Strange and Invisible History/YMMV
- Alternate Character Interpretation: The Death Eaters.
- Complete Monster: Voldemort. Surprisingly, his Death Eaters are given just enough Pet the Dog moments to avoid this.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- The Death Eaters regard Rodolphus and Bellatrix's penchant for public sex on raids as an amusing eccentricity, and tend to politely ignore it, even having conversations with one or both of them directly after (as in, they're still joined together).
- Pureblood men typically love their wives and want them to be happy. Except that nice women don't like being intimate, so women who do are clearly prostitutes. Not everyone actually believes this, but people give it lip-service, and this is basically what Narcissa tells Hermione when she gives her the Talk.
- Lucius scolds Hermione for saying 'please'to an elf. 'One doesn't ask an elf, love, one commands them.'
- Bellatrix agrees that Hermione can keep being friends with Alise but only as long as she's getting something from the friendship, as it's only acceptable for the higher orders to mingle with the lower orders as long as the superior person benefits personally.
- It's totally acceptable for people of the same gender to platonically share beds. If anything, a person who wants to sleep alone if they don't need to is odd, and being unkind by depriving another person of companionship.
- Lucius is proud of Draco when he finds out Draco is the one who does most of the babysitting, because far from being unmasculine, it shows he'll be a good father and provider when he's grown.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Pretty much everyone except Voldemort gets this but it’s Deconstructed. These people do awful things but are mainly seen with the people they care about.
- Moral Event Horizon:
- Stefan crosses it when he murders his uncle Grigor Borev to claim his title and then uses it to conscript thousands of peasants, burning their homes and driving their women and children into the forest (in Eastern Europe, in December) to die. The fact he talks casually about his men raping the women is icing on the cake.
- Travers goes over when he admits cheerfully to his mistress Rita Skeeter that he was the one who loosed the Dementors on the muggle village to test their capabilities, and justifies it by pointing out they're only muggles.
- The Dark Lord wins extra points for managing a Shout-Out during his MEH. 'Take her away, Lucius. We have never been able to abide the snivelling of women.'
- This is after he announces he has no intention of honouring his treaty and saving Bulgaria, including Hermione, Viktor and Draco, and fully means to leave them to die.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The implication that Crouch Sr knowingly sent innocent people to Azkban because they knew too much about the illegal activities he was encouraging the aurors to commit.
- The Dark Lord ordering Snape to sell Hermione to cement an alliance. The family is forced to pretend to be happy as they have a mock-wedding night (it makes sense in context) for the engaged couple, who are twelve and fifteen. Hermione sleeps with the doll that her new mother-in-law-to-be made her.
- Draco and Viktor calmly discussing what will happen to the women if the castle falls to Pavel's werewolves and then agreeing to on a course of action. They're twelve and fifteen at the time.
- Emmeline Vance's transformation into Eugenia Feathering Lestrange. Being forced to spy is bad enough, but to have to marry one of the people who tortured your best friend to madness? And then having to give him a child to keep your cover? It's even worse when one finds out that Emmeline/Eugenia was the one who found the Longbottoms, and Neville is her godson.
- The fate of the muggles of Whitnell. The Dark Lord releases Dementorson them in order to test their effectiveness as a weapon, and then sends people to take pictures of the results.
- The horror of being made to watch as one's child(ren) are forced to commit increasingly brutal actions, sacrificed as political pawns and made to do things you know are damaging them, totally aware that you are responsible for it, helpless to do anything but observe your beloved son or daughter gradually becoming an emotionally wrecked child soldier with no chance for anything like a normal life. And it's all your fault.
- Barty's revelation that he sometimes remembers what he was like. Imagine being mentally seven years old and having the occasional moment of realising what you've become, and what you did to get there, and being unable to understand it or put them it context at all.
- Nagini. With an infant. While his parents are watching.
- Squick:
- Everything and anything to do with Voldemort possessing Harry. He goes through puberty. He is turned on by Hermione. Pass the Brain Bleach please.
- If the notion of Wormtail having sex wasn’t disturbing enough, the notion of having it with another rat definitely is.
- The description of Tamm’s eye.
- The Lestranges (and Sirius's) rotting, post-Azkaban teeth, and Wizarding dentistry generally. Why? Because rather than remove bad teeth, the medi-wizard simply uses what amounts to magical acid to melt the bad spot out and then rebuilds the tooth with new enemel. Reading about Sirius spitting mouthfuls of his liquified teeth into a garbage can is pretty awful.
- Tear Jerker:
Barty: The Bad Thing was all for nothing. Wasn't it? |
- The Woobie:
- Draco Malfoy is thoroughly broken by the end of part one.
- Hermione and Krum.
- You know how Snape won over the fangirls in Deathly Hallows with his tragic back story and constant love for Lily Potter? Now he has see Voldemort looking at him with Lily's eyes. He failed to protect her son. Dude needs a hug.
- Emmeline Vance.
- Barty Crouch Jr.