“Hermione’s Little Helper” 🦂

Granger, what are you …

If you have not read this fic, please let this gorgeous bind (not by me, but for me in an exchange with another binder, @slbindery) convince you.

The fucking quotes! I suppose you could consider this a spoiler alert so I’ll hide them.

(Need I remind you to go look at this post of @littlewinnow’s now?)

I'm actually working on a typeset of the entire twenty-two cards series as a gift for the author, so at some point I will be sharing my own version. But for now, feast on this.

Draco&Pansy

#HarryPotter #DracoMalfoy #PansyParkinson #Slytherin #Hogwarts #HP Fanart #fanart

obsessed with cats that bark

That same evening, after supper, Draco enters the Slytherin common room, black robes billowing behind him in a rather impressive Snape impersonation.

"Snake meeting in the den!" Shouts his sonorused voice.

One by one all Slytherin students file into the common room. Draco waits, brooding in a corner, arms crossed. When they are all accounted for, Draco speaks.

"Flint! Why did you tell Professor Granger about the ring?"

"I thought..."

"Yes, in the future, please refrain from thinking. All of you."

The students lower their gazes.

"Your job is to talk about me when Professor Granger can hear you, not tell her I want to marry her! I have to at least take her on one date first!"

A seventh year raises her hand, Draco nods.

"We talked about how handsome you are, she was sitting beside us on the Quidditch stands when you were acting as referee. She ogled you after we said your arse looked good."

"Thank you, Avery. See? That's what I want from you! No more mistakes."

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

Maple and Neil

Handmade and ooak. Obviously I am a beginner but I love them dearly

Together

Harry is an orphan, so nothing has to be more important to him than his own sense of what is right. And having always had to rely on himself to get through life, he is self possessed and self directed enough to have a very strong sense of right and wrong. And he holds himself to that scrupulously. He always does what he sees as the right thing; he will not be talked out of it. There isn’t anybody he wants to make happy more than he wants to do the right thing.

For Draco, his obligations to others, his family specifically, is the sum total of his idea of the right thing to do. From his perspective, his social and even moral obligations are limited to safeguarding the wellbeing (and when possible the prestige) of his family.

People think of Draco as a bad boy, but he’s actually very conventional. He’s a dick, but his views are not at all controversial in his social circle. When Draco realizes that toeing the party line has brought him to a place where he has to face MUCH more violence than he is capable of tolerating, he has to start thinking for himself and. Well he gets his shit absolutely rocked.

He’s working his ass off trying to protect and uplift his family, but they didn’t show him the same courtesy, not in the ways that matter. Like he got seven top of the line broomsticks when he was twelve, but also. His parents brought home a mass murderer to live in their house and taught him that this was a consummation devoutly to be wished.

And once he meets Voldemort and gets put to work for him, it’s clear that Voldemort is volatile and capricious and his goodwill cannot be counted on as reliably as his explosive anger and vengefulness. And if Draco can see it now, he must think that his parents had to have seen it before.

He has to confront the fact that his parents will cheerfully witness and participate in a level of violence and destruction that he cannot countenance. He can’t be directed by them anymore. He can’t be like them anymore. So what’s his guiding star? Who can he be? What is he supposed to do with his life if not what they’ve asked of him?

There is such an interesting contrast between the two of them! Their characters are at odds in such a fun and fascinating way! After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry has discharged his most significant and pressing obligation, and it’s time for him to heal and regroup and figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. And Draco is in the same place but arguably with an even more significant blow to his sense of self. Neither of them can go back to the way things were, but for Harry that’s a huge relief, and for Draco, it’s terrifying.

Harry is an extremely empathetic and generous person, and I think he would see himself in Draco’s rudderlessness and feel impelled to commiserate. And I think Draco would no longer have much reason to pretend that he hasn’t always found Harry incredibly magnetic, before he even knew who he was.