You just know that everyone is going to call him "Pillock" instead.

 

In cases where Harry's name has changed but the story is still good (Rare but I've come across a few), I just download the fic and use the Find and Replace function to change it back to Harry Potter.

I do the same when Kit is used in Naruto functions but this has lead to a few weird conversations between Naruto and Kyuubi.

 

What do you change Kit to? Wondeer if it would work with pup or cub? Maybe with Prongslet....

 

Why do some people feel the need to change Harry's name? If he's sent back to his parent's time, I could buy changing surnames. But why change Harry? It's a common name, his parents wouldn't think anything odd about it (besides maybe how a great-uncle is also named Harry), and even if he were with a younger self it's still a common enough name to be a coincidence.

I'm just curious, what the author's excuse to give Harry a new name when he's in the Founders era? I would be genuinely impressed if the Potters were already an important family in an era when most people didn't actually have surnames yet.

 

Writer's peeve: Getting a review to a chapter you wrote three years ago, telling you that your grammar sucks and you need a beta.

 

Finally finding a fic that's written well with little to no grammar errors, taking on a trope that's usually done bad and succeeding . . . only to swerve into the stupidity of Ron!Bashing.

 

#1
MC: "We just met but let me tell you all my life story, abilities, secrets and weaknesses in one sitting, while you get angry if I even ask one personal question."

#2
Love interest: "It doesn't matter, it's personal."

Some time later

It was the most fucking important thing.

 

"I'm not going to share this minor thing that would clear up this entire mess completely because it's personal."

 

When the Marauders are written as a group of equals; Peter is treated the same as the others

Lupin with facial scars

When Lucius and Narcissa are portrayed as not loving each other/Narcissa just a victim of Lucius' bigotry that she doesn't share

Same with Vernon and Petunia

Stoic, overly formal, unsmiling Snape

Trite rationalisations for Snape's teaching habits

 

Aren't these canon?

The reason the Potters made Peter their secret keeper (other than the bluff) was because he was their friend.

Lupin is described as having facial scars in the books.

I can't really recall a moment when Snape was smiling from joy. It's true that he's portrayed ridiculously in fanon, but he's hardly a jovial character in the books.

 

They did consider him their friend, that doesn't mean they considered him their equal.

Plus everything we see about their dynamic in SWM. There's also that Pottermore explicitly states:

Lupin isn't described as having facial scars: that's from the movies.

Snape being stoic and expressionless is from Rickman; the book character is pretty expressive and smiles.

 

He became an Animagus as a teenager.

He was a Secret Keeper (they trusted he was a powerful enough wizard to defend himself from Death Eaters, or they wouldn't have chosen him, even with the deceit).

He was powerful enough to brew a potion/cast a spell/orchestrate a magical ritual to give someone a new body.

He was powerful enough to blow a hole through concrete so deep and wide it killed a dozen Muggles and had to be passed off as a gas main explosion.

And, as to your quote, it's from a later interview with JKR, not actual canon.

You might, however, be right on the other two. I'd have to go back and check, but honestly don't care enough to do it.

 

The point was about their perceptions of him. He became an animagus, but years later Lupin chooses emphasize that he 'needed all the help he could get'. We don't know what the process entails, or the extent to which that help was. Sirius says he's weak and chose him as a bluff. He was angry, yeah, but that he chose 'weak' is equally likely to indicate that he did actually think of him that way. They trusted that he wouldn't give them up and die for them, not necessarily that he'd have the skill to escape. Or that he could transform and escape but still thought of him as relatively unskilled. Mhm, the quote is word of god, and I think it blends seamlessly into the canon. The reason it's a pet peeve of mine is because I think Wormtail's inadequacy/uneven standing is a huge part of his arc and how people relate to him. See: Lupin reaching out to him out of pity, how McGonagall talks about him, how they treat him in SWM, how Sirius talks about him in PoA, how JKR talks about him. It's emphasized almost every time he's mentioned in the series and out of.

 

He was following explicit directions from Voldemort while Crabb demonstrated that even a mediocre wizard can do horrific damage.

 

There's a kind of essentialist logic being used here:

'Wormtail and Crabbe are mediocre wizards, but they can cause massive damage, ergo even mediocre wizards can cause massive damage'

...When you can also frame it as Crabbe and Wormtail thus not being uniformly mediocre wizards.

It could also be something like the explosion was because of his panicky emotional state.

Transfiguring a ferret into a flock of flamingos sounds like an impressive piece of magic otherwise.

 

The problem, IMO, is that you're confusing character traits with magical skill. He's weak of character, skittish, etc. etc. But I can't see him being anything less that average magically at the very least, and probably a bit above average according to canon itself. Retcon from interviews and other sources don't hold as much authority in my book as the actual writings.

 

Oh god yes this. Or some other equally stupid, or stupider, reason than personal.

 

"Wingardium Leviosa", Harry yelled.


Yelling or shouting spells. Everytime anyone older than thirteen does it (barring the odd this-will-keep-me-alive spell), it's instaclose. Because it's both stupid and usually a sign of badly thought out magic (in many circumstances, even mugglewank).

 

It's probably the product of movies.

 

Yeah don't you know yelling is more dramatic and powerful?