of hislife, what does he do? He volunteers to help Hagrid go back in there andpossibly track down a giant.

On the edge of the Forest, Harry feels a trickle of coldsweat work its way down his neck, and has to wonder if partly he just wanted toprove that he could. 

–pick it up, chapter 5

That very same chapter, Ginny is faced with going back into the castle whereshe suffered an entire year of trauma, all capped off by losing a brother andfriends and watching people die and nearly dying herself. She tries, but shejust can’t.

“Keep going,” she whispers to herself, thinking of her family in there. Thepeople who need her. Need her to be stronger than this. But, Merlin, there isalso this sharp, hot panic swelling in her chest, the feeling that the stonesthemselves are closing on her and she knows she can’t do it.

She can’t walk in there.

–pick it up, chapter 5

Harry reacts to his personal trauma by almost immediately throwing himselfback into those places and situations, almost as if to prove to himself thathe’s not scared, that he is still brave. Think about the Boggarts, how horriblythey affected him. But his first reaction was to get training to be able todefeat them or hold them off and not let them affect him anymore. This is a guywho runs towards danger. Ginny, on the other hand, is more likely to avoid thethings that have traumatized her. She takes space and time and has to processeverything before she can possibly face the castle again, and even then, ittakes her months to reconcile with it—or just find a way to cope.

Even their job choices in Armistice reflects this. Harry decides on theDepartment of Mysteries—a place that is home to arguably some of his mosttraumatic experiences—fighting Death Eaters, nearly getting his friends killed,and watching Sirius dying.

Down on the ninth floor, Harry steps out into the dark hall. He eyes thestairwell that he knows from far too much personal experience leads down to thedungeon courtrooms used by the Wizengamot.

But he isn’t going to think about that today.

Unfortunately the long dark hallway ahead of him holds more troublingmemories. His throat is thick with it for a moment, that frantic night runningdown the hallways, rushing off to save Sirius, wondering if he’s managed todamn his friends with his stupid mistake. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and the otherswith Death Eater wands at their throats.

It’s possible this was a really terrible idea.

–in my head we do everythingright, chapter 5

Yet, Harry still does it. And part of that is proving that he can. He’s bigger than his traumas. (And,yes, the discussion of healthy processing of trauma is an entirely differentcan of worms.)

Ginny, despite having a highly developed set of skills that might set her upwith a lot of varying careers where she could make real impact, chooses insteadto distance herself from those things she associated with her personal trauma.She chooses Quidditch. Specifically because it’s safe.

Ginny catches her fingers, squeezing tight. “It’s okay. It’s fine. It’s allbehind me now. It’s over.” The DA, the things she learned and did. It’s alldone. Over. And she doesn’t have to find some way to use all that.

She can just be safe.

–in my head we do everything right, chapter 5

Now what is interesting is the flip side of this, how the two of them dealwith the trauma of others around them. The books spend a lot of time on thefact that in many ways love is Harry’s greatest strength, both the love peoplehave felt for him (Lily) and the general goodness and protectiveness he feelsfor people around him, what a good heart he has. Not to mention his willingnessto sacrifice himself for others—which Dumbledore might call an act of love,just like Lily’s. What is interesting though, is that Harry is not anempathetic person. That is not to say that he doesn’t care about people. He iswilling to throw down for them without hesitation. But he has a hard timeconnecting with people, particularly on a deep, emotional level. With hisbackground and experiences, that’s really not all that surprising. Emotionalliteracy is a real thing, y’all, and you have to learn it. Most people get thatby experiencing the empathy of people around them, but Harry had no role modelfor this. Not really. So he’s not great at empathy. Other people’s strongemotions can make him feel really uncomfortable as we see over and over againin the books, and not just his inability to understand Cho. He hates emotional conflict. (And I willargue until I am blue in the face that this is not simply ‘boys don’t doemotional empathy.’ Bullshit. It in no way has to be like that, and I willargue that RON of all of them, is the most empathetic and he develops this overthe course of the books so very clearly. So miss me with that girls are just inherently more empathetic thing.)

So in the context of that, we see the quotes you have from Harry’s internalthoughts in pick it up. Which come up again in later chapters.

Ron leans into Harry, voice low as their friends once again start laughingand talking. “Do you ever feel like we’re missing something? When they get totalking about that year?”

“Yeah,” Harry says. But maybe, he considers, noticing the way Dean iswatching Seamus, they’re better off not knowing.

–in my head we do everythingright, chapter 6

Harry shies away from hearing about other people’s trauma. Part of this ishis struggle to deal with other people’s emotions and personal traumas,especially when he is already so heavily burdened with his own like in pick it up. But also, I have to thinkthe experience of reading Skeeter’s book about Dumbledore has really impactedhim. Having everything he thought he knew about Dumbledore undermined andchallenged really threw him for a huge loop, and even though he reconciled withit in the end, I think part of him still thinks he would have been better offnever knowing any of that. (He struggles with moral ambiguity, as we haveseen.)

Now, compare that to Ginny. She is in a very different place, not justbecause she is more empathetic but because being empathetic becomes her armor.It becomes the one thing that keeps her from feeling like a monster. When sheis training as a Legilimens, Snape over and over again encourages her to remove empathy from the equation. Shefeels herself slipping towards very dangerous places when she does that, andgets pulled back by people like Hannah who reminds her that she needs people, she needs to care. So Ginny finally perseveres by humanizing the verypeople Snape declares she needs to objectify. It’s horribly painful for her,and I think she probably doesn’t see it as salvation as much as the painfulpunishment she deserves for wielding this skill, the cost of the thing. As muchas Ginny runs from her own trauma, she is continually opening herself to theexperiences and feelings of others—both through the things she takes frompeople through Legilimens and the emotional labor she does as a leader invarious spaces.

Ginny moves furtherinto the room, moving from person to person, hearing about their experiences,their losses. Collects them all up and stitches them together like a cloakshe’ll never really be able to take off.

–The Changeling, chapter 10

She does this because she cares, but also because, in many ways, she feelslike it’s her job to carry it all. She’s being necessary. And without it, she might wonder just how much humanity she has left.

🤭

Do you think Harry and Ginny fight often or not? And how do they make up at the end? I've always wondered about these things

Not as often or as constantly as Hermione and Ron. No, when Harry and Ginny fight, they aren’t casual flirty tiffs. The everyday small annoyances roll off both of them more or less. From the outside, they seem perfectly even-keel, Ginny’s occasional waspish comment just met with Harry’s wry amusement. They seem to understand each other perfectly.

All to say that when they do fight, it’s for the big things.

Their fights are almost always shouting matches because sometimes Harry just isn’t capable of putting things into words unless he’s shouting and Ginny’s patience isn’t endless and her temper has always been her weak point. They don’t fight very often, but when they do, they make it count, and it never happens in front of other people. Harry can’t stand to be made a spectacle of, and besides, their fights are brutal and personal, and things neither of them want to share with others. Ginny can be rash and thoughtless when she’s at her worst, and sometimes doubles down on her mistakes before coming to her senses. Harry’s more likely to retreat and get broody and snappish, but Ginny doesn’t let that lie, calling him out on it and never giving him space to stew. So, yeah, they don’t fight often, but when they do it’s deep and loud and a ‘bring the house down’ kind of a thing that they definitely have to train themselves out of once they have children. The only good thing about it is that they don’t leave anything on the table. It’s all out at once.  

But they also break fast, like a giant furious storm that leaves them heaving and breathless and exhausted, and instinctively seeking out the comfort of the other person. They fight hard but forgive quickly, but not just by repressing it all. They talk it out quietly in the exhausted aftermath, usually huddled together–everything nasty and held back and hidden already flung about and revealed and unable to be forgotten again, which lets them figure out how to do better, eventually falling back on apologies and physical contact and alternatively explosive and deeply emotional makeup sex. Ginny never fails to tell him she loves him after a fight, and it calms Harry more than anything else, this reconfirmation of what is between them, of what she feels for him. He isn’t as free and easy with his words, but never leaves her doubting how important and vital she is to him.