padfootswhiskers
And I’ll See Sirius Again
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"Harry described how the figures that had emerged from the wand had prowled the edges of the golden web, how Voldemort had seemed to fear them, how the shadow of Harry's father had told him what to do, how Cedric's had made its final request. At this point, harry found he could not continue." - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
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What - so no one agrees that Jason Isaacs could’ve been both Lucius Malfoy and Sirius Black hmmm, no opinions on that eh? No fucks given for giacomo??
This isn’t shrieking shack Sirius to you??? Do you think this is a joke - am I a clown to you people
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honestly is there a single competent teacher at Hogwarts? Any teacher I can think of with more than 10 lines of dialogue is a pedagogical disaster. Very shippable disasters though, for which I am grateful because your page has made me giggle all week.
maybe Sprout.
honestly, anon? no.
that school is a basket case and the older i get the more my sympathy for cornelius fudge increases. imagine getting the call where dumbledore says "heyyyyy... so, i hired what i thought was an ex-auror who was retired from the service because of serious ptsd, gave him no teacher training, let him perform illegal curses on children for fun, and then it turns out he was an escaped convict trying to resurrect the dark lord all along. lmao."
i'd have devoted myself to trying to discredit him too.
and so, for fun and profit, i think it's only fair for us to establish an official competency ranking of the teaching staff at hogwarts during the period 1991-1998... points on for having a basic grasp of the material, points off for anyone who nearly dies in your class.
1. wilhelmina grubbly-plank, care of magical creatures
genuinely, professor grubbly-plank is the only person we meet in all seven books who seems to be an uncomplicatedly good teacher. she's got a series of well-defined lesson plans which feature a mixture of guided and independent study and which work in a tangible way towards exams, she has clear authority in the classroom but is never unreasonable or cruel, she's demonstrably able to lead a practical class which involves wild animals which might behave dangerously or unpredictably without there ever being any concerns about student safety, she takes an active pastoral role [such as when she helps heal hedwig's injured wing, reassuring harry enormously], she's collegial [she shares her lessons plans with hagrid in goblet of fire, and she refuses to criticise his teaching to umbridge], and she's admired by all of her pupils except harry [who is nonetheless begrudgingly forced to admit that she's incredibly good at her job].
plus, her aesthetic is iconic.
=2. filius flitwick, charms; pomona sprout, herbology
in joint second place, we have these two.
both sprout and flitwick spend canon seeming to be pretty good at their jobs - they have interesting lesson plans which seem to balance theoretical and practical work well and which prepare their pupils properly for exams, their pupils like them and enjoy their lessons, they're both excellent at the pastoral side of their jobs [sprout's gentle encouragement of neville is really lovely], and they're adored by their colleagues.
they lose marks for lax classroom discipline. harry, ron, and hermione are constantly yapping away in both charms and herbology - with harry and ron frequently failing to understand what they're supposed to be learning because they were too busy have a chat.
=4. remus lupin, defence against the dark arts; septima vector, arithmancy
two teachers here who earn their placement on the list by having one pupil who considers them life-alteringly inspiring.
for lupin, this is dean thomas - whose constant state of readiness to throw hands to defend his honour is one of his greatest character traits. for vector, it's hermione.
obviously, they're both well-qualified, well-prepared, engaging, and [at least in lupin's case, but i can't see why it wouldn't also be the case for vector] well-regarded by their colleagues.
they don't rank higher because lupin loses marks for endangering his students by not disclosing his knowledge that the presumed-to-be-a-death-eater sirius has a means of entering hogwarts without detection [i understand why he does this from a characterisation point of view, but it's inexcusable from a safeguarding one] and because vector teaches an elective subject which is implied to only attract bright, engaged pupils - and therefore has an easier time in the classroom than someone trying to get a student like crabbe through their exams.
5. minerva mcgonagall, transfiguration
in comes minnie mac at number five.
unsurprisingly, her solid curriculum, excellent classroom discipline, high-regard among her colleagues and pupils, support of student extracurricular activities, and investment in helping her pupils pursue the careers they want all give her points.
she loses marks, however, for the fact that she is so casually disdainful of pupils who aren't instinctively good at her subject - which suggests that she doesn't know how to adapt her material so it can be understood by every student she teaches. like dumbledore, she seems to have an identifiable favouritism for brilliant students - who she seems to permit to get away with much more than students she considers average or dull - which probably doesn't endear her to anyone who doesn't get that treatment.
on her pastoral approach, though, i don't think that it matters too much that she's not particularly nurturing - even though she's a head of house. she seems to be good at responding to genuine distress and managing genuine crises with empathy, and the "pull yourself together" vibes she takes in response to more trivial dramas is because she's a presbyterian scotswoman.
6. severus snape, potions & defence against the dark arts
the one on this list that i imagine will be controversial...
because snape is a dick in the classroom - not denying that - but he's also, in terms of his pupils' exam performance, clearly the most successful teacher in the entire school. he can fill his newt-level classes despite only admitting those with outstanding grades, and he expects every pupil he teaches to pass owl-level potions and seems not to be disappointed. hermione reveals that he does teach the theory of potions and the discipline's wider application - harry and ron just don't listen - and that she thinks his lessons are interesting.
snape loses marks - obviously - for his general vibe, although i think he should be allowed some leeway for his dickhead behaviour since potions is clearly a subject in which not paying attention and not being able to follow instructions properly is dangerous [hence why i've been a trevor hater since day one].
i suppose he should also be allowed some leeway because it's a genre requirement for a school story to have a theatrically evil teacher. but he's not getting it - since he clearly enjoys the role so much.
7. horace slughorn, potions
marks on for encouraging independent thinking and for clearly being able to hold a classroom's attention. marks off for not learning the names of pupils he's indifferent to, getting his favourite pupils drunk, and for having no follow-up questions to "hello, sir. i'd like to commit some murders."
8. charity burbage, muggle studies
entirely because i think it's genuinely admirable - and, indeed, far more admirable than the fact that the order of the phoenix all happily keep working for the state following voldemort's takeover - that she publishes an article in the daily prophet, to which her real name is attached, explicitly refuting blood-supremacist rhetoric when she must know that a blood-supremacist government is about to come into power.
marks off because the fact that even wizards who've taken her class appear to know fuck all about muggle society means that she can't be particularly good at her job.
9. firenze, divination
marks on because his pupils love him, marks off because that's a tremendously low bar to clear given... trelawney.
him telling his classes that divination is a bullshit, made-up subject is iconic, though.
10. "alastor moody", defence against the dark arts
i think it's genuinely impressive that he manages to go from being imprisoned under the imperius curse for a decade straight into planning a full year's lesson plans [which his pupils love] and doesn't have a breakdown.
marks off because of literally everything else.
=11. all the miscellaneous teachers: aurora sinistra, astronomy; silvanus kettleburn, care of magical creatures; bathsheba babbling, ancient runes
they seem fine.
14. rolanda hooch, flying
full respect to her for managing to wangle a full-time salary out of an annual workload made up of teaching one lesson [badly] and refereeing six quidditch matches.
15. quirinus quirrell, defence against the dark arts
all the proof those of us who hate professor riddle stories need that voldemort would have been a dogshit teacher, if he can't even get his meat-puppet to inspire a room full of eager eleven-year-olds in a subject which is about the coolest ways possible to kill people.
=16. cuthbert binns, history of magic; sibyll trelawney, divination
they're terrible, obviously, but the fact that they remain in their jobs despite being so clearly incompetent is entirely dumbledore's fault. are you not giving the staff performance reviews, albus? come on now.
18. dolores umbridge, defence against the dark arts
umbridge deserves to be in prison, but she did at least bother to plan out a curriculum.
=19. gilderoy lockhart, defence against the dark arts; rubeus hagrid, care of magical creatures
both victims of dumbledore's "lol this will be so funny" era of hiring practices. both deservedly regarded as completely fucking incompetent by all but one defiant brownnoser. both possessing jazzy taste in textbooks.
21. amycus carrow, defence against the dark arts
he beats his sister simply because his pupils do appear to know how to perform the unforgivable curses correctly.
22. alecto carrow, muggle studies
literally nothing positive can be said.
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I mean I feel like every person on the planet would still be obsessing over schoolboy experiences and unable to hold a civil tongue as an adult if one of those experiences was some thug setting them up to get murdered by a werewolf and getting away with it scot-free! Sometimes I kinda feel like JKR went a tiny bit too hard in Snape’s Worst Memory.
an eminently reasonable point, anon - in response to this, on whether sirius and snape could work as a couple if james was still alive.
the werewolf incident and the bullying we see in snape's worst memory are pretty bonkers - and, while they're great for character work [snape seeing himself as a victim targeted for his obvious poverty by the posh and beloved, who the rest of the school will always side with, is a really key aspect of his radicalisation], and while the fact that the marauders basically get away with everything is crucial for the plot [since both james and sirius need that swaggering conviction that they're invincible for the idiotic secret keeper plan to work], they aren't helping dumbledore beat the "hogwarts is a safeguarding nightmare" allegations...
[the older i get, the more sympathy i have with the opposition to dumbledore as headmaster. i'm team lucius malfoy, i fear. cut that hippogriff's head off...]
but one thing i think is really interesting is that - despite the intensity of the bullying and the weakness of the school's response - snape's beef with sirius in adulthood is a petty obsession over schoolboy drama, rather than a visceral response to trauma that he can be forgiven for being unable to control.
snape and sirius interact by behaving like children. they squabble constantly, go out of their way to make little digs about each other both to each other's faces and behind each other's backs, act like shaking hands is going to kill them, remember everything the other has ever said and done, and so on...
their aim is evidently to "win" their interactions in the eyes of others, by forcing those others to side unequivocally with them - even the "sirius black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen" point in prisoner of azkaban is fundamentally snape trying to get dumbledore to acknowledge that he's the best little boy in the room. unsuccessfully.
but they also both clearly enjoy this way of interacting - and i think it's always worth emphasising that, while i think snape does sincerely believe that sirius intended to kill him by sending him to the shack, he is never shown in canon to be afraid of him.
[even when sirius is threatening him with his wand during the occlumency discussion, snape is too busy reading him to care.]
and the very fact that they spend so much time being childish towards each other proves this. because it's very striking - especially in prisoner of azkaban - that snape is afraid of lupin.
and this fear manifests itself not in confrontation, but in avoidance. snape goes out of his way to never be alone with lupin, he makes his efforts to undermine him [setting the essay which outs him as a werewolf, reminding dumbledore that he thinks he's helping sirius enter the castle] when he is guaranteed to be indisposed, and - after lupin leaves his teaching job - we literally never see the two interact.
i think you can make, then, a pretty plausible case for the idea that snape focuses his trauma over nearly being eaten by a werewolf onto... the werewolf himself. snape certainly thinks lupin was in on the plan to lure him to the shack - and he evidently regards the adult lupin as someone who approaches the management of his lycanthropy recklessly, which massively endangers others.
[remember, we only have lupin's word for the claim that snape forces him to leave his job because of his rage over his lost order of merlin... and not because lupin's failure to take his wolfsbane might have killed any number of the children who live in the school he appears to have been hired at to teach without any safeguarding measures being put in place.]
[although - before i make snape sound like an ofsted hero - obviously the main reason he forces lupin out is because he thinks he conspired with dumbledore and harry to free the man who murdered his beloved lily, and lupin is the only one of those people who he can feasibly get revenge on.]
lupin also functions - i think - as the living person on whom snape can focus his fury over james. and, in particular, over the hagiographical way james is remembered - which harry draws attention to in order of the phoenix by pointing out that nobody but snape has ever told him that his father was anything less than wonderful. snape's loathing of james' postmortem reputation - which connects to a belief he has while at school that james is two-faced, obsessed with his public image, and nowhere near as charming in private as he likes to make himself seem before a crowd [which is, of course, the only reason he thinks james intervened before lupin could kill him] - seems to me to be the clearest way in which his trauma over being bullied and never receiving any acknowledgement of that fact manifests itself.
[after all, the fact that everyone is agreed that james was perfect and noble and clever and loyal and funny and brave and benignly cheeky must make him feel... pretty gaslit...]
lupin is the character who expresses this hagiographical view of james most explicitly - he is literally incapable of ever criticising him [i.e. him telling harry that snape thinks james was a bully because he was jealous that james was so talented and popular... instead of because he was a bully...], hence him becoming the focus of snape's lingering trauma over what the "perfect" james did to him.
in contrast, snape clearly regards sirius as more honest - by which i don't mean that he regards him as more admirable, but that he believes with sirius that what you see is what you get. as bizarre as it sounds, i think he actually rates sirius for his role in the werewolf trick, because the callous disregard for his life sirius displays is something which confirms snape's belief that he's a cruel, crude, murderous cunt who doesn't deserve an ounce of the praise he gets, and he's clearly pleased that sirius appears to agree with this assessment. james and lupin - both of whom he clearly thinks whitewash their roles in the scheme in order to seem heroic [james] and a poor innocent [lupin] - upset him much more because he knows they're awful, violent liars but nobody else can see it.
this is an extremely perverse way of respecting someone, but it is respecting someone nonetheless... and i do think, as i said in the ask which inspired this one, that this would set up a way for snape and sirius to grow beyond the schoolboy sniping in time, in a world where james and lily lived and snape and sirius weren't forced by their grief into a state of arrested development - perpetually twenty-one, each using his teenage relationship with the other as a way of self-soothing his agony by regressing to a dynamic they had when their lost loves were still alive...
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the argument that remadora was a psyop to take 🐺 ⭐️ down is so funny to me because what was even keeping 🐺 ⭐️ up🤭
#anti wolfstar#tagged because I don’t want to yuck peoples guns#*YUMS lmfaooo#but im so tired of seeing the same old take on tonks lol#ws didn’t need jkr to work against it because there’s nothing working for it I said what I said#remus x tonks#rant
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I come to you with this question because, having read all your other metas, I think you'd be the right person to ask. Id love to know what you think about Regulus because I have a very hard time understanding his character. Partly because of fanon characterization of him makes him seem like some secret rebel against Voldemort and partly because I just can't really understand any of his motivations. But regardless, I think what we know about him in canon is so interesting - i just can piece it all together. I'd love to know what you think!
(Sorry for the longish ask)
thank you very much for the ask, @hauntingpercival! regulus is a character i also find a bit of a mystery, and so thinking through this answer was really fun.
i'll start by being clear that i'm certainly not a regulus fan. by which i not only mean that i don't vibe with the fanon!regulus of the marauders fandom, who is essentially an original character - and you can read my views on jegulus here... [spoiler alert: i do not back it] - but that when he appears in my own writing in ways i'd like to hope feel influenced by his canon form, i always find myself focusing on aspects of his character which are rather unlikeable.
there is a little bit of a discourse-y reason for this, which will be pertinent to the rest of this answer...
i really don't like the sort of "omg aristocracy is so hot and sexy and interesting" tropes which are so prevalent in writing around the black family. this is firstly because i don't think that aristocracy is in any way these things - and i find it distasteful to imply otherwise - which is because i'm a prole who lives somewhere still bearing the scars of british colonisation who also went to the sort of university where one sometimes encountered aristocrats and they were all cringe and unbearable.
but it's also because it's not - and i will genuinely die on this hill - an accurate reflection of how the blacks are presented in canon. not only does it take sirius' comment that his parents considered themselves "practically royal" to be a statement of fact [sirius is quite clearly taking the piss out of his parents' pretensions], but it also misses that the purpose sirius' discussion of orion and walburga's politics serves in the narrative of order of the phoenix is to show how mainstream their blood-supremacist views were.
sirius tells us that his parents were not death eaters, but that they nonetheless thought voldemort's overtly sectarian political aims were correct. in this, they hold the political views order of the phoenix emphasises belong to cornelius fudge - unimaginative, deferential to the class system, casually prejudiced, and so on. orion and walburga function as a way of showing us just how entrenched the death eaters' manifesto is, how close voldemort came to winning the first war, and what an uphill struggle the order faces to unravel the roots blood-supremacy has in the wizarding world.
[and they also show that the baffling vibes of grimmauld place - while these are made worse by it being three different gothic literature vibes in a trenchcoat - are wizarding norms, rather than evidence that the blacks were uniquely immersed in dark magic. the decor at grimmauld place - and the family's collection of dark artefacts - is the same as that found in malfoy manor, even at a time when lucius malfoy is considered eminently socially respectable. this is a point we will come back to...]
i think, then, that it's crucial to approach regulus not as a swaggering aristocrat, but as someone from an upper-class background which - while still posh, rich, inferring enormous social capital, well-connected - was unremarkable within the circles in which he moved.
by which i mean that hogwarts is based on real-world institutions - britain's elite boarding schools - which are so exclusive and expensive to attend that the student body are from a class-background which seems inhumanly exclusive, affluent, and powerful from an outsider perspective [i.e. from the perspective of someone from the majority middle- and working-classes] but which seems completely normal within the student body itself.
[i.e. nobody at eton with princes william and harry will have been astonished to have been at school with a royal, because they will have been familiar with the social circles, cultural experiences, level of wealth, and expectation of knowing someone with considerable social influence from childhood.]
while hogwarts appears to be a state-funded school [although it also expects an enormous amount of financial investment on the part of parents - such as buying all the textbooks], the fact that its real-world parallels are so elite [and, therefore, come with a specific "look" in the british cultural imagination] means that the student body is incredibly well-heeled and working-class students stand out enormously in a way very rich students do not. hogwarts also exists - like real-world elite schools and universities - as a way of propping up the status quo of the class system by which the wizarding world functions. its pupils have an expectation of procuring jobs in the civil service and other influential professions - using not only connections established at school but connections they possess through their [male] relatives. many hogwarts students we meet in canon are related to someone who occupies an elite position in the wizarding executive or is otherwise socio-politically influential.
at school, then, regulus would have been completely, perfectly average in terms of social position. i also like the idea of him as perfectly average in terms of intellect - and as a good, but not exceptional, seeker. this provides a really interesting point of contrast with sirius, who - while he's also not socially unusual in terms of class [and i will never vibe with tropes like him being followed by whispers going "omg, he's a black, that means he's important"] - stands out in that he's the first black in generations not to be in slytherin, that he's precociously intelligent, and that he - and the rest of the marauders - are class clowns and show-offs.
and i like the idea that this would give regulus a desire to stand out - to be considered the most important person in the whole school. we can get a hint of this in canon - the picture of sirius and his friends harry sees in deathly hallows is immediately contrasted with a picture of regulus sitting in the seeker's position in the team photo. the seeker who acts alone.
and i think this desire for notoriety is what drives him to sign up to become a death eater - that he decides he's sick of having parents with the perfectly normal level of social influence and a brother who is more popular than him, and that he thinks that he's cleverer and more worthy of attention than everyone else in the castle and the world better start showing it.
[and i've never bought - i'm afraid - the idea that he and sirius are close. it's clear from canon that regulus' had no issue being thought of as "a much better son" than sirius, and that he colluded with his parents against him. sirius can love him - and miss him, and regret how they were never able to repair their relationship - but i don't think this means that he feels he's lost a bestie.]
that he holds sincere blood-supremacist views is a given - because within the world in which he lives, these are completely normal and held completely casually [i.e. that slughorn is shocked lily could be muggleborn because she's clever]. the more virulent expression of these views - saying "mudblood", etc. - is clearly considered ill-mannered, but not something which might have any real impact on one's social standing [draco malfoy uses the term with impunity while at school, and nobody ever considers that informing a teacher of this would result in him being punished; equally, nobody from the crowd who witness the event report snape for calling lily a mudblood].
and so i think it's clear that he becomes interested in joining the death eaters - and starts putting together his terrorism pinterest board - because his mainstream belief that being pureblood is better crashes into his desire to be special to form a conviction that riding the coattails of voldemort's ostentatious malevolence is the way he can become famous.
[in this, he is very like snape.]
my assumption is that regulus is one academic year below sirius, meaning that he was born in 1960-1961. my assumption is also that he receives his dark mark while still at school - probably at some point in his newt years [so the academic years 1977-1978 and 1978-1979].
the standard view - expressed vehemently by various order members in half-blood prince - is that voldemort has no interest in death eaters who are still at school.
the order is wrong about this, obviously - not only when it comes to their refusal to accept that harry's right about draco malfoy being marked, but also in the fact that several of the death eaters who are very young at the end of the first war, barty crouch jr. [who is still young enough to be described as a "boy" in 1982 at the earliest], chief among them, must have been taken on by voldemort prior to graduating.
but it seems fair to say that admitting teenagers into his inner circle is unusual for voldemort, especially when those teenagers don't really offer him anything useful. crouch, for example, could be put to work informing on his father's movements. regulus is - as i've said - just ordinary.
and so my view has always been that regulus is marked by voldemort as a favour to bellatrix. i think this partially because i'm bellamort trash, partially because i think it's a nice narrative parallel between regulus and draco [who are very similar] to have bellatrix be responsible for regulus' recruitment when she's canonically vociferously in favour of draco's, and partially because realising that voldemort thinks of him as just some guy would be a big blow to regulus' conviction that joining the death eaters would make him impressive.
[i also think regulus is recruited before 1978 because i think there has to be a shift in voldemort's modus operandi at about this point, in order for the fact that sirius says that his parents got cold feet about what the dark lord was prepared to do after regulus became a death eater to make sense. my view has always been that voldemort's violence prior to c.1978 overwhelmingly targets state institutions and people connected to them, meaning that ordinary citizens can regard them being killed or injured as reasonable risks of their jobs. and then that after c.1978, the dark lord begins targeting civilians - including upper-class pureblood civilians - indiscriminately, which makes his casual supporters start to waver a bit.]
so, let's suppose that regulus leaves hogwarts in june 1979 and finds himself expected to participate as a full death eater, after having been let off all the dirty work by virtue of being at school...
as i've said, regulus has an enormous number of narrative parallels with draco malfoy. and i think that the best way to think about him is to write him as sharing draco's canonical attitude to voldemort's cause - that he believes whole-heartedly in the message of blood-supremacy the dark lord promotes and that he has no problem with people he considers subhuman [mudbloods and blood-traitors] or unimportant [faceless families massacred in their own homes] being subjected to violence in the name of that message, but that he lacks the character traits necessary to perform that violence himself, to see it done to people he likes, or to witness what it actually involves versus the image he has of it in his head.
and so i imagine he starts struggling pretty quickly with the fact that being a death eater isn't quite as easy as he thought it would be when he was making voldemort fancams on tiktok. and that part of the reason he's primed to turn against the dark lord is because of the tension he feels warring within him at the fact that he's still a blood-supremacist, still desperate to be important, and yet growing disenchanted.
i don't however, think this is why he does what he does... so let's get into that:
why does regulus turn against voldemort?
let's be clear about one thing - regulus turning against voldemort has nothing to do with him having some sort of damascene conversion against blood-supremacy.
[or, at least, that's what i think.]
the outline of regulus' defection that we get in canon goes as follows:
voldemort asks someone to lend him a house elf. we know that regulus volunteers kreacher, because he told kreacher so - and so i imagine voldemort mentions at a meeting that he wants to procure an elf [although, of course, he doesn't elaborate on why] and regulus immediately jumps up and says "pick me, my lord" because he sees this as an opportunity to get voldemort to finally notice him.
his assumption must be that voldemort will use kreacher for a purpose which is considered normal in wizarding society - i.e. that he will require him to do something akin to domestic service, perhaps preparing potions ingredients.
it evidently does not occur to him that voldemort would transgress this social boundary and harm kreacher. not - to be clear - because i think that regulus was some kind of abolitionist legend, but because we see several characters express the view in goblet of fire that how barty crouch sr. treats winky is his own business, and that it is impolite for respectable wizards to comment on how anyone else treats his slave. this sort of social behaviour will have a second part - that it is impolite for respectable wizards to treat anyone else's slave in a way which goes beyond what wizarding slaveowners see as normal.
or: that it's fine to be lent a slave to serve you, but very much not fine to nearly kill that slave [someone else's property!] for your own gain.
kreacher informs regulus what voldemort asked of him, which makes regulus suspicious about what the object voldemort deposited in the cave was. regulus then decides to investigate.
kreacher tells us that regulus goes away for an indeterminate period of time and then returns to grimmauld place "disturbed in his mind".
dumbledore claims in half-blood prince that voldemort appears not to wear or display the objects the horcruxes are made from after he turns them into horcruxes. i think we can agree with this or not without it affecting the story - i quite like the idea that voldemort doesn't make the locket until the later 1970s [maybe after the murder of dorcas meadowes, the only person in the first war other than james and lily to have canonically been killed by him personally], but we can also say that he might have worn or displayed it when it was already a horcrux. certainly, regulus must have seen the locket - either on voldemort or somewhere in his lair - and, after kreacher tells him what happened, he goes to see if it's still there.
when he discovers it isn't, he comes to an important conclusion. one which requires a little detour...
how does regulus know what a horcrux is?
i complained at the start of this answer about the black family being portrayed as unusually immersed in the dark arts - rather than some sort of familiarity with the dark arts being perfectly normal for people of their social class.
and i am sure that you might think I'm about to have to eat my words, since i'm not going to try and deny that regulus was able to identify a horcrux all by himself...
but, actually, i'm just chucking malevolently at the opportunity to clamber onto my soapbox and say:
horcruxes are canonically not magic which only a handful of people know about. where voldemort goes beyond the theory of horcruxes which a wizard of regulus' class-background would be familiar with is that he makes seven.
this doesn't mean - to be clear - that i think it was ever common to make a horcrux [i don't think the wizarding world is quite that lawless...], but that it was reasonable to know they exist in the way that we might have some general understanding of something macabre like techniques for disposing of a body, which would enable us to suspect if we saw a neighbour behaving strangely while doing one of those things...
after all, slughorn can suggest [even if he doesn't believe this is what he wants to do] that voldemort could justify his interest in horcruxes by using the excuse that he's working on a project for defence against the dark arts.
that harry, ron, and hermione don't know about them is a result of a combination of their own lack of interest in the theory of the dark arts, the information blackout instituted by dumbledore at some point after voldemort graduates [and my theory as to why dumbledore hates horcruxes even in the forties? grindelwald made one - hence why dumbledore is so hopeful at king's cross that the rumours of his repentance might have been true...], and the fact that they don't discuss their mission with anyone [tonks, kingsley, and moody, who literally have to specialise in dark objects as part of their jobs, would one hundo have known what a horcrux was].
[what they would not have known is what voldemort's horcruxes were likely to be made of. it's this - rather than the idea that horcruxes are completely unknowable magic - that is why it has to be harry in charge of hunting them down: he's the only person in the series who knows voldemort well enough to imagine where he might have hidden them and what they might be.]
so, regulus has a little rummage, works out the locket has disappeared, and has no trouble - especially because voldemort mentions in goblet of fire that he'd told his death eaters he couldn't die [which regulus might not have thought was him speaking literally] prior to 1981 - guessing what it's being used for.
and so, regulus turns against voldemort.
and i think that he does this because the horcrux makes it impossible for him to pretend any longer that voldemort's aims are - when the ministry is forced to the negotiating table by his paramilitary activities - an oligarchy in which upper-class pureblood families benefit and muggleborns and blood-traitors become second-class citizens, but which doesn't deviate too much in terms of its overwhelming norms from the way wizarding society functioned at that time. instead, he is confronted with the undeniable fact that voldemort intends to reign forever as an immortal absolute monarch, and that he has never had any intention of elevating regulus and people like him to the positions of importance he so craved.
[we see something similar happen to draco, whose increasing fear of voldemort throughout half-blood prince and deathly hallows is clearly driven by him realising that voldemort isn't joking when he says that he'll kill him and his parents unless he obeys orders, but is joking when he says he'll be considered a valuable servant should he manage to kill dumbledore...]
and so his death - and his threat to destroy the horcrux - is a repudiation of his beliefs. but, specifically, it is a repudiation of his conviction that voldemort was a primarily political figure who would act as a champion of the pureblood class-system. it's him recognising that voldemort would not stop with a takeover of the ministry - he would kill and kill forever, concerned only with how much further he could venture beyond the norms of magic.
#you should know I liked this post every two sentences I read#which is the tumblr equivalent of leaving multiple kudoses i think#anyway I adore all this and all the insight abt voldemort’s strategies#so interesting! especially liked the point about boys going to eton not thinking anything of studying alongside prince harry#that’s a very cultural thing that would’ve never occurred to me👀👀 epic#meta#regulus black
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16, 21, 26 ask game
thank you for the ask! these are all great questions
16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?
oooh. like @ashesandhackles said, it's very annoying when people are surprised we can speak english, lol. i've seen people being surprised at the fact that we have internet. almost every instagram reel about india will have comments about how the people all shit in the streets😂
ones i agree with? hmm the cows everywhere one is true 😂😂india also is genuinely quite dirty. it's very common for people to be casually racist 😂and we do shake our heads while talking
21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?
food and dance, i think. aliens deserve to see kathak and enjoy mutton seekh kebab
26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?
it does!
when i think of india in hollywood, inevitably i think of slumdog millionaire. now i fucking love that movie. and i love danny boyle (shout out to steve jobs 2015) but it does paint a certain picture of the country. which isn't...inaccurate, exactly, but it's a tiny little pixel of a massive painting. the events/setting of the movie is by no means unrealistic for a modern india but for someone like me who has only grown up in major cities in a pretty much upper middle class family, it feels like a completely different universe. all that to say, india contains multitudes and the usual poverty porn of the country you get is not at all relatable to a significant amount of the population. i think the very location of slumdog millionaire proves my point, really. dharavi is the largest slum in the world, and right across the street lives mukesh ambani, the 9th richest man in the world.
tangentially, my favourite portrayal of india in western film is wes anderson's 'the darjeeling limited'. it's not set in a major metro city but it's not poverty porn either. and i think, somehow, it really captures an essence of india! little scenes like adrien brody being amused at boys playing cricket with a tennis ball....it makes me feel so fond of my country <3
“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set
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I need to do some decorating so I bought myself a tshirt…..
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14
17
thank you for the ask!
14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?
okay so. yes.
i’m very aware that indian cinema is mostly known as a meme internationally because of all the ridiculous soap opera clips that go viral, (and they really are ridiculous), or they’re just known as colourfests of singing and dancing with no real depth. but just like how a certain type of indian identity floods the international market, only a certain type of filmmaking becomes infamous.
india has MULTIPLE film industries, separated by language/region. much like its regular old history, it has a rich and vast cinematic history as well. and there truly are superb indian films! mainstream and artsy. directors like satyajit ray were absolutely groundbreaking and regularly inspire directors of the likes of martin scorsese, wes anderson and steven spielberg. hell, tarantino borrows ideas from telugu films! there is some really good stuff in here!
i recently watched a documentary on an outsider pov to hindi cinema, made for a very intriguing watch!
youtube
17. are you interested in your country’s history?
most definitely! it’s got a very long and convoluted history and what we’re taught in school is a very, very, very, very tiny and biased part of this massive lore but yes, i find it fascinating. i’m a law student so we’ve got a bunch of history again (i took science in high school) and i especially love regional history. some great stuff in there. i do not however like the actual exam we have for the subject 😭
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10, 20, 30 for the ask game
thank you for the ask!
10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?
answered already but you know what. there's several more i use in everyday lingo. behenchod (sister-fucker), randi (whore), laude ka baal (dick hair), koothi mayir (cunt hair), macchar ki jhaant (mosquito's cunt), bhosdike (son of a whore), podi (get lost)
20. which sport is The Sport in your country?
cricket might as well be the only sport that exists. sorry blr i'm a citizen of the whistle podu nation
30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?
my cousin had a brit ex bf, that's about it!
“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set
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Biriyani is the best thing ever. Just needed to say it haha
#youre absolutely correct#it's especially tasty in india now bc ramzan#man i do not know what they are putting in this food#drooooool#answered#artemisia-black
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15, 24 and 27!
thank you for the ask!!
15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?
some of my favs (that i can remember + find rn)
24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?
ahh god. pakistan probably. although i don't think we're particularly nice about any of our neighbours! our jokes are...very socially unacceptable outside india, lol. you know what they say. it's not for beginners 💀
27. favourite national celebrity?
ranveer singh. i'll be the first person to say he's terribly cringey but he has a hold on me and has had one for the better part of ten years. every december i rewatch ram leela and something happens to me. watching him being embarrassing and having to genuinely defend him....it is harder than being a marine
“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set
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1,4,7,10 for you! For the ask game
ahaha thank you for the ask!
1. favourite place in your country?
bangalore baby! not the most happening or beautiful place in the country but it has my heart, lol. it's the city i grew up in and i miss it everyday. mumbai is great, but it's really not the same. if i end up settling down in india for good it's definitely going to be in blr
4. favourite dish specific for your country?
has to be hyderabadi dum biryani, i could eat that every day for the rest of my life. i used to order lunch from paradise biryani like three times a week and i havent found an equivalent since i shifted 😭😭😭
7. three words from your native language that you like the most?
i'm part of like, the 1% whose first language genuinely is english, and although i'm reasonably fluent in hindi and can get by in tamil, it's almost like they're the foreign languages to me...but i think my speech patterns irl are recognisably of an indianised english strain 😂
so i'll say i like that i add a 'na?' to the end of most questions, and i also tend to do that blr thing of 'ya, no' and 'no, ya' instinctively. 'belting scenes' is also a part of my vocabulary 😂😂😂
10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?
answered here!
“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set
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5, 6, 8 and 10 please :)
hi! thank you for the ask! i'm from india.
5. favourite song in your native language?
technically, my mother tongue is tamil, and though i do listen to the occasional tamil song i don't consider it to be a language i'm very fluent in. but. it is much easier to pick my favourite song in this language than in hindi. so here goes
absolute fav tamil song of all time = "enna solla pogirai" by shankar mahadevan
6. most hated song in your native language?
man, this is hard. the hindi film industry's been going through this horrible and extremely long phase of remixing old bangers and making them absolutely terrible. the "pasoori" remix was pretty shit. as is almost everything himesh reshamiya composes. although some of his songs are so ridiculous that they end up being good, so he has that going on for him. special mention to "tandoori nights"
8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?
i haven't travelled much outside the country, but i have been mistaken for being pakistani before, BY other indians. within india, people tend to think "i don't look south indian" whatever that means lol
10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?
this is like being asked to choose my favourite child. i think i'm most partial to using 'madarchod' which plainly means motherfucker, but it rolls off the tongue so much better. i also like 'chutiya' and 'gaandu' quite a bit, but they're more terms of endearments to me than actual insults
“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set
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“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set
given how Americanised this site is, it’s important to celebrate all our countries and nationalities - with all their quirks and vices and ridiculousness, and all that might seem strange to outsiders.
1. favourite place in your country?
2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?
3. does your country have access to sea?
4. favourite dish specific for your country?
5. favourite song in your native language?
6. most hated song in your native language?
7. three words from your native language that you like the most?
8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?
9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?
10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?
11. favourite native writer/poet?
12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?
13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?
14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?
15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?
16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?
17. are you interested in your country’s history?
18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?
19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?
20. which sport is The Sport in your country?
21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?
22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?
23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?
24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?
25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?
26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?
27. favourite national celebrity?
28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?
29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?
30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?
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Hmmm AU idea—Sirius escapes Azkaban during PS/SS. He paddles to shore, battling the waves and whatever, and stops to rest at a small island with a shack. The shack, however, is currently occupied by a family, and he would have taken his leave immediately if he hadn’t seen a familiar-looking boy who’s been made to sleep on the dirt floor…
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