Harry knows that Padfoot and his parents are worried, but very little of it trickles down to him. it can’t: he’s too excited.
his letter comes in the post, in July, a little after what he has started to think of as his old birthday.
(technically it is the newer of the two, but he didn’t know his original birthday until Padfoot told him, so now he has the birthday he was used to, at the beginning or July, and the one he apparently had all along but didn’t know, at the end.)
the letter is just like Padfoot said it would be: his name in bright green ink, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. please find enclosed–
but now he needs all sorts of things! robes, and a cauldron, and books with titles that sound a lot like some of the books he already has, except those books are just stories and these ones will be real. and, best of all: a magic wand.
so he and his mum and his dad and his Padfoot are going to Diagon Alley, in London, and they are meeting Moony in person, for real.
Harry has been trying to act a little more grown up, now that he’s a wizard and nearly eleven, but it’s proving extremely difficult when he is this excited.
I picture every interaction Sam has internally with Reign as that vine where someone asks what a guy wants to eat and the demon answers “the souls of the innocent” and the guy verbally answers “a bagel”
like, heimdall saw that shit right? odin comes back through the bifrost and heimdall is just “…………….”
heimdall: that’s a baby
odin: yes! he’s my son! ………..loki. i’m going to dress him in green and black, because that worked great last time
or odin comes back and is trying to figure out, how to play it, and heimdall and frigga are just waiting for him and completely deadpan
frigga: ah, husband! you have returned from war in time to meet your newborn son. who i had. after being pregnant. secretly.
odin: what
frigga:
heimdall:
loki: *baby noises*
odin: right
honestly, i just need heimdall going up to frigga like “you won’t believe what your husband just did”
odin: he’s a replacement for the child I had to lock away in the shadow realm.
heimdall:
odin: I’ll do better by this one. I know I will.
heimdall:
heimdall: You mean Frigga will.
Odin: Please can we keep it? It’s cute and changes colours and smiles at my empty eye socket. I promise I’ll take care of it I’ll feed it every week and I’ll dress it in green and black and I’ll teach it to throw knives and it will be great!
Heimdall: Frigga, he stole a baby. Say something.
THIS IS THE BEST THING
I like to imagine Frigga visiting Heimdall and they have tea and gossip about how much a mess Odin is.
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”
“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”
Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.
It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.
“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.
“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”
Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.
“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”
“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”
Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”
“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”
Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable – it would be folly to try and settle there.”
Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.
“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft – by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-”
‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’
“What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.”
‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’
“….you….you are going to die, you know this right?”
‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’
“Listen, Cap and I have our differences but I have enough respect for him to put that aside and mark down his exact time of death.”
“Oh my god.”
“All I’m saying is Hydra’s been trying since the forties but Captain America was murdered in cold blood right here right now by a high schooler.”
“Tony—“
“The ice couldn’t even do it but that’s because no amount of arctic ice in the world could measure up to the iconic freezer burn my kid just gave him.”
@a-dot-burr-ell this was from a prompt meme thing you reblogged so I figured I should tag you (also how is the smol and you? I hear you have been v tired, I hope this maybe helps you relax just a lil).
It was “person A hits person B in the face while gesturing wildly to a friend”
————the ‘I’m on mobile’ line——–
Alex <i>loves </i> telling the story later. She always makes Winn take the backhand to the nose. It’s very gratifying.
Of course, it’s Kara, gesturing wildly about the incredibly, ridiculously large and expensively made hoagie that Cat had gotten her for her birthday. She didn’t see the woman in a hoodie and sweats because Lucy was bent double weezing with laughter. So when she stands, with a final floirish to encompase the raw emotion she felt at such a display of love and affection, she did, indeed, smash her hand into the woman’s nose.
The woman later explains that it felt like walking into a very soft-skinned wall.
Kara turns, with a look of horror etched into her face, and begins apologizing immediately. “Oh my gosh, oh I am so sorry, oh Rao you’re bleeding, here let me let me, oh golly I’m such a klutz please, let me help, here’s a napkin, here hold it there and gosh you have such a pretty face I am so sorry to have maybe broken your nose oh no- wait, my sister’s a doctor she can- Alex!! Stop laughing and help us!”
Lucy can’t help either, she’s still wheezing. But she’s wheezing mostly because the woman is slowly blushing more and more because Kara keeps touching her. Like, touching her face and hands and shoulders and hair, because Kara gets so concerned. And Kara’s got a pretty nice face too.
Lucy likes to play ‘which women in the bar is into women’ with Maggie. She’s <i>really</i> good at it. Though, that may be because she asks while in a crop top and with a smirk that could get nuns wet.
Anyway, Kara’s got both hands on this poor woman’s face, nearly in tears, when the woman blurts out-
“Can I have your number?”
At this point in the story telling, Alex pushes Winn out of a chair to simulate how Maggie fell out of hers. Alex claims that her gawking was because she couldn’t believe that Maggie could even be surprised anymore.
Kara just stares and it’s Cat who responds from the other side of the table.
“Are you a multi-million dollar CEO with an icy reputation?” She swirls her drink and arches one eyebrow in a move that has brought presidents to their knees (one particular soon-to-be president to her knees multiple times, though that was back in college and Cat only tries it every other week and Ol-).
Right, so, the woman, hand filled with napkins and pushed against her nose, replies with-
“No.” And Cat smirks because she is, indeed, better than anyone else in this small yet chick cafe. “I’m a multi-<i>billion</i> dollar CEO with an icy reputation.”
And, much later in private, Cat will explain how that magnificent come back just really <i>did it </i> for her. At the time, she says-
“Well then, <i>I’ll</i> take your number and we can discuss arrangements over dinner.”
And that’s the story of how Kara and Cat met Lena Luthor and Alex, Lucy, and Maggie nearly didn’t make it out of a small cafe alive (even with her amazing abdominals, Lucy limped out of that coffee shop).
Winn would like to put in that he wasn’t even there and thus should not be included in the retellings.
Big thanks to @fourtseven for listening to me complain about my writers block (though she’s polite enough to call it expressing frustration).
It’s on their fifth date that Cat finds herself in Kara’s apartment. She’s pressed up against the door before it even closes, her head thrown back, but what she’s managed to see is homey. Not Architectural Digest, but it has appeal. Bright and charming, like Kara.
In the morning, wrapped in nothing but Supergirl’s cape, and light pouring through the large windows, Cat gets a better look. Everything is just so Kara. She can’t find another suitable word, despite her ample vocabulary. There really isn’t one. It’s messy but clean. Like Kara’s desk after lunch. Things, and there are many, fill shelves and cabinets. Cat smiles as she looks over Kara’s eclectic collection of knick knacks, before she heads to the kitchen.
Things are just as diverse in the cupboards, Cat notes as she searches for coffee. No plate, no bowl the same. The mugs are all different, like the chairs around the table. Like all the furniture, Cat realizes as she looks around. Nothing matches, and everything has been painted, touched up. Cat notices the gauges in the wooden top of the island, the chips taken out of the laminate countertop. The coffeemaker looks about twenty years old, the toaster too. Does she pay Kara so little that the girl has to buy everything second hand?
“Machine’s broke. I bro- I’ll have to fly out, if you want coffee.”
Cat turns, pulled from her ruminations by Kara’s sleepy voice, and can’t help but smile at the sight of Supergirl in pajamas, and fuzzy socks.
“I’ll need my cape back though.”
Cat smirks, letting the cape drop slightly, exposing her shoulder as she strides towards her girl. Cat Grant doesn’t need heels to strut. “You’ll have to take it off me.”
Kara pulls her close, when she’s within reach. “Don’t start. I know how you get without coffee. I can go out.”
Cat shakes her head, and let’s the cape fall. “I can think of a few things that are just as stimulating.”
Cat makes a few calls Monday, and is assured by Brenda in human resources, that Kara Danvers might just be the best paid personal assistant on Earth.
A month later, Cat starts to notice the chips and cracks. They’re small, but her penthouse, Carter’s room and the den aside, is immaculate, and the now roughened corner of the marble counter top is glaringly obvious. So are the scratches on her plates, and the cracked tile in the bathroom. And with a sigh she realizes why Kara’s things are second hand. Because Supergirl can bend steel, and crush cement, with little effort. What chance did a coffeemaker have? Why have new things, when they need to be constantly replaced.
So she never mentions it. She’s not sure Kara realizes it’s happening. Cat watches how careful Kara is when she’s at the penthouse. How deliberate all her movements are. Cat had assumed it was nerves before, but as she looks at Kara across the dining room table, and watches how gingerly she cuts up her dinner, how slowly she pushes in her chair, how her shoulders never seem to relax even when she’s playing Nintendo with Carter. Supergirl can’t just smash the buttons when she’s losing.
“I can bring some of my dishes from home,” Kara says, a week later as she helps load the dishwasher. Cat pauses, a scratched plate in her hand, looking up as Kara looks away. “I keep scratching yours. They’re expensive,” Kara rushes out, still staring at the floor. “Or you could get me paper plates maybe? I’m okay with that. I bent all of Eliza’s cutlery, before they got me a set of plastic ones. I don’t want to keep breaking your things. I’m trying not to. Sometimes I just…forget. Forget that I’m an alien. It use to just happen at home, but now I forget here, and I don’t- I don’t want to break your things.”
Cat sets the plate aside, drying her hands and taking Kara’s face between them. “I forget you’re an alien sometimes too. I wake up in your arms, and I watch you with Carter, and there’s nothing alien about it. Except you. And when I see a broken tile, or a chipped mug, because somehow you always manage to knock your cups against your teeth,” Cat says with a soft smile, running her thumbs over Kara’s tear streaked cheeks. “And I’m reminded that you are not of this Earth. You are so much better than this planet could ever produce.You can scratch every dish in this kitchen. I like the scratched one. I like the reminder that this is where you forget. No paper plates. You -this- is not disposable, so break whatever you want. Just no hearts, Supergirl.”
Kara smiled, and nodded. “That won’t ever get scratched.”
Question of Smoke 