Chapter 31: Legacy
Almost done! I've started doing annotated chapters of the sequel, so I can amass a backlog of posts, to be more efficient about it this time around. After this there's just Chapter 32 and the Epilogue!
1. "Do you think Azkaban can hold me, when it is guarded by the natural allies of the Dark Lord? I may be there for a while...but only for a while..."
I was more than a little gleeful that JKR also sent Malfoy to prison at the end of the fifth book, for his Death Eater activities, and had him break out of Azkaban along with a lot of other Death Eaters (though she had that happen in the sixth book, while I didn't have the Azkaban break until Triangle Prophecy).
It didn't occur to me, though, that one reason Dumbledore might have for not liking dementors was his father having been in Azkaban. I thought her Dumbledore backstory was brilliant, and absolutely did not see it coming.
2. He opened his eyes again and continued to look around Mr. Weasley's office. There was a window on the wall behind the desk; Harry realized that the window showed a view of the Burrow.
I also LOVED LOVED LOVED that besides putting her Ministry underground, JKR also had MAGICAL WINDOWS in the Ministry! I was a bit nicer to Arthur about this, but when I got to the magical windows in OotP, I felt like doing a jig!
3. "Well, he brought me," Charlie said. "And Bill. I was ten and Bill was twelve. I met you," he said to Moody, nodding.
Moody looked back at him shrewdly. "That's right, we did meet. You were just a lad. And I also saw your--"
You'd never know that I didn't originally intend to write the prequel, would you? But I made sure I was faithful to this bit in the first fic, which harked back to something mentioned by JKR in the books, though I can't remember where for the life of me now.
And, of course, Moody was about to mention something Molly doesn't want Ron to know about, so she starts screaming...
4. Harry thought quickly; if Bill was in his first year at Hogwarts in 1975, his mum and dad would have been in their fifth year. Prefects.
More Lost Generation stuff that I didn't know was Lost Generation stuff at the time!
5. Harry wondered why Ginny was uncomfortable about the picture of her cousins. They weren't much younger than Bill and Charlie, so they'd be adults now. Had they gone bad? Were they the family shame? He looked at Malfoy, who looked as uncomfortable about it as Ginny. Hmmm... Harry thought. Whatever it was, it looked like Ginny had told Malfoy about it. He definitely did not look ignorant.
And then, of course, it's Ginny who changes the subject this time, since she knows about the "cousins" and Ron doesn't. But right now I honestly don't remember if I really did have Malfoy knowing about the girls at this point or if he was just sympathizing with Ginny about her discomfort.
6. He saw Draco Malfoy sitting near Snape on the other side of the stands, and no one else within a stone's throw of them. Then that changed; the Scottish girl who'd asked him out came near and nodded at the place on the other side of Malfoy. He raised his eyebrows but nodded back at her, letting her sit.
Mariah Kirkner makes another appearance before she's actually called by name. Though I can't say I'd fleshed out her backstory yet, I was starting to formulate it (and eventually meshed it with the backstory for Harry's basilisk amulet).
7. "...while Chaser Alicia Spinnet takes the Quaffle and-YES! Gryffindor, ten, Ravenclaw, zero! As the Head Girl gives the Head Boy what-for!"
Ha! I totally did not remember this part of the Quidditch final when I was writing the Alicia/Roger storyline in Triangle Prophecy, but it's funny to see it now and think of it as accidental foreshadowing.
8. If she [Cho] caught it, Ravenclaw would win the cup; if he caught it now, they would win the match, but not the cup. At least not technically; they would share the cup with Slytherin, tied with seven-hundred points each.
They would share the cup with Slytherin.
He pushed out of his head the horrible consequences of saying to Cedric, We'll take the cup together.
I liked giving this contrast to Harry with the end of the fourth book, a way to make his sharing a victory--which had been as well-intentioned as Krum catching the Snitch, which let Ireland win the QWC--something other than a tragedy. I also enjoyed that, in JKR's OotP, she gave this role to Ginny in her first Quidditch match, when she caught the Snitch to put Ron (mainly) out of his misery, echoing Viktor's actions at the beginning of GoF.
9. After more than an hour, Flitwick stood still and faced an exhausted Harry and lowered his wand. "Bow, Harry," he told him gently. "The duel is over. It is a draw."
Harry lowered his wand and bowed, and that's when he heard, "Expelliarmus!" and felt his wand slipping from his grip, felt himself hurtling backward, bracing himself before he struck the wall hard, and, wincing, sliding down into a sitting position.
Harry beating the other students in the Dueling Club (except for Neville-on-potion) seemed about right, and even getting the better of Snape when he wasn't expecting Harry to be remotely competent. Having Harry beat Flitwick, the dueling champion, would have been a bit much, I thought.
10. Three hours of sitting in Binns' stuffy classroom writing about Goblin rebellions. He actually fell asleep, and when he awoke, Hermione was shaking him and telling him to hand in his parchment. He looked down at it. He'd written one sentence about someone he'd called Oscar the Offbeat, who Harry wasn't even sure had existed.
Weirdly, JKR also had Harry fall asleep in his History of Magic O.W.L., but it was to give him the vision of Sirius in jeopardy at the Ministry. I waited until Harry's sixth year (written well before OotP came out) to give him the bad dreams and insomnia that would lead to his making a different--and yet similar--bad judgment call for the sake of saving someone he loved.
11. Moody stared in disbelief at him. "Potter," he said, clearly in awe, which shook Harry somewhat. "You didn't tell me you could conjure a Patronus. And what a Patronus..."
At his O.W.L.s in OotP, Harry also impressed with his Patronus, but in that case others knew about it already, since he'd been charged at the Ministry with performing this spell away from school and in front of a Muggle (Dudley).
12. Harry's eyes rolled back in his head; he felt himself floating up, up, and, looking down, he watched his body in fascination, watched Moody moving slowly, watched Hermione anxiously put her hand to her mouth in slow motion, then her other hand on Ron’s arm as Ron stared at him, his jaw dropping in tiny increments...
As much as a lot of people felt the pain-blocking Harry could do was pretty cool, I feel that due to knowing more about the HP universe, I wouldn't have made this call if I had to do it over. For the same reason, I believe Dumbledore was wrong, in OotP, to suggest Harry learn Occlumency. If you want more details about why I feel that way, feel free to ask.
13. Malfoy walked back toward the tub, started draining it and collecting his clothes. "And just who am I going to celebrate with? The only Slytherins who'll have anything to do with me are Snape and that fourth-year, what'’s-her-name. And I'm starting to think she fancies me, so I don't want to hang around her too much and give her the wrong impression..."
Draco clearly changes his mind about Mariah later.
14. The following afternoon they went down to Hagrid's to see the seventh-year Gryffindors go up against the sun bulls.
Of course, since Harry spent what would have been his seventh year on a Horcrux scavenger hunt and we only hear about Hermione going back to school for her seventh year, JKR never had to write any specifics about the N.E.W.T.s, so I was winging it on this even more than on the O.W.L.s. But having the students recreate what Jason and Medea had to do to get the Golden Fleece seemed about the right level of difficulty.
It's still not clear to me how Bill and Percy and Barty Crouch, Jr. got 12 O.W.L.s, so I made up my own system and it bears no resemblance to JKR's as a result. Deal with it.
16. As they were about to enter the castle, walking hand-in-hand and grinning at each other,
Hedwig came and landed on his shoulder, a parchment tied to her leg with Dudley's handwriting on it. He thanked her, explaining that he didn't have any owl treats, and she flew off to the Owlery. He pocketed Dudley’s letter; he could read it later.
Red flag; any time a character thinks they can read a letter "later" (or listen to a phone message, or return a call, or open a package) they're going to wish they hadn't put it off...
17. "Percy's the heir. Apparently Penelope's parents were very keen on them getting married and assumed they would in a few years. They never thought anything would happen to them or their children, of course, but they put Percy's name in since they assumed he would soon be family anyway."
Which paves the way for Percy to buy the house in Hogsmeade and become Fred & George's business partner.
18. "Wormtail. He turned up at Smeltings. One of the teachers started keeping him as a pet, or some such thing, and then he was able to get at Dudley..."
I'm actually kind of surprised that virtually no one suspected that Dudley had a huge target on him after he and Harry became friends. A lot of people spotted that Hermione was probably being manipulated, but Dudley's storyline flew below radar for everyone, as far as I can remember. Though I still get irate reviews (one last week!) from people saying, "You made me LIKE Dudley and then you made me CRY for him!"
19. And then he stopped, remembering Trelawney's Tarot reading for the first time in months.
Another brother... And for him, at the hand of the traitor....
The Spectre of Death.
I also just recently got another review from someone dissecting the Chapter 8 Tarot reading in minute detail. I remember when people were doing that all over the Psychic Serpent Yahoo group! Ah, good times...
20. He ripped off the headphones, threw them on the ground with the player and aimed an angry blast at them both with his wand, blowing them to bits. He didn't want it anymore. It was tainted. Tainted, like his friendship with Dudley...
A pity he was never really your friend...you just thought so...
I thought this would be a horrible way to twist the knife. (I was really terrible to Harry!)
21. He took one look at Harry and opened a desk drawer, producing another identical glass. He picked up the bottle and poured until the glass was half-full. He was commiserating, in his way. Snape pushed it toward Harry.
Some people were really upset about Snape giving Harry alcohol, but I'd been planning to reveal that it was heavily watered down even before that.
For Friday: Chapter 32!
1. "Do you think Azkaban can hold me, when it is guarded by the natural allies of the Dark Lord? I may be there for a while...but only for a while..."
I was more than a little gleeful that JKR also sent Malfoy to prison at the end of the fifth book, for his Death Eater activities, and had him break out of Azkaban along with a lot of other Death Eaters (though she had that happen in the sixth book, while I didn't have the Azkaban break until Triangle Prophecy).
It didn't occur to me, though, that one reason Dumbledore might have for not liking dementors was his father having been in Azkaban. I thought her Dumbledore backstory was brilliant, and absolutely did not see it coming.
2. He opened his eyes again and continued to look around Mr. Weasley's office. There was a window on the wall behind the desk; Harry realized that the window showed a view of the Burrow.
I also LOVED LOVED LOVED that besides putting her Ministry underground, JKR also had MAGICAL WINDOWS in the Ministry! I was a bit nicer to Arthur about this, but when I got to the magical windows in OotP, I felt like doing a jig!
3. "Well, he brought me," Charlie said. "And Bill. I was ten and Bill was twelve. I met you," he said to Moody, nodding.
Moody looked back at him shrewdly. "That's right, we did meet. You were just a lad. And I also saw your--"
You'd never know that I didn't originally intend to write the prequel, would you? But I made sure I was faithful to this bit in the first fic, which harked back to something mentioned by JKR in the books, though I can't remember where for the life of me now.
And, of course, Moody was about to mention something Molly doesn't want Ron to know about, so she starts screaming...
4. Harry thought quickly; if Bill was in his first year at Hogwarts in 1975, his mum and dad would have been in their fifth year. Prefects.
More Lost Generation stuff that I didn't know was Lost Generation stuff at the time!
5. Harry wondered why Ginny was uncomfortable about the picture of her cousins. They weren't much younger than Bill and Charlie, so they'd be adults now. Had they gone bad? Were they the family shame? He looked at Malfoy, who looked as uncomfortable about it as Ginny. Hmmm... Harry thought. Whatever it was, it looked like Ginny had told Malfoy about it. He definitely did not look ignorant.
And then, of course, it's Ginny who changes the subject this time, since she knows about the "cousins" and Ron doesn't. But right now I honestly don't remember if I really did have Malfoy knowing about the girls at this point or if he was just sympathizing with Ginny about her discomfort.
6. He saw Draco Malfoy sitting near Snape on the other side of the stands, and no one else within a stone's throw of them. Then that changed; the Scottish girl who'd asked him out came near and nodded at the place on the other side of Malfoy. He raised his eyebrows but nodded back at her, letting her sit.
Mariah Kirkner makes another appearance before she's actually called by name. Though I can't say I'd fleshed out her backstory yet, I was starting to formulate it (and eventually meshed it with the backstory for Harry's basilisk amulet).
7. "...while Chaser Alicia Spinnet takes the Quaffle and-YES! Gryffindor, ten, Ravenclaw, zero! As the Head Girl gives the Head Boy what-for!"
Ha! I totally did not remember this part of the Quidditch final when I was writing the Alicia/Roger storyline in Triangle Prophecy, but it's funny to see it now and think of it as accidental foreshadowing.
8. If she [Cho] caught it, Ravenclaw would win the cup; if he caught it now, they would win the match, but not the cup. At least not technically; they would share the cup with Slytherin, tied with seven-hundred points each.
They would share the cup with Slytherin.
He pushed out of his head the horrible consequences of saying to Cedric, We'll take the cup together.
I liked giving this contrast to Harry with the end of the fourth book, a way to make his sharing a victory--which had been as well-intentioned as Krum catching the Snitch, which let Ireland win the QWC--something other than a tragedy. I also enjoyed that, in JKR's OotP, she gave this role to Ginny in her first Quidditch match, when she caught the Snitch to put Ron (mainly) out of his misery, echoing Viktor's actions at the beginning of GoF.
9. After more than an hour, Flitwick stood still and faced an exhausted Harry and lowered his wand. "Bow, Harry," he told him gently. "The duel is over. It is a draw."
Harry lowered his wand and bowed, and that's when he heard, "Expelliarmus!" and felt his wand slipping from his grip, felt himself hurtling backward, bracing himself before he struck the wall hard, and, wincing, sliding down into a sitting position.
Harry beating the other students in the Dueling Club (except for Neville-on-potion) seemed about right, and even getting the better of Snape when he wasn't expecting Harry to be remotely competent. Having Harry beat Flitwick, the dueling champion, would have been a bit much, I thought.
10. Three hours of sitting in Binns' stuffy classroom writing about Goblin rebellions. He actually fell asleep, and when he awoke, Hermione was shaking him and telling him to hand in his parchment. He looked down at it. He'd written one sentence about someone he'd called Oscar the Offbeat, who Harry wasn't even sure had existed.
Weirdly, JKR also had Harry fall asleep in his History of Magic O.W.L., but it was to give him the vision of Sirius in jeopardy at the Ministry. I waited until Harry's sixth year (written well before OotP came out) to give him the bad dreams and insomnia that would lead to his making a different--and yet similar--bad judgment call for the sake of saving someone he loved.
11. Moody stared in disbelief at him. "Potter," he said, clearly in awe, which shook Harry somewhat. "You didn't tell me you could conjure a Patronus. And what a Patronus..."
At his O.W.L.s in OotP, Harry also impressed with his Patronus, but in that case others knew about it already, since he'd been charged at the Ministry with performing this spell away from school and in front of a Muggle (Dudley).
12. Harry's eyes rolled back in his head; he felt himself floating up, up, and, looking down, he watched his body in fascination, watched Moody moving slowly, watched Hermione anxiously put her hand to her mouth in slow motion, then her other hand on Ron’s arm as Ron stared at him, his jaw dropping in tiny increments...
As much as a lot of people felt the pain-blocking Harry could do was pretty cool, I feel that due to knowing more about the HP universe, I wouldn't have made this call if I had to do it over. For the same reason, I believe Dumbledore was wrong, in OotP, to suggest Harry learn Occlumency. If you want more details about why I feel that way, feel free to ask.
13. Malfoy walked back toward the tub, started draining it and collecting his clothes. "And just who am I going to celebrate with? The only Slytherins who'll have anything to do with me are Snape and that fourth-year, what'’s-her-name. And I'm starting to think she fancies me, so I don't want to hang around her too much and give her the wrong impression..."
Draco clearly changes his mind about Mariah later.
14. The following afternoon they went down to Hagrid's to see the seventh-year Gryffindors go up against the sun bulls.
Of course, since Harry spent what would have been his seventh year on a Horcrux scavenger hunt and we only hear about Hermione going back to school for her seventh year, JKR never had to write any specifics about the N.E.W.T.s, so I was winging it on this even more than on the O.W.L.s. But having the students recreate what Jason and Medea had to do to get the Golden Fleece seemed about the right level of difficulty.
It's still not clear to me how Bill and Percy and Barty Crouch, Jr. got 12 O.W.L.s, so I made up my own system and it bears no resemblance to JKR's as a result. Deal with it.
16. As they were about to enter the castle, walking hand-in-hand and grinning at each other,
Hedwig came and landed on his shoulder, a parchment tied to her leg with Dudley's handwriting on it. He thanked her, explaining that he didn't have any owl treats, and she flew off to the Owlery. He pocketed Dudley’s letter; he could read it later.
Red flag; any time a character thinks they can read a letter "later" (or listen to a phone message, or return a call, or open a package) they're going to wish they hadn't put it off...
17. "Percy's the heir. Apparently Penelope's parents were very keen on them getting married and assumed they would in a few years. They never thought anything would happen to them or their children, of course, but they put Percy's name in since they assumed he would soon be family anyway."
Which paves the way for Percy to buy the house in Hogsmeade and become Fred & George's business partner.
18. "Wormtail. He turned up at Smeltings. One of the teachers started keeping him as a pet, or some such thing, and then he was able to get at Dudley..."
I'm actually kind of surprised that virtually no one suspected that Dudley had a huge target on him after he and Harry became friends. A lot of people spotted that Hermione was probably being manipulated, but Dudley's storyline flew below radar for everyone, as far as I can remember. Though I still get irate reviews (one last week!) from people saying, "You made me LIKE Dudley and then you made me CRY for him!"
19. And then he stopped, remembering Trelawney's Tarot reading for the first time in months.
Another brother... And for him, at the hand of the traitor....
The Spectre of Death.
I also just recently got another review from someone dissecting the Chapter 8 Tarot reading in minute detail. I remember when people were doing that all over the Psychic Serpent Yahoo group! Ah, good times...
20. He ripped off the headphones, threw them on the ground with the player and aimed an angry blast at them both with his wand, blowing them to bits. He didn't want it anymore. It was tainted. Tainted, like his friendship with Dudley...
A pity he was never really your friend...you just thought so...
I thought this would be a horrible way to twist the knife. (I was really terrible to Harry!)
21. He took one look at Harry and opened a desk drawer, producing another identical glass. He picked up the bottle and poured until the glass was half-full. He was commiserating, in his way. Snape pushed it toward Harry.
Some people were really upset about Snape giving Harry alcohol, but I'd been planning to reveal that it was heavily watered down even before that.
For Friday: Chapter 32!