Giant plot bunny won't leave me alone!
I started writing A History of Cartographers the other day as a means of getting to know and better understand the Marauders' parents. I was hoping the exercise would help make them "come alive" for me, and make their relationships with their kids more complex and interesting. Well, I guess it worked. They've stopped being just names and plot devices, and some of them are now clamouring for their own stories to be told. Especially Constantine Perkins, Peter's uncle.
I originally created Con because I wanted Peter to have at least one other relative apart from his mother. So. His mother had a younger brother. I wanted Peter to have a good relationship with his uncle, so I made Con a giver of excellent presents. I also decided early on that Con was gay, which would make Peter more readily accepting of Remus and Sirius when they came out to him in Year Six. That was more or less all I knew about the man until I wrote 550 words about his sister Almira.
Now I know that he's transgender (his birth name was Constance), his parents died when he was about ten, and he and his younger sister Delilah were raised by Almira. Almira married quickly to give them a "dad", but her husband ended up being a physically and emotionally abusive jackass. Almira loved and accepted her little brother for who he was, but she was a nervous woman who did not like confrontation, so she wasn't very good at standing up for him.
When Con got his Hogwarts letter, it was addressed to the wrong name, and he wrote to the school to ask them to change it, and to allow him to enroll as a boy. The staff had a meeting about this, and while Dumbledore advocated for Con, and Slughorn supported him, it was 1929, and most of the other teachers just couldn't wrap their heads around it, and Headmaster Dippet decided to deny Con's request.
On September first, Con boarded the Hogwarts express, and introduced himself to people as Constantine, the first time he had done so outside his family. During the Sorting ceremony, his name was read out as "Constance", which he passes off as a misreading by the Deputy Headmistress, and he is Sorted into Gryffindor -- the first member of his family to be in that House. On his way back to the dorms for the first time, the Deputy Head pulls him aside and tells him to stop "playing games". He's been assigned to the girls' dorm. He's sad and disappointed that he won't get to start over at Hogwarts after all. But then the girls' dormitory staircase won't let him go up.
However, the Deputy Head, who is also Head of Gryffindor, continues to be nasty to him, until she is finally asked to resign by a horrified Headmaster Dippet, or resigns under protest, leaving Dumbledore to fill the position. During his school years, Con makes a number of friends, including Peter Pettigrew's father, whom he will later introduce to his widowed sister, and he dates a young Filius Flitwick for a while. In his seventh year, he is named Head Boy.
I'll just go ahead and add this to the long and ever-growing list of stories I want to write someday....
I originally created Con because I wanted Peter to have at least one other relative apart from his mother. So. His mother had a younger brother. I wanted Peter to have a good relationship with his uncle, so I made Con a giver of excellent presents. I also decided early on that Con was gay, which would make Peter more readily accepting of Remus and Sirius when they came out to him in Year Six. That was more or less all I knew about the man until I wrote 550 words about his sister Almira.
Now I know that he's transgender (his birth name was Constance), his parents died when he was about ten, and he and his younger sister Delilah were raised by Almira. Almira married quickly to give them a "dad", but her husband ended up being a physically and emotionally abusive jackass. Almira loved and accepted her little brother for who he was, but she was a nervous woman who did not like confrontation, so she wasn't very good at standing up for him.
When Con got his Hogwarts letter, it was addressed to the wrong name, and he wrote to the school to ask them to change it, and to allow him to enroll as a boy. The staff had a meeting about this, and while Dumbledore advocated for Con, and Slughorn supported him, it was 1929, and most of the other teachers just couldn't wrap their heads around it, and Headmaster Dippet decided to deny Con's request.
On September first, Con boarded the Hogwarts express, and introduced himself to people as Constantine, the first time he had done so outside his family. During the Sorting ceremony, his name was read out as "Constance", which he passes off as a misreading by the Deputy Headmistress, and he is Sorted into Gryffindor -- the first member of his family to be in that House. On his way back to the dorms for the first time, the Deputy Head pulls him aside and tells him to stop "playing games". He's been assigned to the girls' dorm. He's sad and disappointed that he won't get to start over at Hogwarts after all. But then the girls' dormitory staircase won't let him go up.
However, the Deputy Head, who is also Head of Gryffindor, continues to be nasty to him, until she is finally asked to resign by a horrified Headmaster Dippet, or resigns under protest, leaving Dumbledore to fill the position. During his school years, Con makes a number of friends, including Peter Pettigrew's father, whom he will later introduce to his widowed sister, and he dates a young Filius Flitwick for a while. In his seventh year, he is named Head Boy.
I'll just go ahead and add this to the long and ever-growing list of stories I want to write someday....