Dive into a world of creativity!
So I’m working on this Hetalia/Harry Potter crossover that might not actually be written and a part of it is set in chamber of secrets and I had a thought/question about the workings of the basilisk’s gaze and its killing/petrifying properties
Cause, it’s stare petrifies you if you indirectly look it in the eyes right and we’re shown a few different ways this plays out, like seeing its reflection or looking at it through a ghost
And then there’s Colin Creevey
He sees the basilisk through the lens of his camera. Now, in the book we don’t actually find out what kind of camera he’s using, but I think it’s safe to say that it has a viewfinder (aka that little thing photographers look through to see what they’re photographing). Now, from how I understand it, that viewfinder is really just a lens. Colin Creevey survived looking a basilisk in the eye by seeing it through a lens
So, theoretically, you should be able to survive a basilisks killing gaze by... wearing glasses?
If you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you.
Draco Malfoy will never be able to hold anything for long. Constant crucios over 3 years has damaged his nerves.Voldemort was most displeased with his inability to finish his task, the Carrow’s annoyed with his refusal to torture students for their detentions. His hands shake and shiver, nerves constantly shaking with invisible, imaginary pain that stopped years ago. He yells in frustration as his shaking body repeatedly clinks his teacup loudly against its saucer, another futile attempt to keep his hands steady, and smashes it against the floor, a thousand white shards glittering against the black tile.
Harry Potter breaks down every time he gets a headache. Hand clapping to his forehead as the pain sets on, muttering to himself that ‘hes not back.’ ‘I killed him.’ ‘Its over’ as he scans the room; flinching at too pale skin, hand twitching towards his wand as brown eyes reflect red in the flickering, fluorescent light. The cold tile beneath his fingers grounds him as he tries to convince himself that he’s okay. The feeling that some part of him died that day in the forest, surrendering before Voldemort’s wand never leaves, the hollow feeling leaving an aching, painful hole in its wake.
Ron Weasley finds himself scanning rooms over and over again. Planning exit strategies and ways to take out everyone in the room in order to escape. He imagines everyone as an enemy in disguise, subconsciously moving people like chess pieces and picking his small flat, not because it was cheap or because the neighborhood was good (its dismal really) but because it had the best strategic advantage in regards to the city and places around him, in order to hide in case of attacks. He once again comes to his senses after a nightmare and sighs as he realizes that in his delirium he once again had filled pages upon pages of his notebook with battle tactics and the floor plans of places hes been and fought (Hogwarts, the Ministry, the Burrow...). He rips them out and adds them to a growing folder before making a cup of tea.
Hermione Granger finds herself hording food, slipping apples into pockets and bread into her purse. She comes home to find herself with pockets of tarts and a bag of crackers, handfuls of berries slipped between pages of paperwork and cereal bars snuck into file folders. The months of hiding and foraging have made her paranoid and hyper aware of how much food she’ll need to get through the day. She’ll find herself counting calories and balancing proteins, carbs and fats before she can stop herself and measuring how much she eats, intuitively leaving some over for Harry and Ron, forgetting that they are no longer on the run, having to ration food.
Luna is no longer as carefree and dreamy as she was. Her creatures turn from whimsical and delicate to horrifying. Claws and teeth grow to protect and attack. She won’t leave the house for days, wandering around inside with closed eyes to avoid Blibbering Humdingers who now have poisonous spines and Nargles with razor teeth, her mind having twisted them from cures for loneliness to share with her father, to weapons of destruction to protect her from the outside world. They are real enough to her that she convinces herself they’ve locked her inside her house and won’t let her leave, she thinks they’ve kidnapped and hurt her friends because ‘It’s to protect you’ ‘They are spies’ ‘It’s not real Luna’ ‘They only want to hurt you’. The whispers follow everywhere and consume her, dragging her into the void. It’s when she locks Hermione in her basement under the influence of her broken mind, twisted by false images and under the guise of Hermione being someone else using polyjuice, that she gets a room in the Janus Thickney ward of St Mungos. She has moments of clarity but they are few and far between. her mind crumbled, her spirit broken, a twisted shadow of the young, bright girl who hummed happily as she waltzed barefoot through the halls.
Dennis Creevey perpetually has a broken, cracked, dirty camera on a shelf in his bedroom, never to be touched.
George Weasley has smashed every mirror in his flat and refuses to repair them
Percy Weasley takes to straight vodka and tequila out of the bottle because his guilt over Fred.
Kreacher forever wears a cracked and blood stained locket till the day he dies.
Teddy Lupin spends hours staring at pictures of his parents, shifting into one or the other or trying for the perfect mixture of both, never getting it quite right.
Minerva McGonnagal finds a dusty box under Severus Snape’s bed filled with cracked records; a flaky leather jacket; old Polaroids of a girl with a head of flames and eyes of shattered emerald, smiling, arms wrapped tight around a boy with inky hair and sharp, onyx eyes; a fractured glass figurine of a lily lying carefully on top of the pile; folded within an old letter. She sobs over a life spent hating and being hated as she pats the scratched lacquer on a string-less bass guitar
There will always be an empty seat at many tables all over the country as people mourn lives lost unfairly.
You can take people out of the war, but can you take the war out of people?