It's Like Severus With Lily Except Sirius And James Were Actually Compatible.

I like shipping people that almost nobody ever thought of shipping together and have the potential to be really interesting.

Like Molly x Voldemort, Molly x Sirius, Ron x Voldemort, Andromeda x Bellatrix, Lucius x Hermione, Blaise x Ron and so much more 😄

Wow so many interesting points I've never considered 😍

Hi, do you have an analysis for why you prefer bottom Tom? Most fics have him as a top, but I'm very interested in your perspective ma'am.

well, the short answer is because i want to and because i can.

the longer answer is that i just don't find any of the arguments for why voldemort would never bottom under any circumstances to be as convincing and definitive as their proponents claim them to be.

my issue - to be clear - isn't with people having a preference for reading or writing about him being a top. it's with the fact that him only being a top - and not only that, but him being repulsed or humiliated by the idea of bottoming - is typically presented as such an objective fact that preferring to read or write about him being a bottom provokes responses which range from the simply annoying - "this is out of character!" [any fic in which he consensually shags his prophesied child-enemy is out of character, be serious] - to the genuinely troubling - "it's disgusting! voldemort is a real man and real men don't want anything up their arses!".

obviously - let's be real - a lot of the arguments about why bottom!voldemort is impossible are just typical "slash fandom reinvents gender roles" shit - they essentially boil down to "omg no harry would bottom because he's the girl".

but others do come with more weight behind them. and two of these are:

that the gender norms voldemort was raised with would inculcate in him a big lump of internalised homophobia which would make him see bottoming as feminine, and - in seeing it as feminine - see it as weak, humiliating, dependent, and incompatible with his understanding of control and power. that voldemort would be horrified by the idea of being penetrated, because he would see it as something which polluted or profaned the body he considers to be sacred.

i do think it's possible to argue both of these points robustly, using actual readings of the text rather than just vibes. i've just never found any of these readings compelling.

and the reason why all comes down to this:

"I knew I was different," he whispered to his own quivering fingers. "I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something." [HBP 13]

he's talking about something specific - how he's always known that he's a wizard - here, of course. but we can also take this statement and use it to think more generally about how he views being perceived as deviant, strange, or wrong by the norms of the society in which he lives.

by which i mean... he's somebody who believes that being different makes him special and that people who try to punish or shame him for his difference are idiots who simply haven't yet worked out that he's superior to them in literally everything he does. he's not someone who perceives being different in a self-flagellating way - he doesn't think there's something wrong with him, he doesn't think that his difference makes him a pathetic or unimpressive person. and he's also not somebody who views being criticised or punished for his difference as something which causes him sorrow or anxiety. it causes him rage - because it inconveniences him [it creates obstacles he has to overcome, although he entirely believes he can overcome them] and because it doesn't recognise his self-conception as the protagonist of reality:

Riddle's reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking furious. "You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course - well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!"   "I am not from the asylum," said Dumbledore patiently. "I am a teacher and, if you will sit down calmly, I shall tell you about Hogwarts. Of course, if you would rather not come to the school, nobody will force you -" "I'd like to see them try," sneered Riddle. "Hogwarts," Dumbledore went on, as though he had not heard Riddle's last words, "is a school for people with special abilities -"   "I'm not mad!" [HBP 13]

you can entertain a very dark reading of this scene - in fact, i have - but it's also possible to entertain a liberating one, and see the child voldemort as someone who has always been proud of his difference and prepared to defend that pride in the face of censure, and who is absolutely delighted to be given the language to define and describe his difference and to be given access to a community of people who are similarly - in his words - special.

all of which is to say... the standard interpretation in fandom seems to be that a queer voldemort would fall somewhere on a spectrum from indifferent to his sexuality to actively ashamed of it.

but i think it's much, much more plausible that he'd actually be proud of it, and for his statement - "i knew i was different... i knew i was special" - to be used as the starting point for how we might imagine him realising that he's queer.

and this is why the "he'd have so much internalised homophobia he'd never bottom" argument always falls flat for me - it rests on an assumption that queer men having to grow past a childhood/teenage fear that there's something wrong with them is the default position. it overlooks the fact that there are many ways for somebody to come to understand their own sexuality.

and that two of those ways are "defiantly" and "spitefully". aka the lord voldemort special.

something which always stands out to me about the canonical voldemort, both when he's a good-looking teenager/young man and a monstrous, serpentine adult, is that - even with all the phallic symbolism which surrounds him [enormous snakes and ultra-powerful wands and so on] - the text presents him as somebody who comes across as fairly effeminate:

he's typically described - as we can see from this excellent analysis from @said-snape-softly - as speaking "softly" or "quietly". when he isn't, he's often "shrill", "shrieking", "screeching", or "screaming".

he has a hair-trigger temper and he's extremely emotionally volatile.

he's typically described as moving in ways which have similarly feminine connotations - he "drifts" and "glides". while the primary doylist reason for this is clearly so the reader associates him with snakes, ghosts, and dementors, it ends up giving him a quality of movement which is fey, rather than powerful and purposeful. indeed, we only ever see him do one thing which requires physical, as well as magical, prowess - duelling. but, like fencing - which is its real-world equivalent - good duellists aren't people who are physically strong or imposing, they're people who are cunning and nimble [and the other men the text emphasises are good at it are snape, flitwick, and harry - with harry's quick reflexes being explicitly given as a reason why [i.e. GoF 34] ]. his ability to fly is a demonstration of his magical power alone, since it allows him to circumvent the need to use a broom, which does appear to require physical strength [hence why the only main characters who aren't fond of using brooms are either women or fat, cowardly little boys like neville...]

building on this, he's often described in ways which make him sound quite physically fragile - he's very thin, he's very pale, he's always cold, every time his heartbeat is described it seems to be irregular and so on.

his reputation in his teens and young adulthood is as a "polite [and] quiet" goody-two-shoes who "showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all" [HBP 17]. i think that point about aggression is really important - it builds on what mrs cole tells dumbledore about it being "very hard to catch him" bullying other orphans [HBP 13]. he's not dudley - or james and sirius - using his physical talents to subdue and control people. he's sneakier... more insidious... indeed, in chamber of secrets, ron explicitly compares him to percy - somebody else the text presents as fairly effete - in order to complain about him "squealing" - aka, running to tell a teacher, like a girl, instead of settling things like a man - on hagrid [CoS 14].

when he's a young man, living alone for the first time, the text thinks it's very important to tell us that he has "slightly longer hair" than he does at school [HBP 20]. "slightly" is obviously the operative word here - i don't think he's strutting into hepzibah smith's house in a twenty-four inch lace-front - but we can certainly imagine him with the sort of greaser or pompadour haircut which was understood in the 1950s as being a bit counter-cultural...

of the five horcruxes which are objects - rather than harry and nagini [who is, of course, female] - three [cup, diadem, locket] originally belonged to a woman and are acquired from a woman, two [cup, locket] are acquired by killing a woman using a stereotypically female murder method [poison], two are connected to voldemort's rage at his mother being disparaged [locket - he's furious to hear hepzibah say that merope must have stolen it, ring - he attacks morfin immediately after morfin calls his mother a "slut"]. and all five of these horcruxes also depend on women to introduce them into the narrative in a way that facilitates their destruction: the diary is given to ginny; dumbledore puts on the ring in order to speak to his sister; the locket is associated both with walburga's grief [it's literally moved from the cave - voldemort's grave for his mother - to the house which is walburga's own tomb!] and with umbridge's performance of femininity; the cup is given to bellatrix [and the text is very clear that both she and voldemort understand it as having only been given to her, rather than to her and rodolphus] and is then destroyed - albeit off-stage - by hermione; and harry is given the tools to acquire the diadem by cho, luna, and mcgonagall, although he has to overcome the obstacles of alecto carrow and helena ravenclaw to get hold of it. harry - of course - also only becomes a horcrux because of a woman - lily's - sacrifice.

his favourite death eaters are a woman and a very feminine-coded man. but - more interestingly - what the text finds unimpressive isn't that he likes bellatrix and snape... it's that he leaves a lot of his dirty work to male minions who are characterised by their brutish strength - people like greyback, hagrid [who he makes carry harry up to hogwarts], rowle, gibbon, amycus carrow and so on. there's the heavy implication in the text that voldemort's preference for leaving the violence to others - as i'm always pointing out, his canonical kill count is really low; most of the murders in the series are done by other death eaters acting on his orders - is something we should see as weak.

the text associates him with this effeminacy - i think it's really important to note, given who jkr is - as a criticism. it's something - much like the text's presentation of him as aromantic, and the fact that the degradation of his looks via the creation of the horcruxes makes him look sexless/eunuch-like - being used to underscore his villainy. he's feminine-coded in a toxic way.

but let's take this in another direction [and let's also return to the actual question you asked me...] and read him as someone who has always had to deal with being perceived as queer by other people, and having that perception be associated with negative assumptions.

he's very easy to imagine as a child/teenager who's the target of ridicule from his fellow orphans/fellow students [for not being sporty, for liking to sit in the library for hours on end coming up with anagrams of his own name, for the way he walks and speaks] which hinges on the idea that his failure to conform to the expected conventions of "proper" masculinity mean that he's not a proper man... and that if he's not a proper man then... he's not straight.

but then we have to come back to the "i knew i was special" point, don't we?

voldemort's belief in his own superiority can - in my view - be used to read him as somebody who would embrace being camp or effeminate or whatever term we want to use, in order both to express his contempt for people who criticise him ["think i'm a messed up little deviant, do you, mrs cole? well, you don't know the half of it!"] and who conform to social norms he thinks are reprehensible ["oh, do purebloods frown upon bottoming, abraxas? well - guess what - so do muggles. do you agree with what muggles think?"] and to humiliate, subjugate, and control them ["you think i'm a faggot, do you...? well, you're right... i'm a faggot who's defeated you in battle and now i'm about to kill you... still feel like a man?"].

while - obviously - appearance/gender presentation has nothing to do with preferred sexual roles - the manliest men on earth can be bottoms! being femme doesn't prevent you topping! - i really do think that voldemort is someone who can be written entirely canon-coherently as thinking that the homophobic perception of bottoming as weak, powerless, or humiliating is complete nonsense, and who would actively flaunt his rejection of this perception as a way to mock people who subscribe to it.

after all, we see him do something similar in canon when it comes to his blood-status and social class. the death eaters - lots of whom are posh pureblood men who conceive of themselves as the most important people in the universe - are made to kneel at the feet of and kiss the robes of and be branded like cattle by and be at the beck and call of someone who's neither pureblood nor posh. there are - as lupin tells us - no wizarding princes... and yet the closest things the wizarding world has to an aristocracy are rolling around on the ground debasing themselves and calling a half-blood orphan "my lord".

voldemort does this to humiliate them. but he also does this to amuse himself - à la logan roy making men who've displeased him play "boar on the floor".

[wormtail being forced to care for him when he's in his half-form at the start of goblet of fire, for example. he's not humiliated in the slightest by his dependence on wormtail... wormtail is humiliated by it, and voldemort finds it hilarious.]

and so i think we can plausibly imagine him also deeply enjoying making his straight, married, "i would die before i let anything near my arse", "i'm not getting changed for quidditch with so-and-so there, he's queer", "i'd disown my son if i found out he let other men fuck him" death eaters grovel for the favour of someone who loves getting railed...

this deeply aligns with how voldemort understands things like power and control - and it's why the argument that he'd only top because he would regard it as the only way of being powerful and controlling never hits for me.

because this also rests on an assumption - that the bottom always understands themselves as the passive partner. i do think the fandom is broadly getting better at recognising that bottoms and submissives are different things [although the bar was on the floor...], but i think there's still a tendency to default to the idea that the two people involved in sex are an active partner and a passive partner, and that the passive partner is - for want of a better term - the receptacle.

the language used around bottoming reinforces this assumption. its voice is passive - the bottom is penetrated, is bred, is fucked, is taken - its verbs are passive too - the top does, the bottom receives.

but the thing is... this is just semantics. and it's a semantic argument directly rooted in misogyny, and the homophobia which stems from and connects to it.

and - since it's just semantics - we can change the language we use at any time to completely reconfigure the assumed power dynamic.

the bottom grants access. the bottom consumes. the bottom takes. the bottom absorbs. the bottom uses. the bottom captures. the bottom detains. the bottom grips. the bottom devours. the bottom permits. the bottom destroys.

the top is the person who's passive - who receives permission, who is granted access, who is consumed, who is absorbed, who is captured. the top is the person having their life-force leached from them. they're just a toy, just a piece of meat. they literally don't matter.

and the text already uses this sort of language - the language of consumption and capture and permission to cross thresholds and so on - to talk about voldemort's attitude to power, magic, and the body.

he drains the blood of unicorns; he uses up the life-force of the people and animals he possesses; he grows stronger by consuming ginny's secrets; he is restored to his body by taking from his father, wormtail, and harry; he takes the money dumbledore offers without feeling the need to thank him or regard it as a gift; he offers up gifts to people he wants to use for his own gain; he "doesn't march up to people's houses and bang on their front doors" [OotP 6]; he hoards and conceals precious things; his soul is kept safe by being encased by the horcruxes; his locket is guarded by something which has to be drunk, which destroys anyone who assumes they can simply take it without his permission; he "would be glad to see anything miss hepzibah shows me" [HBP 20] and then seizes her secrets and uses them to bring about her doom; his descent from slytherin is proven by his control of the threshold of the chamber of secrets; he places himself and his talents at dumbledore's disposal, "i am yours to command" [HBP 20]; he controls snakes and they do his bidding; he drains the ministry of its secrets; he controls the dementors, who devour joy; augustus rookwoord "has lord voldemort's gratitude... i shall need all the information you can give me" [OotP 26]; he is the greatest legilimens - that is to say, he is excellent at pulling other people's secrets into his own mind and using them as he wishes - the world has ever seen; he has seen ron's heart and it is his; his followers live to serve him...

his followers are called death eaters, not death fuckers.

and so it's inarguable, really, that he'd have a legion of service tops under his command...

Sirius Black was a bitch fyi

The last part is...interesting 😧 But the rest is absolute gold!

Thoughts on Peter Pettigrew? And if you ship him with anyone, who?

thank you very much for the ask, pal! peter is a fascinating character and i always enjoy properly thinking about him.

because - let's be honest - he really goes under the radar, in both canon and fanon. he's extraordinarily cunning, ruthless, powerful, adaptable, emotionally literate, intelligent…

and yet you wouldn't get that impression if you take harry's narrative at face value. even after peter escapes at the end of prisoner of azkaban/cuts his own hand off in goblet of fire.

[which is one of harry's most interesting character traits - his tendency to split the world into black-and-white "good people" and "bad people" is something we talk about a lot, but he also has a tendency to split the world into "special people, who have agency" and "unspecial people, who don't"... hence his attitude to characters such as stan shunpike.]

but the main thing i find fascinating about peter isn't actually the way his talents are overlooked by the text. it's the way he embodies one of the series' central messages: that "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live" [PS 12].

when dumbledore says this to harry, it's as advice on how to deal productively with grief. and obviously that's a good and healthy message to receive - especially for the children who are philosopher's stone's intended audience.

but the statement has another application, which ties to another one of the series' themes: that all that glitters is not gold.

so much of the overarching seven-book narrative is about jealousy and longing - harry's longing for a family, ron's jealousy of harry's fame, petunia's longing for magic and jealousy of lily, snape's longing for lily and jealousy of james, etc.

and it's also about how this jealousy and longing leads us to see what we want to see - ron becoming convinced that harry's feelings for hermione are romantic, lupin's inability to criticise james leading to his rage when harry's appalled at him walking out on tonks, the death eaters being convinced that voldemort is a champion of pureblood oligarchy, fudge refusing to believe that voldemort has returned etc.

as both ron and harry learn after ron stabs the locket-horcrux, you have to live the life you actually have and you have to know the people you know as they actually are. you can't imagine them into something they're not, become sad and/or angry when they fail to meet expectations it was always impossible for them to fulfil, and then let that sadness and anger fester until the poison within you can no longer be contained...

which is the peter pettigrew special, really...

sirius' assessment of peter in prisoner of azkaban comes in clutch for us on this point:

"Because you never did anything for anyone unless you could see what was in it for you. Voldemort's been in hiding for fifteen years, they say he's half dead. You weren't about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore's nose, for a wreck of a wizard who'd lost all of his power, were you? You'd want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn't you?" [PoA 19]

i love this line for a lot of reasons - especially sirius' tacit admission that he and james once met that criteria of "biggest bully in the playground" - but i particularly like the way it aligns peter with [dumbledore's assessment of] voldemort's school friends:

"As he moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for want of a better term, although as I have already indicated, Riddle undoubtedly felt no affection for any of them. This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts." [HBP 17]

peter is fundamentally someone ambitious seeking shared glory. and he does this - like, it's implied, quite a lot of death eaters - by putting on his rose-tinted glasses and deluding himself into believing that the person he expects to share that glory with him actually will share it... until everything comes crashing down and he's forced to see that they actually think of him as unworthy of sharing anything with. and his fury becomes toxic.

because peter is someone who inherently views himself as a follower.

lord voldemort would never - to borrow sirius' phrase - do something for someone else unless he could see what was in it for him. but voldemort's selfishness is because he sees himself as the unparalleled superior of everyone he meets - there's no need to help those under you if they're the only people who benefit!

peter's selfishness is slightly different - everything he does is in pursuit of vicarious glory. he wants to be praised and rewarded by a leader he's made more powerful. he doesn't want to be that leader himself.

peter the marauder

indeed, canon emphasises that this is what attracted him to james and sirius:

To Sirius' right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter, plump and watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in this coolest of gangs, with the much-admired rebels that James and Sirius had been. [DH 10]

obviously this is harry's subjective view ["much-admired rebels" is a bit of a stretch, let's be real…], which the text does acknowledge ["or was it simply because harry knew how it had been, that he saw these things in the picture?"].

but harry's assessment of the teenage peter here matches the one we're given across the series:

"Pettigrew... that fat little boy who was always tagging around after them at Hogwarts?" said Madam Rosmerta. "Hero-worshipped Black and Potter," said Professor McGonagall. "Never quite in their league, talent-wise." [PoA 10]

James was still playing with the Snitch, letting it zoom farther and farther away, almost escaping but always grabbed at the last second. Wormtail was watching him with his mouth open. Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded. After five minutes of this, Harry wondered why James didn't tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself, but James seemed to be enjoying the attention. [OotP 28]

peter is set up as someone who's understood by everyone not to occupy the same role in society [both "society" as in the social ecosystem of hogwarts, and as in wizarding society more generally] as james and sirius.

this is almost certainly for class and blood-status related reasons - and hello to another anon on this point:

the fact that the only parent mentioned in the text is his mother strongly suggests that he's a half-blood with a muggle or muggleborn father [which his narrative parallels with snape, his narrative relationship with voldemort, and his narrative contrast with barty crouch jr. also support].

the way his mother is spoken about by other characters in prisoner of azkaban - especially fudge: "black was taken away by twenty members of the magical law enforcement squad and pettigrew received the order of merlin, first class, which i think was some comfort to his poor mother" [PoA 10] - sets her up as the passive figure in her relationship to the state [the ministry deigns to provide her with comfort], thus implying that she was ordinary, middle-class, and respectable, but lacked the class-based social power to occupy a more active role in the relationship.

[contrast her, for example, with someone like augusta longbottom, who is a much more active figure narratively.]

but she also can't come from a working-class background, because otherwise voldemort wouldn't seek to humiliate peter by making him live in snape's slum house as his servant.

but peter is also set up as someone who - while he accepts that james and sirius are his superiors and doesn't want to usurp their positions - nonetheless thinks that the two of them will do all they can to increase his chances of helping them accrue more glory, thus allowing the glory he shares in to be all the greater.

and why not? after all, he has plenty of evidence that they'd be capable of doing this, given the lengths they go to for remus…

i think he can be very easily understood as somebody who thinks that - once the three of them have nailed the animagus transformation and achieved their goal of supporting remus during the full moon - then the next thing on james and sirius' list of priorities is putting in a similar level of effort on his behalf.

indeed, the text does imply this - in snape's worst memory, peter goes from being positioned with remus as james and sirius' inferior:

Snape was on his feet again, and was stowing the O.W.L. paper in his bag. As he emerged from the shadows of the bushes and set off across the grass, Sirius and James stood up. Lupin and Wormtail remained sitting.

to being physically positioned with remus but clearly wanting to be an active member of james and sirius' shenanigans:

Lupin was still staring down at his book, though his eyes were not moving and a faint frown line had appeared between his eyebrows. Wormtail was looking from Sirius and James to Snape with a look of avid anticipation on his face. [...] Wormtail was on his feet now, watching hungrily, edging around Lupin to get a clearer view.

to physically joining - but still being excluded from equality of power with - james and sirius:

"How'd the exam go, Snivelly?" said James. "I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment," said Sirius viciously. "There'll be great grease marks all over it, they won’t be able to read a word."   Several people watching laughed; Snape was clearly unpopular. Wormtail sniggered shrilly. 

to being positioned as sirius' equal under james' leadership:

"Well," said James, appearing to deliberate the point, "it's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean..." Many of the surrounding watchers laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included.

to being included as both james and sirius' equal:

But too late; Snape had directed his wand straight at James; there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James' face, spattering his robes with blood. James whirled about; a second flash of light later, Snape was hanging upside down in the air, his robes falling over his head to reveal skinny, pallid legs and a pair of greying underpants. Many people in the small crowd watching cheered. Sirius, James, and Wormtail roared with laughter. [OotP 28]

but this symbolic ascent towards james and sirius recognising and including him isn't what actually comes to pass, is it?

[and as a little shipping-related aside... this is an immaculate wormbucks or padtail premise.]

clearly, peter's experience from the beginning of his sixth year onwards [so from the autumn of 1976] is one in which his hero-worship of james and sirius [and it is just james and sirius - if he felt aggrieved enough by remus that he wanted to implicate him in the potters' deaths he absolutely could have done so] begins to crumble...

and then to fester...

until he's reached a point where the following isn't something he believes is actually true:

"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" [PoA 19]

[this - as an aside - is one of the major differences between harry and james/sirius. harry's understanding of loyalty and sacrifice is much less transactional: "dumbledore knew, as voldemort knew, that harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it" [DH 34].]

and decides that he should probably transfer his loyalties to the much bigger bully who's just arrived on the scene.

enter lord voldemort.

peter the death eater

while there are some key differences [peter is the one who has to approach voldemort, rather than the other way round, and - as i've said here - i think voldemort withholds the dark mark from him to keep him striving], peter's recruitment by the death eaters has a huge amount in common with draco malfoy's.

[more on which... here.]

voldemort must win him over by validating his belief that james and sirius [and also dumbledore/the order] don't take him and his talents seriously, that they need to be punished for this, and that when peter has humiliated them, he will have the time of his life basking in the glow of the victorious voldemort, who will also reward him spectacularly.

this is what voldemort does with quite a few of his minions - including regulus [another fantastic ship for peter], barty crouch jr. [likewise], and, of course, snape [which flops], all of whom have that corrosive perception of themselves as always being overlooked.

in the first war, then, voldemort must be pretty nice to him.

[or as nice as voldemort ever gets...]

the threats and the punishment come later.

[as another aside, the implication of canon is that voldemort's use of violence against his minions is relatively infrequent - and only used in specific circumstances - in the first war. the egregious torture he subjects them to in the second - and the fact that he does this publicly - shocks, terrifies, and humiliates even the most ardent first war loyalists. i think we can assume, then, that peter returned to voldemort expecting to find him in the same "you catch more flies with honey" mode as in the first war. he was mistaken.]

the contempt 90s!voldemort holds peter in is iconic - so many of his best lines are times he's mocking him!

but something which always stands out to me is that voldemort's contempt for peter is inextricably linked to his previous position as one of the four marauders.

[indeed, i find it fascinating that voldemort says that peter "faked his own death to escape justice" [DH 33], because the only thing he can mean by "justice" in this context is that peter should have let sirius murder him...]

and the most explicit demonstration of this is the fact that he always calls him wormtail.

this is a fascinating twist on the way voldemort plays with the language of intimacy with his death eaters. his favourites get referred to by their given names, while the rest are referred to more formally, using their surnames:

"Severus, here," said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right. "Yaxley - beside Dolohov." [DH 1]

and, of course, his ultimate favourite gets referred to by her nickname.

but peter isn't being called wormtail by the dark lord as a show of affection... it's an expression of disregard.

it's clear that the voldemort of the second war deeply understands that peter's life between the potters' deaths and his unmasking at the end of prisoner of azkaban [that is, the period when he didn't get the glory he wanted, he just got a dead james, two friends who want to murder him, and a master who hates him] made him start to regret his resentment of james and sirius for not living up to the versions of themselves he'd invented in his head - especially following sirius' death, when he receives a second demonstration of voldemort's contempt for him, since the moment sirius is out of the picture, the dark lord declares him surplus to requirements and dumps him on snape.

voldemort also knows that peter can only suppress these regrets and pretend they don't exist for so long...

and so everything about their second war relationship is voldemort pre-empting a betrayal he knows will come, when peter's long-buried grief for his friends comes roaring back. hence him setting up peter's silver hand to kill him when his loyalty wavers.

or, more succinctly:

"You returned to me, not out of loyalty, but out of fear of your old friends. You deserve this pain, Wormtail. You know that, don't you?" [DH 33]

peter the [un]man

there's one final thing which i think is really interesting about peter's portrayal in the text, and that's his relationship with gender.

he's someone whose presentation as unmasculine is consistent across his appearances - and is consistently intended to be belittling. but he's also someone whose lack of masculinity is used both to underscore his villainy [and to emphasise that it's the worst type of villainy - to quote jkr, "i loathe a traitor"; peter is the most reprehensible villain in the doylist text's eyes] and to misdirect the reader away from it.

before he's unmasked at the end of prisoner of azkaban, peter is associated narratively with neville:

A hatred such as he had never known before was coursing through Harry like poison. He could see Black laughing at him through the darkness, as though somebody had pasted the picture from the album over his eyes. He watched, as though somebody was playing him a piece of film, Sirius Black blasting Peter Pettigrew (who resembled Neville Longbottom) into a thousand pieces. [PoA 11]

and - therefore - is associated with a lack of masculinity in a fond way. neville is a character the reader is supposed to like, but not a character the reader is supposed to aspire to be like.

the text uses both peter and neville's appearance - especially the fact that both of them are noted to be fat [neville gets described as "plump", which is understood as slightly more polite, but the meaning is the same...] - to emphasise this. they're soft and shy and unsporty. they're passive, in contrast to harry [and james'] masculine vigour. they're both followers, but in a good way.

or, they both occupy the role female characters tend to: conduits for the male characters' deeds and desires, but lacking the agency to have deeds and desires of their own.

[hence why i am extremely compelled by @whinlatter's theory that the best lightning-gen parallel for peter is ginny...]

this is the tone of the secret keeper swap. peter is chosen by james and sirius precisely because they understand him as a vessel. he can contain and surround and envelope the potters and keep them safe that way, while sirius - who embodies the active qualities of a masculine protector - protects them by fighting and running and being hunted.

but - of course - peter doesn't perform this feminine protector role. he corrupts it. and this another way the text underscores that he's its worst villain... he bastardises a role typically associated with motherhood.

he and sirius are set up narratively as the parallel to james and lily: sirius is the masculine figure, the father, the "take harry and run"; peter is the feminine, the mother, the "refuses to stand aside".

once peter is unmasked at the end of prisoner of azkaban and his corruption of his maternal role is revealed, the text's presentation of his unmanliness then becomes something used to emphasise how vile and creepy the reader is supposed to find him.

it does this while maintaining the corrupted motherhood metaphor - hence him having to nurse voldemort's pseudo-infant form in goblet of fire, and hence him being positioned as inferior to barty crouch jr., who joins voldemort and peter, his "wife", to take the narrative role of voldemort's son and heir.

this is extremely interesting, since the text typically uses a lack of maternal or pseudo-maternal experience to indicate that its female villains [especially bellatrix and umbridge] are to be understood as villains by the reader. the exceptions, petunia dursley and walburga black, are fascinating parallels for peter, given the way that they also embody the corrosiveness of resentment and the impact it has on truly being able to grieve.

but peter also becomes a second, specific form of unman once he's unmasked...

the eunuch.

it's really striking that - from the latter chapters of prisoner of azkaban onwards - peter is frequently associated with the theme of voyeurism:

But Ron was staring at Pettigrew with the utmost revulsion. "I let you sleep in my bed," he said. [PoA 19]

Snape held up a hand to stop her, then pointed his wand again at the concealed staircase door. There was a loud bang and a squeal, followed by the sound of Wormtail scurrying back up the stairs. "My apologies," said Snape. "He has lately taken to listening at doors, I don't know what he means by it." [HBP 2]

the sexual undertone to these associations is really significant, because - when combined with the presentation of peter as a follower/an outsider looking in and with the presentation of him as lacking in virility - it renders him sexless, but in a specifically jealous way. he's not voldemort, whose canon presentation as aromantic is used to underscore his villainy by implying there's something "wrong" with him... he's someone who should have been able to access the "normal" structures of love and family, but who has self-castrated himself from this "normality" due to his corruption arc, and who is forced to watch from the sidelines coveting what others have and regretting his decisions and loathing himself.

[hence my absolute conviction that the reason he's not at home on halloween 1981, when sirius goes to check on him and finds his safe-house empty, is because he's snuck into the potters' house in rat form to watch james and lily be murdered...]

and this idea of peter as somebody unsexed or castrated is really interesting as a lens to examine one of his most sinister moments - his role in the torture and murder of bertha jorkins.

nb: there is a discussion of rape in what follows.

i liked this post by @pangaeaseas - and the discussion in the notes -about voldemort's treatment of peter surrounding his capture of bertha jorkins. but i thought it was interesting how a lot of this discussion focused on the ways voldemort is insulting peter's intellect in this context... and not the ways he's attacking his sexual prowess.

the text is pretty clear - not least in the enormous victim-blaming undertone to the way many characters [especially male ones] talk about bertha's disappearance - that peter brought bertha to voldemort after convincing her that he wanted to engage in some form of consensual sexual encounter [described by voldemort, in pg-13 terms, as a "nighttime stroll"]. voldemort's astonishment at peter managing to accomplish this isn't so much him being shocked that he had the way with words/quick thinking abilities to talk bertha into going with him, it's him being shocked that someone he considers to be so unmanly as to be impotent managed to pull.

and then - it is heavily implied, both in the text itself and in jkr's statements since publication that her editor looked like she wanted to be sick when she described how voldemort was restored to a rudimentary body - to rape:

"He was the penis able-bodied servant I needed, and, eunuch poor wizard though he is, Wormtail was able to violate a woman follow the instructions I gave him, which would return me to a rudimentary, weak body of my own, a body I would be able to inhabit while awaiting the essential ingredients for true rebirth." [GoF 33]

Would you say that calling groping sexual assault is disrespectful to rape victims? Because if so, I'd say the real disrespect lies in downplaying assault rather than calling it what it is.

Also, in the grand scheme of things, yes, Snape has committed worse actions than James. However, in an isolated Snape vs. James scenario, James was worse. When Snape fans discuss this, they primarily focus on how James treated Snape and the consequences of that - how James alienated and abused Severus, how Snape’s poverty, neglect, and lack of social advantages led him to seek power in terrible places because they were the only spaces that accepted him (but also groomed him), how the incident with Sirius likely caused Snape to resent authority figures, and how that resentment pushed him further into the Death Eater circle. The discussion isn’t necessarily about who became the worse person in the end, but rather about James’s actions towards Snape and how it probably affected Snape’s trajectory.

And didn’t Minerva send kids into the Forbidden Forest and leave Neville to sleep outside the common room? That’s more than just being strict.

can snape stans for the love of god please shut the fuck up

here are some things i’ve GENUINELY seen snape stan’s say today and i have receipts:

1. that lily only fell in love with james because he gave her a love potion. i…i don’t even know what to say other than that this is obscene.

2. that james’ actions could be compared to what death eaters do. i’m sorry, has james ever killed or tortured anybody purely due to their race/ethnicity? does james think that all minorities deserve to die or be controlled? and do i need to remind people that snape literally WAS an avid blood supremacist and death eater?? jesus fucking christ…

3. like 3000 people saying over and over that james sexually assaulted snape. first of all, comparing pantsing to sexual assault is extremely disrespectful to anybody who’s been s/a’d, myself included. second of all, that only happened in the movies, dipshits. clearly you didn’t read the books if you obsess over that argument.

4. that lily, sirius, remus, james, and peter are all worse people than snape. i’m sorry, did any of them grow up to torment innocent children? did any of them grow up to find pleasure in the pain and suffering and fear of little kids, using their position as a TEACHER to express prejudice? did any of them grow up to use a child’s DEAD DAD’s actions from DECADES AGO to justify cruelty? peter grows up to be awful, but the other four make childhood mistakes that they learn and grow from in adulthood. snape never learns and grows. he just gets worse, and that’s nobody’s fault but his own.

5. that minerva and hagrid are just as bad as snape. first of all, hagrid never discriminated against students for their race or identity and neither does minerva. hagrid and minerva are tough but fair. they don’t enact cruelty. when they see bullies or cruel students get what’s coming to them, then they turn away because they’re witnessing natural consequences. i won’t deny that minerva and hagrid have favorites but they aren’t blatantly cruel to people who aren’t favorites and their only acts of cruelty are ones in which the students ACTUALLY INSTIGATE something worth punishing. snape punishes neville for existing. he punishes hermione for daring to participate in class. and malfoy goes off scott free because he’s a pure blood.

moral of the story, snape stans are delusional. if y’all weren’t so INSANE, then maybe i’d actually like snape. but you are. so i don’t, and i doubt i ever will!

I love a blushing, giddy, nervous-around-Harry old Voldemort.

my favorite type of tomarrymort is actually Voldemort at the ripe age of 70 discovering feelings of true love compassion towards Harry and suddenly acting like a giddy teenage girl who writes about her crush with added hearts in her diary

They think enemies to lovers is just negative or angry banter with a grudge.

I think term enemies to lovers is so waterdowned and that's why people think harrymort is weird

"Also I think there's a slightly worrying tendency on the liberal 'left' (which is typically the majority in most fandom spaces) to shut down conversation and discussion in general, particularly if those conversations are uncomfortable. You see thought-terminating clichés frequently deployed in such spaces and I think it's just not helpful. Seeing posts from supposed leftists trying to convince people that it's morally wrong to even THINK about Harry Potter is pretty wild to me, tbh. I think that for a while now there's been much more of a focus among the left on idealism over materialism, to the point where material reality is totally ignored in favour of, essentially, trying to get everyone to think the correct thoughts. To me this just isn't a productive or intellectually responsible approach."

I have seen this tendency in every leftist space: no productivity whatsoever, just shaming people and policing their thoughts, completely hindering any reach beyond the likable.

What your opinion on all this talk of leaving the hp/marauder fandom because it directly/indirectly supports JKR? Do you have any desire to leave?

Well my opinion is that I can understand it completely if people choose to do so, but personally I have no desire to leave nor intention of leaving. I understand that it might bother individual people but I'm not asking anyone to look at this blog; in fact the reason I started to use this sideblog is so I could keep everything HP-related away from people who choose not to see it. While I think HP's cultural relevance today is such that it's impossible to avoid entirely, I do empathise with people who'd rather not see it. If someone wished to block me for continuing to blog about HP, I think that might be the healthiest option for everyone involved.

Anyway, I understand why this is happening and I think it's important to discuss. But that's the point. It's important to discuss, not stick our fingers in our ears.

I think this is a great post about it! Here are my own (long-winded) thoughts:

Personally I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we should stop reading and discussing works written by bad people. I don't believe that's a constructive or healthy way to engage with literature. If nobody's left to discuss something as culturally relevant as HP (or LotR, or whatever) critically, then what is the point of literature in the first place? Is it pure entertainment and therefore easily discarded? Ftr I'm also firmly against banning (even socially 'banning') literature of ANY sort, for ANY reason. "You shouldn't read X because it's morally wrong" is to me ultimately a conservative belief.

Anyway: I find it pretty obvious that JKR said 'if you like my books you agree with me' PURPOSEFULLY to cause this kind of a reaction, because she knew it would cause her detractors to become hyperfocused on pointing fingers at each other and thought policing each other over a kids book rather than focusing on what's actually going on. I don't think we should be playing into it, and I don't think even JKR believes it herself-- I think it was deliberate. And tbh from what I can see it has had the exact effect she intended.

The other thing I'll say is that (and tbf I can't say for sure) but I suspect that the online HP fandom might be exaggerating its own importance a little bit. Tbh I think that even if the online (and more liberal) fandom disappeared overnight there would still be tens of thousands of kids (the target audience, after all) discovering and reading Harry Potter for themselves across the globe. Scores of parents and aunts and grandparents who know nothing about JKR buying those books for the kids in their family. And that's not counting the people who actually do agree with JKR. Yes fandom disappearing might have some small impact, but tbh I think it would be all but insignificant. It would be much more, like infinitely more, materially significant for people in fandom to donate time and/or money to trans organisations in their own countries. ((I also think what would be somewhat helpful is for fandom to take responsibility in encouraging people not to watch the HBO series. The success of the series is imo more contingent on online opinion than the books.))

There are also millions of people still using twitter, instagram, and amazon, despite the very real material damage caused by Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, and that's a MUCH more direct cause-and-effect than simply talking about Harry Potter because using those platforms LITERALLY lines the pockets of those individuals. I will say that if you're on twitter telling people they should stop talking about Harry Potter I simply will not take you seriously loll 😂

I guess there is probably some amount of people who discovered HP through, idk, Marauders tiktok and decided to read the series, but how significant is this number? It's incredibly difficult to grow up in most countries around the world and not come across Harry Potter in some way. For good or ill I do think HP is en route to becoming a children's classic. If tumblr goes down and my blog and all the blogs I interact with on here disappear, I don't think this would change.

On the other hand, simply for posterity I do think there's some value in continuing to discuss it-- all of it, including the reality of who the author is, the cultural relevance of HP, the text itself and what this all means given its significance in our culture. And it's important to discuss it critically, honestly, and constructively. It's remarkably easy with HP to avoid giving money to the author, which is something I believe to be worthwhile, so tbh I can't bring myself to agree with 'it would be better if we stopped talking about it' in a general sense. Personally I don't think the only people left discussing it should be right wing maniacs lol-- again, for posterity if nothing else.

Also I think there's a slightly worrying tendency on the liberal 'left' (which is typically the majority in most fandom spaces) to shut down conversation and discussion in general, particularly if those conversations are uncomfortable. You see thought-terminating clichés frequently deployed in such spaces and I think it's just not helpful. Seeing posts from supposed leftists trying to convince people that it's morally wrong to even THINK about Harry Potter is pretty wild to me, tbh. I think that for a while now there's been much more of a focus among the left on idealism over materialism, to the point where material reality is totally ignored in favour of, essentially, trying to get everyone to think the correct thoughts. To me this just isn't a productive or intellectually responsible approach.

What is the material benefit of all of us simply shutting up about Harry Potter forever? How does this actually help anyone beyond yourself and your own conscience? To me it seems like ultimately a performative and virtue signalling action that is pretty meaningless when you're not doing anything else, and is particularly meaningless when you're not applying this to literally anything else in your life. Fandom isn't activism, but by extension NOT-fandom also isn't activism haha. Personally I dislike Marvel films and think they're barely-disguised propaganda for the American military-industrial complex, but I don't think it's evil for people to write their Bucky/Steve fanfiction or whatever lmao. And I certainly don't think it's wrong to discuss Marvel films, the opposite in fact, I think they should be critically discussed.

So, basically, I think it's perfectly understandable that people would want to leave the fandom. But ultimately I think that's an action you're taking for yourself, and I don't think there's much to be gained from refusing to discuss things deemed 'morally wrong.' I think to a certain extent it's natural and probably healthy to feel some guilt about it all, but also perhaps it's worth questioning why we feel such extreme guilt about this, which is really just people talking to each other about books, and not about the 486948736 other much more unambiguously destructive things we do with our time and money on a daily basis.

As long as we're willing to discuss this topic honestly and constructively, to be conscious and empathetic towards others, and to refrain from spending any money on HP-related products, I don't think it's wrong to remain in the fandom tbh. To deny HP's impact on today's literary landscape would be, imo, dishonest, so therefore somebody has to discuss it. And I'd much rather there be a variety of opinions within that discussion.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Lily wasn’t a feminist and, at most, had a basic understanding and practice of it, limited to choice feminism and girl-bossing. While that isn’t real feminism, it was probably the norm in the 70s.

But her life choices make it clear that she wasn’t a feminist icon and was perfectly content with following patriarchal traditions and taking part in patriarchal dynamics. It seems far more likely that she wasn’t a feminist than that she was.

So when I see someone saying she was a feminist, I just roll my eyes and scroll, because the idea seems pretty laughable to me.

The post: You can’t say Lily Evans was a feminist because a person with feminist awareness wouldn’t marry a privileged cishet man who abused his power by being a bully right in front of her.

The Snaters: LILY WAS FREE TO CHOOSE JAMES, DID YOU EXPECT HER TO CHOOSE SNAPE?

Me: At what point did I say she had to choose someone? At what point did I say I ship her with Snape? At what point does questioning a character’s political mindset turn into reducing her to an object of desire between two men?

Of course Lily was free to marry whoever she wanted; I have no problem with that. My issue is with people trying to portray her as some kind of feminist icon of the 70s when there is nothing in the canon to suggest that, and when that theory is contradicted by her life choices. A feminist woman from the 70s wouldn’t marry the class’s rich bully, wouldn’t end up with a hyper-toxic white guy who spent his time abusing classmates, wouldn’t end up with a spoiled and obnoxious brat who publicly stripped a working-class classmate against his will. And this has nothing to do with whether Lily should have ended up with someone else. Lily should end up with whoever she wants—no one is debating that. What’s being debated is the attempt to portray her as a feminist icon when she simply wasn’t.

Lily was a white girl from the 70s who was completely alienated from the patriarchal structures of her time, only cared about social issues that directly affected her, and chose a traditional life that was entirely in line with the patriarchal expectations for women of her era. She was not a revolutionary, she was not a feminist—she was a teenage mother who married her high school boyfriend, who happened to be a rich jerk. And saying that does not imply in any way that she should have chosen another man. The fact that Snaters are so obsessed with this just proves that all their so-called progressive rhetoric online is pure performance, because anyone with even a minimal understanding of the subject would never assume that criticizing a female character’s political stance means she has to pick one man over another.

Honestly, what a drag. But what’s even more exhausting is how all these people attack not only by twisting your words and making completely irrelevant statements but also by trying to argue their points with nothing but fan theories and assumptions based on their own biases or whatever fandom content they consume as if it were gospel. And the moment you counter them with canon-based arguments, suddenly, they decide the conversation is over and that they’re going to "leave it at that." Because, of course, the moment canon gets thrown in their faces, it turns out they have no ground to stand on, and their arguments are invalid because they’re built on nothing but the pillars of their imagination—so they have to retreat to avoid embarrassing themselves further.

I’ve said it over and over: I don’t care if people come to throw hate my way, and I don’t care if people come to debate. But if they do, at least have the guts and the dignity not to run away with their tails between their legs when I completely dismantle their cheap hate-filled discourse—because, honestly, it’s as embarrassing as it is disappointing.

Harry is so gorgeous 🧎‍♀️🙏