🌹 A Flower For Everyone Not Feeling Their Best Today

A discreet Portkey was set up for him once a year.  It was usually an empty bottle brought up from the kitchen, except for the time Fred Weasley managed to enchant all the bottles to hide themselves around the castle and explode into different colored confetti any time a prefect walked by.  That year, he had to make do with a biscuit tin.

  Anthony often thought that he’d just skip it.   He was usually only just digging into his classes for the year, and there was always at least three essays he would have to finish when he got back.  He sometimes started to write the letter to his mum telling her he’d be staying at Hogwarts before the guilt would overwhelm him.

  The truth was, he wasn’t sure he believed in any of it any more.  He lived in a world where bushes really did catch fire without flame, where water could be made to spurt from a stone.  Those wonderful, terrifying tales he grew up with could really be true- and that made him question his faith.

  But he went.  Every year.

  Every year, he felt the jerk under his navel, landed dizzily in the field behind his house.  Every year he entered the warm kitchen, smelling of freshly baked challah and sweet apples.  Every year he helped his mother clean up after dinner, licking the honey off the spoon she offered him as a treat.

  Every year he recited the same prayers, sung the same melodies, told the same lies to the friends and neighbors he saw at shul.  Every year, he felt the slight dizziness and unreality that came with fasting.  Every year, he watched as tears rolled down his mother’s cheek as she recited the Yizkor for his father.

  Every year, he cried too.

  And every year, when the kugel had been eaten and the kitchen was in a state of controlled disaster, Anthony Goldstein would kiss his mother on the cheek, gather up the leftovers she had neatly wrapped for him, and walk out to find the empty bottle in the middle of the field.

  And returned to the real world.

(Source: thejdc.convio.net)

L'shanah tovah, lovely followers!  May your new year be sweet and full of joy.

when u first read the secret history it’s like oh, what an elegant and deep piece of literature. and then ur like…………bunny steals a frozen cheesecake from someone on financial aid. charles gets high and kills a bee at the funeral of his friend, who he helped to murder. henry didn’t know that people landed on the moon. richard thinks he’s straight. francis is hesitant that their alibi is going to the theater because he doesn’t want people to think he went to see such terrible movies. “and as we leave donne and walton on the shores of metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.“ what the hell is going on in this book

On Anthony Goldstein: Judaism in the Potterverse

[NOTE: I don’t know why I have been obsessed with this for like, the last week, but I have, so here you go. Also, I cannot believe an Anthony Goldstein tag actually exists on Tumblr. When I despair, I am reminded that no one quite obsesses over barely-extant characters like the HP fandom, and I love them for it.]

I find Anthony Goldstein a really fascinating way to think about the way that a Jewish character would fit into the wider spectrum of the magical world as realized by JK Rowling. On the surface, it shouldn’t matter. A Jew should’t be any different from any other minority culture shoved into Ravenclaw (which for what it’s worth seems to be the house that stereotypically high-achieving minorities get sorted into). And yet it’s a question worth thinking about, particularly because Rowling’s world is constructed on notions specifically Christian in character.

This largely boils down to the struggle of Absolute Good vs Absolute Evil, with terms of morality used as alternative names for God and Satan, two independent forces in eternal opposition.  This dichotomy isn’t really a thing in Judaism (Satan is understood as an agent of God). The books are ultimately framed in the context of this struggle, from the world building to Harry’s personal coming of age and fight against Voldemort. It is the very foundation of British Wizarding culture, and to not proscribe to this view would leave someone like Anthony Goldstein permanently alienated.  

Culture clash would arise for Goldstein out of such things as the notion of ‘the Dark Arts.’ In traditional Potterverse, the Dark Arts are 'Dark’ because of some evil that seems inherent in the nature of the creature/spell. The reaction toward such magic is 'defense,’ by either learning how to beat the creatures, or counteract the spellwork. Judaism would not, arguably, make the distinction between good and evil magic in such terms. They would not be mutually exclusive. Magic would be considered evil in the context of its practitioner, not so much in the particulars of a spell or beast. Specifically, magic would be primarily understood as evil if the one who uses it does so to render himself a God-like figure. The ramifications of this would be subtle but significant. Voldemort, for instance, would be evil not because of the magic that he uses, but because he uses it with the intent to elevate himself above the condition of man, and exact powers that humanity should not possess.

This would give rise to the question of whether any sort of magical power is permissible for humans, a question that I could see being an ongoing concern for Goldstein, particularly as he presumably lacks the presence and affirmation of other Jewish wizards in Hogwarts. I could  see Goldstein as someone predisposed to disciplines that require an individual to not see himself or herself in inherent opposition with a type of magic, such as Care of Magical Creatures.

Jewish tradition has a history of magic different from that of medieval Britain, from which a lot of the stock images and sentiment in Potterverse arises. Rather than identifying with Merlin, or the Witches burned at the stake, a Jewish wizard might instead look instead to the 'miracles’ of certain medieval Rabbis, or Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel and the Golem of Prague, or King Solomon. Demons instead of Goblins as the morally ambiguous, humanoid figure. Dybbuks instead of Boggarts. Magic derived from Hebrew as opposed to Latin. There is the potential that Goldstein would find himself, or his family, identifying with a magical past and identity that would have very little to do with that adopted by British wizardry, and by extension Hogwarts as a community and educational establishment. 

Then of course there is the fun of parsing apart the whose and wheres of Anthony Goldstein. Is he a North London Jew?  The next generation of an old British family? Or apart of one of the twentieth century Jewish-immigration waves? Is there a wider Jewish Wizarding community, or is he an anomaly? The last of a tradition? Judaism’s rich tradition of fantasy storytelling and folktales were largely wiped out along with the rural European communities that fostered them, so it wouldn’t be far-fetched that if there was a larger Jewish Wizarding community, it had all but vanished after the Holocaust, and that people like Goldstein represent what remains of a nearly-extinct subculture. 

 Anti-Semitism was historically a feature of elite British boarding schools, and it would not be unreasonable to assume that it would extend to magical ones, especially seeing as there is even less of an established Jewish presence in the magical community than the muggle one.  

Anthony Goldstein would likely never have a place where he could realize himself fully, constantly requiring to either subdue his magic, or his Jewishness in turn. He would find himself alienated on a fundamental level with the British magical community, and would be plagued by doubt when it came to the practice of magic. He would be perceptive and capable at communicating with magical non-humans, and would not see magic as a source of darkness, but the human thirst for power. He would distrust magical assertions of authority, and would find himself burdened with a past that his education has not equipped him to fully understand. 

Headcannon : ( Teddy Lupin)

Can we all agree that:

Seeing that Teddy Lupin is just like Tonks; being a metamorphmagus.

Teddy morphing into people who are having a hard time whether they should dye or cut their hair.

So in that way, they can see what they would look like if they did it, also helping them if it looked bad/good on them.

“ᴀɴᴅ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ sᴀʏ;

ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ ᴡᴀᴋᴇ ᴜᴘ, ᴛʜɪs ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ᴀ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ”

Reblog if you were ever bullied.

17851

That’s disgusting.

Well done society.

Well done.

ravenclaw theodore nott

for @snakepitnet event: taking a cannon to canon

the sorting was taking too long, while an eleven years old theodore nott shivered on the chair, praying for slytherin being screamed out, as his father was, as it should be

things seemed blurry and unfocused when the sorting hat shouted out a clear ‘ravenclaw’ and a stunned professor mcgonagall hurried him to join his housemates at the table

everyone looked at him like he had a troll head spurting out of his shoulder, but as theo sat down and clang to a cup full of water, he smiled to himself

because it was during the first night theo spent in the ravenclaw tower, looking at the very dark, very starry sky, lost in it’s infinity, that he felt truly free

his father’s owls were insistent and constant, but he knew that nothing could change the fact the sorting hat chose ravenclaw, the hat was never wrong

after the second week, the last owl he received from his father, was a single sentence letter, written angrily with dark ink “no son of mine is a ravenclaw”, and theodore nott smiled to himself again, overtaken by the same sense of freedom when he looked up at the sky from the ravenclaw tower

Keep reading

Keep the flame going for those we have lost to suicide. 

Random Teddy/James headcanons….

James won’t let anyone call him anything except James, except for Teddy who has about 100 different nicknames and terms of endearment for him and is the only one who would ever get away with it

Teddy always has chocolate in his pockets, and sometimes he forgets about it until after things have gotten a bit hot and heavy with James and he finds the melted sweets.  James always laughs at him, taking Teddy’s fingers with a wicked smile and licking it off.

James loves Teddy’s appearance, loves his piercings and tattoos and his wild hair.  It’s so unaffectedly Teddy; its bold and unforgettable.  But his favorite is when Teddy is sleeping, when everything sort of slips away and he’s so relaxed, his hair its natural plain brown and his face so relaxed.  James loves him like this the most not because he’s less of anything, but because James knows he is the only one who gets to see him like this.

No matter how old James get, or how long they date, he never seems to get tired of broomstick innuendo, sliding up behind Teddy at family dinners and gleefully whispering “Wanna go for a ride on my broom, Lupin?”

James has no shame. At all.  It isn’t long before the family stops looking for them when they go missing on holidays or celebrations because they already know what they’re likely to stumble upon.

No matter how much James pretends not to be sappy or sentimental, Teddy knows it isn’t true.  Teddy knows he keeps a box hidden under the bed with cards and travel tickets and little things Teddy has given him.

Teddy isn’t sentimental, not the way James is.  He doesn’t need bold romantic declarations and he doesn’t keep cards and letters.  All he needs is James, right beside him, all he needs is one touch or kiss to remember everything.

Probably James Sirius Studying

James : "Okay I'll start studying at 8:00."

*some time goes by*

*time is 8:01*

James : "Oh well, I missed it, I'll start at 9:00 then"