Is The Size Of The Parlor In The Changeling (at Least In Ginny's Fifth Year) About What It Would Be At

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)!!!

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. :)

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

Theodora :: Antonia :: Ginny

The world isn’t kind to girls with strange ambitions…

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.

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.