@ashesandhackles Heres The Convo.

@ashesandhackles here’s the convo.

How do you think Sirius stacked up to Hermione in talent--comparing them both at the same age obviously. Which subjects do you think one would be better at, worse at, or the same?

Oh anon. Any answer I will give to this one will rile my very dear @bluethepineapple and I am on a mission to make her like Sirius a lot more, so no 🌟

I will say what they have in common is that they have an astute eye on politics. Blue and I came up with how Sirius would affect Hermione's arc in canon (not what you asked, but I am going to seize the opportunity). Here are our notes:

- Hermione's ongoing arc through the books is her relationship with rules and institutions. Her arc moves from experiencing personal injustice to minority (muggleborns) in CoS to seeing ministry's and their sham trials (or lack of it in POA) to seeing slavery in GOF and then outright creating a rebellion group in OOTP and Sirius' story is very important to that.

- advocacy: Sirius is probably Hermione's first experience with human advocacy, and she was Sirius's first advocate. While Harry was understandably too emotional, and Ron was confused - Hermione directs the conversation in POA and covers all bases (how did that happen? how did this happen? she ensures the story is air tight, and it an intuitive indication to Harry to lower his defenses). It opens up the conversation that really allowed him to express his innocence.

- the Sneak jinx: Hermione has no experience with guerilla fighting you know? But she does know betrayal, and she knows Sirius who was falsely incarcerated for 12 years and is still suffering in his childhood home despite being innocent. And it informs so much of her approach to the SNEAK jinx, how much it focused on revealing the real traitor so that there would be no fall persons. It exists so there would be no repeat of Sirius, and it works exactly like that!

- Hog's Head vs Three Broomsticks: after their first Dumbledore's Army meeting got overheard, Sirius points out that they would have been harder to overhear in Three Broomsticks. She takes his advice - her meeting with Luna and Rita for Harry's interview is in Three Broomsticks. She really respects his opinion even here when she was doubting him so much!

- house elves: among all people who turned Hermione down in SPEW (Hagrid calling it "doing them unkindness") in GOF, Sirius is Hermione's biggest supporter in that argument. He agrees with her ("She has got a measure of Crouch better than you have") along with his famous - "If you want to take a look at what a man is like, take a look at how he treats his inferiors". This is exactly why she was so upset with him about Kreacher - his support in GOF is why Hermione expects so much from him. Even then, she trusts him to go and ask for Kreacher's den and give the elf christmas presents and he answers her and it doesnt sound like that was a disparaging convo at all.

He is the odd mix of the eye-opener but also the mentor. He was the clearest evidence she had of inhumane injustice, but his insight was also so vital in directing her and helping her refine her advocacy.

Cacio e Pepe but make it Accio Pepe (dropping the e in between). I wonder what that would summon me in the HPVerse.

This is brilliant. But, make James Potter choose to suction the back of his head with a hair dryer for hours since it’s described as “sticking up” in canon.

Headcanon that there’s rituals wizards can use to modify their appearance permanently… once, and they were in fashion (so to speak) in the 70’s.

James Potter stood in the eye of a hurricane for 27 hours to make his hair look permanently messy yet good.

Severus Snape drank a glass of tar every day for a month (wizards be sturdy) to get a voice as silky as Sinatra.

Albus Dumbledore replaced his knee bones with metal from the 1st train to go through the London Underground, in order to get his map like scar.

The rituals all require the wizard to be a bit fucked in the head.

A take: The best metas about HP characters come from fans of said character precisely because of how much they’re invested in them. Criticism doesn’t follow the same linear logic though: the Snapedom has spot on criticism about the Marauders but the hardcore Marauder fandom can’t bring themselves to atleast be neutral on Snape and accept the flaws of their faves.

Good context especially for people who aren’t from the UK.

Hey flo! So this is pretty random but I was having an argument with my family the other day over whether Hogwarts is a public or government school and since you’re easily one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve come across regarding Harry Potter I was wondering what your thoughts on the matter were? Thanks for the input and sorry about the randomness 💗💗

It's funded by the Ministry, Rowling has said this and there are no fees mentioned in the series. It's worth considering as well that Rowling's own politics land her pretty firmly as a labour supporter of the Blair/Brown years, where there was significant investment in education.

Also, as a random bit of knowledge for you, in the UK a public school actually means a private/fee paying school. We still use the word private school to mean fee-paying, but public school is also used to refer to a specific type of private school, and usually means somewhere very old, traditional, perhaps with charitable status (even though pupils must still pay). A public school is one such as Eton or Rugby or Winchester, where traditionally they were "open to everyone" (as long as they could pay) and it didn't matter if you weren't from the local area or what your background was. Nowadays they... well they do offer bursaries and scholarships and things but they are pretty much exclusively for the 1%. Fees can cost £40,000 per year which is roughly double the national average salary, and you often have to pay to just apply, even if your son (there are schools for girls, just a lot more for boys) doesn't then get in. The majority of our recent Prime Ministers went to one public school in particular.

A lot of aspects of Rowling's writing feel very much like Hogwarts is a public school so I can see the confusion - that it's a castle, for one thing, but also signifiers such as the fact that it's a boarding school, the House system, the points system, the Head Girl/Boy and Prefects, the emphasis on sports, the fact that teachers are professors. She was certainly influenced by older English literature that centred around public schools. But most of these things can also be found in state schools too - my grotty state school did not have a Head Boy/Girl but many do, it's perfectly common, and we did have a house and points system and a strong emphasis on sports. Public schools also traditionally had more control over their own curriculum and specialisms which is probably why Vernon assumed he would have to pay to send Harry there. They were also legally allowed to physically discipline pupils for much longer than state schools, which might be why Harry was nervous that McGonagall was going to cane him in PS - corporal punishment would have been banned when he was just a small child, but it was not banned in private schools until he was in his teens.

Dudley's school, Smeltings, is clearly a parody/criticism of the traditional English public school. The rather silly uniform described like the boater hats and knickerbockers feel extremely traditional public school, and though I am not aware of any schools where students are allowed to carry big sticks around to hit one another with, it seems to poke fun at the "character building" culture of bullying that many public schools, like Eton and Gordonstoun, are known for. This is something I can see not translating that well for an international audience but for a British reader immediately emphasises what the Dursleys are like.

But there are many signs that Hogwarts is not a public school - that it is the only school available to British witches and wizards available, that there was no entry exam (although the child must be magical), that although students must still fund their own supplies and uniform (again, this is standard for British schools) there is no mention of school fees and a family like the Weasleys are able to send 7 children there on one salary. I know some people like to suggest they are poor because they have to pay school fees, but I think those people misunderstand the realities of class and wealth in the UK - a family at average income or below may be able to struggle, scrimp and save enough to send one child to a public school, but the only way entire groups of siblings are going is if the family is extremely wealthy. Certainly these schools are not taking in charity cases like Tom Riddle, Remus Lupin or Severus Snape - occasionally a council house school kid will win a scholarship and they will make a big deal of it in The Sun to try and suggest they are not the ultimate symbols of class divide in our pathetic little scrap of land, but the reality is these kids have had to work insanely hard and have essentially won a lottery. These schools are not approaching poor kids.

From my perspective, I went to a very good but very typical state school, which was directly next door to a private school. Only a fence, a narrow path and another fence separated our sports grounds. I can remember the private school kids in their cricket whites standing at the fence and jeering at us through the fence. I can also remember that large groups of us used to break into their grounds on snow days and vandalise the place, so...

When I got to uni, I was very lucky to be accepted into a highly competitive university and college, where I suddenly found that those kids in their cricket whites and fees of £6,000 per year would have been considered positively impoverished by some of the Etonians and Harrovians I now rubbed shoulders with. Some were perfectly charming young men that I liked. But that's all I will say about that.

Listen I’ll stop trashing Snape as soon as someone can give me a good reason for Neville Longbottom, the boy whose parents were tortured to insanity by someone who is still alive, to be more afraid of Snape than anything in the world.