The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (a thread for Potterheads)

#what epilogue

 

Concept: Genderqueer!Rolf/Bisexual!Luna in a poly relationship with people of various genders


Also, I think I need to copy/paste my Horrible Homophobia Headcanons from my skypechat into this thread, to explain how I personally justify Tonks in HBP onwards from a Watsonian perspective. (Cause the Doyleist perspective is very simple: shitty authorial choices.)

 

As has been pointed out before, the epilogue has a definite sense that JKR's idea of what constitutes a happy ending is not the same as what most of the readers think constitutes a happy ending. And for most of us it's not "heterosexual marriage with picket fence and 2.5 kids," so the idea that this is what every character is living in their 30s and we should be happy for them for finding a spouse offscreen who we know nothing about kinda... falls flat.

 

Okay here we go. This is really long.

[18:40:03] elph: well tl;dr i believe that remus, sirius, and tonks are all massive homos and molly weasley obliviously bullied the latter two into a very unhappy marriage

Spoiler: here is the rest

[18:40:54] elph: and i find it perpetually baffling that JKR wrote these backstories and metaphors and layered characters which pointed strongly in that general direction and somehow didn't know she was doing it
[18:41:24] elphfriend 2: remus/sirius 5eva
[18:41:36] elph: so: from the first time it's explicitly mentioned (HBP p582) remus is very very clearly unwilling to enter into a relationship with tonks
[18:42:36] elphfriend 2: but elph hes just nervous about being a werewolf or some shit!!
[18:42:40] elph: so remus gives his age, poverty, and HIV status lycanthropy as reasons for this, but when everybody goes "yeah but no one cares though", he doesn't defend himself, he just tries to change the subject
[18:42:42] elphfriend 2: i shoul rerea the books
[18:42:56] elph: me too, it's been so long cause i don't have my own copies (they're at my parents' house)
[18:43:32] elph: anyway - remus very carefully avoids saying "i do feel that way about you, it's just that..."
[18:44:03] elph: he doesn't say "i don't feel that way", and that aspect of the scene pings my gaydar
[18:44:29] elph: i remember being a babygay and being afraid to say something as overt as "i just don't feel that way" in case it led towards "because i'm gay gdi"
[18:44:32] elphfriend 2: im just very sa that they never got a proper relationship (remus an sirius i mean)
[18:44:41] elphfriend 2: keyboar broken orry
[18:44:51] elph: i'm convinced that they did, just not "onscreen" so to speak.
[18:45:06] elph: but it would not have been very happy, given the backdrop of war and trauma and shit.
[tangent snipped]
[18:49:42] elph: so regarding the queer headcanons again: long before JKR talked about the HIV/lycanthropy thing, i already thought of remus as gay because of a more nebulous gaydar. the most concrete thing i could say about it was that it was his relationship with sirius + sirius having a pretty damn gay narrative that pointed me that way
[18:50:03] elph: it's sirius's family stuff that pinged me
[18:50:24] elphfriend 1: tbh considering the popularity of this ship you're not alone
[18:50:28] elphfriend 2: ugh i love the behind-the-scenes war love story shit
[18:50:36] elphfriend 2: especially since it was in the80s or whatever where homophobia was rampant
[18:50:52] elph: there's this sense that the blacks don't WANT to "have to" disown him, and if only he'd just stop being stubborn and silly and give up this ridiculous behaviour! and marry straight and proper and continue the bloodline of course.
[18:51:46] elph: and then there's the weird uncle. the uncle he barely knew, who apparently never openly expressed support for him or criticism of pureblood supremacy
[18:52:25] elph: the bachelor uncle who just barely fell within the lines of Acceptable Life Choices, not because he rebelled actively, but because he avoided it passively
[18:53:20] elph: who presumably, since he left everything to this random nephew in his will, felt very strongly about wanting to support and protect sirius
[18:54:15] elph: this is like... this is so very similar to both real and fictional coming out narratives i've seen
[18:55:18] elph: the uncle or aunt who never married, who didn't rock the boat but never really fit in, who was always inexplicably distant from your immediate family, stepping up when you're in crisis to show their support
[18:55:44] elph: in fact, JKR wrote a similarish character into The Casual Vacancy (which i loved, ftr)
[18:56:36] elph: the teenagers are straight but feel stifled by the Old Families' conservative traditionalism and judgemental approach to anyone who's different
[18:57:35] elphfriend 2: interesting
[18:57:46] elphfriend 2: it all makes sense and wasnt something i noticed when reading the books las
[18:57:47] elphfriend 2: t
[18:58:07] elph: and then the bitter lesbian aunt turns up semi-uninvited and tells the unhappy teenagers "you're right, your families are dicks"
[18:58:22] elph: do you meant the Casual Vacancy thing or the uncle alphard thing?
[18:59:24] elphfriend 2: the uncle one
[18:59:32] elphfriend 2: never read the casual vacancy,not really my kind of book
[18:59:36] elph: fair enough
[19:02:23] elph: ftr, the bitter lesbian aunt in TCV (Patricia Mollison) is not actually the aunt of the teenagers she talks to when she turns up; her neices virtually never appear in the book, but two of the main teenage characters work for her dad. and their families have political/business links with the mollisons, so they're under a lot of pressure to not have their boss discover anything he would Disapprove Of.
[19:04:11] elph: imagine uncle alphard bumping into james and remus around the time sirius ran away, and telling them he agrees completely that their family is full of shit
[19:04:12] elph: it's basically that
[19:05:10] elph: i also imagine (in headcanon terms) that sirius is not proud and confident about his sexuality the way he is about other stuff his family hates
[19:05:19] elph: bc his family are not the only ones who are homophobic
[19:05:46] elph: homophobia is still rampant in the non-purist wizarding world, and the muggle world that sirius and his friends want to respect/protect
[19:06:27] elphfriend 2: i remember about 8 oir so years ago there were a lot more harry potter fictives in the community than there are now,and its sort of saddening
[19:06:50] elph: [my ex] knows a lot more about lgbt history from that time period, so i can't go into detail, but from things she's told me this is a very historically accurate theory
[19:07:24] elph: and then we have tonks. i actually read tonks as queer from the getgo.
[19:09:06] elph: apart from bill, whose earring/ponytail/leather clothes are pretty much framed as cool fashion sense (and who doesn't have any other features, iirc, which might be interpreted as Definitely a Possible Quair), i felt that tonks and remus were the two most plausible gay characters, and they were just sort of smushed together because Everyone Must Pair Up
[19:09:54] elph: the wizarding world's relationship conventions are really weird: they have almost double the lifespan of muggles, and yet the norm is to get married very young. and for everyone within a relatively small social circle to all pair up with each other in that group.
[19:10:43] elph: back when i was a wee fandom babby, people were very disparaging of fans who shipped ALL of the ships that ended up being endgame in the books. they called it OBHWF, One Big Happy Weasley Family. it was considered lazy writing
[19:10:58] elph: and then look what happened :P
[19:12:20] elph: so if you interpret this as an in-universe social norm rather than lazy writing, then everyone, including tonks, is under pressure to pair up with someone in their social circle. remus got a free pass on this because even if he was straight his werewolf status is too big of a taboo for people to expect him to have much luck in his love life.
[19:13:40] elph: tonks is young and generally rebellious, but once the war starts, it amplifies the pressure to pair up in a neat little heterosexual marriage because that is what her culture expects of her and she might die tomorrow, dammit
[19:15:19] elph: if you choose to read her as a gay character who is not that open about it (which is v watsonian but that's where this whole headcanon comes from anyway), then again, you have someone quite similar to sirius: happy to rebel in certain ways, because her peers are accepting of those particular ways; but not as confident when it comes to coming out
[19:16:01] elph: my headcanon is that molly, with her heteronormativity goggles on, observed a fond friendship between tonks and remus and put on her matchmaking hat to go about convincing them both that this was True Luv
[19:17:18] elph: tonks, due to the building pressure to enter a committed hetero relationship, takes this idea and runs with it. it's a very convenient way to continue being in denial; if you spend all your time convincing yourself that you're definitely in love with this particular man, then you don't have as much time to worry about being secretly a lesbian.
[19:19:41] elph: her depression in HBP is consistent with all of these different pressures. so is her changed patronus, in fact: she gets it into her head that The Problem is that she needs to get together with remus, and she's telling herself that that's why she's depressed, that's why everything feels like shit. when you adopt a denial mechanism like that (and i've had plenty of experience with that sort of thing), you start to see the thing-you-decide-will-fix-it as your path out of unhappiness.
[19:21:42] elph: (i've had this happen a lot throughout my life. in chronological order, If I Could Just [find a best friend/lose weight/overcome sleep/leave this school/move away/atone fully/get to cambridge/get on that med/etc], All This Would Resolve Itself)
[19:22:30 | Edited 19:22:41] elph: so for her, remus begins to represent freedom from depression, which of course makes him a rational patronus, even if that feeling comes from self-deceit
[19:24:10] elph: but the very fact that her patronus is a wolf - e.g. the aspect of remus that has been destroying his physical, mental, and social well-being since childhood - says that there's a wrong note in here somewhere. i can't imagine how remus must have felt when he found out. if i were him, it would be a serious blow. i'd feel horrible about it
[19:24:46] elph: because he's been reduced to a symbol, and that symbol doesn't even represent who he really is. and this applies to her perception of him in general, as well as her patronus.
[19:26:51] elph: iirc, in the rest of the series, tonks expresses excitement about meeting particular expected milestones in her relationship with remus (such as a very rushed marriage). i never got the impression that she was actually happy about being with him - just about being with him. which is a pretty significant distinction: if you're happier about your relationship Status than you are about your actual partner, that's... not a very good sign
[19:28:57] elph: ANYWAY tl;dr sirius and remus and tonks are all massive gays and if JKR had decided to kill arthur instead of remus and tonks (which was apparently her initial plan) then i want to believe they'd have figured things out and lived a happy companionable life together while tonks found some sweet ladeez to date & eventually invited a beloved partner to co-parent teddy with her and remus
[19:29:06] elph: also i have to go reread Stealing Harry now
[19:29:17] elph: the end

 

Wasn't the epilogue written first? Because I've heard that and it explains a lot.

 

IIRC it wasn't first, but it was written many many years in advance of DH.

Also, for me personally, the idea of having children (and even marriage, to some extent) isn't just "not my ideal happy ending"; it's "definitely an unhappy ending". I tend to project that feeling onto characters, so even if they're depicted as happy in their hetero marriage with 2.5 children, I sit there thinking "oh shit that's not good". With a lot of characters who are depicted in young adulthood & are never, at that age, portrayed as particularly wanting or not wanting children - when Word of God says they're happily married with kids, I get this nervous feeling. It's kind of the fictional/abstract version of the way I feel when someone claims to be outwardly happy with a situation that I suspect is actually abusive (though obviously that is a much more serious thing). I felt like this about Katniss as well.

 

There's also the fact that if you scribbled out the names and a few descriptions in the epilogue, the only characters who you could identify from their behavior are Harry and maybe Ron.

 

.....yes good

this, yes.

 

I'm kinda sad that the Krum/Hermione thing never went anywhere. Are they even still friends in the epilogue?

 

@Elph not only does it not represent who he is but it represents the part of Remus that his boggart represents, aka the thing about himself that he is most scared of.

 

Making it further "REALLY, Jo?" that she said on Pottermore that his Patronus is a wolf, too. 888|||

 

siiiiiighs
I feel like everything beyond the actual canon of the HP books is just
messily and clumsily being thrown together with no actual thought or consideration for the characters in it
and no consideration for history and actual real-world stuff, in the case of the racism thing

 

From a Watsonian perspective, I think Tonks had some conflicting opinions about her status as somewhat of an outsider in wizarding society, which influenced her desire to be In A Relationship With Remus instead of the more normal desire when crushing on someone to just, y'know, be with them. With her status as a metamorphmagus (which, genderfluid Tonks anyone?) she's Different in a way that she seems on a surface level to embrace, but in the movies at least, I can't quite remember in the books, she's not fully able to control or hide it, no chance to switch off her weirdness. Enter Remus, who is also weird in a way that he wants to conceal, a way that society won't let him the same way Tonks' body won't let her, and that's maybe the first time as an adult that she's encountered someone with that similar experience. And then, because they become friends, Molly Weasley who is practically the definition of normal thinks that they should get together! Finally, a chance for Tonks to be normal and to prove that she can be normal, and the desire for normality outweighs the part of her that really only considers Remus a close friend, not a romantic option.

Too rambling; didn't read: Tonks wants a beard in the shape of a friend.

 

And the whole "purebloods don't care about your sexuality despite being obsessed with carrying on a family line" thing. PLEASE JK.

 

wasn't there a thing for a while where harry thought tonks' patronus was for sirius cause it looked similar enough? obviously j.k. is mistaken & remus' patronus is actually a big black dog i made myself sad

 

That's still hilariously accurate to the queer reading anyway. hell, way back when my lesbian ass got coerced into dating this guy i was close friends with cause we were both kind of weird and now me, him and his husband meet up at pride every year.

 

And bits of the books, too, but yeah, it's especially bad with the paracanon.

 

.....ohhhhh my god are you kidding me
all I can imagine of pureblood families is them being obsessed with their children being heterosexual! they'd probably be the ones to start Wizarding world conversion therapy, they'd be so hell-bent on their children growing up and having children to carry on the pureblood line with another pureblood! it would not fly to be gay in those families, not the way she wrote them being so obsessed with carrying on the line and purity of blood, at least.

 

It doesn't say, but I would love it if they stayed in touch and started having more in-depth conversations as Viktor's English improved.

Uhhhh, what?!
I'm going to pretend that she made the same mistake Harry did with Tonks, except in reverse - i.e. it's actually Padfoot but she saw a big canine and assumed it was the wolf.
I guess you could maybe justify it in-universe by saying that your Patronus isn't always something you like, and that it can just be something that makes you feel powerful. Except that still doesn't make sense, because Dementors and Boggarts both bring out your worst fears... maybe Remus dreams of a parallel life where he was an Animagus rather than a werewolf, and his animal form was a wolf because it matched Padfoot's :P (fake edit: upon a closer look backwards i see that @lupadracolis said this already)

In the books she can control it without difficulty, and could hide it if she wants to but she doesn't want to because pink hair. (The pink hair doesn't even out her, anyway. In the Muggle world people might think it was a wig or something due to lack of brown roots, but in the wizarding world changing the colour of your hair is hella easy even without being a Metamorphmagus.)

yep yep yep yep
Running with my above idea about Patronus forms: even if Remus's wolf Patronus represents something other than his lived reality of lycanthropy, it still doesn't make it alright that Tonks represents him mentally with his lycanthropy. Though if you run with the Tragic Internalised Homophobia headcanon it could represent a reason why she ran with Remus for her Mandatory Hetero Partner: perhaps she didn't consciously think Remus might be queer, but identified with the othering aspect of his condition.

 

In my current favourite Wolfstar fic (modern nonmagic AU which I wholeheartedly recommend), Sirius explains that his family doesn't care that he's gay, they care about the fact that he refuses to marry a woman and continue the family line. Also that he proclaims his sexuality openly instead of marrying the aforementioned hypothetical woman and just letting it be an open secret that he sees men on the side.

editing to explain: that's what I figured the pureblood community would be like, at best.