#potterverse

Had a dream about designing solar punk outfits for house elves and it reminded me of this comic by French cartoonist/writer Boulet (full version after the jump) that speculates on applications of Potterverse magic to environmental restoration. Seriously, though, why was eco-magic not more of a thing in HP? Hufflepuffs like myself and Sprout would’ve been all over that. (Although, to be fair, Hogwarts and its surrounding country is a sort of protected habitat for a lot of magical creatures who can’t live anywhere else in the British Isles, so maybe there’s more going on that we get to see. I bet Hagrid is involved in conservation efforts and breeding programs.)

The Sacred Twenty Eight: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Lestrange

Four heirlooms of the Strangers; powerful warlocks the muggle Gauls called sons of Toutatis. A death coin for enemies, a torc for luck, a sword for immunity and a dragon’s infinity knot.

There is little that the two branches of the Lestrange family agree upon - the longstanding disagreement between the French and the English line stems from a feud in the early 11th century which was never resolved satisfactorily. In fact, the only thing they do agree upon is their divinity. The Lestranges, unlike most venerable wizarding families, trace their descent to a wandering family of warlocks in Iron Age France whom the Gaulish tribes came to worship as protectors of the tribes and in time, war gods. (The other thing both lines of the Lestranges agreed upon was that blood was awfully nice and one could never have too much bloodshed.)

The feud between the two branches is a complex matter. It began in 1066 A.D. when the Lestrange patriarch died, leaving behind two sons and a tidy amount of gold, lands and peasants to be divided between them. His will was never found (destroyed, claimed each of the sundered lines of the Lestrange family) and the two were left to divide his wealth between them as they saw fit. It is here, in their telling of their history, that the stories of the English and the French Lestranges diverge and each side claims theirs was the truest, they were the most wronged.

The French Lestranges tell a story of greed and avarice. The younger, ambitious and hungry for a life far beyond his means, demanded he be given the lion’s share for he had plans that his elder brother lacked. His elder brother refused, quite rightly, but the younger was not content to let the matter lie. The younger Lestrange rallied a motley army of serfs,household knights and mercenaries to wage reckless war upon his elder brother. This proved to be his undoing for his brother held the stronger claim to the lands and wealth and the greater part of the family’s forces rallied to him.  Thwarted, humiliated and bankrupted, the younger Lestrange - they claim - fled with his family on William’s ships to England with several priceless family heirlooms (stolen, not their own, ought to be returned), to escape the hand of justice which truly ought to have been their inheritance.

The English Lestranges tell a very different story altogether. In their tale, the elder Lestrange promised his brother the share of money their father would have wanted him to have. But when the time came to divide the wealth, the elder son turned his back on his brother and declared that this father would have never left the younger the share he demanded as his birthright - yea, would not have left his younger son any money at all if not for the tenderness of his heart. Greedy, the elder called him, irresponsible, frivolous, and so speaking, cast his brother out with nothing to his name.

Thus cheated of his inheritance, the English Lestranges claim the younger brother did what he could and attempted to rally the Lestrange fiefdom to his cause - failing only because they were niggardly cowards who lingered, tending their fields instead of fighting for him. Penniless and pursued by muggle bloodsuckers he fled with his family and came to England on William’s ships, with nothing but their clothes and some heirlooms which were theirs (not stolen, their own, made for them, owned by them). For their loyalty to William of Normandy and their prowess on the battlefield at Hastings, they were well rewarded and given a fiefdom of their own. This marked the beginning of the English line of the Lestranges.

The truth was such a complicated matter. Those who had looked into the matter, family biographers and the like, had ended up throwing their arms into the air in despair and given up - until finally they chose their sides by their proximity to each branch of the family. Those in France declared the French Lestranges wronged - the English dogs had stolen from them, ought to return the priceless goods stolen from them. In England, however, they sang a different tune: the frogs were penurious swindlers who had come by their just deserts when their brother had left, taking their most precious, most valued treasures, claiming it as his inheritance. Miserly swindlers who would cheat their brothers deserved as much.

As for the truth? Truth was cast to the wind - who knew what the actual truth was? History was, after all, nothing more than a set of lies those with power agreed upon.

The Sacred Twenty Eight: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

Three sisters: Morgana, Morgause and Elaine of Garlot. One dark, one brown, one fair. Three sisters: Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa. One a warrior, one a rebel, one entirely unexceptional.

Of all the houses of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the Blacks were the only ones who could trace their descent to an ancient royal family, canonized in both myth and legend. There were those who were openly skeptical that a wizarding family could claim to be related to Arthur, King of the Britons and his three half-sisters; Morgana, Morgause and Elaine of Garlot - such a claim, they said, was far too exaggerated and could never be proven (for none were allowed to see the Black family tapestry but the Blacks themselves). But most agreed - out of fear and awe - that the Blacks indeed were children of these great sorcerers.

For how could they dispute it when all the portraits of these mythical figures seemed to live again in the faces of the Blacks striding alongside them in the Ministry, studying at Hogwarts, holidaying with them in the South of France?

But if those concerned with the veracity of this outrageous claim had bothered to dig through records held in the Department of Mysteries - held purely for historical purposes, of course - they might have found a series of bills and commissions to various unknown artists and artisans of the early 11th century. Of early tapestry-weavers instructed to portray their patrons as characters from Arthurian legends - else face death (how wonderful those ancient times were, where the missing poor prompted no visits from the Auror department). Of mosaics and etchings presented to this family; all the children of the Lady Igraine shown with the high cheekbones, dark hair and pale faces particular to the Blacks. Of portraits and paintings and landscapes - all in the grand tradition of the rich families of those times. In time, any traces of the original Arthur and his half-sisters were lost and all the artworks concerning the Arthurian legends - even among the muggles - came to assign each character the same face over and over again; pale skin, dark hair (sometimes light for Elaine of Garlot was a fair young maiden), high cheekbones: trademark of the Black family. 

And yet these records would mean nothing, not even in a history textbook, not after all this time. For who could say, after all these centuries, that the Blacks were not descended from Arthur, Morgana, Morgause and Elaine?

The Blacks were not practically royalty. They were royalty.

[Paintings: Morgan le Fay by Frederick Sandys, The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse, The Accolade by Edmund Blair Leighton

Photo Credit: Helena Bonham Carter as Morgan Le Fay (Merlin, 1998), Katie McGrath as Morgana (Merlin, 2008), Imogen Poots as Fanny Knight (Miss Austen Regrets, 2007)]

potterblr:

PotterBLR 1K Follower Celebration: Favourite Movie As Voted by Our Followers | 3rd Place
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) dir. David Yates

risarodil:

Which Marauder are you?

bladesrunner:

HarryPotter20thAnniversary:ReturntoHogwarts

At least he cover is pretty… 

A Crime Against Harry Potter

[[previously: one, two]]

Newly crafted headband? Check.

Kajol and rouge? Check.

Skinshade? Check.

Trixie dabbed on a splash of her lucky scent, a mix of vertiver and mint with thin slices of dirigible plum. It had become especially popular in these summer months for its cooling properties and she spent quite a bit of time brewing up bottles for her growing clientele, most of whom she met or would meet tonight.

Though for their bottles she left out the dirigible plum: that was her own little secret.

She placed a couple of those bottles in her bag, along with assorted sample bottles of some experimental mixes and a few other headbands, popped on a pair of red satin bar shoes, did one last mirror check, and made her way to Gatsby’s.

***

Fern had been exaggerating somewhat about her connections to this semi-regular extravaganza. She didn’t know Jay Gatsby - though to be fair, hardly anyone at the party knew him. Some people claimed to know him, but mostly he was myth and legend, perhaps apocryphal, extant only in the oohs and ahhs of the admiring.

She did have a cousin in New York, Ladon Greengrass, and that cousin really did know how to bring people together. Having moved to New York soon after graduating from Hogwarts to visit Gatsby (an old friend, he claims, though Trixie never figured out if that was true), he became the American point of contact for the British wizarding travellers who, like him and his cousin Fern, were piqued by rumours of a weird and possibly dangerous land where thrill-seekers flouted prohibitions and statutes, where magic flowed as freely as prescriptions for firewhiskey, where the exotic were prized and revered.

It was this love for the exotic, as fleeting and fickle as it could be, that earned Trixie’s keep in New York. The fabled Orient had also captured the dreams of the denizens here and Trixie’s fashion and perfumery were much sought after by those that wanted to be especially hip to the Hindoo jive. Her chachas and fupis could barely keep up with the jamdani orders that Trixie transformed into flapper dresses that made their wearers float as light as the fabric flitting on their skin, made to glow by saffron-gold-laced potions adapted from recipes shared by a friend of her grand-mère’s, the resident mambo of her Brooklyn enclave who adopted her as one of her own.

Family.

The mambo was not at the party tonight, nor were the weavers of the jamdani. The rest of Trixie’s family weren’t here either. Not her blood family - they were either long gone or far away, and she was an only child - but her rag-tag chosen family, Fern and Ailene and Florence and Walter, forged far south, almost a lifetime and another world away.

She did try to invite Walter up here, but he kept blowing her off, telling her that he had some ‘business to do first’. Last she heard from Florence she was planning to move to Virginia to pursue further study, but nothing since. And Ailene, sweet powerful secretly-magical Ailene who’d given her the final boost to her move out here - Trixie couldn’t get a hold of her. Walter had said that Ailene was 'in a spot of trouble, but she’ll be OK I think’ - and then nothing.

Trixie tried to not freak herself out, blame herself for something she doesn’t even know has happened. Maybe she’s just busy. Quiet. Nothing’s wrong. Surely

As for Fern? Fuck Fern. Fern had, just one day and out of nowhere, left. Moved her wanderlust on, perhaps, to some other actual exotic part of the world. Maybe somewhere closer to where the jamdani or the saffron-gold had come from. Trixie didn’t know: the only warning she got was when she bumped into Ladon one evening and he made an offhand comment about seeing Fern the day before she left, expecting Trixie to have known about her departure. Fern didn’t even bother to say goodbye, leave any way to get in touch. As if Trixie didn’t matter worth a damn.

Trixie wished she could forget Fern the way Fern had forgot her. She drowned herself in the parties, the perfumery and couture, the liquor-spiked candies and never-spiced-enough roasts - anything to keep her mind away from the fact that Fern had left her hanging.

She still cared.. Cared, even if they’ll never meet again. Parties and potions do not stifle a caring heart, no matter how much she tried.

But anyway. Enough reminiscing. Trixie has work to do.

***

The swarms around Trixie made it hard for her to even get a sip of her lavender champagne, but that wasn’t too much of a problem.

Her new headband had a panel that changed colours according to the current fancies of the wearer. She observed the colours of the people trying on her samples: lots of metallics and golds and silvers - not surprising given the moneyed crowd that tended to frequent Gatsby’s parties. Splashes of reds and pinks, the passionate and lascivious ones, joining the perpetually smiling yellows and oranges in chatting up other headband-wearers and making connections. The occasional purples and jewel tones, many whom Trixie recognised as being similarly gifted in magic as she was, others who spoke of poetry and spirit and learning. The rare rainbows and colour-shifters, ones who loved all the world had to offer, never content with just one path, a constant explorer.

Walter? Strong silver. Florence? A light yellow, or pale orange. Ailene would be a deep amethyst or ruby. Fern, fucking Fern, she would have definitely been a rainbow.

Trixie’s headband shifted colours, currently floating the same shade as her drink. She was collecting names and numbers for preorders - a cool couple of hundreds dollars’s worth, not a bad haul for one night - when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Ladon. Oh. Hey.”

“Greetings, dear Trixie. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Trixie had not really spoken to Ladon since hearing the news of Fern’s depature, asdes from the occasional pleasantries when crossing paths at Gatsby’s. She could have asked Ladon more about Fern, where she’d gone and how she’s been, but it’s hard enough to get someone who chat for longer than a few minutes at these parties, let alone the rest of New York.  Besides, if Ladon wanted to talk to her he could have made more of an effort to do so.

Trixie took down the last name, closed her notebook, and turned to face Ladon and his companion: a striking, strapping figure, his face hardened with scars and stubble, sporting one of the headbands that Ladon had borrowed from another party-goer. Teal.

“Looks…interesting on you,” said Trixie, stifling a laugh. “You much of an outdoors person?”

The companion’s eyebrows perked with cautious curiosity. "In a sense, yes,“ replied the companion. "How could you tell?”

Trixie explained the magical science of the headband to him: how they were based on the divinatory art of scrying, the panels made out of squares of black mirror coated with a specially brewed solvent giving it its colour-changing properties. Her adoptive mambo had used scrying mirrors often in her witching work to get the lay-of-the-land of the situation at hand, and aura-reading had just caught on as the latest spiritualist craze. Trixie saw an opportunity to combine her skills and cash in - everyone wanted every part of themselves to be pretty and glitzy, why not the soul?

“Ah, the old magic - I haven’t seen this since I helped tracked the African jungle manticore over in Tanzania,” mused the companion. “Indeed, the colours in your ornament remind me of the streelers I occasionally ran into - though perhaps their changes in colour were less metaphysical, more physiological.”

Trixie wasn’t sure what to make of this strange man’s answer. He knew about magic - but that wasn’t necessarily so unusual in New York, even if many didn’t take it all that seriously. Yet he spoke of this magic as though it was a foreign, ancient, long-dead relic, the domain of the yet-to-be-civilized. Something to be studied by the ones more educated.

And what was all this about manticores and streelers?

Ladon stepped in: “I should introduce you two. Trixie, this is Newt Scamander, an old friend visiting from England, he’s a magizoologist. Newt, this is Trixie Shafiq, she’s a close friend of my cousin Fern, you may have been at Hogwarts at the same time. She’s an artisan, mostly with clothing and perfumery and accessories…like that headband you’re fiddling with.”

Hogwarts. That fancy British magic school Fern talked about. So he too was magical.

“Hello Newt, fancy meeting you,” said Trixie. “What’s a magizoologist do?”

“I study animals - magical ones.”

“Ah, explains your manticore business. Fitting name, by the by, Newt. Mind if I call you Figsy?”

“Figsy?”

“Y'know, like Fig Newtons. Damn good treats. You ever had one?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Let me see if I can get some for you,” said Ladon, waving down a waiter. Soon after the waiter returned with a tray of thick rectangular cookies; as Newt bit into one the cookie crust crumbled, revealing a tart dark paste.

“Hm, not bad,” said Newt after finishing the cookie. Trixie smiled and helped herself to a few off the tray.

“Good. Figsy it is, then.”

“While we’re on the topic of names - yours. Shafiq. Don’t think I’ve heard that before, though it seems a little familiar. But anyway. Very unusual. Exotic.”

Trixie had the very odd sensation of being examined, like one of Florence’s teenage science experiments.

“Fancy yourself a little Oriental, I take it?” continued Newt. “It’s such the rage, even in old Blighty town…”

Trixie winced. Yes, her 'exoticness’ is what allowed her to be successful, but for heaven’s sake, you don’t call people Oriental, that’s for rugs and knick-knacks.

“My name is mine,” said Trixie, biting her inner lip to stop her from yelling. “'Trixie’ was given to me by friends, but Shafiq was from my father - who was from the Subcontinent.”

Newt, oblivious to Trixie’s measured reaction, picked up another Fig Newton and tore off a bite to eat as he prattled on. “Ah, you’re Hindoo? You don’t look at all -”

Trixie yanked Newt’s wrist, the cookie collapsing on the shiny tiled floor. Her skin shifted shades the same way as her headbands, moving from near-alabaster to dark chocolate. Her face rounded a little, her eyebrows fuller, her eyes so wide open they startled Newt and Ladon with their intensity.

“Don’t tell me where you think I am from,” snarled Trixie, gaze locked on Newt. “Everybody does, and they are always wrong.”

Ladon was dumbstruck by Trixie’s attitude, but Newt didn’t seem to be particularly frazzled. Instead, he beamed, like a kid discovering a new toy.

“You’re a Metamorphmagus!”

Trixie’s grip returned and tightened on Newt’s wrist. “A whatnow? Figsy, are you calling me some sort of animal?”

Newt pulled his hands away from Trixie and shook his wrists out. “Oh no, no no no. They’re most definitely people, just a rare sort. Shapeshifters. They can change the way they look. Though the ones I know of tend to opt for less…subtle changes. Purple hair and duck faces, that sort of thing. Just a little fun, y'know.”

“I don’t know about fun, Figsy - I know about survival.” Trixie could have shapeshifted into dynamite based on mood alone. “My parents taught me this to make sure no one could hurt me for thinking I was an alien. Things weren’t so good for our kind. Still aren’t.”

“I don’t understand. Surely shapeshifting in public would get you even more persecution from the Muggles?”

Muggles? The word seemed familiar, and yet…

“He means people without magic, Trixie,” said Ladon. “You know, people not like us. Like the people who bought your headbands thinking it was just some silly fun.”

Trixie’s loud cackle held a hint of bitterness. “Honey. It’s not your so-called Muggles I have to worry about. You go to New Orleans - hell, you leave this party and go to the real New York, and you’ll see magic out in the open. Everyone knows and nobody cares. Where do you think this spiritualism jive all came from? No, you know who I’m more worried about? White folk.”

Trixie’s features shifted again, now more closely resembling one of the other flapper girls at this party - bright skin, cropped blonde hair, a dash of freckles. “My people are getting locked up for being the wrong color. My father’s people - they didn’t know whatwe are, White or Colored or Turkish or Malayan or Italian or what. One time the big lawmakers said we were White, which means we should be OK.”

“But then people realised, people like my father - we’re not exactly light-skinned. So we started getting in trouble.” Trixie’s features shifted back to the version that surprised Newt and Ladon: her usual, non-Magic-created self. “My mother’s people, they would never be OK. They were Colored, the bad kind of Colored. Means you could get hauled up just for existing sometimes. They used to call themselves Hindoo to try and protect themselves, but then the White folk started hating Hindoos and now we’re all in trouble.”

Trixie suddenly had a flash of Fern: she wasn’t exactly White either. But she was British, from a land where the magical ones lived apart from these Muggles. Do they treat their Colored folk the same way there? Was that why she disappeared? Walter, Ailene, Florence…? Is that why…?

“You could be arrested just for being not White?” said Newt in disbelief. “What a barbaric lot these Muggles are!”

“Oh don’t be too sure that it was all Muggle, Figsy boy. As I said, everyone knows about magic. Some of those White people causing trouble for us were also magical. Catch you in a corner, chant some words - boom! Off a tree you hang, upside down, don’t even need a rope.”

“Hang off…wait, how did you survive?" 

"We use glamour. This Metamorph thing you said it was. Both my parents knew what to do. They taught me glamour magic, taught me how to transform just enough so that I could blend in just enough to get by. Or stick out a little if the place was right. Like here - being a little unusual helps my business. But not too unusual or else they think I’m one of the waitstaff - or worse, that I cheated my way in. Look around, boys - you see anyone darker than these cookies round here?”

Ladon and Newt saw mostly people that looked just like them: White, European, not likely to have their ethnicity questioned by the authorities. They wondered if some of them were like Trixie, shifting themselves to safety.

But what if you weren’t born a Metamorphmagus - well, as they know it, Metamorphmagi are bornnotmade - but Trixie seemed to imply that this 'glamour’ business could be taught - there didn’t seem to be that many magical Colored people that they knew - were they all -

“You see, boys, when you have to walk through multiple worlds all the time, when you’re never one nor the other, when what other people think you are is more important than what you think you are - you don’t have to be some Metamorphwatsit. Or even magical like us.”

Trixie looked out at the crowd in front of them, a mess of magic and glitz and illusions. Everyone dolled and suited up to present as fine society. Everyone, in their own way, using glamour magic.

“If you want to survive? You knew how to shapeshift.”

[[source: Heather Romney
some ideas from other blogs have been linked where relevant.
SO VERY SORRY for the long delay. I’ve been busy with a show, and then MH370 has been sucking so much of my energy. I’m not entirely content with how it ends, mostly because there’s one last small thing I want to make happen but don’t know how. But I’ve been working on this for ages and wanted to get it out there.
According to Bengali Harlem the South Asian immigrants were designated White for a while, and there had been many other POC that assumed themselves as “Hindoo” to gain the same racial protections, but it didn’t last very long.]]

thepostmodernpottercompendium:

The Sacred Twenty Eight: The Noble and Most Ancient Houses of Shafiq and Shacklebolt (2/?)

Pictures, left to right: Jallianwala Bagh Massacre 1919, Non Cooperation Movement 1920-21, Dandi Salt March 1930, Bengal Famine 1943, Trains during the Partition 1947, Indhira Gandhi visits Bangladeshi refugee camps in Bengal 1971.

He does not understand, when he is five, why his mother is weeping for people in a far away place with a strange name which is not home.

When he asks her, she only cries harder, and his father grips him roughly by his shoulder and pushes him away, admonishing him for troubling his mother. Someday, his father says, you will understand.

(He does not tell them, after asking his ayah, that he still does not understand why they care about wicked people who think they can get away with murdering innocent people. Why should they care? They are not theirpeople.)

He does not understand, two years later, when they return from the Halloween ball at the Ministry of Magic; the wrath of Kaliherself writ large upon his mother’s countenance (though she has long since given up her old family gods) and his father’s eyes shining with the same light of battle which must have once shone in their forefathers’ eyes as they swept out of the Hindu Khush following Muhammad of Gor.

Shafiqs are landowners and caretakers, yes, says his father, we grow and we create and we heal the land, but there is also anger in our hearts and when the time comes, we are warriors as well and all men quake when a Shafiq raises his arms to go to war.

(He tells his father he is not a Shafiq then, because there is no anger in his heart and his father only laughs and ruffles his hair and tells him that when he is older, the anger will burn in his heart too.

It is the last time, for a very long time, he hears his father laugh so openly.)

He does not understand, nearly twenty years later, why his mother both laughs and cries at the letter his father sends them from the old country, complaining about the damn bilatisthinking they’re clever by refusing to put us in prison. This is no laughing matter, being put in prison. It is wrongto break the law.

His mother silently hands him a book by a man called Olaudah Equiano and tells him that sometimes men make bad laws and it is for them, the ones who take care of their people, to fight those laws.

(He begins to understand, a few years later, when he realizes that his colleagues at the Ministry care more about Grindelwald’s war and its ill effects on England, not the millions starving back home, or the boats burning to keep the Germans (or the Japanese) from freeing his people; when they talk of oppression by mugglesand he wonders what the non magical folk have ever done to them that can be compared to what they have done to his people - then he understands, they do not look beyond their navels, so they exaggerate their pain, these pampered dandies.)

He does not understand why his father is grim-faced and his mother cries and cries and cries when Clement Attlee finally gives their countries Independence and the bilatisleave. It is a time for celebration - they have finally won their war. People die all the time. Let them die; they are not their own, they are mugglesthey do not have magic.

His mother goes into hysterics when he says this and his father fixes him with such a stare, he nearly wets himself.

Are you a Shafiq? His father asks him, are you my son or a son of a pig? A fool that you spew such nonsense? Are you blind? Have the bilatis turned your brain to porridge?

(He understands, a little, when as he watches his mother’s body burn on the funeral pyre, the tears begin to flow. Death is not easy to see. His father gruffly tells him to be a man and stalks away. Proud and tall as always.)

He begins to understand even more, when he meets his Anglo-Indian wife’s family and he listens to them drawling away about how the homeland is dirtyandstinky and his people are backward.They are your people, your forefathers he wants to yell, but smiles apologetically as his wife squeezes his hand sympathetically underneath the table.

He understands better, when he reads Macaulay’s Minute on Education (1835) and he reads these words:

We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.

He finally understands properly, twenty three years later, why his mother wept when their people, once united by common cause against their oppressors, turn on each other and commit genocide over divisions created by those very same oppressors they fought to drive away. He understands, when not a murmur is heard in the Ministry of help to be sent to them - when British newspapers are silent about sending troops to help clear up the mess they made in the first place.

But by then it is too late to teach his son what it means to be a Shafiq; to be rich and yet have anger burn in your heart.

So he teaches his grandson instead. These are only stories to them both, but he sees the fire of anger in his grandson’s eyes when he teaches him the history they do not teach them at Hogwarts. Of how the men of this country went to their homeland and stole from them in the greatest sanctioned robbery in the history of the world - 2.5 billion pounds (probably a lot more) stolen to never be returned. Of how, for two hundred years, they were taught that their ways were inferior and foolish, based on superstition not science. Of how they burnt their boats and stole the very souls and identities of people by turning them British, by turning them against their own culture (like your father, he says regretfully). 

Of how these very men turned their people against each other: one religion against each other, countries arbitrarily divided along the lines of religion leading to one of the largest massacres in history. Of how ten million of their people were displaced overnight, in a war caused by the same arbitrary division of nations along the line of religion and politicking - this time for culture and language, because truly what did people in Dhaka have in common with people in Islamabad besides a vague commonality the bilatisdecided superceded all other commonalities? But now ten million people fit neither here nor there - they were not Bengali because they were muslims but they were not Pakistanis either (how could they be, those northeners were so different.) Ten million people with no identity, always to live unsure of themselves. This was the story of their people; magical or not, allof them were theirs.

And then many years later, his eyes are misty with tears as he watches his seventeen year old great grandson snap his wand and declare that he will not live as a bilatiwizard among a people with no conscience and no guilt for their cruelty. He goes to muggleuniversity instead, and then returns to his homeland to make a difference by working in a muggleNGO, practicing their old magic. The magic of their forefathers. And nobody serves him notice for using magic in the presence of muggles.

It is a start, he supposes, and then imagines his father would be proud. The anger has burnt in his heart and he has passed the flame of anger on. They will be caretakers, they will be warriors.

There will always be a Shafiq as long as they remember.

[Pic sources will be added later. Many thanks to notyourexrotic for helping with various bits of information and shaping this story (also for their incredible project shafiq28 which, I’ll be honest, shaped the headcanons for this one in a hugeway). I never liked the whole Statute of Secrecy biz given its ramifications when you apply them to other countries outside of the Euramerican region - its similarities with the whole divide and rule policy which governed Brit colonial policies when they were leaving countries are far too close for comfort.]

[[re-reblogging for this as there’s been an update to the original.]]

thepostmodernpottercompendium:

The Sacred Twenty Eight: the Most Ancient and Noble Houses of Shafiq and Shacklebolt. (Part ¼)

When they first saw the list, they laughed.

When they asked them why they laughed, they only shook their heads and did not answer. How could these people understand? To them the world was simple. There were three kinds of people: the pure, the sullied and the impure. The ones without wands were aliens, a different kind of species. Sub-human.

They knew better.

They had built civilizations. They were there when the Babylonians planted their trees in the Hanging Gardens. They were there when they laid the first stones in the pyramids. They were there when the Mesopotamians wrote their first histories and humans first recorded time. They were there at the founding of the first cities of the earth. They were there when the first men ploughed the field and built their homes. They were there at the breaking of the continents. They were there, among the first men of the Earth.

And while these savages were still scrounging around in the earth, speaking a primitive language of grunts and growls, they had been there reading the stars and considering the very nature of being and existence. These savages who were only learning how to wield the plough when their people were at the very height of their civilizations. These savages who were still shepherds and the like during the waning of their peoples.

Oh yes, they knew better.

They understood what differencemeant. They saw it in the eyes of the pale-faced muggles who eyed them on the streets. They heard it in the speeches of politicians who called them dirtyandoilyandcorrupt and claimed that their blood would soon flow freely on the roads of England if they did not go back home. They felt it in each death and in each drop of blood shed to fuel the Empire.

These people mourned over the tragic nature of Grindelwald’s short lived rule and conveniently forgot other horrific numbers. Eleven million, ripped from their homeland and shipped across the sea for the fat to get fatter. Three million dead, so that Britain could eat and fight their war on full bellies. 200 years of pure destruction.

But they would never forget. These were their people. It did not matter if the blood in their veins was magical or not. These were more their people than these savages waving their wands, who thought that this wand waving magic was the only form of magic worth knowing. Who thought that those who did not wave wands were without magic. But in truth, where they came from, magic was a part of the lives of everyone from the highest king to the lowliest slave and dalit. Where they came from, everyone lived their lives by the signs they read in their stars. Medicine and magic were one and the same, for healers were witches and witches were healers and every village had a witch-healer. They all came together to ward their homes and lands against evil spirits and evil eyes. They all sang the songs of mysticism together, deep spells to work magic that the non magical folk called miraculous. Magic worked for the sake of magic, for enjoyment and pleasure. Deep magic which called for time and patience and acuteness of mind to thread together all the spells in a pattern as complicated as life itself.

And these people, these wand-wavers now deemed them worthy enough to join their little club of those pure enough to be elevated above the rest of magical Britain.

How noble!

How gracious!

How patronizing! - but they did not say this aloud though they thought it many times.

No. The Shafiqs and Shacklebolts only smiled, and did not bother to tell these people that being a Shafiq and Shacklebolt was not a matter of a tightly knotted family tree, but a question of beingness. Nor did they tell them that this list was young and they were old, old as the very bones of the earth: they did not need this list to tell them their worth or explain who they were. They knew, even if these foolish children did not.

They smiled and they did not speak, for centuries had taught them this at least:

Never cross the white man
And he will not hurt you.

[Picture sources: Pureblood 28 List by thestagpatronus,detail from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon,Girl with a parrot from the Tutinama manuscript,Igbo Maiden Spirit Mask,Nabta Playa,the Goddess Nut,Astrolabe, The assembled animals complain to the raven of their mistreatment at the hands of man by Miskin (or a student) c. 1595-1600, Leopard, kingdom of Benin, Nigeria, ivory with copper inlay, 47 cm high, late 19th century.

In case you’re wondering why there are pics of Igbo/Benin artifacts alongside Egyptian/North Africans one, I have a well planned out migration route for the Shacklebolts and I’m not just saying stuff because I can’t be bothered to pull out culturally specific works of art. Ditto Shafiqs.]

[[As far as my Shafiqverse is concerned, this is canon.

I’m kind of busy the next couple of weeks, but I’ll reblog more from this series - I’ve contributed a bit to this story and it looks to be more amazing than I’d anticipated.]]

[[a continuation - well, a prequel really - of this story]]

“Trixie bè, come on, come with me.”

Trixie lets her sweet friend’s house rest in her mind the way she rests on her shoulder, their own little world amidst the noise ruckus of the Dixie Drug Store.

Oh don’t let the name and the plain little storefront fool you - the drugs of choice in this joint weren’t those newfangled sulfa or insulin or pepper-up or stinksap, oh no no no. Just say the magic words and the friendly nurses will dispense some fine bootleg  - firewhiskey and gin and daisywood draught and absinthe, currently being poured in a glass by Fern in preparation for a slotted spoon, a cube of sugar, and Incendio.

Fern, Trixie, and a small group of other friends were at one of their regular nights at the joint, listening to good time jazz and watching shake dancers and laughing at each other’s progessively zozzled joking.

Zozzled - surely that explains Fern’s claims about this swanky party at this exotic far-off city? I mean - fountains of champagne and dragon-barrel brandy, oysters Rockerfeller and butterbeer bonbons by the plateful, the skies lit up with violet and sapphire fireworks, the best of the dirty blues singing to molls in their finely tailored suits and dolls in their ropes of pearls and diamonds - maybe just the pearls and diamonds? (That got her attention.)

“Are you sure there really was such a shindig, Fern shè, or did the Green Fairy give you a mirage?”

Fern stirred the melted sugar into her absinthe glass and took a sip. “I’m telling you, it’s real! My cousin has this canny ability to bring the right people together and create a swell time! You could say…it’s like magic.”

The rest of her friends laughed, which made Trixie roll her eyes. It’s not like the rest of them had nothing to do with magic - those limeys might have tried to put up some statute or other, but America’s ley lines were throbbing with power. Even if you weren’t especially trained, like Fern at Hogwarts or Trixie with the matriarchs in her family, you knew enough to sprinkle salt on your doorways for protection or tie a knot in your clothes to find a lost item.

Still, there were some things about magic that the other people in her table wouldn’t be able to appreciate in quite the same way: the underlying rules and logic, the effort to skillfully harness magical power without letting it overwhelm you, the sheer amount of work and study it took to really understand magic, its potential, its limitations.

Most people just assume that being magical meant you could snap your fingers and all your wishes would come true. Indeed it was Trixie’s friends, children of her parents’ friends and neighbors, a porous yet tight-knit group that lasted through the years, that named her: “Tricksy”, she of the rabbits and hats and voodoo dolls. As the gang got older their ideas of magic became a little more nuanced, but the old nickname stuck - and sometimes so did the jokes.

Then there was Fern. Fern was in most ways very different from Trixie - while Trixie was as flapper femme as they came, Fern stylised herself like one of those bull-daggers, solid and steady with a predisposition for fine suits. But Fern was similar to Trixie in one very crucial way: she, too, was a trained witch.

Fern’s training was rather distinct from Trixie’s; Fern’s English family had sent her off to Hogwarts, a fancy formal school where students took special classes in things like spell-casting and ayurveda but named them things like Charms and Herbology. The school wasn’t new to her - her father had mentioned some distant relatives that had decided to head to Bilat instead of Markina and had sent children there or that other fancy European school, Doomstrang maybe? and her mother had sometimes wished she could have sent Trixie to Beauxbatons so that she could learn to be a more refined fluently-French belle, but alas circumstances and currency were not in their favour. Bit of a blessing, really; Trixie couldn’t see how a school named after pigs or pretty sticks could teach her the depths of her family’s inheritance.

Even so, even with its cross-cultural variations, magic - like music and love - was universal. One could meet a wizard, witch, spell-caster, shaman, jadukara, sorcierè, and be able to strike a kinship on shared understanding and skill. Trixie wasn’t always fond of the way Fern and people like her tended to brand non-magical folk as Muggle, separate from them - but at the same time she was deeply appreciative to find someone that gets it.

(Doesn’t hurt that she’s a sweet sight.)

And now Fern was telling her about this fantastic shindig, supposedly run by a cousin of a cousin (I thought it was us Bengal kids that were supposed to have the convoluted family trees) who had himself gone to Hogwarts before deciding to explore the New World (nothin’ new here). Fern had been invited one time, while back up in New York visiting family, and could not stop talking about it since. 

And Fern wanted her to come along.

“Sounds like a good time,” remarked Walter, one of the others at their table. His mother used to see Trixie’s mother all the time for remedies to maladies medical or otherwise, and while they had their meetings he and Trixie would have their playdates. Now he was one part wisecrack one part dreamer, his fashion sense carefully created to display effortlessness, always looking for a way up. Running the business that kept the Dixie Drug Store stocked wasn’t quite enough for him. “If you ain’t going I’ll go.”

“It’s invite-only, Waldo.”

Walter shrugged and took another sip of his whiskey. “Then I'll be Trixie. With her shapeshifting dresses and sparkle and whatnot. What are they gonna do, put me through some magic body scanner to see if I’m the right person?” He shook his head; Trixie did not seem to really appreciate the golden opportunity in front of her. He really would take it if he could.

“I wouldn’t put it past him, honestly,” replied Fern, drinking the last of her absinthe. (Maybe her last absinthe for the night. For now.) “He does like his experimenting. Every time I hear about him he’s gone and transfigured something else or made up some new charm.”

“Ooh, a scientist,” cooed Florence, another friend of Trixie’s whom she had known in school. She was fond of learning, the group’s resident bookworm with the voracious appetite, and occasionally did experimenting of her own. Trixie was sometimes glad that Florence wasn’t a witch simply because who knows what kind of chaos that girl would cook up? “God, I wonder what his library would look like. If his parties are that spectacular, imagine the books!”

“Maybe you should go, Florence - you’d probably appreciate it better,” said Trixie, sighing. “Me, I’m just ordinary.”

The fifth person at the table slammed their shot of bourbon on the table. “Child, you are not ordinary,” bellowed Ailene.

Ailene, Trixie’s oldest friend, a whirlwind of confident energy who created new bonds fast and held on to them hard. Indeed, it was so long that they’ve known each other that Trixie wasn’t quite sure when it started: all she could remember was that her mother had been unusually kind to Ailene’s mother, a single parent, and they’ve been close ever since.  

Sometimes Trixie wondered if Ailene was really a witch in hiding: she did have a really peculiar ability to read people’s truest intentions, protect against harm, attract all sorts of weird and wonderful circumstances. Ailene didn’t say. Maybe she was magical the way everyone was magical, each individual carrying innate abilities to create and destroy and transform. Maybe she was magical the way only Ailene could be magical.

“If anyone’s not ordinary it's you,” said Trixie.

Her friends weren’t having any of it.

“Stop it, girl. Yes, we know Ailene’s extraordinary. What we’re saying is - so are you.” Walter took Trixie’s hands in his while Fern rested her hands on Trixie’s shoulders and Florence and Aliene watched on. “You have a gift for haute couture of the deepest kind: your work makes people not just look - but feel like one of your Sultanas.”

“That’s just because my family left me with all these fabrics from back East. Anyone could look like an exotic princess with some sparkly gold-embroidered fabric.”

“Any old fool can try - but your work? Bè, you make it real. Every last cut and stitch - smooth as silk. And I know you put in some of them magic skills to make it look like you’re wearing liquid jewels. Even an old frumpy puss like yours truly can be a superstar.”

“You’re never a frumpy puss, Walter.” Indeed, with his leather jacket (old and well-loved, charmed by Trixie to withstand any wear and tear) and a shirt that seemed to shine even in  the darkest night (a gift from Trixie for his birthday many years ago, still fits beautifully), Walter had a sharp dress sense to make even a sack of flour look fabulous. But yes, Trixie’s knowledge of dressmaking went beyond the typical seamstress standbys: magical silks called for magical skills, and her father had been very particular about her mastering the family trade even across oceans.

“Oh and honey, that bottle you gave me all those years ago?” chimed in Florence. “Couldn’t ace those tests without them. I was a quakin’ mess! And whoosh – flying colours!”

Trixie remembered the little vial she had given Florence when they were at high school together and Florence was about to collapse from exam stress. A standard of her mother’s and one of the first potions Trixie learnt to brew, it was said to give the wearer luck - well, really, what it did was lift the wearer’s spirits enough so that they created their own luck. That little boost was enough for Florence to face the exams with calm confidence and get straight As. (Not too long ago Fern had told Trixie about Felix Felicis, a fairly common potion back in Limey-Land, and she wondered if the idea had jumped over with the slave boats.)

“That was mostly your smarts, Florence dear, that’s kind of the point of the potion.”

Trixie was never really very good with taking in praise. Sure, her clients loved her work - most of them had been familiar with her parents’ work and were glad that there was someone else continuing the legacy. Also there was a sudden revival of interest in the Orient, which made her work even more in demand just for the exotic factor. But being strongly skilled in dressmaking or potions-making was expected of her; it would have been unusual in her family if she wasn’t at least competent. Whenever someone asked her if she was any good, she didn’t feel like she was the best person to answer - she knew she had the technical chops, but she didn’t have Ailene’s confidence or Walter’s drive or Florence’s intelligence or Fern’s whimsy.

She was Trixie, dressmaker and potion-maker, trained in the magical arts, but not quite sure who she is outside what she can do.

Well, she had dreams. Dreams of travel, like Fern: being able to see the world and retrace the footsteps of her father’s people. Dreams of learning, like Florence: diving into subjects she’d never even thought about and soaking up everything there is to know. Dreams of ambition, like Walter: jumping on any opportunity that presented itself and really make something of herself. Dreams of poise, like Ailene: commanding a room with just her presence, no problem too big for her, self-assured and strong.

“You know, Trixie, I think you undersell yourself,” said Ailene after a while. “Yeah, maybe Walter would look great anyway and Florence would have graduated. But you’re the spark that gets things going. You have a talent for bringing out the best in people. You see what’s possible – and you make it possible.”

Trixie was somewhat taken aback by her oldest friend’s assessment. “But I thought that was your thing!”

“Where the hell do you think I learnt it from, sweetheart? Your mother befriended my mother when no one else would. You befriended me when no one else would. Your heart is in everything you do – and the purest of hearts can accomplish wonders. I tell you, Trixie, New York? New York will be a goldmine for you.”

Trixie looked at Ailene, then at Fern, then at everyone else around the table. New York could be a goldmine, yes. Maybe she can parlay some of the trendy Orient there. And she did always want to get out of Storyville for a spell.

But what would she do without all the people that made her who she is? People were leaving Storyville by droves already, including some of the gang’s old friends that would have otherwise been at this very table right now. How can she abandon her closest ones like these?

Sure, Fern would be there with her – but for how long? Fern never really stayed at one place long enough for anything; it was a wonder Fern hung about Storyville for longer than a month. And what about the rest?

“Hey, listen. You get to New York, you become a superstar, then we’ll come to visit, okay?” said Florence, noticing Trixie’s anxiety.

“Yeah babe, we’ll be fine. We still have lives here,” continued Ailene. “But you – you are destined for the stars. Or at least more of this world. I can feel it, I know.”

Walter leaned back and smiled a rare smile. “And hey, you stay there long enough, maybe you can invite me to this party. See if it’s as good as Plants here says it is. Then I won’t have to be you to get in, I’ll just be me.”

Fern would have thrown absinthe at Walter in response, but the absinthe was all gone, and she wasn’t going to waste a drop anyway. “Yeah. At least come up for the party. You can always come back. Just one weekend.”

Just one weekend. One weekend that could change everything, or one weekend that could give her a blessed break, or one weekend that could just be the same ol’ same old.

You ain’t gonna know if you don’t go.

Trixie drank some of her brandy and let the jazz roll back into her brain, sparking daydreams of golden fountains and brass horns.

“One weekend. Let’s do it.”

[[source: Andrew Ding]]

She pulls out the last of her dresses from her closet. Every shade of the spectrum, embroidered so finely with saffron-gold and mallowsweet-ruby and dittany-pearl; you could swear the lines moved under the light. The lush fabrics were from her father, one of the early nodes of the chikondar network stitched between Hooghly and Treme, selling yards and yards of dreams of the fabled Orient. It was her father who taught her how to sew, how to bind seams with just a squeeze of the index and thumb, how to charm each dart with a fitting spell so that every body can wear your work, how to interweave strands of glamour and fortune.

She takes out a mahogany box lined with velvet, and carefully places vials of perfume within. Notes of asphodel and honeywater and jimson weed; one little whiff and your spirit apparates. The potions were from her mother, granddaughter to a granddaughter to a granddaughter of a Voodoo Queen, matriarch and crone and mediwitch to a community of vagabond peddlers and creep joint princesses. It was her mother who taught her how to brew, how to steep just enough belladonna to fly but not enough to crashland, how to portion off each tincture and oil with masterful precision, how to bottle fame and brew glory.

She picks up the tube of kajol that is older than she is and paints haunting dark rings around her bright doe eyes - a ritual since birth, when her father’s sister draws into her strength and protection.

She cradles the stole made from a wolf that died before she was born and hangs it off her limber slender shoulders - a familiar since birth, when her mother’s brother wraps around her power and sanctuary.

They are all long gone now, her elders: abbaandmomanandfupiandtonton. Claimed by tuberculosis and cyclones and Jim Crow. They left the world for her and left her the world. She’s always had a touch of the bede and the gitane in her, likely decanted from strings of long-losts dadis and grand-mères. The spirit of transience stirs in her - longing for adventure, getting away from the fading homeliness of New Orleans, mulling over her sweetheart’s invitation to New York.

Should she take up that invitation, head to unknown territory, start over? Enchant the locals with canny magical skill grounded in sincere empathy?

Isn’t that what her parents ultimately accomplished? Is that not just an approval but her birthright?

It’s time for her to follow in her family’s footsteps, and go.

Viola ‘Trixie’ Shafiq locks the door to her childhood home at the edges of Storyville and resists looking back.

[[picture source: this article about rose-based perfumes - I’ve tried looking for the original source for this specific picture but haven’t been successful. Also trying to find a 1920s vaguely South Asian looking lady is hard.
Most of this story is based on the book Bengali Harlem, which talks about the migration of Bengali people into the US, including a significant number of clothes merchants that traded and eventually settled in New Orleans. Here’s more information about this and other Bengali-US migration movements. For some reason a lot of the daughters in the Bengali/Creole of Colour families were named Viola.
There is a Part 2 (or at least a Part 1.5) of this story, which explains where she’s going and who she ends up meeting in New York (guess who!). I would have written the second part here but it’s late and I’m tired so here’s a teaser.]]

“Sabilabeta, please - please come to your senses!”

Mahmubah watched her daughter storm off in a huff, refusing to look back at her. Was this really her daughter? The one who thought her family was the universe, who would giggle as her mother and aunties braided her everlong hair, who would listen intently to stories of the dainee and annoyed her older cousins by being the favourite student of their jadukara elder (“she’s not even supposed to be here!”) and dreamed of mastering the difficult and arcane mysteries that were shopnojyoti?

Would her daughter really dare be so biadab to her elders, so stubborn and petulant? Well, Sabila was always stubborn, but normally she was stubborn for a good reason - like wanting to learn more and more, or wanting to help with the fishing and cooking.

But wanting to run off and marry a Shafiq?That was not a good reason.

“Maa! I have come to my senses! He is a good man, and we will have a good life. You can have a good life too, can’t you see?”

“A GOOD LIFE?! Is your life not good enough already, being with your family, living a simple village life?”

No, that goddamned Indrajala Cadet College corrupted her, taught her that her people’s ways were faltu and messy and old-fashioned, taught her that the only good way to do jadu was to be like the Bilatis: quick fixes and short sentences.

Taught her that the only good jadukara were the Shafiqs, because they owned land, and her people deserved to be ruled over because they were transient and spent more time in the rivers.

Casi, those Shafiqs called them. Peasant. Country bumpkin. Gravel and poison in their mouths.

Sabila looked back at her mother, not quite knowing which age to be: her body feeling out twenty, her mind fresh out of school and primed for a new adventure, her eyes with the same earnest twinkling from infanthood. Did her mother want her to be an independent adult or did she still see her as the child with the braids?

“Look, Maa! We live hand to mouth, hoping Allah will bless us with fish and rice, having to move around all the time because the cyclones and floods take everything away! Not even the strongest jadu of our kind can conquer Mother Nature! We are being destroyed, Maa - but this is our chance to survive.”

“IT IS THAT MAN’S FAMILY THAT IS DESTROYING US!” If Mahmubah was not too tired she would have slapped Sabila. “They pulled us from the rivers, our soul and blood, and made us come to land. They took away our connection to the water - that is why the cyclones and floods wash everything away. They have stopped paying respect to the water; instead they seek dominionandcontrol, as though they are Gods. As though they are the dainee! They and their Godforsaken school, wanting to control jadu, no respect for where it came from - the WATER!”

“You sent me to that school!” yelled Sabila. When she was not even ten, a couple of staff members from the relatively-new Begum Indrajala Jadukara Cadet College had visited their bank of the river to look for students. They were impressed enough by Sabila’s talents and sheer enthusiasm to offer her a full scholarship.

Sabila thrived in that school: her love of learning flourished as she was exposed to a wealth of subjects and skills, most of which she would never have imagined back in the river. She picked up TantramantraandAyurveda with ease, having had a lot of practice back home and relished the jadunai subjects like Mathematics and Art and English since they were so newandfresh to her.

(To her puzzlement the subject of shopnojyoti was barely mentioned anywhere in her studies - if it did it was only referenced as a lost, possibly mythical art. Sabila did spend some time trying to investigate what her teachers really knew about shopnojyoti, but after one too many deadends she dropped this line of inquiry and focused on regular schoolwork.)

Her absolute favourite school subject was Sahitya, Literature - a curious blend of jaduandjadunai. The works and writers she studied had achieved acclaim amongst the jadunai, even outside Bidesh, winning awards with strange names like No-Bell. Yet these works were so clearly written by jadukara, so infused were they with magic and power - the heart of jadu beating through the mastery of the Bengali language.

It was through Sahitya that Sabila lost her heart: to Faizal, a young man maybe a year or two older than her, as energetic and macho and boisterous as any other male his age - except he was a Shafiq. One of the Zamindars, the landowners. Probably a heir to the school. He wasn’t as passionate about learning as Sabila, indeed even with his family status he didn’t stand out much, but he was funny and had big ambitions and treated Sabila like a queen. Faizal watched Sabila recite some Chakravarti poetry at a joint recital, one of the few times the boys’ and girls’ sections came together, and fell in love with her beauty and depth of passion.

Their depth of passion sparked a love affair that had to be kept relatively secret during their school years - can’t destroy your dignityandhonour, you know - but after years of passing poetry back and forth and cheering on sports games and late-night walks with mishti and moonlight, Faizal proposed marriage.

“You are my sultana,” he said. “Let me give you the good life, be part of the Shafiqs, never a care or worry in the world. Be a real sultana.”

Sabila had been surrounded by Shafiqs - most of the school consisted of them or their peers, landowner families with privilege. There was even the odd Bilati or two, the occasional Cinadeshi and Japani, and a few who were like her - poor river people on scholarships. The Shafiq students didn’t talk to her much, but Sabila admired them all the same: their grace, dignity, ease with power. Their elegance and beauty. Their chatter about those strange exotic cities they would go to on holiday - London and New York, Alexandria and Istanbul. They had everything they ever wanted. They never needed to struggle.

Sabila remembered years of barely being able to eat when cyclones and floods would wreck their makeshift towns (a fairly common occurrence). She remembered the clothes getting threadbare, there was only so much that repair spells could do. She remembered late nights staring out onto the rivers, wondering why their boats would never travel further into the oceans, is that not what boats were for?

What was her life for, if not to explore with elegance and grow with grace? How could her mother not see how much better her life would be married to a Shafiq? Did her mother notwant her to have a good life?

“We sent you to school because we wanted you to have a chance at a good life.” Thought so! Just as Sabila was about to jump in:

“Butbeta, being a Shafiq? They are different from us. They don’t respect us. They are of the land; we are of the water. Let those of the land return to the land, and those of the water return to the water.”

“Didn’t you say all jadukara come from the water? That includes the Shafiqs. That includes Faizal.”

“THE SHAFIQS HAVE BETRAYED THE WATER! They have forgotten about the ways of the water! Did you not listen to me, baccha?! They turned their backs on the water to rule the land! They turned their backs on us, on you!”

“I AM NOT A BACCHA!”

Sabila was furious. Her mother saw her not just as a child, but a baby. Who was she to preach about respect when she wouldn’t respect her own daughter?

“Faizal did not choose to be a Shafiq,” said Sabila after a (slightly futile) attempt to calm down. “But he chose me. He could have chosen anybody, even another Shafiq or a Bilati girl, but he chose me. He wants me to be his sultana, Maa. He wants me to have the good life.”

“Does he want us to have the good life?” asked Mahmubah, losing patience with her daughter’s insolence. “You don’t just marry one person, you marry into their family, their community. Is he going to provide for us, or is he just going to rule over us and make us suffer so that we can provide for your sultanalife?”

“He will not make you suffer - I will not let him make you suffer.” Sabila was losing patience with her mother’s obstinance. “Please, Maa. Faizal is a good man. Just at least meet him. I promise, he’s not like all the other Shafiqs who don’t care. He cares. He cares about me and he will care about you.”

Sabila sat by her mother’s feet. She knew her mother had reason to doubt; she did lose her father, after all, to mysterious circumstances that left her mother barely able to take care of her even with support from extended family. But Faizal was different. She’s sure of it. If only her mother would give her a chance…

“Okay. I will meet him. But I cannot promise that I will approve. I need to make sure he is good enough for my daughter.”

Sabila kissed her mother’s feet in gratitude. Believe me, Maa - we will not let you down.

[[picture sources: articles on demotix (1,2) and sfgate about the Bede people-nomadic river-gypsies of Bangladesh that practice magic. (I’m aware that the term “gypsy” is a slur against Romani people; however, almost all my sources about the Bede people (inc from Bangladesh) use “river-gypsy” as a descriptor and I’m not sure what other terms are favoured by that community since they’re not English-speaking.
My computer can’t really deal with most graphics software and the originals of the demotic photos are about 55GBP each, so please excuse the massive watermark.
Sabila is the name of the woman whose photo I used to talk about a Bangladeshi magic wedding. Mahmubah and Faizal are named after my parents.]]

amusliminhogwarts:

Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed of 16 Widdershaw Lane liked to pretend they were a perfectly normal Muslim family, thank you very much.

Marwan Ahmed was a tall, dark-haired man with far-away green eyes, bony elbows and dark skin that gave a nod to his Moroccan heritage. He was prone to thickening of his T’s and curving of his I’s (lending flavour to his London accent), and flurries of fluid Arabic poetry that made his wife roll her eyes.

Iman Ahmed - of Pakistani descent - was as petite as her husband was tall, with a no-nonsense demeanor that belied her family’s five generations in Leeds. She was a wonderfully blunt woman, though immensely kindhearted, with a tongue sharp enough to embarrass even the most wayward child.

The Ahmed’s only child, Aliyah was their pride and joy. A vivacious child born with big brown eyes and a temper at odds with her wheat-coloured hair, she was perhaps a little more spoiled than the Ahmeds would have liked to admit.

Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed began to see the first signs that something was different with their daughter the day the impatient three-year-old made an apple slice zoom right out of her distracted mother’s hands.

After the original shock had worn off, her parents read Quran over her and throughout the house to ward against djinn, but the accidental magic continued. With fingers made cautious from fear, they wrote Qur’anic verses on pieces of paper and put them in a locket for her to wear in order to protect her from the evil eye and black magicians.

Now this family were Muggles through and through, but being Muslim, certain types of magic were very real to them. Being a particularly Muggle craft, such “Black Magic” employed the use of evil djinns, which resulted in a type of sorcery only the most depraved Muggles would use (involving urine stored in jars and all manner of hideous things).

When she was old enough, Aliyah’s parents sat her down and explained properly why her abilities needed to be kept secret, and what magic in Islam was and why her abilities, though entirely pure, would be seen as evil by close-minded, fearful people. 

(source)

Maybe this family should be talking to the Bede folk I just discovered. Muslim and magical. But yeah, the Quranic verses in a locket sound familiar: I remember my grandmother giving me a pin that had the entire Quran in teeny tiny script in it to wear all the time. I wonder what she thought of the whole jadubusiness.

[[eee! go check out A Muslim In Hogwarts this is pretty exciting :D]]

Thestral! 

Spooky season is finally upon us!

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Luna Lovegood:  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix