How do you think Albus’ character developed from that summer 1899?

... Just ask me to describe his entire character arc why don't you. (The tone of annoyance is entirely in jest, I'm delighted to get this question! But it's also a bit of a mammoth of a question.) 

If you're familiar with the @sortinghatchats system, then the way I would put it is "he went from being a pure Gryffindor primary to a burnt Gryffindor relying on a Ravenclaw primary model". If you're not familiar with it - it's an elaborated version of the sorting system that makes it easier to use as an actual personality test, with some very useful concepts added. The relevant ones here are that someone's house describes their primary life strategy - Gryffindor relies on gut instinct and moral intuition, while Ravenclaw follows a deliberately constructed belief system. Someone can "model" a house that isn't theirs by borrowing its strategy. Someone with a "burnt" house would prefer to use the strategy of that house, but for whatever reason has lost faith in their ability to do so. (The tumblr I linked to provides a more in depth explanation if you want one). 

Basically the summer completely damaged his ability to trust - either himself or anyone else. Every thing he had relied on - his idealism, his ambition, his ability to love wholeheartedly and unreservedly - backfired on him so spectacularly that it must now be deemed suspect. In some ways this is a good thing because he had to reconsider his priorities and ended up with better ones - equality over power or personal freedom - but at a massive psychological cost. I imagine he was extremely depressed for some time afterwards, not just for the obvious reasons but because it's near impossible to pick yourself back up when every mechanism you have for doing so has just been thoroughly undermined. You'll notice that every person he claims to admire - Harry, Newt, even Aberforth ("my much more admirable brother") tends to follow their gut moral instinct pretty simply and without question, and it tends to lead them more or less right. Albus wants nothing more than to be able to do the same, but the cognitive dissonance between how he feels for Gellert and what he rationally knows about him, as well as the consequences he has seen from his misjudgement, make that impossible - and I think he feels pretty fundamentally broken for it. He's not the kind of person who's meant for the kind of calculated, chessmaster-like approach we see him adopt in the series - he's meant for the kind of unrestrained love, passion and conviction that ended so badly for him in 1899. 

I also think that summer instilled a deep sense of responsibility and isolation in him. He spends the rest of his life trying to make up for how he failed Ariana, and I get the impression he ends up trying to act as caretaker for the entire world because he couldn't be that for her. It's obvious how that plays into the war with Grindelwald, but I think it's a factor in how he acts when fighting Voldemort, too. Beyond just his unwillingness to let others all the way in due to lack of trust, that summer left him entirely alone - Gellert fled, Ariana died and Aberforth hated him - and because it was largely the consequence of his actions he ended up with the impression that he deserved to be that way. That isolation, plus his lack of trust in himself or others, plus his sense of responsibility all played directly into why his actions in the books seem so manipulative to so many people (and, to some extent, really are) - he feels he has to handle everything himself so he pushes people into the right roles without communicating properly with them, and his reasoning that this is the right course of action is stronger than his guilt towards the people he might hurt because that guilt is a gut instinct that can't be trusted.

Recs pleaze.

They're not based around time travel, but you should read this ongoing fanfic about harrydore by The_Real_Larken and also this one by inarticulateimbecile because they are gorgeous and I've never read pining written so well. I read these and I also yearn.

Anything by BvinYa_Raama is also typically very good and they have a talent for being very funny in the bargain, so check out this fic of theirs or this one depending on whether you fancy darkly-tinged humor or just straight-up darkness with the promise of tantalizing things to come.

When it comes to actual firegold/time travel!harrydore though, I'd recommend you pull anything from this masterlist on the blog (also typed out below just in case, since direct pastes are just taking me to the homepage for some reason x.x).

The masterlist needs to have one or two new fics from 2023 added, I believe, but anything on that list will be amazing!

https://firendgold.tumblr.com/works

clearing the box

I've got through some of the shorter asks now, just working on giving satisfying answers to the longer ones!

sorry again about the delay

hey"

Idk if you've ever heard of the fic The Hour of Wolves? It's an AU where Romilda gives Harry amortentia, exploring SA, eating disorders etc. It sounds like a whumpfest but it's actually really good and the Dumbledore/Harry interactions are soooo good and faithful imo.

oh dude, I love An Hour of Wolves. I love that fic so much. You know a fanfic's good when I absolutely despise its main ship (hinny) but I would recommend the fanfic to literally everyone on the planet as the best thing ever. There are times when I wish AHOW is what had HAPPENED instead of HBP, the Harry and Dumbledore interactions are just that good.

I'm a super big fan of Harry whump to a certain extent (as long as it gets better) and I'm locked in to when things get better in that one.

(This is one of those fics that also has me reminding myself that Romilda is only annoying and disrespectful in canon, lol. I have almost written some very unflattering things about Romilda in fanfic before remembering that AHOW!Romilda is not canon!Romilda and I shouldn't bash her for no reason.)

as always,

The whole "manipulative!Dumbledore" trope is brainless anyway, but it's especially dumb when you do the slightest bit of analysis on Albus' behavior around kids. Namely, that he's like... okay at "raising" them as long as it's just doing basic stuff for them, but he prefers to have someone he feels is more qualified be up close and personal for the children's more emotional needs.

He does this with Ariana, taking care of her shelter and privacy while Aberforth is in her face being "the favorite" brother. He does it again (and even harder) with the students of Hogwarts after Ariana's death, going from being their cool Transfiguration professor who stomped on a fascist once to being their headmaster who's kind but kind of quirky and even deeper in the background than before, leaving the daily management to the Heads of House. There's no students whose personal lives, bank accounts or love lives Albus has any interest or influence in, during or on the edges of canon.

He has students he likes, sure, but we don't see any of them randomly visiting Albus for tea. No one writes letters asking for his advice on trivial matters—it's always potentially world-ending shit. Even when Albus' students become adults and potentially friends or colleagues, their decisions to become either anti-Voldemort revolutionaries or Ministry drones are entirely their own, and none of them use the change in dynamic to get any closer to him.

And rather than the fanon moustache-twirling villain who likes chortling over inheritances or love potions or the Greater Good™ or whatever inflated or made-up nonsense, the real Albus seems perfectly happy to have no particular favor for or (paternal) guiding hand for anyone else—until he meets Harry.

And even then, Albus trots out his typical kindly-but-detached "parenting style" at first, letting McGonagall be his Head of House and Molly and Sirius get up close to play surrogate-mum and brother-dad, only to get a wake-up call when that doesn't quite fit neatly around Harry "hi, I have no blood family left that gives a shit, please adopt me" Potter's skinny shoulders.

Hi.

Do you write fanfic? If you do, which harrydore writer are you ?I've been wondering and I have some guesses haha

I do write fanfic! It's no secret, this is me. I write and rewrite sections of Chapter 14 of The Inverse Lightning Bolt in the deep background and scream about how much my job sucks these days.

okay this is wild but Harry x albus in time travel aus is something I could never have imagined but that I now really like?? I read through your entire blog today and had a blast so tysm for that 🫣

this has taken me WAY too long to answer, but thank YOU for giving this pairing a chance!! it's so easy for people to immediately squick harrydore or time travel!harrydore, even with how close Harry and Albus are in canon and how easy it is in fanon to poke and prod bonds to be whatever you want. so to hear that you read the whole blog and enjoyed it is like.. whoa. 🤩

that moment when you cross the point of no return with a character should be accompanied by a specific chime i think. like 🔔 congratulations! this one has been installed in the Permanent Collection and you will never stop thinking about them as long as you live

Ok so bc anything i do in this fandon is specifically to piss that woman off, i gotta ask:

Do you have any ideas for fic scenarios for trans!albus and/or trans!Harry? (time travel harrydore or not, you pick)

so funny story anon, my instinctual answer for this question was "no, I've never thought about it, sorry"—but as I was writing that reply a while back, I actually started getting ideas. It was wild. (That's also why this took so long to get out, sorry!)

trans!Albus is easier for me to imagine for some reason. I had this idea where his entire early life could be rewritten just to do a deep dive into the Dumbledore family dynamics when the firstborn prodigy half-blood son is AFAB instead. How that might change Percival's actions on Ariana's behalf (or not), if he doesn't have any thoughts in the back of his mind about leaving his family in his "eldest son's" hands. How that could change the rivalry between Albus and Aberforth, who might not be super tolerant of an uppity older sister who's also queer. We still don't know much about Kendra somehow, after 1 billion years of Pottermore, but whether or not she's accepting of Albus' gender identity and sexuality could be their own spin-off fanfics, they're that fascinating. Her own Native history could then be touched on as well.

All these things together could be a point of personal conflict for Albus, who's already a living embodiment of a taboo Native/European union and might have to wrestle with what's accepted from him as a Good and Proper Woman of English society re: marriage and carrying on some (other) pureblood's line, along with protecting Ariana's secret and "making up" for his father's crimes.

I don't know if Albus' sexuality changes. If it doesn't, I can see him being briefly confused about What Elphias Is To Him when he gets older, and Elphias is getting his own messages from home about How Much Time He's Spending With That Dumbledore Girl. I imagine there would be a lot of conversations between Albus and Kendra, and Albus and other peers, about who he was going to marry and what his "prospects" were since his father's a known criminal. And Albus, beyond not identifying as a girl at all, would find all this discussion about such trivial sexist matters frustrating as hell.

Unfortunately, I see everyone at Hogwarts misgendering Albus while he's a student, or pretty much everyone. Like, he eventually tells Elphias who accepts right away (and is confused about What That Means for Him in private), and maybe a few other students, but none of his professors are Getting It. His stellar academic record probably keeps him from being bullied as much, but doesn't entirely protect him from rampant transmisogyny and slurs when he outperforms people.

But regardless, assuming the "major beats" of history play out the same way, I can see Albus being a lot more proactive re: marginalized rights than he already was in canon, and perhaps moving the overall British Society Needle way further to the left, because it's one thing to talk shit about the powerful, progressive, weird old man that no one really knows is gay but can kick your arse without breathing hard, but another thing entirely to talk shit about your trans, out and proud, progressive Supreme Mugwump who has already freed all the elves, speaks all the magical creature/Being languages, is raising your kids at school better than you are at home, AND is still gay and can still kick your arse without breathing hard.

This is all, of course, imagining that Albus is AFAB and identifies as male. If it's the other way around and Albus is AMAB and identifies as female... I can't even imagine. I'm not cool enough ig

As for Harry, it's weird but I don't have any trans headcanons for him during his Hogwarts years. It's kind of similar to how I don't read many genderbent!Harry fics unless I adore the author, because even though I'm a girl I can't imagine Harry IDing as one for some reason. (I'm very limited, I know.) BUT. For some reason this changes when you bring in time travel harrydore.

With the ship as the parameter, I can imagine an AFAB Harry who's spent his whole life chafing at the clothes Aunt Petunia gets him—because 'unfortunately' (for her), even pre-puberty, she can't just give Harry Dudley's cast-offs unless she wants The Neighbors to start lifting eyebrows and asking questions—because they're girl clothes and along with just not fitting in to the Pristine Pretentious Family with her messy hair and tight clothes and taped-up glasses, Harry has never felt like a girl. He insisted on having people call him 'Harry' as soon as he could talk and get away with it, and only has to hear his deadname from his teachers and with the Dursleys.

This all of course changes once McGonagall is reading names on the Sorting List in 1991 and just barely doesn't stumble over Harry's preferred name being on the list instead. (She is surprised only because Harry is famous. By the time Harry goes to school, there have been many other out trans students in this headcanon. But probably very few under her eye have been quite this famous.)

I've always personally headcanoned Harry as bisexual, but I don't know if that would be the case in this particular headcanon. I can still see him going after Cho, and perhaps even Ginny. I can see him having the same confusion about What Are Ron and I To Each Other that a trans!Albus had about Elphias a century ago, without ever living his Hogwarts life as a girl to anyone but his enemies (and having a lot of friction with canon!Hermione and/or Lavender as a result). I can see Draco hating Harry even more, because he always kept "her" in the back of his mind as a Dark Lady he could serve under in all ways, only to have this... boy being his rival and Quidditch better and wanting absolutely nothing to do with the Malfoys or purebloods or knowing her place.

A thought that sticks in the back of my mind is that JKR (otherwise known by me as That Woman (derogatory)) specifically wrote Harry as a boy for a lot of reasons, and the main one being that she always planned for him to live and pass on his line in the "traditional" way, and having her titular character be a girlboss would've derailed that status quo. In a universe where Harry is AFAB, I can imagine a lot of related conversations with and around Harry about this. How "she" is "the last Potter" that there will ever be, because naturally she'll marry into one of the families and the name will be lost forever. I can see this being a real bone of contention with Harry and radicalizing him, along with Voldemort and the discrimination against werewolves and house-elves and centaurs and veela (which I doubt even one dedicated Dumbledore would be able to get rid of), making him take his place as the next generation leftist magical powerhouse.

And so how does all that change his relationship with Dumbledore? I... don't really see it changing much. If both characters are trans, that's another point of connection for them that bonds them through all the mess the government and society puts them through. It makes Albus a figure for Harry to admire as a young boy ("look, the most powerful wizard in the world is just like me!") and to still anguish about as a young man ("all the choices he made that I don't agree with, all the secrets he kept from me, how do I know I won't make the same mistakes or make no better progress than he did?"). Their relationship could be all the more painful or distant if one of them is out and one is in the closet, like an Albus who never came out or transitioned and is seeing in Harry the upright boy he could have been, or if Harry is resentful of Albus living his truth because he, a knobbly-kneed adolescent girl, doesn't have the power, freedom, or influence to be who he truly wants to be.

But focus! I'm focusing! Time travel Harrydore. The specific scenario I was imagining was one where AFAB Harry never comes out to the general public. His loved ones who are his peers know, but all the adults in his life (yes, including Remus and Sirius) never get to meet him properly. They die thinking of him as "James' daughter". And after defeating Voldemort, Harry just can't take the idea of spending any more time not being the person he wants to be. He's done being the Girl-Who-Lived so he writes goodbye letters to Ron and Hermione and does some ancient ritual without anyone knowing, and instead of changing him at the molecular level it flings him back to the past.

And so unlike a lot of time travel fics (including mine lol) where Harry is grieving his true time and desperate to get back home, this Harry misses his friends terribly, but it doesn't take long for him to see being an unknown in a different time as a golden opportunity. Sure, it would have been better if he'd been flung into the future instead and maybe had more tolerant people instead of less, but no one knows who he's "supposed" to be here. So he can grow into the man he truly is!

And so while Harry is setting up his new life for himself (maybe as some personal tutor, or a backup Quidditch player, or something that keeps him out of the limelight for once?), he runs into trans!Albus who doesn't have many friends and not much else going on for him (depending on who or where Grindelwald is right then), and Harry's nervous but they hit it off and become close friends, and one thing leads to another, and...

*cackles*

Also also, and sorry for sticking this all the way at the end lol, but MUCH RESPECT for hanging around in HPF just to stick in the craw of That Woman. I think I'm adopting your philosophy for the future. ^^

It annoys me so much when fanfics have their respective self-insert character (Sirius, Lupin, Snape, Molly, McGonagall, Lily, etc.) "call out" and push Dumbledore around. It's fucking Dumbledore, mf was defeating Dark Lords before any of these dudes were even born.

I don't care how much of a #badass you imagine Lily Potter to be, she's not getting away with that lmao. It's always so stupid too, you'll have fanfics which have Remus Lupin unironically call out Dumbledore for knowing about the tunnel in the Shrieking Shack and not doing anything about it while Sirius Black was on the loose. Remus. Lupin. The lack of self awareness is stunning.

The only characters who I can see getting away with that (and having the desire to do it) are Aberforth and maybe Harry (in a fit of anger, like at the end of OotP).

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Sunday Funday

that feeling when you get a brand new story idea, but it literally has no plot yet, just vibes>>

Paul Cumbie, Doll House, 1883 | Modeled after the Vanderbilt mansion at 660 Fifth Ave, New York

really love dynamics that are like 'it honestly doesn't matter if you view them as romantic or platonic, the point is that they love each other. the type of love is inconsequential, all that matters is that it's there'. gotta be one of my favorite genders.