Stephanie.

"Autumn Reflections" 🍁 | calibreus

This is revolutionary. I struggle so much with applying this to how I live my life.

narcissa malfoy was probably the most powerful occlumens in hogwarts history and nobody knew

she literally stood up to lord voldemort and lied that harry potter was dead and i don’t know about you but if i were an evil ruler i would probably want to triple-check that my nemesis was, you know, actually deceased

voldemort had actual doubts about snape

narcissa swans on by without a whisper, without a second glance

narcissa malfoy understood from a young age that she was meant to do only a few things: look pretty, say nothing, and marry well. 

narcissa malfoy understood those rules, and she layered her mind with them. 

look pretty. wear the most expensive robes. grandmother’s pearls. curl your hair every night. think only of clothes and dimples and the way your hair falls when you flutters you eyelashes at a boy. 

say nothing. don’t speak when mother and father are screaming at each other. demurely look down as another boy asks you to dance. retreat into the reading room when your family friends, known death eaters and criminals, pay your parents a visit and speak in hushed voices over tea. think of pretty things. 

marry well. marry into a family of your parents’ friends. bear children. wear pearls and look demure and think of nothing but pretty, pretty things, like the way your husband’s hair gleams in candlelight. 

masters must learn the rules before they can break them. narcissa learned the rules so well that they wrapped around her; sank into her skin and her mind. they protect her from enemies. they conceal the quick, strategic plots ticking her brain into gear every moment of every day. they hide the calculation of each smile, each movement. 

narcissa is so good, so perfect, that no one will ever know.  

#look like the flower but be the serpent underneath

# I actually have lots of thoughts about this # I think she got away with lying so easily because Voldemort would never have expected her to # I don’t think she even needed to use occlumency # because why would /some silly women/ # /Lucius’ wife/ # ever lie to /The Dark Lord/? # she wouldn’t be smart enough # she wouldn’t be brave enough # she wouldn’t be selfless enough # Voldemort is an absolute idiot when it comes to the things that really matter # ’Houselves children’s tales love loyalty innocence’

#voldy was shocked when he found out his mom was the witch #he assumed his father would be magical

and there you have it.

rb again for that meta, damn

Not only was this one of the most badass moments of the books, but it was genuinely surprising without being some Random Shit Out Of Fucking Nowhere that some authors/scriptwriters think is all there is to being surprising/shocking.

Because it makes perfect sense.  Of course Narcissa would turn on Voldemort without a second thought to protect her son. Not only because she’s his mother, but because that’s how Voldemort was defeated the first time around, and Voldemort cannot change or learn. 1980′s Voldemort was defeated because of a mother’s love, Lily’s sacrifice for Harry. Lily was not considered important to Voldemort, only James and Harry were. Voldemort was even willing to spare her for Snape, if she didn’t put up a fight (which of course she did). To him, Lily was irrelevant, because she was a woman and Muggle-born. Voldemort underestimated her, and it cost him. So naturally he would do the same thing again in the 90′s, focusing on Harry and the prophecy, never considering the thing that defeated him before might do so again. He was wary of Lucius and Draco, but underestimated Narcissa and it lead directly to his defeat. And she KNEW he did, and used it to her advantage.

This short-sightedness is even reflected in his most ardent supporter Bellatrix, who was also killed by a furious mother protecting her child.

A mother’s love started the series, and a mother’s love ended it.

A mother’s love started the series, and a mother’s love ended it.

YES.

Also, Narcissa’s rebellion started nearly two years before, in Half-Blood Prince. She snuck out of Malfoy Manor in the dead of night, cloaked, and went into a Muggle neighborhood to seek out Snape’s help. She talked about a plan she shouldn’t have known anything about [forbidden] and enlisted his help [also forbidden]. 

Voldemort has a history of putting the people his followers love in danger and expecting their unswerving obedience anyway. He lost Snape when he went after Lily. He lost Narcissa Malfoy when he let her husband rot in prison and set her son up to die. 

His followers know, up close and personal, what the Dark Lord is capable of, and they will do whatever they have to do to save their loved ones from his wand. 

Voldemort is excellent at playing upon that emotion to hurt people (pretending to torture Sirius to bait Harry to the Ministry kidnapping Luna to manipulate Lovegood), but he doesn’t understand it.

Exactly! Voldemort doesn’t understand it, and because of that, it never ever even once occurred him it might backfire on himself. He overlooks love and those who he thinks less of. He looks at the world through this own glasses and in doing so, he utterly, completely fails understanding other people’s ways of thinking. And it’s not like he’s even trying to understand, because he thinks so little of it, he doesn’t think it’s worth even trying to understand it.  And that is his greatest weakness.

So Voldemort doesn’t expect Narcissa Malfoy to lie, because once again he fails to understand why she even would. He made his own defeat, when he refused to learn from his mistakes in the past, overlooking the most important thing that led to his downfall, thinking it unimportant and ridiculous, it being for the weak.

we won’t make this mistake again

Reflecting on the Dawn of a New Year by Phil’s Pixels

This is never not funny

rebloggin’ cause that is the actual look on my face when that happens

trying out passwords

almost stumbled

by Denny Bitte

Untitled by Joel and Jasmin Forestbird

simonroppel_photography ~ Greenland

Mount Hood, Oregon | Photographer: Stephen Zimmerman

by Anastocio Asuncion

2810; Autumn Trail

fluffy sky