"Call Me Lord Voldemort."

"Call me Lord Voldemort."

"You see?" he whispered. "It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course..."

I am literally debating right now whether I should chuck Tom's angsty little teenage "I am Lord Voldemort" moment with the "Knights of Walpurgis" into the Void Of Unpublished Scenes and whether I am actually going to bother calling the collection of morons that because it's driving me up the wall and I don't think Tom feels utterly convinced either.

grrrr writing fight scenes is so frustrating especially when physical contact isn't allowed.

Yeah I agree 100%, over time the Next Gen fandom (post Cursed Child especially) has gotten unnecessarily aggressive about Commonly Accepted Canon about characters who have either two lines of canon dialogue or none at all. I feel like back in 2012-2015 it was a really nice time for Next Gen, you could have whatever versions of the characters you wanted, there were so many different interpretations, Scorbus, Scorlily and Scorose ships were all thriving and no one gave you shit about anything. I don't mean to say Everything Was All Hunky-Dory but people were pretty much chill. Now, though, I kind of have moved away from writing Next Gen because people are so aggressive about their fanon characterizations (especially for Scorpius and Albus). Now it's like you must ship Scorbus and LilyxLysander (do they have a name?) OR ELSE you are a bad, terrible person.

You do you, @firinniee, Next Gen is supposed to be a chill sandbox for creators to play in, not to be bossed around by people who think fanon = canon.

I don't like to write about such things, but I expected that sooner or later I would get a message like this here. Namely, anon wrote a comment to me (which I will not paste because I would have to censor about 90% of it) because, to put it bluntly - he/she does not like Rose x Lysander ship and thinks that I should remove all my content with that opinion. Well ok, we live in a time when someone cannot have a headcanons for characters whose name and surname are practically the only thing that new. I love the overall creation of Lily, Rose, Lysander or other nex gen characters that are often based on a similar pattern in the fandom and in that case I love reading about some of the ships but I think that MY VISION OF LYSANDER fits MY VISION OF ROSE more than MY VISION OF LILY in MY universe but that doesn't mean I don't like Lily and Lys in others. Like, if someone does not like my work, they do not have to watch it, I will continue to enjoy every person who watches, writes nice comments, likes it, gives hearts and such an anon will have peace tho.

So by accident I copied this in with my phone yesterday and it destroyed the paragraphs and I just checked it on my computer and realised. Excuse me while I go cry out of shame and embarrassment.

Rubeus Hagrid meets Tom Riddle (Excerpt, Chapter 29)

Both Tom and Merrythought turned around to see the victim; but they need not have worried.

He laughed good-naturedly as the spell bounced off of him ― the boy had to be pushing eight feet tall. But he wasn't tall in the weedy, gawky way either (although, being thirteen, he was obviously awkward-looking). He was solid and wide and his hands were enormous.

"Miss Nott!" snapped Merrythought. "I told you categorically that no duelling spells were to be used! Twenty points from Slytherin!"

The girl who had cast the spell ― Nott's sister ― simply pouted, and then gave Tom a long, sideways look from under her eyelashes. He ignored her, and went over to the strangely unperturbed victim of the Knockback Jinx.

"I'm Tom Riddle," he said, offering his hand to the boy. "Slytherin House, fifth-year."

He grinned, and shook Tom's hand heartily. "Rubeus Hagrid," he offered. "Nice ter meet yeh, Tom."

He would see about that.

"Take Hagrid to the Hospital Wing, Riddle," ordered Merrythought.

Tom didn't see anything wrong with Rubeus, but he obeyed. It was on his way to Dumbledore's office, anyway.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go."

As soon as they were out in the corridor, Tom, not one to mince words when the opportunity arose or deny his curiosity, asked: "Are you a half-giant, Rubeus? The way that spell bounced off you..."

Rubeus shrugged, and made a funny sort of nod; half-proud, half-embarrassed.

"Why did that girl jinx you?" asked Tom, wondering if it was anything he could use against Nott.

Rubeus shrugged once more.

"Yeh know," he said. "Most of th' students don' like my kind. 'Specially in Slytherin."

"Half-bloods?"

"Half-breeds. 'Course, not everybody figures it out as quick as yeh. Professor Dumbledore did, o' course. "

"Oh." Tom had heard that word being thrown around the common room, but he generally didn't pay much attention to name-calling unless it applied to him. So that was why Merrythought had been so desperate to get Hagrid out of her class; she probably wanted him out of Hogwarts, too.

"Are yeh Muggle-born?" Rubeus went on, in that same good-natured way that reminded Tom of Algie Longbottom, his now fellow prefect and the apple of Merrythought's eye.

He'll probably get the job after she retires, thought Tom.

It was Tom's turn to shrug. He could have explained, but he didn't feel like going into all that David Copperfield nonsense.

So this is Dumbledore's other charity case, is it?

They both fell silent for a while.

"Well, here's the Hospital Wing," said Tom, gesturing at the door. "Take care."

Rubeus flashed him a toothy grin, and hurried inside.

"What an imbecile," Tom muttered under his breath, then with a dramatic swish of his robes, turned away and went towards the next corridor.

In his not-at-all-humble opinion, he was the much superior of Dumbledore's charity cases.

Your mental health doesn’t make you bad.

“Ballet embraces the soft, ethereal and majestic side to women, and yet we often don’t see the media portray black women in this light. My project aims to reveal that women of color possess these qualities. We too are capable of portraying the princess, fairy and swan.”

 —Aesha Ash

Aesha Ash’s prestigious career has included world class roles. Yet she’s now on to a different mission, with three big goals. She wishes to see ballet become more diverse. She hopes to inspire youth from rough areas to pursue their dreams. And she wants to show the world that tough environments can’t hold back talented people, especially those with ambition.

Aesha performed professionally for 13 years. She attended the legendary School of American Ballet; joined the New York City Ballet at age 18; and has danced solo and principal roles for companies like the Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Alonzo King Lines Ballet in San Francisco. Now she’s focused on The Swan Dreams Project, in which she uses imagery to tackle stereotypes placed on black women. Aesha commissions photographers to snap her as a ballerina in her hometown of rugged Rochester, New York, and in Richmond, California, and then donates proceeds from photo sales to organizations helping advance inner city youth. She also donates images to organizations for their fundraisers and to people seeking more positive imagery for their children or groups.

The dancer points out that black women have always existed in ballet, yet few become principals, the highest tier of dancers. When Misty Copeland became the first black female principal with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre last summer, Aesha found the milestone a moment to celebrate, yet sad and troubling that in 2016, we’re still celebrating a first. She hopes The Swan Dreams project will give more dancers — and youths in general — the chance to be celebrated for their own talents.

Rochester has one of America’s highest crime rates. But Aesha hits the streets to prove that her hometown is more than violence and gangs. That’s where her Swan Dreams Project comes in. “My community saw that out of our environment came a ballerina, not just negativity — a little black girl from inner city Rochester actually went on to become a professional ballet dancer in a top-tiered company,” Aesha said in a one-on-one interview for this report. “Youth followed me on the street saying, ‘This is what we need. This lifts us up.’”

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