How Would The Conversation Among Severus Snape And Lily And James Potter Be In The Afterlife?

There's something that always confused me about the Harry Potter universe. I don't know if it's just me lacking functioning braincells or what. Disclaimer the answer might be in the books since the films missed loads but it could have also been explained in the films and I'm just dumb. I haven't read the books since I was about 14 and the films since 2018 so maybe I'm forgetting things.

So when Voldemort failed to kill Harry the spell backfired and killed him. He didn't permanently die because he had horcruxes (not including Harry at that time)

Why did it take so long to come back to life. Like I know he was chilling on Quirrels head for a bit. Meaning that he wasn't a full body and hadn't been a full body since the night he killed Lily and James (until the GoF)

Like surely he would just like take a week to recover from dying and then be back up and running.

Cause otherwise horcruxes aren't even that powerful if you have to drink unicorn blood and do a completely separate ritual to be fully back to life. Both of which apparently requires outside assistance.

Because you have to split your soul to make horcruxes which he'd done before. Which if Harry became a horcrux because Voldemort died and split his soul then he's died multiple times before that to create each other horcrux.

Like why did he remain a slug thing for years when he died at the Potters but not when he was losing every other horcrux. Surely soul splitting and dying is calm in comparison to having multiple soul pieces destroyed in succession.

Basically I'm not understanding how you come back to life after dying if you've got a horcrux and how long it takes to do so.

There's a post going around Tumblr about how if you're post-menopausal and have bleeding, you should get it checked by your doctor. I brought some minor bleeding I'd had up in a doctor visit earlier this year, prompted by that post, and this week, after a biopsy, I found out I have cancer. It's early stage and the survival odds at 5 years are 99%. I have an oncologist appointment and we may have caught it early enough that surgery alone will be sufficient treatment (no radiation/chemo).

So that post may have saved my life and it may have made my treatment a lot easier too.

If you get into menopause and then start bleeding again, really, get your reproductive innards checked out. The life you save may be your own.

Bruce Wayne\Batman is the blockbuster version of the “Sherlock Holmes” archetype. Change my mind

Something that recently occurred to me is that nobody ever made sure Harry reunited with the Dursleys at the end of the year. He takes the train, crosses into muggle King’s Cross and then meets with them.

All on his own. Without supervision.

So what if Harry notices that as well? He is, after all, highly motivated to find an alternative to returning to them.  What if he sends them a letter that he found another place to stay and they would not have to come pick him up in London? And he takes the train, crosses into muggle King’s Cross, says “goodbye and enjoy your holidays” to Ron and Hermione and takes off.

I have two versions of this semi thought out:

1) this happens after second year and is partially driven by Dobby.

Dobby wanted to be free. That was the extent of his plans. Oh right, and “keep Harry Potter safe”. So maybe Dobby sticks with Harry during the last days of second year and they manage to strike up a friendship. This friendship includes Dobby being strictly opposed to Harry living the way he does at the Dursleys.

Between the two of them they have a relatively detailed understanding of the wizarding world, if from a side-line perspective, and the ability to mess with essentially any magic (Dobby), funds and the ability to handle the muggle world (Harry) and zero inhibition or respectful braincells.

Dobby delivers the letter to the Dursleys during the night (Harry doesn’t think they’d treat Hedwig too kindly) and after they reach King’s Cross, the two of them make their own way through London. They take care that Dobby only casts when alone to avoid the trace, Harry drags them to Diagon Alley and Dobby coaches him through wizarding life essentials and their appropriate costs and they get a subscription of the Daily Prophet. They exchange galleons for pounds and live in various youth hostels.

And then Sirius breaks out and they read about his connection to Harry in the paper. Dobby *flips* and hides his Harry Potter, Sir, and himself as well as a house elf can hide.

Dumbledore checks on Harry and panics because the Dursleys haven’t seen him since he went off with the Weasley kids.

Sirius watches that go down from the bushes while he also tries to check on Harry and panics. His priorities and plans go from “see Harry - hunt Peter - contact Harry” to “FIND HARRY - PROTECT HARRY”.

Dobby is questioning whether he should get Harry expelled after all.

Harry misses the days in which the only murder attempts around him were on unicorns.

2) the somewhat cracky edition

This starts at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban. After all, by then he has the experience of living at the Leaky Cauldron for a couple of weeks. And he had freedom from the Dursleys offered to him, getting five wonderful minutes of hope for the future.

He is not going back. Sirius could live on the run for a year, Harry could manage a summer.

So he takes the train, crosses into muggle King’s Cross, says “goodbye, Ron and Hermione, enjoy your holidays”, pretends to go look for the Dursleys, turns right around and reboards the Hogwarts Express. He is kind of curious what it does when it isn’t ferrying around students.

What would change if the DMLE was in any way competent?

A likely incomplete and ever expanding list.

Hagrid would not be considered a criminal. He might still be expelled for keeping a dangerous illegal pet in his dorm. But Myrtle clearly did not die from an acromantula bite

the obvious: Sirius doesn’t get framed for long. Priori Incantatem on his wand and at least the murder charge is gone

in Goblet of Fire, even if the ministry didn’t believe Voldemort was back, two students have been kidnapped and one returned dead. That should garner a more detailed investigation, which leads to Death Eaters arrested left and right

students being petrified?????? investigation please????

Quirrell’s death and possession lead to an early discovery of Voldemort’s continued existence

tbc

I was thinking about The Half-Blood Prince and Dumbledore willingly endangered so many people during that year????? I mean, it’s been a while since I read the book in detail, so maybe it’s primarily in the movies.

BUT we know Dumbledore knew about Draco Malfoy’s task to kill him for the entire year thanks to Snape. Which means that through inaction Dumbledore allowed multiple people being in mortal danger and getting severely harmed. Memorable instances:

Ron being poisoned, only saved by Harry’s quick action. Could just as well have hit Slughorn or any other person close to him

Katie Bell being put under a curse and laden with an extremely deadly object. Again putting her and all around her in immediate danger of lasting curse damage. Wasn’t she in St Mungo’s for a while?

Madame Rosmerta being put under the Imperius for a lengthy period of time, as Draco was nowhere near the Three Broomsticks at the time of the cursing of Katie and was the one to put Mme Rosmerta under the spell. That can’t be healthy

THE VANISHING CABINET?????? HOGWARTS WAS LITERALLY INVADED THAT YEAR????? Bill Weasley was scarred for life and only the timing left him free of the full werewolf curse. I cannot remember if there were any fatalities except for Dumbledore himself that night

I am all for giving Draco Malfoy a second chance, at that point he was literally threatened with his own and his parents’ death to act. But the way Dumbledore goes about it is so accepting of uninvolved people getting hurt. Instead of making a plan with Draco on how to get him and his parents into a safer situation he just sits back and watches SO. MANY. PEOPLE. ESCAPE. DEATH. NARROWLY. Even after Harry literally goes up to him and goes “Malfoy is up to something”, which would give him the perfect opening to check in with Draco without revealing Snape’s status as a spy.

This is canon, right?

Ginny and Harry, two main characters

I find it really sad how overlooked is the rarity of Harry and Ginny's couple dynamic.

In stories like Harry Potter where the main character is clearly the main character and not just the person who gives us their point of view for the story, it's very common that the love interest isn't an equal to the hero. Usually, the love interest is one of the helpers of the main character which inevitably creates an unbalanced dynamic where a lot of the life experiences of the love interest revolve around the main character. Take Ron and Hermione, they are not equals to Harry. They are equals to each other, they are the only two people who know what it means to be Harry's best friend in the war but the stories/adventures they are involved in aren't theirs. They are not equals to Harry, which doesn't mean they are less or more, just something else.

Ginny on the other end is the only character between the young ones - besides Harry obviously - that is a main character in her own right. She has her own story, her own friends, her own adventures, her own giant trauma, and her own relationship with darkness. She has her own hero story with her leading the rebellion at Hogwarts and her own helpers, Neville and Luna.

She is a main character whose story we don't have the opportunity to read. And Harry is her love interest just as much as she is Harry's one. She may understand Harry perfectly and so be perfect for him, but Harry understands her perfectly too and therefore is the only logical love interest for her.

And even after the books she keeps being Harry's equal becoming famous in her own right with professional Quidditch and then assuming the most influential role in Wizarding World sport as editor of the sports section for the Prophet.

She even has her sort of prophecy with the whole being the first daughter in seven generations and the seventh sibling, something that supposedly makes her quite powerful, something that we see, something that even Slughorn, a man who knows pretty much all the people who are worth being known, recognizes.

To solidify this point, her story is circular like Harry's. If Harry starts this story as someone who needs to be rescued and who is in search of a family he ends it with him protecting other people for a job and having a loving family. Ginny starts her story as a young girl who as such has to hide her true ambitions, as someone who because she wrote in a diary faced unspeakable horrors, and she ends the story with being famous for her talent, the mother of a youngest sibling and girl that she'll make sure will grow up not needing to hide her ambitions and a journalist, reclaiming her passion for writing.

Harry and Ginny are basically two main characters with a lot of secondary characters in common who happened to find each other and get married. It's basically a cross-over between two stories it's just that we've read only one of the two.

ADDITIONALLY where was Dumbledore for all of November 1st anyway?

Obviously not at Hogwarts, McGonagall would have found him there and never gone to Privet Drive.

Not at Privet Drive to check the Dursleys’ suitability as, again, McGonagall would have met him pre-Harry-delivery.

Probably not at the Ministry, because that would have been known to Hagrid when McGonagall asked him if he knew where to find Dumbledore.

Not at Gordric’s Hollow, because then he would have taken Harry with him instead of sending Hagrid.

So what was he doing for the ~30 hours following the Potters’ death that nobody knows about?

Something I still don’t get is how the entire wizarding world knew to identify Harry by his scar. It seems a little counterproductive to have a distinctive mark of a person supposedly kept from the wizarding world be common knowledge.

Nobody should even suspect there would be a mark - Avada Kedavra famously leaves no trace. And since Harry’s location is a guarded secret, chances are slim that some wizard/witch recognizes him on the streets (because he looks like James maybe), sees the scar, and promptly spreads the word. So that is probably not how the scar gained it’s notoriety.

That leaves the magical people who saw him on November first and second-Hagrid, McGonagall, and Dumbledore. Sirius might have gotten close enough to spot the wound, but Hagrid was the one to get him out, so Sirius likely didn’t know about the scar. He is also out as the one having spread the word because, well, Azkaban.

Hagrid and McGonagall are unlikely to be questioned directly about the events of Halloween or Harry Potter and both heed Dumbledore’s orders to keep mum about Harry’s whereabouts. That leaves one person knowing about the scar and having access to the wizarding world.

…Dumbledore explain.

Bruce Wayne, sitting in a cute eco-friendly cafe while on a video call with Tim: Oh Noooo, are you sure there’s no way the board of directors will let us get rid of this old decrepit Wayne Factory building that is unsafe for our workers and also for the surrounding environment?

CEO Tim, with equal gravitas: No, I’m afraid they just won’t budge. It technically meets legal requirements on paper, and we can’t prove that the chemicals affecting the local ecosystem that have no other possible source are from the out-of-date drainage system… they’re saying it would cost too much to fix the place up too, which is ridiculous, because we’re us, but our hands are tied…

Bruce, full Brucie himbo mode: Oh I just feel so SAD for all the sweet fluffy animals and the pretty flowers and especially our hard workers dealing with such unsafe conditions… I think I’ll give them all a nice short vacation this weekend, so the ENTIRE PLACE will be EMPTY and SHUT DOWN from FRIDAY TO TUESDAY, the SECURITY SYSTEM WILL BE DOWN because it’s just so GLITCHY, I’m sure no one will do anything about the ENVIRONMENTAL STAIN ON OUR COMPANIES NAME THAT WILL BE COMPLETELY ABANDONED FROM FRIDAY TO TUESDAY- Timmy do you think I’m being too subtle?

Tim, snickering: no no you’re doing great Bruce I’m sure they’ve got it

Poison Ivy, on a date the next table over: ( ‘-‘)-☕️

Harley, through tears of repressed laughter: so… we doing anythin’ this weekend?