Some of you might have noticed something kind of funny about people.
Almost none of them like Treasure Planet.
And, considering I joined this fandom well over three years
ago by now, this comes as absolutely no surprise to me – and chances are, if
you’ve known about this film for longer than, say, a day, it fails to surprise
you, too. I mean, we’ve all heard the reasons, haven’t we – valid though they are, it’s depressing to hear them, the millions upon
millions upon millions of them.
“Sorry, the sci-fi
just wasn’t my thing.”
“I liked it okay, but
I can’t see myself ever watching it again.”
“The animation was
good, but I didn’t really like the rest of it.”
“It was…sort of weird
to me.”
“It doesn’t measure up
to Treasure Island.”
“It just wasn’t my cup
of tea.”
Or – and here’s the one that gets to me:
“I just really didn’t like the main kid.”
The words come across as pretty innocent – it’s just a matter of preference, it’s just their opinion, live and let live, nothing wrong with disagreeing…and there’s not. There’s really, really not. You can hate Jim Hawkins as much as you want. But you can look me in the eye and can you tell me why you hate him? Can you tell me why, exactly, that’s the argument I’ve heard the most out of any of them? Can you tell me why, in my 3+ years in this wonderful fandom, in the thousands of days I’ve now spent promoting the shit out of this film every chance I get, can you tell me why that argument is the one I find myself dealing with the most? Can you look at me and can you tell me why you hate Jim Hawkins? Can you do that?
Because here’s the thing – I can tell you why I love him. And I got shit to back up me up.
Let’s get down to business. Let me tell you why I love Jim Hawkins – every habit, every quirk, every mannerism, every virtue, and every flaw. Let’s plunge right in.
He’s kind.
Sure, you can roll your eyes if you want to, but honestly? Being really, truly, simply, genuinely nice is such a rare quality in the world, and Jim has – and displays – this quality in abundance. I mean, for one thing, bringing Billy Bones to the Benbow when he seems ninety percent sure the guy’s just crazy? Yet he takes a chance anyway, because the sailor’s sick, the sailor’s injured, it’s raining really hard, he shouldn’t be out in this in his state, here, give me your arm, let me help you, you can come in out of the rain and stay in my house for a bit.
And what about the time he met that half-mad robot on Treasure Planet and, despite the fact that BEN blatantly oversteps his boundaries a good ten times (”Will you let go of me?/Stop touching me!”/Will you quit hugging me?”) or so within the first five minutes of their introduction, despite the fact that he is very obviously unhinged from all that time alone, despite the fact that BEN is loud and attention-drawing and the word stealthy isn’t in his vocabulary, despite the fact that he’s putting the captain and the doctor and himself in peril by doing so, Jim allows BEN to come with him – all he needs is to hear about the robot’s century of solitude, his loneliness, his desolation, and he just drops everything and says, “If you’re gonna come along…”
And don’t even get me started on the deleted scenes – such as the one where he offers to fix this child’s scooter, even though he and this kid have never met before, never even spoken to one another, and yet he offers to fix this scooter because aww the kid’s sad let me fix it for you.
Because, beneath that black jacket and that dark scowl of his, Jim has a huge, huge heart and it’s there and it’s evident for anyone willing to look. Because Jim just legitimately cares about other people, and there’s no ulterior motive, he doesn’t ask for compensation, he doesn’t expect anything in return, he just genuinely likes helping others.
(And as I don’t happen to have an image on hand for the child’s scooter bit mentioned above, have a few bonus pictures of times when Jim was nice)
Comforting a frightened Morph despite the fact that his life is in the most immediate and intense danger
And how about the time he lets a pirate – the leader of a mutiny in which he was supposed to be killed – walk the fuck away from him because he believes there’s good in Silver?
Don’t get me started on this kid and his kindness. Don’t. Get me started.
And he’s smart.
I don’t mean passing-his-finals-with-flying-colors oh-haha-that-was-a-total-seat-of-my-pants-test can’t-believe-I-pulled-through-with-a-B I-was-pulling-answers-out-of-my-ass kind of smart.
I mean completely, incredibly, off-the-charts, blow-your-mind brilliant. He might be failing his high school classes, but it’s certainly not due to the challenge; he doesn’t put any effort into his work because he just doesn’t care. I mean, we even hear Sarah state that he built his first solar surfer when he was eight. So let’s let that sink in for a second.
This kid
was no older than that when he built one of these
Just let that sit a minute. He built one of those gizmos
when he was eight fucking years old. Hell, I’m not one hundred percent sure I understand them now, and he was eight and he understood them so well he could make them. (Sure, he ultimately uses it to cause trouble and ride straight into restricted areas, but it still makes him pretty brainy.)
And not to mention, when Silver tries to teach him how to steer a skiff, he doesn’t even let the guy finish his sentence before he starts powering it up. Despite the other’s best attempts to stop him, Jim ignites the engine and sends them whirling straight into a comet. He fucking steers a boat – with limited knowledge, considering Silver didn’t get a chance to teach him everything – he steers a boat into a comet, and rides that comet to its end and does it without ever missing a beat, without ever throwing himself or his companion out of the boat, without ever messing up or getting hurt or hurting Silver or anything, just gets the hang of it right off the bat.
And at the end of it, all Silver says is, “If I could maneuver a skiff like that when I was your age, they’d be bowing in the streets when I walked by today!”
Oh, and did I mention he powers up a century-old crashed boat in sixty seconds? No? Well, he did that, too.
Oh, and he also made another solar surfer, this time at fifteen, out of the useless parts of their failing ship while the planet explodes around them.
And, when said surfer begins failing, threatening to send him plummeting to his death in a raging river of lava bubbling and frothing beneath him, he keeps it going – literally rams it into the wall, striking it against the metal surface until enough friction occurs to power the thrusters again, and he does this all in the space of thirty seconds.
Oh, and he figured out where Flint’s trove was hidden before anyone else, just based on the fragmented bits and pieces he’d picked up from other people
And did I mention yet that he was the only one who could open the map leading to the planet?
There were people thirty and forty years his senior trying to figure it out
and he figures it out in seconds
And he’s brave
Remember when he casually faced down a whole crew of pirates three and four times over, all in the space of twenty-four hours?
And how about the fact that he refuses, at great risk to himself, to open the map for the pirates – until Silver threatens the captain and the doctor?
Or when he’s fixing that hundred-year-old boat we discussed earlier, and tells BEN to leave without him if he can’t get away in the next five minutes?
Oh, and when the star Pellucid goes supernova on their voyage and the hands are sent to secure the solar sails, not only does Jim immediately ascend, no hesitation
he also spots Silver, who followed him there, fall from his perch, and literally fucking throws himself down onto the wood and hauls the cook – who, to be honest, has a good hundred pounds on Jim and probably almost took the kid down with him, and definitely dragged the kid closer to the edge than would be advised – back up to safety.
And later in the film, he receives an order from the captain to scout ahead and find them a better place to hide – and even though the pirates were spotted seconds earlier, circling the skies in a longboat, Jim expresses no hesitation, simply obeys.
And, oh, uh, you remember that solar surfer we talked about earlier, the one he constructed as the planet bursts into flames and burns down around him?
Yeah, here he is riding it through the fires and eruptions and random debris, here he is casually risking his life to save everyone else, most of them being pirates who would have loved to see him dead.
Yep, don’t mind him, he’s just saving everyone else. He might die doing it, but damn, he’s doing it anyway.
But wait. I did promise to discuss his flaws as well, and, so far, I haven’t been making good on that promise, have I?
Fear not, for Jim Hawkins is far from perfect and it’s time for us to explore the reasons why.
He’s impulsive
While most readily refer to this as a “Mary Sue trait” and “not really a flaw” , I can’t help but disagree; if we consider it an undesirable trait in a real person, why on earth would we think it little more than a cute quirk in a fictional character? Believe me when I say, Jim’s consistent failure to think before he acts is not a charming little thing – it’s a flaw, plain and simple.
For all Jim’s kindness, for all his bravery and unfailing ability to think fast on his feet, he is impulsive as all hell.
Like when he, in his first meeting with Silver, throws out several thinly-veiled accusations – showing his cards, playing his whole hand right off the bat on the off chance that his opponent might show his, too.
Unsurprisingly, of course, Silver does not rise to the bait – meaning Jim revealed everything to the man who will later become his enemy, in a sense losing the only advantage he really held, whereas Silver lost nothing and now has additional information to help him on his way. And all this could have been avoided had Jim just kept his mouth shut.
And that time when he attempted to eavesdrop on a couple of the other hands cause he thought they were acting suspicious
But it’s not long before they notice him and immediately shut up – meaning Jim has now given his suspicions away to four different people, four people whom he suspects. (Five, if you count Oxy and Moron as two.)
Or how about when they find that map we talked about earlier, and when he opens it up and realizes it leads to Treasure Planet, his first thought is to follow it? Like, this could be anything. A trap, a red herring, a fool’s errand, and Jim just throws himself headlong into it because look there’s a slim chance it could be treasure let’s go right now!
I mean, there’s just no room for doubt: Jim is super impulsive, and that’s not a good quality to have. Sure, it gets shit done, but cautious people get shit done too, and they probably get it done better because they’re not making snap decisions every 2.5 seconds.
And Jim is selfish.
Sure, we all love him. Well, some of you hate him, and some of you love to hate him, but the sentiment stands; we all love Jim, but you can’t love somebody for too long without noticing his flaws. And Jim has his flaws.
And it’s especially obvious in scenes like this
where we see that Jim was just out on a joyride while his mother visibly struggles to run the inn by herself.
It’s obvious he uses that solar surfing hobby to escape, to distract him from his problems after a tough day, but this, in turn, suggests that he feels his problems at the moment are more important than Sarah’s, and so puts himself before his mother.
And he makes things harder on her than probably anyone else in her life, going out and getting in trouble all the time and bringing the police to her door
Not only is this probably really bad for business, it’s also likely embarrassing and obviously upsetting for poor Sarah – yet Jim offers no apology, offers almost nothing beyond the words, “Mom, it’s no big deal!”
And when they open the map and realize where it leads, Jim jumps on the chance to leave Sarah
Not just their lonely little planet, but Sarah, he wants to leave her. And though his intentions here are honorable (”We could rebuild the Benbow a hundred times over!” / “I’ll make you proud!”) it still fails to completely sugarcoat the fact that he left her there, lured away by the promise of adventure.
Because Jim is selfish.
He’stouchy, and defiant as all hell.
Sure, this is a flaw. Sure, it’s not a great quality to have. Sure, it holds him back more than anything, and it probably gets him in more trouble than it’s worth – but I still tip my hat to Disney for introducing this flaw at all. It has been proven in the past that children with absentee parents – particularly boys with neglectful fathers – tend to become obstinate teens with no regard for authority, and I’m just so proud of them for doing their research on that one.
Admittedly, however, this quality does cause him more trouble than it’s worth. I mean, he makes himself an enemy out of the scariest alien aboard in the first five minutes, all because he has to have the last word.
As a matter of fact, when I think about it, Jim has single-handedly gotten on the bad side of every one of these pirates on board this ship, with the obvious exception of Silver, and he does it all because he is just that feisty.
On the other hand, however, his pluck is the first thing Silver notices – and likes – about him. It’s obvious that while the pirate captain plans to work the spunk out of him, he can’t help but respect it, too.
Like, for instance, on Treasure Planet, when Jim refuses to allow Silver to leave without him
there’s an instant where Silver looks like he’s about to argue
and he could, he could just hold the captain, the doctor, or even BEN at gunpoint, and chances are, Jim would likely obey just to spare those he cares for. Despite the fact that Silver is clearly the one in power here, he gives into Jim’s demands – because, even if he doesn’t like it, Jim’s defiance is something he can respect. They may be enemies now, but Silver recognizes and respects that Jim makes a worthy enemy.
And let’s not forget that he’s stubborn.
Seriously, once he’s found something to fight for, he’ll fight for that, and he’ll get it, no matter what it takes, and there’s nobody in the world that can change his mind. If he gets it in his head that he wants to do something, if he gets it in his head that he should do something, he’ll do it, no matter what.
And in some cases, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means he has a strong sense of right and wrong and knows the difference between the two, and will do what he believes to be right, regardless of what other people say. He has a moral code, and a strong one, at that, and he rarely deviates from it. And this is actually a good thing when, say, there’s a treasure-hunting pirate captain attempting to bribe him into betraying the captain and the doctor and handing over the map.
And, when this fails and Silver resorts to trying to frighten him into submission, the kid doesn’t even blink. He can’t be bought, and he sure as hell can’t be intimidated.
Of course, this isn’t always a good quality to have; while it does make him more resistant to tactics such as temptation, it also makes him inflexible and, in some cases, extremely resistant to change, even when that change would be for the better.
But that iron will has another advantage.
It makes him hardworking.
Whether it’s as trivial as swabbing the deck, or as enormous as seeking out a legendary treasure trove, if Jim sees the point in a task – if he sees, for himself, why it’s worthy of his time – he will put his all into it, no questions asked. So though most would call him a delinquent, and while the robo-cops on Montressor outright tell him that he is a loser
Jim is actually extremely industrious and capable – he just doesn’t always show it. But it’s there, if you know how to look.
Like when Silver leaves him with this huge pile of dishes in the galley
and he just picks up his brush and keeps right on going
and in fact, is so determined to finish up that damn stack that he ends up falling asleep in the galley, head resting on the pot in his hand
but the dishes around him are gleaming.
Or how about when he was failing at school at the beginning of the film, and by the end, he has graduated from the prestigious Interstellar Academy?
Can you imagine how much work it must have taken to get himself into that Academy? I mean, how long did it take for him to pull those grades up, to convince others he was really serious about this, and can you imagine how much work it took to get through the Academy once he got there? But Jim got there anyway, and he did graduate, and he did do all that amazing stuff, and he did it because he works hard.
Oh and remember
He was lost
Though by the end of the film Jim is high-spirited and confident, we know from the beginning that it wasn’t always so. His father’s absence left a hole in him, a hole he felt it was too big to fill – a hole that left him feeling worthless and rejected, it left him feeling angry and defeated, and it left him thinking he wasn’t good enough. It left him with a strong, deep-seated fear of abandonment, and more than that, it left him searching – searching and searching and never quite finding the missing piece he so desperately needed.
Jim felt he had no future; Jim felt he wasn’t worth a future; Jim didn’t really know where he was going, and that’s the kind of relatability I’ve come to expect from Dreamworks. I don’t go into a Disney film expecting to find real characters, so this came as a pleasant surprise.
And something else I’ll probably never get over
Jim is sensitive
So, this one actually sounds funny. I mean, I just said earlier how selfish Jim is, right? How he’s always putting himself before Sarah? Yeah. That whole argument still stands. It’s just that Jim isn’t all selfish, all the time. Can he be selfish? Yes. Extremely. Is he selfish? Sometimes. But he’s also, as mentioned before, a genuinely nice person. A person with honest empathy. His instances of self-absorption don’t cancel that out.
Now, while most define a sensitive person as “one who understands and feels for others” – and while Jim certainly does that, too – we’ve already tackled that. We’ve talked about Jim as a compassionate and thoughtful individual, and I’m not here to talk about it again, though I could.
No, there are drawbacks to feeling for others, and I’m here to talk about them.
I mean, Jim cares about other people – Jim feels deeply for people, deeply enough to welcome complete strangers into his house and offer lonely individuals a place at his side, Jim just feels for people even if he’s never experienced their hardships for himself. And if he can feel so strongly for strangers, if he can look upon a person he hardly knows and want to help ease their pain, if his heart squeezes upon seeing others’ suffering, how much do you think it hurts when he experiences his own?
His father, for example. An indifferent, neglectful parent, the heartache they cause, it would sting even the most impervious – but for somebody as thin-skinned and tender-hearted as Jim, it absolutely devastates him. And when the man finally gives up on his family, leaving behind his wife and their eight-year-old, it just tears the kid apart.
As a matter of fact, it hurts Jim so deeply that it takes him seven years just to realize that it wasn’t his fault, or anyone’s; his father’s rejection caused him so much pain that he is well into his adolescence before he can even begin to accept that he’s gone.
But this isn’t just one instance; it’s not merely a festering childhood wound, no. Jim takes the slightest slip-up straight to heart – and upon believing he caused Mr. Arrow’s death, he spends what appears to be hours beating himself up for this perceived failure.
And ultimately, he might have continued indefinitely had Silver not intervened and comforted him.
And of course, less than twenty-four hours later, Silver tells his bloodthirsty crew – and, unwittingly, an eavesdropping Jim – that his attentions were all for show, that he had to be nice to the kid to keep him from suspecting the crew of anything shady, he had to win the lad’s trust or risk his suspicion…and Jim really believes it, and, in fact, is so hurt, that he appears to take a moment to swallow back tears.
Jim is just so easy to hurt.
And to be honest, it’s great; it makes his empathy for others more believable – after all, if his own wounds have left such obvious marks, who’s to say another’s tribulations won’t win over his sensitive heart?
And, hey, hey, don’t forget
He’s just a kid
I mean, he’s doing all this awesome shit, he’s building solar surfers
and saving lives
and working his ass off and being super kind and impulsive and defiant and selfish and everything, he’s doing all this, and he’s only fifteen years old. Like. He’s fifteen. He’s not even an adult yet. He’s not even of legal age. He’s just casually amazing at fifteen, but what do you think he’ll be like in five years, ten years, twenty?
As Silver says, he really is going to rattle the stars.
Now let’s review before we go:
Jim is kind.
Jim is smart.
Jim is brave.
Jim is impulsive.
Jim is selfish.
Jim is touchy and defiant as all hell.
Jim is stubborn.
Jim is hardworking.
Jim was lost.
Jim is sensitive.
Jim is just a kid.
Just please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t ever forget Jim Hawkins.
The most hilarious thing about the fact Buckbeak had a trial and lost is that later on JKR resolves the issue by having Hagrid take him in again and renaming him Witherwings. That’s literally all it took. What if in POA, Hagrid simply said, “Sorry, Buckbeak flew away.”
“There’s a hippogriff right there, Hagrid.”
“A different hipprogriff.”
“I’m… pretty sure that’s the same hipprogriff.”
“Prove it.”
no dna tests we die like scientifically underdeveloped societies
Prisoner of Azkaban continues to be the most frustrating book
Someone should have just adopted Sirius and started calling him Gerald.
Remus: Erm… this is our new order member, my… cousin Gerald. Gerald White.
“Mr. Lupin that is Sirius Black with glasses!” “Oh come now Minister, Sirius Black doesn’t wear glasses. That wouldn’t make sense.” “Well have Mr. White take off his glasses then!” “He can’t he needs them to see.”
it got better
It’s honestly a miracle to me that wizarding society doesn’t collapse every other week because like
You’ve got this world full of people who can destroy whole buildings or turn people into beetles or make vehicles fly just by waving a stick at them
And there is literally no common sense
Anywhere to be found
Voldemort would never have had anyone find out he was back if he just went around calling himself Steve
Okay, see, I thought I saved this post to comment on it but I’d like to bring up
The Minister would NEVER EVER disbelieve in Gerald White. He’d buy it hook line and sinker. The wizarding world would buy it hook line and sinker. The GOBLINS wouldn’t but wizards have been shown to be pretty blindingly clueless. Still, Gringotts would grudgingly give Sirius access to the Black fortune.
But, but, but, you know the one person
the one person
who Gerald White would drive AB-SO-LUTELY FUCKING BATSHIT?
Severus Snape.
Snape would do everything, EVERYTHING, to get people to believe that it’s Sirius. But the Order would ignore it (they accepted Sirius as Sirius before anyway) and Remus would just be so… so affronted.
‘Severus, he is my cousin.’
And Sirius would love it. He’d love the fact that Snape just hated it. He’d be the BEST DAMN GERALD WHITE EVER b/c Snape is doing everything from dropping veritaserum into his firewhisky to capturing a dementor in a box and releasing it on Sirius when he least expects it
That one causes problems for a bare minute because SHIT A DEMENTOR ATTEMPTED TO GIVE GERALD THE KISS MAYBE SNAPE IS RIGHT except Harry comes forward and is like ‘excuse me, I’ve never committed a crime and dementors are ALWAYS attacking me, I think they’re attracted to glasses’
and the magical community is like ‘shit, yeah, you’re right’
and just
Spare. Snape goes spare.
Now I’m imagining Fred and George sneaking extra Weasleys into Snape’s class manifests every year.
Annnd I wrote the thing. Sort of. It kinda got out of hand.
–
The first year they’re just Fred and George, except when occasionally they’re Gred and Forge, but it’s not too long before Snape just stops trying to tell them apart and just treats them as the joint entity “Weasley,” who happens to be in two places at once.
The next year they take turns attending first-year Potions class as Barry Weasley, the glasses-wearing Weasley cousin who missed the Sorting Ceremony because he tried to swallow three chocolate frogs at once on a bet from his twin cousins and got sick.
Snape has a choice between asking questions about Barry and punishing Fred and George for tormenting their cousin, and punishing Fred and George wins out. At this point, it’s not really that weird–the Weasleys do tend toward large families–and any excuse to give the twins detention is basically the sort of thing you could put under a box propped up with a stick on a rope and a “TOTALLY NOT A TRAP” sign to catch Severus Snape.
So he figures Barry Weasley is real. He comments on the boy’s resemblance to Fred and George, and Barry nods and says “Everyone says that. I could fool everyone but them, except eventually people figure out there’s only one of me.”
Snape doesn’t have much cause for complaint. Barry is not a difficult student (the twins are, at this point, quite happy with the joke for its own sake and so don’t risk the Barry persona on tormenting him), perhaps a bit prone to letting his mind wander (it helps that George is actually interested in Potions, and uses the second run as an opportunity to experiment), but there have been no outright disasters centered around his cauldron, which is a lot more than can be said for the twins.
The next year is Fred and George’s third year, Barry’s second year, and Ron’s first year. They don’t take Ron entirely into their confidence … but they do let on that they’ve invented a fictional “Cousin Barry” to mess with Snape a bit, in case Snape asks, but Snape doesn’t ask.
He does mention Barry Weasley to Barry’s supposed Head of House, but by pure luck he manages to do so when Minerva is sufficiently preoccupied by that late night with four first-years sneaking out after curfew, and she hears “Harry and Weasley,” and nods, and asks him something about a Gryffindor fifth-year she’s concerned about, and, well, that basically settles it.
Fred and George run into a minor difficulty in that they don’t have a free period coinciding with “Barry’s” potions class, but they get lucky enough to have History of Magic during that class, and Binns wouldn’t notice if Fred or George set the classroom on fire, much less if Fred or George is always absent.
Fred and George are at this point quite satisfied with getting “Barry” through seven years of Hogwarts without Snape realizing he’s fictional, but then at the beginning of their fourth year Snape is absent from the Sorting and the Welcome Feast and … well. Opportunity beckons.
Since Fred and George are pragmatic about which elective classes they take (they’re much more interested in independent study directed toward magical jokes and pranks), they have several free periods and it only takes a significant look between them to agree that, yes, they can absolutely handle being one more person just for Potions class.
They’re a bit more advanced at their magic now, and a bit of diluted Shrinking Potion and a Freckle Charm create Barnaby, Barry’s younger brother. There’s a minor concern with Ginny being in the same class, and more importantly, Operation Barnaby is still in the planning stages when McGonagall hands out the schedules and they realize they have Transfiguration during the requisite class period and McGonagall will definitely notice if a twin is missing.
Thus is is that Barnaby Weasley, Hufflepuff, is born.
Snape doesn’t give away anything more than a mild frown at another Weasley showing up on the class roster, but he does raise an eyebrow and inquire, “Hufflepuff?” after reading his name.
Barnaby (Fred, at the moment) turns red with the help of a Blushing Charm and looks hurt and defensive, which makes the Hufflepuffs, upset at the perceived insult to their House, accept him without question. Nobody ever asks either twin why he only shows up in Potions class; they get that it’s some long-con joke focused on Snape and they don’t interfere.
Barnaby is not quite as hopeless at Potions as Neville, but he is prone to the same wandering attention span as his brother, only more so. His potions regularly fail and occasionally explode, usually in a way that to Snape indicates carelessness with the ingredients and tells Fred or George something useful about the what happens when you do that.
The next year there are no new Weasley children, officially, but when Fred plops himself down next to George on the train and says “So what about a girl?” George knows exactly what he’s talking about.
They mix a hair-growing potion on the train, and have to hide it quickly when Draco Malfoy comes running into their compartment, frightened of the dementors.
George takes the hair potion and the shrinking potion and the pair of them use the Marauders’ Map to intercept Snape on his way to the Great Hall. Fred hides behind a pillar and casts a Duplicating Illusion Charm on himself and tries hard not to burst out laughing as George plays Nasturtium Weasley, little sister to Barry and Barnaby, who’s somehow managed to get lost on the way to the Great Hall.
Snape’s not the slightest bit pleased to be getting yet another absent-minded Weasley cousin, snarls, snaps something vaguely cutting, and leads her towards the Great Hall, intending to hand her over directly to Professor McGonagall; instead he runs into Fred and George (actually Fred and his charm double); Fred explained that they saw their cousin wandering off and went to go get her. Snape lectures the pair of them on wandering, accuses them of being up to no good, and stalks off to direct evil looks at Professor Lupin.
Which, luckily, takes up so much of his attention that he doesn’t pay attention to the Sorting. Fred and George decide the next morning, after careful consultation of multiple students’ class schedules, to put her in Hufflepuff along with Barnaby.
They strike it lucky again, in that first-year Potions only conflicts with Care of Magical Creatures, to which only one twin is going (they don’t see much point in both of them taking the same class, figuring that one of them knowing something is as good as both of them knowing it and they can teach each other more effectively than anyone else can teach them, an argument that failed to impress Professor McGonagall into letting them each out of half their classes back in first year); Hagrid won’t be expecting to see two of them.
Nasturtium Weasley, it develops, has quite a lot of bright red hair and a tendency to hyperfocus on ingredients or processes, leading to a lot of ruined potions when she keeps stirring too long or spends the whole class period shredding the shrivelfigs or gets lost examining the lobes of a dirigible plum leaf. Fred and George, taking turns being Nasturtium, are happy to spend the time just thinking through some interesting research they’ve been doing or contemplating a problem with their latest invention or just brainstorming new joke ideas until Snape appears, bellowing about melted cauldrons and the people who don’t even notice them because they’re too fascinated by the down on a downy mage-thistle.
But they’re being run just a bit ragged at it and decide that three is enough–until they wander past the Hospital Wing at just the right time to hear Snape bellowing apoplectically about Harry Potter, and Dumbledore’s more reasoned tones making light of the idea that Harry and his friends were in two places at once.
Fred and George look at each other and a light goes on.
They’ve heard about time-turners. They’ve also seen Hermione Granger run herself ragged studying textbooks for every subject available. They know how many subjects there are, and how many class periods in a week.
As one, they reach out and lightly smack each other on the head for not putting it together earlier.
Snape comes raging out the door just in time to see them and gives them detention. Fred and George scowl after him and turn and look at each other. And nod.
It’s on.
Fred “accidentally” bumps into Hermione when she’s on her way to McGonagall’s office, pretends to lose his balance, and falls hard to the floor. It gives him bruises, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for the successful theft of major, highly-regulated, top-secret magical artifacts. Hermione turns to help him, and George switches the time-turner with an elaborately crafted fake, a Confundus Charm and a Diversion Charm giving it the correct density of magical energy signature and ensuring that anyone who tries to use it will find an urgent reason to put it off. (George is super pleased with that one; it’s a time-turner, so quite naturally anyone who can use it has plenty of time to use it later.)
Next year is their sixth year, which brings enough of a drop in courses (there are definite benefits to getting only two OWLS each, though they doubt their mother would agree) that they only need to use the time-turner once, when Barry has Potions when Fred has Transfiguration and George has Herbology. They’re almost disappointed by this, until Fred gets a devastatingly diabolical grin on his face and says, “what if there were two of them?”
George’s face mirrors the grin in an instant, and he responds with his own suggestion. “Cousins.” A pause. “And they hate each other.”
And so come into being Gentian Weasley, younger sister of Barry, Barnaby, and Nasturtium Weasley, and her cousin from yet another branch of the Weasley family, Bilious Weasley the Second.
This time they give themselves some insurance, and make very good use of the time-turner, by charming Snape into seeing the new arrivals be Sorted. For a diversion they let Peeves the Poltergeist into the kitchens and assist him in creating havoc (testing out a potential product, tentatively named the Souper Swimming Pool, in the process); the amount of commotion takes three Professors to sort out, one of them Snape, and it’s surprisingly easy to hit the distracted Potions Master with the prototype of a Daydream Charm, highly modified to suit the occasion.
Once they’ve finished the time loop, they blast themselves with Aguamenti charms to make it look like they’ve just come out of the rain and sit down. Snape sees Weasley, Bilious and Weasley, Gentian be sorted into Gryffindor one right after another and summons himself a bottle of firewhiskey.
This is a mistake, as he has the keen and ignoble joy of being hungover for the worst Potions class he’s ever taught, including that one time when somebody (Potter) threw a firework into the Swelling Solution.
Gentian snickers when Snape reads Bilious’ name. Bilious calls Gentian “freckles.” Slytherin students from accross the room (the both of them are Gryffindors this time) look on in obvious amusement. Snape looks constipated. Their own supposed housemates eye them, looking confused, concerned, and generally bamboozled but none of them vocalize their curiosity.
Fred and George share a secret, gleeful smile, and escalate.
They spill things on each other: water, pigeon milk, stinksap. Gentian breaks a salamander egg on Bilious’ forehead; Bilious stabs Gentian with a knarl quill. They drop the wrong ingredients surreptitiously into each other’s potions. Bilious’ cauldron spews copious amounts of green smoke, gaining a lecture and losing five points for Gryffindor; his retaliation recreates Neville Longbottom’s disaster a few years prior and melts Gentian’s cauldron. Gentian shrieks at Bilious, Bilious dumps the whole jar of puffer-fish eggs over Gentian’s head, and Gentian launches herself at him, punching and clawing and screaming her head off.
Snape separates them with a wave of his wand and threatens them with a month’s worth of detention collecting bubotuber pus. Gentian says, “You can’t do that, I’ll tell McGonagall on you,” which neatly puts Snape off telling Professor McGonagall himself, because honestly, she probably will take issue with it. Bilious smirks loftily and sneers, “Baby. I like bubotuber pus. It smells like petrol.”
“How,” Snape asks suspiciously, “would a wizardborn young man like yourself know about petrol?” and Gentian (secretly Fred) hides a wince; their father’s particular fascination with Muggle things might be their undoing. But George recovers, saying proudly, “My dad’s an accountant.”
The Slytherins laugh. Fred catches the reference and Gentian says, “Oh, right, your dad’s the family Squib.”
Bilious grabs his cauldron and makes to empty it over her head, only to find that the contents are basically a solid baked into the cauldron’s bottom. Snape casts it away and tells them they’re more of a disaster than Neville Longbottom and deducts fifty points from Gryffindor, and they spend the walk out of the dungeons trying to convince their housemates that the points don’t actually matter that much.
Snape goes straight to McGonagall to complain, but refers to them as “Those two damned Weasleys,” and McGonagall nods and makes sympathetic faces and promises to speak to them. Fred and George get a detention with McGonagall at the same time as Gentian and Bilious have one with Snape, which makes them as happy as a time-turner can make two mischief-minded teenagers in possession thereof.
That year is a delight. They have a Triwizard Tournament to watch, a small multitude of visiting students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, many of them attractive, to interact with, and five alter egos with which to torment Professor Snape. Moreover, with the time-turner and the extra Potions classes, they’ve made significant progress on their product line and are turning a brisk business with the student body.
Snape learns quickly and the first time is also the last time he schedules Gentian and Bilious for a detention together. Fred and George take it in turns to run certain of their inventions past Flitwick and Sprout to gain back some of the points they lose in the first-year Potions class. By the time summer rolls around, Fred calculates that they’ve used the time-turner enough to have come of age and potentially erased the Trace on them.
They pay Mundungus Fletcher a galleon to come somewhere out-of-the-way with them and lend them his wand to cast a few spells. When no owls show up carrying Ministry warning letters, they head to Diagon Alley and celebrate by buying a storefront and the flat above it, and spend most of the summer there, fixing it up and getting things ready for a product launch next year. NEWTS, schmoots.
There’s of course that annoying business about Voldemort returning, and their mother decides the best way to keep them out of the Order’s business is to turn them into house-elves, but they come up with a few charms to do housework slowly by magic, and adjust the illusion spells, and put in just as much of an appearance as necessary.
Then September rolls around again, and their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is even worse than Snape and Lockheart combined, and just like that, Barry, Barnaby, Nasturtium, Gentian, and Bilious all add themselves to Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.
This largely sucks, because the DADA classes are utterly useless this year, but Fred gets the idea of substituting their alter egos and eventually themselves with illusion charms (”She doesn’t actually teach, she’ll never notice”), which makes George laugh hysterically because they’ve progressed from attending classes multiple times as different people to using doppelgangers to avoid going to class at all, and the two tactics are completely at odds with each other. But they do it.
Umbridge doesn’t notice, and pretty soon the only class they show up for is the one where second-years Bilious and Gentian are forever hurling hateful looks, creative insults, badly-aimed spells, and improvised projectiles at each other.
Umbridge starts taking points from Gryffindor off at the first “blast-ended walnut” from Gentian and assigns the first detention at Bilious’ elaborately-detailed Muggle catapult. Fred and George add a line of Magical Model Muggle Major Munitions to the product array at the soon-to-be-hatched Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, and make copious notes on how to use them as actual weaponry once Voldemort makes his appearance.
Fred writes “I must not fight in class” with Umbridge’s quill for six hours and then steals it. George listens to Fred’s description of the evening, takes one look at Fred’s hand, and breaks into Umbridge’s office and takes a generous crap on her desk. “Crude,” says Fred admiringly, “but deserved.”
The next time Barnaby has DADA, Fred goes as him in person and tests out a Skiving Snackbox. Throwing up on Umbridge is satisfying. He gets detention and writes “I will be more careful with how I am sick” some nine hundred times with a completely normal quill, charmed to write in red ink like a Muggle fountain pen, and mimes innocence when Umbridge expresses confusion at the lack of redness and swelling on his hand.
Gentian and Bilious get into a full-on wizards’ duel in their next DADA class, and aim so terribly that Umbridge gets hit more than they do. They both get detention, and Fred and George send illusions in their stead.
Next week they do it again, and Umbridge spends half the afternoon in the hospital wing, getting tentacles removed. Colin Creevey, confined to bed rest for a case of Exploding Hiccups, sneaks a picture and later trades it to the Weasley Twins for a Pygmy Puff, two Daydream Charms, and a promise to look into developing Extendable Eyes.
Umbridge goes to complain to McGonagall, who listens to the entire rant about a pair of students she’s never heard of with a reasonably straight face. Then she blandly tells Umbridge she’ll look into it, and turns back to her essay-marking.
McGonagall wanders down to the staff room the next morning and relates the whole conversation to the other teachers. Flitwick and Sprout are practically rolling on the floor by the time she finishes, but Snape is standing there looking Stupified; he makes the biggest miscalculation he’s made in years, and asks, “You mean they’re not real?”
McGonagall looks at him, calculates what all it would take for him to be asking that question, and promptly laughs herself sick.
Snape waits, looking like he might catch fire, until she recovers. “Yes, Severus. I have never heard of a Gentian Weasley, and the only Bilious Weasley I know is my age.”
Snape says, “There’s two Bilious Weas—who names these people?!”
“There’s one, Severus. I can assure you that there is no such person attending this school at this time.”
He grimaces, then tries, “I don’t suppose Ginny, Ronald, and their siblings are fictional?”
“No such luck, Severus.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them. “Fred and George.”
“Most assuredly real, Severus.”
“No, I meant–they did this. They’re responsible for this, aren’t they?”
“I would imagine so,” McGonagall says, a hint of a smile hovering about her lips.
He eyes her. “Shut up, Minerva.”
She claps a hand to her mouth to hide a giggle, and he turns and sweeps from the room.
As it turns out, he has Gentian and Bilious the next period.
Fred and George, blissfully unaware, are launching into their standard pretend fight—in this case, swordfighting with Transylvanian Lesser Pseudoporcupine quills—when Snape arrives at their table and claps a hand on their near shoulders. He’s smiling like a dragon.
“Fred. George.”
Shit.
They have a moment of sharp dismay, but it doesn’t last. They are the Weasley Twins, they’ve been fooling Snape for years with this prank, and they have money hidden in multiple places and the deed to a shop in Diagon Alley and all the official education they’ll ever need.
They turn and grin back.
“Well done, Professor,” says George. “How’d you find out?”
“Professor McGonagall told me.” His smile was a thin, sharp blade.
“No way.”
“Really?”
“How’d she know?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“I’m afraid I did, Mr. Weasley,” says McGonagall from the doorway. “Although admittedly without knowing you were pranking Professor Snape as well as Professor Umbridge; I thought I was merely sharing a very amusing anecdote with the other teachers.”
They’re drawing curious looks, though fortunately Fred-as-Gentian’s cauldron is hissing like a teakettle and drowning out the conversation; Snape snaps at them to pay attention to their cauldrons before jerking his head at his office door.
Once they’re ensconced within what Fred once called the Snape Museum of Slimy Things, and Fred and George have undone the spells and potions that make them Bilious and Gentian, McGonagall turns to Snape and says, “I forbid you to expel them, Severus.”
He’s about to respond when Fred says, “Go ahead, expel us.”
That gets them two very surprised professors. George shrugs. “Everything’s ready to go. We’ve got a shop in Diagon Alley and enough stock to fill it and enough expertise for a lifetime of success.”
Snape frowns and asks, “Do I want to know what you’re planning to sell?”
George says, “No” at the same times as Fred says, “It’s a joke shop.”
McGonagall looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Snape looks like he’s swallowed a sea cucumber. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then says, “I would have never imagined an argument that could convince me not to try to expel you, but you’ve just provided it. I will not be assisting you in selling pranks to the student body of Hogwarts on a retail level.”
George says, “Actually, we’ve been doing it since the middle of last year.”
Snape turns to McGonagall. “I quit.”
“No.”
“Hey, let Umbridge expel us,” Fred suggests. George snickers.
Snape looks at them, and then at McGonagall, and then back to the twins.
“No, you’re going to stay here,” Snape says, a look in his eyes that makes them wonder what all Umbridge has said to him. “You’re going to continue to be Gentian and Bilious—and Nasturtium and Barnaby and Barry.” He looks to McGonagall as if for confirmation, and George considers that both professors were young once, and were quite possibly as complete and utter hellions as him and Fred.
Snape smiles like a knife. “Give her hell.”
He’s never felt so much respect for a teacher before.
“Mr. Weasley?” Snape adds, almost as an afterthought, his eyes shifting from one to the other as if unsure which of them he’s addressing.
“Yessir?”
“Fifty points from Gryffindor.”
Fred and George smile at each other as they follow McGonagall into the hall.
Worth it.
They follow orders. Bilious and Gentian hit Umbridge with so many “accidental” hexes that she finally bans them from her classroom. Barnaby functions as a sort of a Patient Zero for Umbridge-itis. Barry uses his status as the quiet one to construct elaborate spells that have Umbridge’s classroom warping itself into odd shapes or growing spines out the walls or puffing up like a balloon and trapping her at the bottom. Nasturtium stands up in class one day and slams an epic poem about how teachers who don’t teach are useless and a sea sponge would do a better job of earning the salary.
Between them, they work to set up elaborate pranks and position Umbridge to catch the worst of it. After Dumbledore’s removal, Fred and George set off the best fireworks display Hogwarts has ever seen, and McGonagall gives Gryffindor one hundred points; Gentian and Bilius, usually the only ones still played in person by the Weasley twins, play Umbridge beautifully the next morning, fighting each other as usual and then turning ally, working together to attack her with flurries of squawking birds and flying, shitting replica nifflers.
When Umbridge twigs that they’re all working together she stands up in the middle of the Great Hall at dinner and demands that every Weasley in the place stand up.
Four Weasleys, all siblings, do so.
“Where are the rest of you?” she hisses to Ron, who looks clueless. Ginny cocks an eyebrow and looks to Fred and George speculatively. Umbridge turns to them and they smile like sharks.
Fred climbs up onto the table, George right on his heels. “Ladies and gentlemen, a performance by myself and my twin!”
George produces a potion, downs it, and becomes Gentian.
Fred narrates as George shifts between the various fictional cousins, ending by restoring his own appearance, putting on a pair of glasses, and becoming Barry. Snape slaps his face down into his hands. George finishes by announcing that these new appearance potions, and the fireworks, and a multitude of other products, would be available at 93 Diagon Alley, home to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
“Not so fast,” says Umbridge, holding out her wand. “The pair of you are going to be expelled—but first you are going to find out what happens to troublemakers in my school.”
“We’re not,” says George, “But let me tell you something: this is not, and will never be, your school.” He looks around at the students, at the teachers, at Snape and McGonagall standing a short distance away, and he and Fred wave their arms in a mirrored gesture to take in the whole student body, and they say, the pair of them together, “This is our school.”
The cheer from around them shakes the rafters.
Then they raise their wands and say, again in unison, “Accio brooms!”
The brooms make holes in the walls on their way in, and Fred and George mount them and soar up among the floating candles, and Fred has to cast a Sonorus Charm to make himself heard over the cheering.
“Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, number 93, Diagon Alley: Our new premises!”
And George waves to Peeves, who’s floating up there along with them, attracted by the promise of mayhem. “Give her hell from us.”
Peeves salutes, and Fred and George fly out the front door to freedom.
When they return to Hogwarts almost two years later, their time spent as the fake Weasleys serves all of Hogwarts well: the muggle munitions devices, some elaborate magical shielding, judiciously-applied daydream charms turned hallucinogenic means of luring the Death Eaters to shooting at false targets, and projectiles that created all manner of interesting effects, save the day for many people in the Battle of Hogwarts.
Fred never knows he came close to dying. George never knows he came close to losing his twin. They go back to Diagon Alley, afterwards, and as the world puts itself back together, they help people laugh.
Fred and George are out of school now, as are Barry, Barnaby, Billious, Gentian, and Nasturtium Weasley.
That should be the end of it
And then in comes Floribunda Weasley
And no one knows who she is
And then the next year there’s Reginald Weasley, followed by Horace Weasley and Hogarth Weasley (also twins)
And every year there’s one or more Weasleys, even when there are no Weasleys enrolled in Hogwarts at all
One year there’s a class where all of the other students have disappeared and only Weasleys show up in their place
That one sends two teachers fleeing into the night, screaming
And this is how Weasleys become cryptids
Everyone knows about Weasleys and has stories about Weasleys, but everyone knows they aren’t really real
And future generations of actual Weasleys find themselves in the odd position where everyone knows that Weasleys aren’t actually real, so they can get away with anything
And Fred and George have an entire wall full of detention slips under the names of various Weasleys over the years that they love to show off
They’re proudest of the ones they had nothing to do with
Police positivity is so fucking needed in this day and age
Thank you!!!
The positive side the media doesn’t want us to see. Cops are people, too! #Ibacktheblue
This!!!! ❤️💋
Cops protect and serve, plus so much more. Be kind to them.
These policemen are adorable and there’s thousands who are all the same. Please don’t discount these people because of a few bad eggs. Police are people too