Latest Posts by raysreads - Page 10

The Brightest Start in the Constellation of Leo

There is none such story as tragic and sad as that of Regulus Black.

He was a small boy born into the house of hateful, supremacist, parents. His house was filled with cursed objects, scarily dark books, weapons, and in one case, vials of blood. His parents were most likely abusive or at least snide, cold, angry, hateful, and distant. I mean look at Walburga’s portrait.

(based off of the Malfoys, does anyone remember how Lucius would swing his cane at Draco? Mostly his hand, but still!!! That thing had sharp teeth!!! And Draco tended to avoid it with a little too much practice and ease...So who’s to say the Blacks weren’t similar or worse?)

He had a singular person in that house who really cared about him, and that was taken from him when Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor and they started a hateful feud.

He was then pressured into becoming the perfect pureblood heir because their first choice was a Gryffindor, a disgrace, and a blood traitor to boot. 

They swayed him to the Dark Arts and Voldemort, he was made a Death Eater. Being a Black means you are technically pureblooded royalty and in direct eye of Lord Voldemort himself. We’re not sure when he became a Death Eater but it can be hazarded a guess around 16/17. By 18 years old, barely a year put of Hogwarts he had probably tortured, killed and been robbed completely of his innocence (if he ever had any in that wretched house). 

At this point he is estranged from his brother, said brother is fighting on the other side and they’ve probably fought against each other, has one cousin who has been disowned because she loved a ‘mudblood’, another cousin who is married to a death eater, yet another cousin who is an insane maniac who gets off on torture, is being pressured by his parents who then die, entrenched in a war while being barely an adult himself, is most likely fighting and killing former classmates and teachers, and second guessing everything hes ever been told by his family.

So the Dark Lord asks for an elf.

He, as the Black heir, is expected to step up. So he does, no matter how much it pains him. Even though Kreacher is currently the only family he has that cares about him and vice versa, he gives him up. So in secret he orders him to come back as he does not want him to die. Kreacher goes and carries out the task of drinking the potion for the Dark Lord and returns home, obviously having been tortured and on the brink of death. Once Regulus has fixed him up he reports everything to him, who then figures out the locket is a Horcrux.

He knows it must be destroyed, he knows he will most likely die.

Can you imagine? 18 years old, not even a year after he’s graduated, and he willingly walks to his death. Can you imagine him sitting down and writing that letter for the locket with shaky hands and tears streaming down his face? He’s scared. Of course he’s scared! He’s a child! Just eighteen! He is eighteen years old and he marches out of that dark house with his loyal elf and gets Kreacher to take him. He appears on a rock out in a stormy, wild sea. Cold, salty spray rips into his skin and he dives into the chilling water. He shakily sails out to the little island and peers into the basin.

Its a glowing green potion that gives off a malevolent energy. He knows what it is. He saw what it did to Kreacher, he heard the description. He found it in the back of the Black Family Library: The Drink of despair. 

It was a torture potion. He knew this. He knew it was like being crucioed from the inside out, that it made you unbearably thirsty, that it made you see the most terrible things....

He didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to die.

He knew Kreacher could survive it and get home safely where he could fix him up. He knew this. But he couldn’t bear to put poor Kreacher through that again. 

So he drank it himself and condemned himself to Death instead.

For a House Elf.

He died so his House Elf wouldn’t be in pain.

So 18 year old Regulus Black drinks a torture potion. Willingly. To protect his House Elf. In the middle of a lake filled with zombie Inferi. Miles from any living being. To steal an object belonging to the Darkest Wizard in history. 

He wasn’t even sure if it could be destroyed but he drank it. And got so thirsty he drank from the lake. The Inferi swarm him, clawing at his skin, pulling at his hair, ripping his clothes... He desperately orders Kreacher to switch the lockets, destroy the real one, and leave as he gets dragged under.

Regulus Arcturus Black dies at the age of eighteen, all alone, at the bottom of a lake of inferi, with no one but an old, bitter House Elf to remember what he had done. He didn't do it for the glory or the recognition of the masses, nor for the forgiveness of his brother. He tells no one and dies disgraced. Disgraced by his brother for being a Death eater. Disgraced by his Family for turning his back on the Dark. Disgraced by the Death eaters and Voldemort for ‘fleeing’ or ‘leaving the cause’ or whatever excuse they cooked up.

Regulus Black didn’t want to die. He could’ve saved himself and lived. But he didn’t to spare his friend the pain. He died so his House Elf didn’t have to hurt.

Brightest Star Indeed...

How about Percy as a Dark Academic?

Like, its not that far of a leap.

I can see him up until 3 am in the common room with his potted ink and quill scratching notes in the margins of all his essays, curly hair wild and everywhere and only getting worse as he pulls a knit vest over his head and redoes his tie through refined muscle memory. I can see him thumbing through Shakespeare and the Odyssey, obsessing to Oliver Wood levels over history and knowledge, consuming his breakfast at the speed of light as he pours over philosophy, just so he can crawl up the tree in the garden to continue his reading there. I can see him scribbling notebooks upon notebooks full of poetry and lyrics and snippets of story never to be written with character sketches so fleshed out they seem to escape the page. I can see him wandering through the graveyard of Ottery St Catchpole and jotting down the best names and anything else that comes to mind as he mentally prepares his plans for the night (a date with a cup of cocoa and a typewriter he saved 11 years of loose change for).

I can see him wearing vests and trench coats and slacks and ties and blazers (can you see him ever wearing jeans or a t-shirt?). 

Imagine  him trying to rush through an entire chapter just as the sun breaks the horizon because his last candle is burning out again and its 4 am and he has work tomorrow but ill read just one more chapter.....

I swear Percy wears masks like no one else. Hes always been different and laughed at and put down at every turn but he’ll love his family no matter what

So, that scene where Harry retrieves Ron from the bottom of the lake and Percy loses his mind? Let’s look at that.

“Percy, who looked very white and somehow much younger than usual, came splashing out to meet them.”

“Percy seized Ron and was dragging him back to the bank (’Geroff, Percy, I”m all right!’)”

And three pages later: “Madame Pomfrey had gone to rescue Ron from Percy’s clutches.”

But you know, as Ron’s always telling us, Percy only cares about his career.

There is a very popular reading of this character that holds that he really is defined by his ambition and self-importance, and that he never does anything to show that he values his family until DH.  It’s a reading that most likely comes from taking Ron and the twins estimation of Percy as fact and it completely ignores scenes like this one.

What Rowling does here is a brilliant example of showing instead of telling.  When not in crisis mode, Percy is very verbal; he’s always talking about his accomplishments or work business that no one finds interesting but him.  Here, he’s all action.  He completely fails to act the part of a cool, impartial judge because his little brother appears to be in distress, and his affectation disappears.  What remains is a very Molly Weasley-esque kind of concern: You’re alright? Ha! I don’t believe you.  Let me smother you with affection until I’m satisfied that you are correct.

As funny as the image of Percy checking over Ron like an agitated mother cat is, my favorite part of this scene is Harry’s amazement that Percy looks young.  He’s eighteen, only four years older than Harry himself. He IS too young to be taking his boss’s place in this capacity, but Harry has bought into the affectation too. I think people sometimes forget how unreliable Harry’s point of view is.

There is no lack of evidence showing that Percy is quite different from what he pretends to be and how his siblings see him; you just have to tune out all the noise they all make about him to see it.