She's fully human (at the moment :evil: ).

That's evil! You're evil! (Chimera hag/unicorn/russalka/human Hazel when?)

What does her staff do though? I gotta know!

She can poke things with it!


It's heavy and it's got a knob on the end. She can whack people with it.

She can bonk things with it.

The hive mind has spoken. Hazel can, should, will, and must hit Minerva with her stick.
 
One thing that I do find curious in the context of this fic is the fact that among the founders, Rowena at least was most likely from a region that wasn't conquered by Rome (and thus the Romans probably didn't purge their druids). Of course, Catholicism might have done the work where Rome couldn't. Still, Ravenclaw House and perhaps the castle as a whole may contain Druidic secrets of their own.
 
You guys where talking about the prize......now I have this image of Hazel writing this inn the air....

I am Hazel Potter, I am immortal and in the end. There can be only one!!!
Pulls a sword out of her jacket and holds it up.
Now to cut some heads off for the prize.
 
I'm a little sad that Snape is terrible here. Though it does fit his canon personality quite well. I suppose I've just been reading too much alright-Snape fanfic to like his assholishness here.
 
If I recall correctly the Great Hall get's the colors of the winning house for the last meal of the school year, and also bragging rights.

More than one story (usually by an American author) has pointed out that this seems, lackluster considering the amount of effort it takes to keep said points and how everyone acts about it.

I'm not sure how the Brits who's school system was the basis for the 4 Houses see it mind you. They might find it perfectly ordinary.
Most of us don't take the points very seriously. It's the house competitions which are taken a bit seriously, House Rugby, House Drama, football, etc. Because those are competitions and everyone, especially in my school(grammar school) liked to win.

Also, there are house assemblies, you have registration with your house, etc, so there is more of a sense of community than most americans would get I think. Not like it's shown in Hogwarts though, I think that sort of thing might be more common in boarding schools.

There's also house captains, committees and stuff who will want to win more, because they're in charge of certain things. Like, the house drama captain generally wants to win house drama, house sports captain wants to win the sports, etc. But it's all generally light hearted competition, done for fun. No one I knew had a Malfoy-Weasely rivalry, houses don't hate each other, houses don't have personality archetypes, etc.

And we obviously hung out with people who weren't in our houses and it was not something we really thought about outside of competitions. Might be a little different in boarding schools, but I dom't think it would be that huge a difference.
 
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I'm a little sad that Snape is terrible here. Though it does fit his canon personality quite well. I suppose I've just been reading too much alright-Snape fanfic to like his assholishness here.
We've only seen one interaction involving the man, where he got his mind invaded trying to, ironically do the same to a student presumably to determine if she was being honest or trying to prank him like her father would have.

Of course he'd be cranky. How things develop from there remains to be seen. Especially since Hazel at least appears highly interested in the subject he teaches.
 
It's going to be... extremely problematic to punish Hazel through most conventional means.

She doesn't care about House Points, she doesn't care about peer pressure, she's completely self-sufficient and carries all her belongings with her at all times, she can just choose not to show up for detentions, she doesn't actually care about passing courses just acquiring knowledge, she doesn't have parents or guardians to exercise control over her, and she can move about under her own power internationally. It remains to be seen whether her 'doorway' trick can bypass the wards entirely or not, but it's pathetically easy to get off the school grounds if you feel the need to.

I think it's very likely that Hazel just gets fed up with classes at some point and disappears for a week or two in order to do something productive with her time.

I mean, what are the staff going to do? Expel her? Dumbledore would sooner fire Snape.

Hazel is the rebellious punk youth of this school year.
 
We've only seen one interaction involving the man, where he got his mind invaded trying to, ironically do the same to a student presumably to determine if she was being honest or trying to prank him like her father would have.

Of course he'd be cranky. How things develop from there remains to be seen. Especially since Hazel at least appears highly interested in the subject he teaches.
You are right, of course, but he was already cranky before the Legilimens Fiasco™.

It's too soon to say but it seems that the Snape of this story, just like the Snape of the source material, seems to only see Hazel as James' daughter and as such is predisposed to think the worst of anything she does or say (in this case seeking out the potion classrooms close to the curfew, before she's even had her first potion class, with a "bogus" excuse, while "knowing" that a prefect is likely to take her and her fellow Hufflepuff along when the time come).

Whether that's a hasty conclusion and/or he'll learn to judge her on her own merits remain to be seen.
 
I'm a little sad that Snape is terrible here. Though it does fit his canon personality quite well. I suppose I've just been reading too much alright-Snape fanfic to like his assholishness here.
I think that it was not really bad, considering that he has been through enough to damage him socially, and that the child he is dealing with is from "the family he couldn't have" and whatnot. A child came barging into his space and he wanted that child gone... I think that people have a right to their space.

This of course all gets thrown right out of the door the moment that one realises that he is a school teacher. He should never have been anywhere near to a position that requires interaction with children, especially not this specific child. This is, at best, a massive failure as a teacher, and could potentially be career-ending depending upon the local standards. The locality is Hogwarts, and the standards are... well, they had the big bad on-staff, after they were declared the big bad. Now, the big bad was in hiding, but, well, when they have some of the most capable wizards, and most powerful artefacts, one might think that they could do a basic scan for "loci of corruptive malevolence" once in a while... and there was also Ubmrage, and a literally cursed posting that can't have been getting the highest bids... and the ghosts of former students who died violently on-campus is not exactly a great look...

Like, this level of automatic hostility towards a student is pretty bad, but seems outright civil by the standards of the time and place. I mean, she wasn't even accosted by a large hungry carnivore, or deliberately exposed to her worst fears with perilously little preparation, or sent dozens of metres into thin air on a dodgy broom that never sees maintenance...

I think that he better fits as a university professor...

It is also worth a thought that this may have been a really bad introduction. This was a student who was clearly failing to be a good little sheep sticking with the herd, and thus was probably one of those "creative" types who are always causing trouble.
 
You Hogwarts teachers are very different from common fanfiction depictions of them. Flitwick and McGonagall in your story are close minded and practical sorts. They don't think about abstract theory Their teaching is formulaic. They're good at their wizardry but they're not scholars. It fits Rowling Wizard's World very well. They reflect the values of their society.
McGonagall, absolutely. Flitwick is more open-minded than McG, honestly has to be at least a little considering his heritage. You have hit the nail on the head, however, in that neither of them are researchers. Knowing magical theory well enough and having the sheer balls to push the envelope of what magic can do is a very rare combination of traits. In this AU, magical research is well-known to be dangerous, and the fate of those people far too often resemble what happen to Pandora Lovegood.

Honestly, the two people in Hogwarts with the most knowledge of magical theory are undoubtedly Dumbledore and Snape.
The hive mind has spoken. Hazel can, should, will, and must hit Minerva with her stick.
…I don't think that is a good idea, but sure. If the hive-mind is decided, I will be on the lookout for opportunities for Hazel to whack Minerva with a stick.
I'm a little sad that Snape is terrible here. Though it does fit his canon personality quite well. I suppose I've just been reading too much alright-Snape fanfic to like his assholishness here.
Alan Rickman (RIP) did a marvelous job depicting Snape as a pitiable but miserable person trapped in a difficult situation partly of his own making instead of a cruel, selfish man-child who was obsessed with a childhood friend and whose grave many people but especially Harry and Neville should have pissed on with great enthusiasm. Honestly Rickman did TOO good of a job considering how few people are willing to keep in mind that the Severus Snape we see in the books fits the second description.

I realize that's semi-tangential to your comment, but I felt it was a good introduction to what I wanted to say. Namely that while fanfiction writers have white-washed him in all sorts of ways over the years, you should NEVER go into a HP fanfic assuming that Snape will be anything other than an absolute shit stain of a character.
 
Can't speak for people who've gone to boarding schools, but I don't recall having anything like the house points system. Which means we either didn't have one, or we did but absolutely nobody cared about it.

Also, quick question: is Hazel's magic actually different from witches/wizards at a base level, or is it the same but she just learned to use it differently due to being self-taught and then assumed that means she's not really a witch? I've been assuming the latter, but I'm curious if there's been any WoG on the topic.

An exact point system like Hogwarts has would be a nightmare to keep track of without a magic castle to track points when teachers say to give or take them. However British boarding schools did to the multiple houses thing where they were encouraged to have nasty rivalries in other ways.
 
Alan Rickman (RIP) did a marvelous job depicting Snape as a pitiable but miserable person trapped in a difficult situation partly of his own making instead of a cruel, selfish man-child who was obsessed with a childhood friend and whose grave many people but especially Harry and Neville should have pissed on with great enthusiasm.
To be entirely fair Alan Rickman was an Actor with a capital A. The man had to add more depth to Snape because how can you act when the character you're given has all the depth of a puddle?

Fanfic Snape is whitewashed because a lot of fanfic writers can't honestly believe that an actual functioning adult man can be that shallow, which says a lot about their faith in humanity and possibly their lack of working in customer service positions.

Edit: Also they're probably using the movie version of Snape as a base which gives him that inbuilt added depth of character. Which funnily enough means that Fanfic Snape is recursive.
 
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I am pretty sure we can do it without magic castles.
Think about how much bookkeeping it would take for each staff member and prefect to document each giving and taking of points and keep a accurate total in sufficiently real time for it to matter? In a modern context that could be done with a cell phone app but in the 90's it would be sufficiently annoying that a lot of staff would avoid using it as much as possible.

A more plausible version that could be implemented is house competitions of various kinds giving points to the winning house such as the do with quidditch applied to other big events that they can apply points at the end of. Maybe points for good grades on tests basically stuff they can evaluate all at once rather than keep track of all day.
 
Remember that Dudley was going to a private school, Smeltings? All the kids were given sticks to whack each other with, and Harry was target practice. Pretty fitting that she's the one with the stick, this time.
 
Think about how much bookkeeping it would take for each staff member and prefect to document each giving and taking of points and keep a accurate total in sufficiently real time for it to matter? In a modern context that could be done with a cell phone app but in the 90's it would be sufficiently annoying that a lot of staff would avoid using it as much as possible.

A more plausible version that could be implemented is house competitions of various kinds giving points to the winning house such as the do with quidditch applied to other big events that they can apply points at the end of. Maybe points for good grades on tests basically stuff they can evaluate all at once rather than keep track of all day.
I think that it'd get folded into things like detentions and tests, yeah. Rather than just '10 points from Snootywaffles' whenever a teacher feels like it, it'd be collated as part of already-tracked achievements and transgressions.
 
In a modern context that could be done with a cell phone app but in the 90's it would be sufficiently annoying that a lot of staff would avoid using it as much as possible.
They could use notebooks. Collating would be an issue, but so long as they crossed-out entries as they were set into the overall tallies there would be little need to actually coordinate. I don't really see how an application would make it appreciably easier? I mean, sure, if they want to harvest analytics then computers are great for mass-harvesting odds and ends of people's activities, but if they just want a big tally of numbers then it still pretty much comes down to pulling something out of a pocket and jotting down a-dozen-or-so characters...

I think that people get into the habit of such things? Record-keeping has been a thing for a long time, and has generally been adhered to at least as far as appearances, and unless the students are themselves tracking the points, it doesn't actually matter if the tallies end up being a bit off, given that the point seems to largely be to tell a room full of unstable minds that one of their number is a weak link...
 
Think about how much bookkeeping it would take for each staff member and prefect to document each giving and taking of points and keep a accurate total in sufficiently real time for it to matter? In a modern context that could be done with a cell phone app but in the 90's it would be sufficiently annoying that a lot of staff would avoid using it as much as possible.

A more plausible version that could be implemented is house competitions of various kinds giving points to the winning house such as the do with quidditch applied to other big events that they can apply points at the end of. Maybe points for good grades on tests basically stuff they can evaluate all at once rather than keep track of all day.

I teach at a primary school, so it's not quite the same, but house points aren't that hard to manage. You just keep track of points in your own class and collate them all at the end of each week. You give out tokens that are worth points out to kids if you see them doing the right thing outside of class, and they bring them to the office to be scored.
 
Hazel is also an 11 year old kid with a big knobby stick, I would frankly be more surprised if she never tries to hit anyone with it :V

She can put it somewhere than 'accidentally' summon it to her hand with someone in the way. I imagine they wont be too pleased with a magic staff hitting them on the ass on the way through.
 
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