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.)

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.

🤭

I remember you writhing a what if Harry and changling Ginny got together earlier but i can't find can you link it?

You mean this?

Here it is, canon evidence that Salazar Slytherin was NOT a racist bigot. He was concerned for the well-being and safety of the magical community, which could have been compromised by letting the “common people” know that wizards and witches existed.

datvikingtho

been thinkin about pre-reveal marichat....