Strange and Invisible History

Strange and Invisble History by Madea's Rage is a deconstruction of the “Hermione is really a pureblood” fics. At the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Voldemort possesses Harry, the Death Eaters take over and Hermione turns out to be the long lost daughter of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange. War, politics and arranged marriages ensue.

Basically it’s Harry Potter meets A Song of Ice and Fire.

Has a sequel in progress, Influence of Souls.

Tropes used in Strange and Invisible History include:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Completely averted by the main characters. Cultural differences aside, part of what bonds the family so tightly is the shared commitment by the adults to the welfare of the children, including emotionally.
  • Invoked with Druella, Bellatrix and Narcissa's mother. She was a manipulative emotional abuser who continues to try to terrorise her daughters despite being a portrait. Word of God says she's a Borderline Personality.
  • Scabior's family was extremely dysfunctional, and his father Obed was a violent drunk. Which explains why Scabior kills him. It also gives some context to the incest between him and his sister Nora, but that doesn't make it less disturbing.
• Adorably Precocious Child:
  • Hideously, violently deconstructed. By the end of SIH, the characters are essentially understood to be adults in teenage bodies, and have terrible mental and emotional scars from having fought in multiple conflicts, killed people and united Bulgaria. The adults about them are aware of it happening but can't do anything to stop it.
  • Viktor ends up being made lord of Castle Krum at fifteen, and by seventeen is Lord Protector of Bulgaria. He is also married to Hermione by this point.
  • Hermione is first lady Krum, and then Vicereineby the time she's fourteen. She ends up getting married to Viktor in the same time period.
  • Draco is Seneschal of Castle Krum, second in command to a feared war-leader, and by the time he's fifteen, has been forced to take the Mark and become a Death Eater.
  • Anu Tamm is twelve and the veteran of two different wars. He ends up being Seneschal of Castle Borev, as well as a high feudal lord in his own right.
• Adult Child: Barty, due to permanent, irreversible brain damage from having broken mentally in Azkaban, and then living under Imperius for ten years
• All Women Are Prudes:
  • This is the assumption of Pureblood society, to the extent that Rabastan apologises profusely to his wife every time for having bothered her.
• And Call Him George:
  • Averted, but only just, by Nagini. She takes care to be gentle, but the humans are absolutely aware she could kill them in seconds, and tend to find her cuddles pretty scary.
• And I Must Scream: Harry is possessed by Voldemort. It is exactly as disturbing as it sounds.
• Anti-Hero: Most of the protagonists do seriously dodgy things.
  • Snape is the most obvious example. In order to save as many people as possible, he willingly sacrifices innocents to meet his goals, manipulates lives (including compelling a gay man to marry one of his spies, knowing very well that it will make them both miserable), and has teenagers trained to act as child soldiers. On the other hand, he is genuinely trying to do good, and acknowledges he's done all these things.
  • The younger generation has their share as well. Draco is pretty willing to use violence to meet his goals, and Viktor and Hermione make ruthless examples of their enemies. The three of them also have a show trial for a failed assassin which ends with their poisoning him with the drink he tried to give them, but which got served to children in their charge in front of the assembled nobles.
• Arranged Marriage: It’s pureblood, patriarchal society so it’s happening left, right and centre. They seem to end up okay for the most part.
  • Rodolphus and Bellatrix.
  • Hermione and Krum
  • Emmeline Vance and Rabastan Lestrange. She’s a member of the Order in disguise and he’s a gay Death Eater. Somehow the marriage functions.
  • Anu Tamm and Yana Krum.
  • Alise and Scabior.
  • Moody and Hetty.
• Asexuality:
  • Desmond Feathering/Alastor Moodyis this. Played with, in that he is aromantic,but sometimes has sex with his wife Hetty to give her the child she wants so desperately. He finds it neither pleasant or unpleasant, but simply something he does to please someone he cares about.
• The Atoner:
  • Snape, as in Canon.
  • Rita Skeeter.
  • Played With by the Death Eaters. They regret serving Voldemort, not their treatment of muggleborns.
• Aw, Look — They Really Do Love Each Other
  • Snape and Sirius in between insults.
  • Cunegarde may be a grumpy old bitch but she adores Hermione.
  • Bellatrix isn’t exactly maternal... but she ends up plotting to betray Voldemort for her daughter.
• Badass Boast:
  • Viktor, of all people, gets one when he threatening the Romanian ambassador because he thinks she helped to poison the children

'I am intimating nothing. I am telling you, with God as my witness, that should I find out Romania was behind this, should I ever discover that you or any other Romanian had a hand in this thing, I will bring my troops to your country and your world will burn.'

• • Draco gets one when he tells Sven and Ilya about his father, and suggests they leave him alone in the future.

My father is Lucius Malfoy, and they call him the Butcher of Britain for a reason. He's taught me everything I know. Everything. And what he didn't teach me, Bellatrix Lestrange and Severus Snape did. Now stand aside, you whoreson bastards, or I'll show you why people piss themselves when they hear we're coming.

• Bad Boss: Voldemort, as in Canon. Unlike Canon, his inner circle become fed up.
• Battle Couple: Almost all of them. Special mention goes to:
  • Bellatrix and Rodolphus, who co-run the war in Wales together
  • Hermione and Viktor, who lead armies together.
  • Anu and his future wife Yana Krumare this decades in the future. As he's killing the mad wizard Sepp, Yana holds off the remains of the man's mooks.
  • Narcissa and Lucius.
• Bi the Way:
  • Penko is this, as he mentions having slept with women in the past. Rabastan, on the other hand, isn't at all interested in women, despite the fact he's married to Emmeline/Eugenia at the Dark Lord's command.
• Big Brother Mentor:
  • Viktor is this to Draco, to the point where Draco refers to him as his 'brother, best friend and cousin in law'. He also calls him brother in law more than once.
  • Draco in turns becomes this to Anu. Anu calls Draco his 'idol, big brother and cousin.'
• Berserk Button:
  • Viktor is kind, well-mannered and gentle. Until you dare imply that his mother, Zhivka who dies mid-story or his fiancee later wife, Hermione are anything less than virtuous.
  • Never insult a lady's honour in front of Draco.
  • Threaten Hermione's fiance, later husband, Viktor in her presence and watch the fireworks commence.
  • Mention that Barty isn't 'really' family to the Lestranges and you'll regret it immediately.
  • Try to force Barty to leave the Lestranges, especially his surrogate child, Edric and he will come at you with everything he has. Threatening them is an even worse idea.
  • Suggest Anu Tamm's Nene is a bad woman and suffer for it.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Everyone. Except Voldemort.
• Black and Black Morality / Black and Gray Morality:
  • The protagonists are Death Eaters. This is going to happen.
  • Snape does some serious messed up things in the name of bringing Voldemort down. Like selling Hermione for a thousand Aurors, marrying Emmeline Vance to Rabastan Lestrange and letting a paedophile teach children.
• Black and White Insanity:
  • The Death Eaters, as in Canon. It's strongly implied that members of the Order suffered from this, which is part of what caused the First Wizarding War to become so vicious.
• Blue and Orange Morality
  • Pureblood culture runs on this:
  • Early in the story, Hermione tries to escape Hogwarts, which is being held by the Death Eaters by running out the door. She gets caught and Rodolphus spanks her. For Purebloods, that's a very normal way to discipline a child, and he's hurt and surprised that it seriously damages her trust in him. Hermione perceives the incident as an adult first deliberately harming her and then wanting to act like it was all right.
  • The Lestranges aren't especially pleased when Hermione is too nice to the lower orders, but praise her for being cunning and her familiarity with the Dark Lord's writings.
  • The Dark Lord's philosophy is made of this. He leaves the children to die in Bulgaria because he asserts that if they aren't strong enough to save themselves, they deserve to die.
  • Most of Nagini's more disturbing actions fall under this category.
• Blood Knight:
  • Bellatrix, in a serious way. She explictly gets a sexual thrill from combat, and freely admits she'd rather fight than do almost anything else.
  • Draco is beginning to show signs of this.
• Brother-Sister Incest:
  • Scabior and his sister, Nora. He was potentially the father of her child, and the reason he went to Azkaban; he killed the other man who might have fathered the baby.
• Bully Hunter:
  • Anu and his future wife, Yana are implied to grow up to become these. Decades in the future, they're both famous in story for killing a mad wizard who slaughtered a bunch of muggles.
• The Butcher:
  • Lucius Malfoy is ironically nicknamed 'The Butcher of Britain' due to his organising two massacres in a single day and never getting his hands dirty.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Viktor does this to his father in response for his emotional abandonment of him and the others after Viktor's mother, Zhivka, dies.

'You know what the difference between you and them is,Papa? THEY FUCKING CAME AND GOT THEIR children!'

• Card-Carrying Villain:
  • Deconstructed. The characters on every side see themselves as being having the moral high ground, and their beliefs as being the only possible rational choice.
• The Chessmaster: Severus Snape.
• Costume Porn / Pimped-Out Dress
• Cold Sniper:
  • Rodolphus is revealed to be this. When he fights, everything goes(literally) 'cold', and he feels like he's watching from a long way away.
  • Hermione is potentially becoming this. At one point, she calmly kills an auror sent to kill them and her mien never changes.
• Child Soldiers:
  • Nearly all the characters under eighteen. Draco raises an army of schoolchildren to break the siege at Castle Krum and then help unite Bulgaria. Most of them end up maimed, emotionally scarred or seriously traumatised by their experiences.
• Chivalrous Pervert:
  • Sirius, times a million. He gleefully teases Snape about his many conquests (and openly uses the money Snape gives him to help him spy to hire prostitutes), but takes care to treat the women well, and when he gets into a relationship with Emmeline/Eugenia, he's faithful to her.
• Chubby Chaser: Wizarding society likes women somewhat larger than the muggle ideal, generally speaking.
  • Scabior is attracted to Hetty, and later Alise because of their soft, fleshy bodies.
  • One of the changes the reshaper makes to Emmeline Vance is to make her shorter and somewhat rounder in accordance to the societal ideal.
  • Snape chooses a wife for Desmond Feathering/ Mad-Eye because he assumes that a plump, curvy woman would please the bridegroom.
• Cooldown Hug:
  • Barty gives one to Viktor after they capture Blagoev, and urges him not to make the mistakes that he did. It works.
• Coup De Grace:
  • Draco gives Stefan one of these after blasting his chest apart with Reducto after negotiations fail. Possibly averted, in that his motive is to get his head, not any particular sense of mercy for his enemy.
• Crapsack World: Voldemort takes over. Racism, classism and sexism ensue.
• Creepy Child:
  • Hermione has elements of this. Adults tend to find it sort of eerie that she's always cheerful and polite, no matter what. Deconstructed, in that it's symtomatic of her emotional issues, and characters know it. They're still disturbed.
• Creepy Good:
  • Scabior is a unsettlingly jovial psycho for hire who helps Rodolphus interrogate 'guests', kills his own father and really, really loves his knife. He also deeply cares about those under his charge, tries his hardest to comfort Hermione after things go downhill and declares that he's Lestrange's man and always will be because Rodolphus is nice to him.
  • Nagini is revealed to be this. At one point, she finds Draco crying. Her response? She coils him and hisses. Since the scene is from her point of view, the audience sees that she's trying to calm him by cuddling him and hissing a snake lullaby.
• Creepy Souvenir:
  • Scabior is fond of these. At one point, a character reflects that it took quite a bit of work to persuade him not to bring 'wet prizes' back from sucessful 'jobs.' He also carried the tongue of the first man he killed about as a watch fob, and when he killed his father, Obed, he took his eyes and tongue and left them as an offering on his sister's grave.
  • Stefan's head is this for Draco, as he brings it to the Conclave to prove the man is dead. Rumour has it in-universe that he still has it.
• Cry Into Chest:
  • After Barty tells her what happened to the LongbottomsHermione does this with Snape, even sitting in his lap and hugging his neck. He is appalled and horrified, but permits it, and gradually comes to tacitly offer comfort without being asked.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Barty Crouch Jr.
• Cuddle Bug: Wizarding culture generally encourages people to be this way. Purebloods are very proper in public, but are very affectionate and tactile in private.
  • Barty, who loves to Glomp people. He actually glomps Snape repeatedly and lives to tell the story.
  • The Lestrange brothers are both this way. Rodolphus hugs and kisses his wife and daughter very regularly, and Rabastan often pats and hugs the wife Snape forced on him despite being gay, though it's strictly a brotherly kind of affection.
  • Nagini turns out to be this. The constant slithering into beds and coiling people? It's just snuggling.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Snape, as in Canon, especially toward Bellatrix and Sirius.

'Please, explain my motives to me, your insights are fascinating.'

• • Bellatrix herself does this to almost everybody she meets, and tends to lampshade Snape's plans by using this.

'Why yes, a convenient parselmouth will simply present themselves. Why don't we just advertise for one in the Prophet?'

• • Aunt Cunegarde, all the time, to everyone.

'Well, sitting here maundering about it will be ever so useful to them, won't it? If you all feel sorry enough for yourselves, perhaps this situation will undo itself entirely and we can all go on a nice picnic.'

• Deconstruction Fic: Complete with frequent Lampshade Hangings
• Disappeared Dad: A common theme amongst characters.
  • Hermione's muggle Dad disappears right after the Dark Lord returns, because the Lestranges kill him and his wife.
  • Viktor's father is alive, but too mentally ill to help in any way.
  • Anu's father was a gang rapist who assaulted his mother to avenge a debt. In an odd case, his offical father is a high noble who died years before he could have been conceived.
  • Scabior's father disappeared because Scabior tortured and killed him.
• Doorstopper:
  • SIH is well over 2000 pages long, and Influence of Souls is at about five hundred and growing.
• Dumb Muscle:
  • Averted by Viktor. Everyone expects him to be this, and he's smart enough to use it fully to advantage. He also comments ironically on it when he tells Snape he's not as smart as Karkaroff was at his age meaning he has no intention of taking the Mark, as he knows Karkaroff's days are numbered because he didn't come back to the Dark Lord.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Viktor is an international Quidditch star, liege lord of Castle Krum andLord Protector of Bulgaria. He's also Uncle Rumen's 'little bear'. Invoked, as Penko uses this to 'encourage' Viktor to nap whilst Zhivka is dying by threatening to tell Viktor's fiancee why he's got that nickname.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • The first time we see Hermione, she stands up to the Dark Lord, refusing to follow his orders.
  • Bellatrix's first action out of Azkaban is to kneel and kiss the Dark Lord's hem. This is darkly referenced later when she begs on her knees for him to help Hermione, and he refuses.
  • Scabior stabbing John Dawlish, Emmeline Vance's fiance to death in front of Hermione. Despite the fact he's got a wand. And laughing about it, but then just as quickly scolding her not to touch Dawlish's wand, lest she hurt herself. He even tells her to be a good girl before leaving her with the body.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Scabior is initially very resistant to the idea of marrying Alise, and flat-out tells Snape that he doesn't want to marry a 'lil girl.'
  • Rabastan is totally appalled by the plan to use Anu Tamm as bait for Slughorn, and call out the rest of the group, basically invoking this trope.

' I have been party to a good many terrible deeds, but I will not be party to this. I'm sickened we're even seriously considering it. Anu is a child, not a pawn to be used.'

• Evil Feels Good:
  • Dark magic is highly addictive and causes hypersexuality in users (until it makes them sterile). This is apparently how the Lestranges conceived Hermione. The magic caused them to have spontaneous sex during a raid, and their magical energy allowed a conception to take place in spite of the fact they both should have been sterilised by too much usage.
• Evil vs. Evil
  • Part One gives us the Death Eaters VS the Werewolves
  • Part Two gives us the Death Eaters VS Voldemort.
• Eye Scream:
  • Stefan deliberately trying to blind Anu Tamm when negotiations don't go his way, and partially succeeding. It's described in detail.
• Flashback Nightmare:
  • Most the younger characters. Viktor sometimes dreams of seeing blood and brains on the floor of the British Ministry and Draco has the 'chorus of screams' from the various battles he fought in.
• Fluffy Tamer:
  • A rare human example: Everyone, in-Universe considers Rodolphus this in regards to Bellatrix. He genuinely sees her as an adorable Moe whose violent fits of rage are just cute little wobblies, and whose sadism is actually childlike enthusiasm.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • The younger generation: Hermione (Sanguine), Viktor (Phlegmatic) Draco(Choleric) and Anu (Supine).
  • The Death Eaters are: Snape (Melancholic), Bellatrix (Choleric), Rodolphus (Sanguine) and Lucius (Phlegmatic).
• Friend to All Children: Pureblood culture expects this of everyone, and for people who don't to pay the ideal lipservice. Death Eaters actively working against the Lestranges and Malfoys are nonetheless genuinely excited about getting to play with Rabastan's son with Emmeline/Eugenia, Edric, and offended when they won't bring him down to see them.
  • Snape, to his absolute horror. Children tend to glom onto him, and despite his generally snarly nature, he makes himself treat them well, if not nicely.
  • Draco, who's the main babysitter of the younger Krum children (Viktor's cousins), and who ends up mentoring Anu, despite his efforts not to.
• Funetik Aksent:
  • Scabior as one a these. When e's feelin nervous, it gets rite thick,it does, but when e's calmer, then he doan do it s'much, yeah?
  • Odd example: The Dark Lord has a phonetic POV. When He is narrating, everyone else speaks all in small letters unless they're addressing Him, and their names are uncapitalised. When He hears viktor speak, he hears him in a completely phonetic accent.
  • /nagini never says i or uses punctuation just speaks like this/
  • Averted with Viktor, who struggles a little but mainly uses standard spelling except for using 'v' for w words and so forth. Hexsept vhen the Darg Lort is narrat-ting—it geds notic-ably theekair becauze the Darg Lort duss nod lige to hear pee-pol speeking Een-glish vith an agsent.
• Gentle Giant/Genius Bruiser:
  • Viktor. He's built like a linebacker and has rough, thuggish features, but he's gentle, sensitive and extremely intelligent. Amongst other things, he teaches himself to read and speak fluent, if heavily accented, English with virtually no formal help aside from Draco. He can also memorise long passages of works and recite them from memory.
• Give Her a Normal Life:
  • Dumbledore's whole motive in taking the Lestranges' baby. He was afraid that the Malfoys would turn her into a symbol for other Death Eaters to rally round, and that other magical families might not want to deal with a child who could well be an incipient Dark witch. He may be right about that last one...
• Glomp:
  • Barty does this, usually to Snape or Rabastan. He often comes up behind people and bearhugs them.
  • Bess the dog does this to Salazar, which ends up blowing his cover as actually being Sirius Black in animagus form.
• Grievous Bottley Harm:
  • Viktor, when he gets into a fistfight at camp with Blagun Hristov. Averted, in that the bottle doesn't break, which doesn't prevent Viktor from knocking out a number of teeth with it.
• Groin Attack: Poor Mc Nair gets this. From Bellatrix Lestrange. Twice.
• Gunship Rescue:
  • The Swedish fleet which breaks the siege at Castle Krum.
• Hair-Trigger Temper:
  • Bellatrix, who starts hexing and shrieking at virtually any provocation. Her desire to control her temper so as not to scare Hermione is initially what helps them to bond.
• Half Truth:
  • Lucius is literally the master of this, as he's the regime primary spin doctor. He also uses this to soothe Hermione after Barty Crouch Jr lets slip about the Longbottoms, by explaining how her parents were 'helping them understand' about the Dark Lord.
• Heroic Bastard:
  • Anu Tamm, who summons help when Hermione is attacked by Sven and Ilya, and then joins the war, despite being twelve, proving his valour by preventing the escape of Pavel the werewolf.
  • Hetty has shades of this. She calmly prevents aurors from raiding Twelve Grimmauld Place by flirting with them, and then helps Draco keep from reacting when he finds out he's supposed to Assassinate Arthur Weasley as punishment for raising an army.
• Heroic BSOD:
  • Hermione has a major one when Rinky dies. It shows how far she's come that she feels all right letting her parents see her curled up in a ball, sobbing hysterically, and refuses to let go of her mother.
  • Draco has one when he breaks down crying in Skopje, telling Snape he knows he's leading his friends from Durmstrang and the other schools to a terrible death.
  • Viktor has a small one of these on the morning he and Hermione assume the Protectorate, saying he can't rule a country and wishes that they could run off together and leave it all behind. She firmly brings him back to reality.
• Heterosexual Life Partners:
  • Snape and Sirius, of a distinctly snarky and outwardly unsupportive type. Until someone threatens one of them, and the other loses it completely.
  • Viktor and Draco. Invoked, as Snape very much plans for this, sending Draco to Durmstrang precisely so the two will bond.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Hetty.
• Ill Girl:
  • Averted with Sose Tamm. She is constantly sick, but it's from a lifetime of malnutrition and hard work. At twenty-eight, she looks forty, is riddled with arthritis, coughs constantly from breathing so much soot and has spine issues that cause her to hunch. She also isn't dying--she's just chronically ill.
• Infant Immortality: Averted.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Viktor and his wife are not tsar and tsarina; they are Lord Protector and Vicereine.
  • Viktor only ever refers to his uncle Stefan as 'the false lord Borev'.
  • Rodolphus does not torture dissidents. He invites guests to have a chat with him in his private office below the Ministry.
  • Snape does not have a dog. The dog freeloads off of him whilst adding nothing of value to his life, because he is a filthy mongrel.
• Instant Death Bullet: Mainly averted by most of the characters.
  • Zhivka takes a Bludgeoning hex in the head and lingers two months in a coma, never waking.
  • Draco has to give Stefan a coup de grace after blasting his chest apart with Reducto.
• Irony:
  • Bellatrix and Rodolphus are impressed and delighted when they get to know Hermione and find her to be polite, intelligent and genuinely kind to others. Snape finds this ironic, as the reason she's like this is because she was raised for the first ten years by muggles, in a culture that values those things. Had she been raised by her aunt and uncle Malfoy like the Lestranges would have wanted, she would not have turned out that way.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Scabior loves these, kicking and punching Blagoev the assassin, and threatening him with his knife.
• Jerkass/JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Snape and Cunegarde.
• Keet: Barty.
• Kneecapping: Anu Tamm does this during the Battle of Castle Krum, to prevent Nicolae Pavel from running away. With a flaming torch. After getting an eye blasted out.
• Knife Nut: Scabior. He often uses his knife in preference to his wand, and greatly enjoys what he calls the 'wet-work'.
• Knight Templar:
  • Many of the Death Eaters are this. They absolutely believe their actions, no matter how heinous, are justified, because they are creating a perfect New Britain. For them and people like them.
• Lady of War: Hermione and to a lesser extent, Narcissa.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: About two hundred named characters, canon and original.
• Mama Bear:
  • Bellatrix Lestrange.
  • Narcissa Malfoy.
  • Harm any of the people Hermione cares about. Go on. I dare you.
  • Nagini for Hetty.
  • Eugenia for Hetty.
• Manly Tears: Wizards generally are quite inclined to these, due to Values Dissonance.
  • The Lestrange brothers both cry several times over the course of the story, especially when Rodolphus thinks he's going to lose Hermione, or Rabastan sends his son, Edricinto exile.
    • Rabastan also gets a bit teary when Barty asks to see the Longbottoms "because they're broken too."
  • Viktor cries from time to time, particularly when his mother Zhivka is dying.
  • Lucius Malfoy gets damp-eyed on a number of occaisions.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Viktor starts calling Draco 'Drago' when he stays at Castle Krum the first time. Draco eventually starts calling himself that to everyone who isn't part of his English family. Hermione deliberately invokes this, calling him 'Draco' when things are calm and 'Drago' when he's acting as Seneschal of Castle Krum.
• Missing Mom:
  • Hermione's muggle Mum vanishes because the Lestranges torture her to death.
  • Viktor's mother dies a quarter of the way through, which is the catalyst for a number of other things that directly cause the events of the plots.
• Monster Clown:
  • Invoked in universe. The Snatchers wear clashing, mismatched clothing because it intimidates people. One guy dressed like a drunk rodeo clown is funny; five of them, showing up on your doorstep to invite you to have a 'chat' with Rodolphus Lestrange? Not funny at all.
• Moral Myopia:
  • Both sides to a degree, but the Death Eaters' dogma is deliberately this. People at the top are justified in any and everything they do to those beneath them, because the strong have an obligation to subjugate the weak and keep them in their place. Toward their equals, though, the rules of society apply.
• Muggle Foster Parents: Hermione. Bellatrix disapproves. Violently.
• Music for Courage:
  • Invoked: During the Siege of Castle Krum, the reinforcements sing so the people inside the Castle know they're coming and keep fighting. As it's a force of foreign aurors and schoolchildren everyone is singing something different.
• My God, What Have I Done?
  • Rita Skeeter realises that supporting the regime has led her to contribute to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, by writing misleading articles about the supposedly glorious war in Wales.
  • The Death Eaters collectively have a moment when Emmeline/Eugeniatells them that the children are likely to become Dark Lords in their own right unless their parents help them not to.
• Mysterious Parent:
  • Played with and invoked in-Universe by Anu Tamm, the bastard son of a shepherdess. Viktor 'suggests' that someone as brave as Anu is, due to his help with the November War can't possibly be a bastard, so officially his father is a high noble. Unofficially, the noble died years before he was conceived, and his actual father is exactly whom his mother always said it was: one of her rapists.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast
  • The Butcher of Britain, Lucius Malfoy.
  • His son, the Butcher's Boy
  • Bellatrix Lestrange, the Angel of Death
  • Rodolphus Lestrange, the Monster of Ministry Square
• Never Mess with Granny:
  • Aunt Cunegarde, who's pushing 120 at the moment.

Cunegarde: I was Slytherin House duelling champion my last five years. You young people, think you know everything.

• Nietzsche Wannabe:
  • The Dark Lord and his dogma. He explictly refers to a 'subhuman' class, and teaches his followers are essentially Ubermensche, which justifies whatever they do, and that the law of the jungle is the proper model for society.
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  • When Rodolphus isn't a Fluffy Tamer, he's this for Bellatrix. He finds watching her perform Dark magic extremely arousing, to the point that Hermione was conceived on a raid and the Lestranges are famous in Death Eater circles for giving into their urges at strange times.
  • Viktor is becoming this for Hermione. Her huge magical abilities turn him on, whereas most other characters are frightened when she does things like immolate seventy aurors.
• No Indoor Voice: Bellatrix. Rodolphus thinks it's cute.
• Noble Fugitive
  • Viktor, Hermione and Draco become this when they re-enter Bulgaria during the November War.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Sirius's attempts at ridding Spinner's End of garden gnomes.
  • What the wolves did to Anu Tamm's village. Draco reflects that it would be enough 'to teach a person to hate', but gives no concrete details.
  • What Lucius and Draco did to Lofstrom and Arbanas by the lake at Durmstrang. It never says, but Arbanas is too traumatised to discuss it even years later.
• No Periods, Period:
  • Averted. Hermione's first period is one of catalysts for her bonding with her mother.
  • Violently, squickily averted during the march through the Rhodopes. One of the things making Hermione miserable is that she's got her period, and the blood is freezing to her underwear in the cold.
• Not So Different:
  • Snape brutally deconstructs Sirius's Black and White Morality by listing, in detail, every atrocity he personality took part in or had knowledge of. And then every one he knows Sirius, as an Order member, either took part in or condoned, and ends by invoking this trope.
• Offscreen Villainy: Used for perfectly legitimate reasons.
• One of Us: Madea’s Rage is a troper and frequently mentions tropes and this website in her author’s notes.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Snape becomes this to Hermione(and the others, to a lesser extent), despite his best efforts. He manages to get the Dark Lord to send troops, if only a few thousand foreign volunteers, to Bulgaria to fight the wolves and teaches her how to defend herself in her new role.
  • Barty perceives himself as this, especially to Edric, and will attack anyone who tries to harm the others with incredible violence.
  • Lucius Malfoy, who scares the Swedes into giving them a fleet to break the siege of Castle Krum and save the kidssimply through force of reputation.
  • Rinky the house elf, to the extent that he sacrifices himself to save Hermione and Barty from Dementors, and uses his dying breath to demand Snape promise to guard his beloved Miss. Snape does it, to honour his courage and loyalty.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Hermione is intially led to believe her muggle parents either left or were kidnapped and killed by the Order. In actuality, the audience knows that Bellatrix and Rodolphus led a raid to torture and kill them. Hermione's abandoment issues are a serious plotpoint for a long time because of this.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Snape is an odd case, in that Hermione has two living parents, but sees him as a father-figure all the same. It's almost a tri-parenting situation, in that whilst Rodolphus is Father, Snape is Dad. He was the first 'safe' person Hermione meets, after Narcissa and she treats him like she did Cyril Granger, the muggle man who raised her with his wife.
  • Anu promotes Snape to being his father-figure after the events of December 1995. Partly because he desperately wants a father of his own and partly so Snape will marry his Nene, his mother,to make sure she won't be alone if Anu dies helping fight the war.
  • Barty sees himself as this to Edric. It becomes offical when Rabastan and Eugenia ask him to go into exile with their son and help raise him in their stead. There are also shades of this in his relationship with Draco.
  • Penko is this to Edric, as he is his formal guardian after the baby is sent as a hostage to Bulgaria. He and Rumen are also this to Viktor after Martin disengages mentally.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Hermione and Krum.
• Psycho for Hire:
  • The Snatchers are very deliberately psychos for hire, at least in the beginning. Rodolphus recruits infamous murderers, a Wizarding mafia assassin, and a serial killer in order to terrorise people. Those guys dressed as clowns? They're your universe's Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy, every one of them. And they're the police.
  • Averted with Scabior, and to a lesser extent Rice. Scabior does what he does because he's good at it, and because he wants enough money to buy a brothel and move up in the world.
  • Snape invokes this to Sirius, saying that every group needs an axe-man, and Dumbledore's use of Mad-Eye and the aurors is no better or worse than Rodolphus and his 'mad dogs'.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad:
  • The Snatchers become this later on as they gain characterisation, eventually becoming a combination of this trope and Psycho for Hire
• Racist Grandma:
  • Great great Aunt Cunegarde, who ranks the non-British members of the family by their 'smelliness' and calls them 'petty little boyars'.
• Red Baron:
  • Hermione Lestrange later lady Krum, the Unburnt,and the Lady of the Breech.
  • Viktor,lord Krum, Lord Protector of Bulgaria, the Young Alexander.
  • Draco Malfoy,called Drago Traitorsbane because he slew Stefan Borev, the traitor lord Borev
  • Anu Tamm, the One-Eye, or Anu Wolfhunter
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • Snape's whole MO. He tends to hide things in plain sight and simply rely on others to not see them, or to discount what they do see. Surely a member of the Inner Circle wouldn't:
  • Recruit the eleven year old daughter of Bellatrix Lestrange as a spy, and then groom her as his apprenctice?
  • Manipulate his country's most dangerous enemy into springing the members of the Order currently in Azkaban and then turn them into assistants?
  • Decide he wants a spy in Sofia and accomplish it by marrying one of those same assistants to a gay Death Eater who also happens to be Rabastan Lestrange?
  • Convince the Dark Lord to have Karkaroff replaced with a disguised Mad-Eye Moody?
  • Sirius is this in spades. He convinces a werewolf to follow him by punching him out, bluffs his way into briefly teaching DADA at Beauxbatons and manages to convince the Inner Circle he was on their side the whole time by not saying anything.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Nagini subverts this. Voldemort gives her a baby to hold and she has a disquieting habit of slithering into people’s beds while they’re sleeping. But Hetty turns out to be a parselmouth and we find out that Nagini is actually rather fond of them all. When she offers to eat you after you die, it's a sign of respect. And when she's squeezes you with her coils it's because she thinks you're adorable and she's trying to hug you. Seriously.
• Retcon:
  • In-Universe example: Lucius does this to explain the Lestrange's torture of the Longbottoms to Hermione. As he explains it, it was tough love to help them understand why the Order was bad, and the Lestranges meant to fix them after except the Order wouldn't permit it.
• Room 101:
  • Rodolphus's 'office' is a soundproofed chamber under the Ministry. No one has ever left it alive.
• Royal We: Voldemort starts using this.
• Sand in My Eyes

Bellatrix: Elf! Get me something to calm my eyes, they're inflamed.

• Shell-Shocked Veteran:
  • Most of the younger characters to one degree or another, but Draco Malfoy is the most obvious example. He has random crying jags, suffers terrible nightmares,is hyper-vigilant and can't sleep by himself anymore. He also has vivid flashbacks, and refuses to go anywhere unarmed.
• Shoot the Dog:
  • Snape does this a lot. Examples include:
    • Personally killing Dumbledore, because the alternative is letting Gyffindor Tower be burnt to the ground with the children inside.
    • Arranging a number of marriages between couples where one of the partners is, at best, a dangerous fanatic, and at worst a murderous lunatic because the alternative is even worse.
    • Deliberately using a child as bait for a paedophile.
  • Hermione encourages Viktor to (nonfatally) poison two people to remove them as threats, and suggesting that making one of them seem mad and then confining them a hospital would be preferable to killing them.
  • Draco raising an army of schoolchildren, knowing many of them will die.
  • Viktor's agreeing to geass the wolves to himself personally, essentially making himself and his wife warlords.
• Shout-Out: There are a lot of Shout Outs to A Song of Ice and Fire but other works are mentioned.
• Sketchy Successor: Stefan Borev, especially given as he almost certainly killed his uncle to assume his title
• Soft-Spoken Sadist:
  • Rodolphus is this trope incarnate. He's affectionate, loves to tease and joke, and is the best torturer in Europe. He's like Ward Clever if Ward Clever had a side-line involving red hot pinchers.
• Slasher Smile:
  • Snape's finds out that Peter is still alive. Cool. Snape finds out that Peter betrayed the Potters and is responsible for Lily's death. Snape starts smiling and contemplating killing Peter when he stops being useful.
• Spoiled Sweet:
  • Hermione, to a degree. She is genuinely shocked and appalled when she finds out Alise couldn't go to Durmstrang because she's muggleborn, offers to make clothes for her elf (he doesn't get offended because he knows she doesn't get it), and excitedly spins wool, showing off the calluses and chipped nails she gets from it.
    • Played With, in that she is spoiled by her biological parents but was given good principles by her muggle parents.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Hermione becomes a Type One due to her fears of being abandoned. Deconstructed, in that the people about her knows she's this and worry about her constantly because of it. Her slowly growing willingness to permit her Wizarding family to see her less than totally cheerful and smiling is a major point of character development, as she comes to believe that they love her and won't abandon her.
• Invisible to Gaydar:
  • Rabastan Lestrange is this. He's a feared warrior with zero interest in anything even slightly sterotypical, dresses terribly and happens to like men. Justified, in that the sexual politics of the Wizarding world are very different.
• Tell Me About My Father:
  • Well, more like 'Tell me about my father figure's mother. Since Hermione has promoted Snape to Dad she wants to hear about his mother. He obliges her, showing that he returns her affection and has come to see her as a surrogate child.
• Teenage Wasteland:
  • Type three. There are adults, but the Lord Protector and Vicereine prefer to be surrounded by people they know personally and trust, most of whom are friends from school. Aside from the Minister of Magic and Lord Paramount of the Conclave, pretty much literally every other named position is filled by someone under twenty. Visitors find it incredibly creepy.
• The Sociopath:
  • Averted by the main characters, all of whom are capable of empathy, but express it in ways indicative of the Blue and Orange Morality of their culture.
  • Played straight by Stefan Borev. He decides to sell a castle full of women and children to werewolves who want to kill them. Why? They insulted him by throwing him out because he used his sister's funeral rites as cover to steal from another guest, assaulted a brain-damaged war veteran, and then insulted his nephew's inlaws. He's a Truth in Television type sociopath, meaning that whilst he can be outwardly charming, his own lack of foresight undoes him, and people tend to sense something 'off' about him unless he's actively trying to charm them.
• The Unfettered:
  • Snape will sacrifice anyone and do whatever it takes to save Britain from the Death Eaters. Later, he becomes this about his surrogate daughter, Hermione, to the point where he willingly betrays comrades and has people killed to meet his goal.
  • Bellatrix will do anything to protect the people she loves, especially Hermione. Anything.
• They Knew the Risks:
  • This is how Snape snaps Draco out of his Heroic BSOD moment in Skopje. He asks whether Draco was truthful about what the fighting would be like, and when he says he was, this trope is Snape's response.
• Torture Technician:
  • Rodolphus. He's a very competent warrior but his real genius is extracting information this way.
• Took a Level in Badass: Draco gets lessons from Mad Eye Moody. Hermione gets duelling lessons from Bellatrix Lestrange and Magnificent Bitch lessons from Snape. Draco goes from the moany little whinge bag of Canon to undisputed Badass and Hermione goes from frightened eleven year old to cunning Lady of War. Both of them are somewhat miserable though.
• Training from Hell:
  • Cunegarde's training of Hermione is this emotionally. She's insanely brutal, even deliberately cruel, but it's to make sure Hermione can handle whatever happens without batting an eyelash.
  • Averted in the case of Feathering/ Mad-Eye's training of Viktor and Draco. It's tough but not unreasonable.
  • Also averted by Bellatrix and Rodolphus, who make no bones about expecting the best from Hermione academically and magically, but prefer to use praise and approval to encourage her to excel.
• Villain Protagonist: The Lestranges and the Malfoys are the main characters. Go figure.
• War Is Glorious:
  • Brutally, hideously deconstructed by Rita Skeeter. She writes a series of editorials praising the war in Wales, and then ends up spending the night in a field hospital, tending dying trainee-aurors.
  • Desmond Feathering/Mad Eye Moody invokes this, ordering Viktor and Draco to make sure the students under their charge understand this isn't true.
• War Is Hell:
  • Played straight. The battles are bloody and terrible, with body parts everywhere and dying people screaming for their mothers. The fighters often suffer serious mental scars afterwards.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • The Order of the Phoenix. Snape outright states that they were the ones deliberately escalating the conflict, and gives examples, such as Barty Crouch Sr's edict that aurors leave their wounded comrades to give chase to enemy combatants, even if the enemy was in flight and the aurors were dying.
• Wham! Line:
  • 'My lord, Bulgaria has gone dark.'
  • 'Take her away, Lucius, we never could abide the snivelling of women.'
  • 'Unless your lordship prefers we should proclaim something else. We could proclaim a tsar'.
  • This is a Wham! Line mainly because of who says it.

Bellatrix: I'm not that person anymore. Snape: Good. Your role is to pretend that you are still she. And when the time is right... Bellatrix: We will kill Him. Snape: Yes.

• • This.

/the female doesnt fear nagini good good/ /nagini would not hurt hetty/

• Worthy Opponent:
  • Pavel regards Viktor and Hermione as this, having great respect for their determination and courage.
  • Viktor and his wife regard Nicolae Pavel as this, as he acts honourably toward them and seems to be trying to minimise causalities.
  • In a comedic example, Snape regards both Bellatrix and Sirius as this, frequently taking great pleasure in tormenting them.
• Yandere: Bellatrix for Voldemort. At least until the end of Part One.