I like the way personal touches in the will kind of paint a picture of a wider universe.

I did like the twist!

I love moments like when Storm agrees that Scabbers is a special rat, and we’re all tearing our hair out while Harry is completely oblivious to what he actually meant

Obviously my guess doesn’t matter much since I’ve read this before, but I did forget what happened, so my guess is that he’s trying to surreptitiously signal to Tom Riddle that if he is possessing Harry then Lucius knows he is

I like the idea that the Blacks would have Phineas’ portrait made to not know the things that they wouldn’t want future headmasters to know. It’s a simple detail, but it’s the little things that add up to a greater whole

I’d forgotten about Harry’s argument that parseltongue is actually common but people are afraid to admit it. I think he’s probably wrong, but I really enjoy him making the case.

Finally! so many stories have someone muggle raised (usually Hermoine) try to take Muggle Studies as an easy subject. Good to see Harry consider the hazards of knowing more than the teacher... Some teachers can actually handle this but the vast majority will fail you if you have enough "wrong" answers at a minimum and probably treat any explanations as challenging their authority. Bleah...

“Harry's instinctively disgusted face made both the girls giggle.”

I felt a great disturbance in the fandom, as if millions of weirdos who think robst stories aren’t the literary equivalent of a kick in the balls cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Draco didn't say anything except a murmured, "get well soon," much like the others.

That’s how I’d do it. I’m an idiot though, so don’t take my word for it

Oh Harry, it wasn’t insultingly easy; you blazed the Lockhart retricted section pass trail!

I really like the balancing act Harry has to do in this. Him being pulled around in a bunch of different directions is something that probably should have happened in canon, but JKR didn’t seem to want to put very many characters in the books.

I totally passed this over the first time I read this, but all that about changelings and the spells to identify magic is super interesting.

Most pressing: why would you want to make those spells illegal? To make people keep squibs? Why? To protect young Muggleborns from being switched? Plausible, there’s nothing saying that the practice didn’t become gauche because it became very hard to pull off. Actually, that might explain the shift in attitudes, since now muggleborns weren’t a potentially useful resource for purebloods.

Interesting: for the magical people the changeling thing was a super win-win. Leaving squibs behind probably increased muggleborn birth rates, and taking in new blood probably helped inbred families stay diverse enough to avoid bad things. Is all the craziness and deformity we see in the wizarding world (the movies have more than the books, but the books at least have a lot of people who are said to look troll-ish) the result of keeping the same inbreeding practices of past centuries without the changelings to keep the gene pool from becoming too shallow?

I love that every year Harry has to con another person for restricted section access.

Review review review. Good chapter!

Poor Harry. I think the absence of any scene like this in the books is strong evidence that Dumbledore really did raise Harry to have nothing to live for. On purpose, I mean. Obviously he did that purposefully or not.

You have to admitHermione has been throwing her weight around and voicing her criticisms loudly - not exactly trying to fit into her new world is she? And I thought she was supposed to be intelligent.