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.)

Hi, I'm sorry I don't know if you've already answered this, but I was wondering why you made Bletchley the Slytherin captain instead of Montague? Also, was Millicent in the Inquisitorial Squad like she was in the books? I don't think so because she's in the Parlor, but I wanted to ask you anyway. I love your writing, but please don't feel pressured and take your time. Have a good day :)

The short answer is that Montague was the Chaser whose spot Ginny took. So he was no longer on the team, meaning Bletchley got the badge instead. (Which also allowed me to sidestep Montague, who JKR clearly made a kind of nasty dude. It was my way of trying to humanize the Slytherin I could while working around the already-established-as-horrid Slytherin.) Of course, in the process of answering this I am realizing a mistake I made in chapter 2 of The Changeling. I specifically mentioned Terrance Higgs as a kind of mean Chaser, which should have been Montague, seeing as how Higgs was the Seeker that Draco replaced. So whoops, my bad.

Millicent in the Inquisitorial Squad is another one of those moments. It was a matter of giving greater depth to Slytherin characters. Where I could, I just tried to explain why Harry’s perception was what it was. I couldn’t work around Crabbe and Goyle and Draco being nasty. And I left Pansy as the sort of coldly nasty character too. But I felt Millicent, of all of them, even though she had very specific, nasty run ins with Hermione, might have been really misunderstood. I also don’t like the way she is specifically pointed out in the text as being unattractive and more than likely fat and a physically mean and nasty bully. (Which boy, the ink I could spill on JKRs depiction of fatness as a negative trait, even Molly is just ‘plump’ like there has to be some distinction to tie to moral lines–like looking down on someone who is frumpy is classist, but being wary of fat people is just good sense. Come on, JKR, you’re better than this.) So I decided that of all the Slytherin that were established in the narrative that I could give an alternate approach to, I wanted it to be her. So I thought about who she could be, not to completely change her. I was happy to leave her aloofness, her prickly approach (which, if the text is any indication, she probably herself was probably the recipient of some nasty treatment due to her looks). She doesn’t owe anyone smiles and pleasantness. She can be exactly who she is and still be three-dimensional and pivotal and important. So was she still an Inquisitorial Squad member? No, I don’t think so. I could maybe buy her working for Umbridge, but definitely not the Carrows. I’m not sure if we read that as a change I made to her character or a change that came about because of Ginny’s leadership in The Parlor. I like to think it’s the latter. As much as The Parlor girls expanded Ginny’s idea of who people can be, she also impacted her sisters’ understanding and approach to class lines and pureblood culture and the war in general.

Thanks for the ask!

slytherin + house traits 

{ravenclaw} 

Ravenclaw: Are you two fighting ot flirting?

Slytherin and Gryffindor: Yes

Slytherin girls who offer to wing each other’s eyeliner. Slytherin girls who stay up late in quiet groups in the common room and everyone thinks they’re plotting something but really they’re just studying because Ravenclaws aren’t the only ones with good grades. Slytherin girls who complete mock unbreakable vows that they’ll never share each other’s deepest darkest secrets. Slytherin girls who always have each other’s backs and aren’t afraid to go after anyone who disrespects them. Slytherin girls who act dark and mysterious but have lip synching battles in their underwear late at night.

Gryffindor girls who climb the trees on the edge of the forbidden forest and just talk for hours. Gryffindor girls who can and will take down the boys who sit in the common room and make sexist remarks. Gryffindor girls who all wear bright red lipstick and always braid their hair when there’s a Quidditch game. Gryffindor girls who don’t understand what’s up with all the attention Harry and his friends always get because any of them would be just as willing to stand up to Voldemort. Gryffindor girls who stay up all night, drinking smuggled fire whiskey and ranting in drunken slurs about how much they hate Slytherin house.

Ravenclaw girls who have struck fear into their enemies’ hearts because no one should be that intelligent. Ravenclaw girls who paint each other’s nails while discussing the new book they’ve all been reading. Ravenclaw girls who cover for each other when one of them forgot to do homework because they were too busy working on a brilliant idea they had for a new piece of music they were composing the night before. Ravenclaw girls who never go to the bathrooms alone because they’ve figured out that bad things happen. Ravenclaw girls who lay on each others’ beds and play with their hair while having deep 3am conversations on a school night.

Hufflepuff girls who vow to remain friends even after they’ve all graduated and gone their separate ways. Hufflepuff girls leaving random inspirational notes in each others’ school books. Hufflepuff girls who are usually well-tempered until someone from another house makes fun of them, then all hell breaks loose. Hufflepuff girls who come up with secret languages so that they can pass notes during potions class and giggle when Snape tries to decipher a note about how terrible his teaching is. Hufflepuff girls who always make plans of growing a giant garden full of magical plants together, but just end up eating their body weight in desserts they’ve swiped from the kitchen.

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?