Dashing-luna - Dashing-Luna

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She laughs. “I forgot. You are best mates with my brother, aren’t you?” His forehead creases, like he’s uncomfortable with the reminder. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.” I’m rereading the Changeling and I actually laughed out loud at this part. Oh sweet, naïve Ginny.

Ah, The Changeling, chapter 5. Harry being adorable and Ginny being oblivious. Bless. Doubly funny because without that untimely reminder, Harry might have actually gathered up the nerve in time to ask Ginny to Slughorn’s party like he was kind of trying to at the end right before she gets up and leaves.

You can imagine his internal dialogue: “Look, Harry, she has to go to the party anyway. And she just clearly said that she and Tobias aren’t anything (not that you cared one way or the other), and yeah, you were supposed to be just trying to get some information about Draco out of her, but you really like just kinda…being around her, so it wouldn’t be all that awful to ask her, right? I mean, it’s just…reconnaissance. And the fact that her hair smells nice is, like, completely beside the point. You’re doing Ron a favor, really. Making sure she’s not going with some other bloke that they clearly can’t trust. Wait–what? Oh, bloody hell, she’s leaving? Now? Why? Stop her! Ugh. She’s gone. Great, Harry. Just great, you absolute ninny.”

It was fun to get to play with Ginny’s obliviousness, especially because I could trust the reader to know that Harry is a lot more interested than she realizes. But really, we all love it to pieces that Harry goes with Luna anyway, don’t we?

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.)

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.

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

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