Author's Note: I consider Jo Rowling to be a revisionist writer. However, this is coupled with a vehement hatred of her readers and their ideas for many unexplained aspects of her universe, to the point that she changes things on a whim, and almost always to the detriment of the fandom, like creating, somewhat randomly Fleamont Potter as Harry's grandfather.
This was despite, within her own narrative, having a scene where Harry notices Charlus Potter, and Sirius assuring him that he was descended from that Potter. She then turned around, after the fandom embraced this with Harry being Lord Potter-Black, and created Fleamont. Suddenly, Harry's 'trust vault' was just the money left over from Fleamont stupidly selling his stake in, I kid you not, hair care products, and he was never a Lord of anything.
What this did was both put the Black legacy firmly in the laps of Narcissa and Bellatrix, since Sirius wasn't even Lord Black in the first place, Jo Rowling having declared he was stripped of the title, and stripped Harry himself of any peerage, with the magical peers list reading like a who's-who of dark wizarding families instead, and Godric's Hollow became, more than likely, the Potter family home.
However, that is not what this story is concerning, even if it has become one of two polarizing topics in recent Harry Potter discussions. This is about her almost Victorian rhetoric that 'Every magical community owes it's magical heritage to the United Kingdom!'. As an example, the Far East, who has a heady history of mystics and legendary figures who can perform miraculous feats, and invented franchises like the Mahou Shoujo franchise…
Apparently, according to Jo, first discovered magic because of cultural exchanges with the British Ministry, and the spiritual side of Japan isn't magical in the slightest, and the only known magical school in America was founded by a British immigrant. Let's ignore the natives with their shamans, they're just fake magic. That is important, but not the major subject.
This story covers something else, namely two incidents with Hermione in the second book, the first being her petrification, which was part of the narrative of the book in general, and the other being an earlier incident where she was turned into a catgirl in a potions accident, which effectively 'put her on a bus', and meant the investigation went at a glacially slow pace, with her being cured magically, pun intended, of her petrification only after the entire affair was barely solved outside of a series of deus-ex-machina.
This is due to a common problem with Jo Rowling's writing style is that nothing seems to come together at all until the final act, and any attempt to mitigate or help the situation is doomed to fail, and often something happens that makes the situation that bit more dire, with only the first two books ending on a hopeful note, and the easy solutions are destroyed, lost or otherwise useless because of how the clues are handled, and the final solutions almost always are done in a way which makes every victory bittersweet.
This story takes the catgirl transfiguration accident and worsens it, making it inherently incurable, in exchange for the immediate problem being solved much easier, but, as a trade-off, also allowing some of the antagonists of later volumes to play their hand much earlier, which means some of the things that happen in later books will happen earlier, and much more effectively, but other problems, that cannot be solved as easily, will take their place.
Harry Potter And The Catgirls Of Gryffindor: A Year 2 And Onwards Alternate Universe Story
Chamber Of Secrets Chapter 1: All I Want For Christmas...
Around the world, Christmas is seen as a time for celebration, for opening presents with family and friends, and having nice things both as gifts and as things to eat. However, for Luna Lovegood, She no longer bore witness to that version of Christmas, and had only seen disaster, crisis and bad tidings. The beginning of her loss of the traditional vision of Christmas came when, as she was lamenting that Ginny and her family had made other plans for that year, Her mother was in a terrible accident, that caused Luna to, on Christmas Day, be stood in a graveyard, her presents forgotten and unopened.
Over the following years, Christmas was forgotten, her father not able to be back in time, and the Weasleys seemed to have largely forgotten the Lovegoods, having not even attended the funeral out of respect. All of that made her feel that there was no happy time for Luna Lovegood, no magical end-of-year celebration. She'd spent too many years sat on her own, as her father settled down to the Quibbler. She liked to pretend he invited her on his expeditions, that the old Xeno Lovegood still existed, but even she knew that was one of the white lies she had become comfortable telling. He'd not left England in several years, and worked late at the Quibbler in reality.
When she arrived at Hogwarts, though, she was hoping to gain new friends and companionship, but that wasn't to be, being the daughter of some eccentric explorer who hadn't found anything concrete in years, and several publications had called senile, his self-published magazine only making him worse in their eyes. So, While she was sorted into Ravenclaw, as far as the House was concerned, she didn't belong there, she had never belonged there and they made sure that she knew it.
As soon as she was out of sight of the teachers, who offered warm words and empty platitudes, she was bullied, called names and stigmatized by every level of her House, and even members of other houses who accepted the not-so-discreet alienation as part and parcel of school life. Her last hope was the School Rules, normally a sanctuary of safety and protection for the common student, and she'd reported it to Professor Flitwick, even making sure to be concise with her report about what was happening to her in Ravenclaw.
She might as well have just basically submitted a few lines saying that she was being bullied and for him to look into it. Sure, the report was given, and the Prefects were informed, but she wasn't to know that one of the Prefects had already been informed. They laughed off her report, claiming something even worse. That she'd lied about the whole thing. That it was part of a campaign of abuse by her towards girls whose families had found fault in something that her father had printed, and that she was using them as proxies for an abuse campaign.
There was far too much bad press about the Quibbler for Flitwick to discount what the Prefect had told him, and he told them they'd investigate what was going on at the following mealtime. What he never found out was that an exchange was done, in that Luna's things were temporarily returned just before dinner that day, and several items were handed to the Prefect, who left them in logical, but easily found locations within her belongings, with backdated reports about them disappearing that had been handled 'internally'...
So, when she went to Flitwick's office after dinner, she found the girls she'd rightfully accused looking smug, with only her trunk being in his office, and she watched as he looked through it, and, almost pantomime-level acting had them telling him that various items were theirs. It was almost painful to watch the Prefect pretend to look hard through the trunk, pulling out each item they'd placed with great care and maximum impact within the trunk, along with a sheaf of papers that backed up the abuse campaign story. They were getting really good at faking her and her father's handwriting.
"I already checked their trunks, and found none of the items you mentioned in them. A quick cursory check showed that the items you claimed were lost had been hidden in a poorly hidden alcove, to make sure that, if I'd checked your trunk first, I would find your story seemed to ring true..." He told her, in a tone that reminded her of the goblins of Gringotts, "Now, I do not know what problem you have with these students, but if you continue to set them up in such a shallow and callous way, I will be forced to go through with measures which I won't like… You wouldn't want to be expelled before you've even finished a year, would you?"
When she checked over her trunk later, a piece of parchment had been stuck to the inside of the lid, explaining that 'Some parchment was spilt on after the writing supplies were accidentally damaged. Replacements for the latter was supplied, but we do wish to state that work may have been lost due to the extent of the spillage', for her to find her homework for the following lessons was gone, erased, telling her that it was her punishment for ratting out the girls, as she was forced to desperately rewrite those assignments, and failed miserably.
She lost even more points due to failing to provide her homework, with Flitwick's expression becoming more and more soured towards her. She had to note that her Charms homework hadn't even been touched, despite having it the following morning. The breakthrough that changed it all was when she put a simple, but effective, burglary charm on her trunk, with a nice long sheet of parchment filed with Flitwick about her wanting to repent for bringing the house into disrepute. She hadn't expected to find Flitwick discovering a just 'stolen' item, oddly without a Prefect or report to him as a legal backup, that had ended up flung under the bed.
Even worse, One of the Ravenclaw house elves reported to him that they'd cleaned under every bed only ten minutes before, and all students had supposedly left the common room already to go to the Great Hall, and he'd seen Luna at lunch, but not the student who had met with him, meaning she was not where she should have been. As he was about to report it, in one last spiteful act, her trunk outright vanished, Flitwick musing that charms on opening a trunk don't work when you steal the entire thing, before he called them into his office...
"Where is it?" He'd snapped.
"Where's what?" They'd asked.
"Recently, I had been discussing with McGonagall about how Ms. Lovegood here was a dreadful student, her homework incomplete and seemingly done at the last minute, and engaging in spiteful bullying. She'd agreed with me on a last chance for Ms. Lovegood, and if it had failed, she would have been expelled by now..." Flitwick stated.
"So, What's that got to do with us?" The students who had fingered her before asked.
"Amazing how, shortly after I find there to be something… odd about the fact her abysmal points loss came straight after the harsh telling off that I gave Luna recently, and that, when she put a charm on her trunk, which she showed to me, and I happily became the one alerted..." He began.
"Why would the thief alarm her own trunk?" One of them asked, for him to notice she was wringing her hands. She knew that she'd figured out they'd continue trapping her with the same offence until she figured it out.
"She was planning on having me work on a similar thing with your trunks later, as part of a peace offering, and a way to earn back her reputation..." Flitwick had claimed, "Anyway, I come to find that someone attempted to put something INTO Luna's trunk, and was likely about to claim that Luna had stole from her again, which would indeed have got her expelled, when she was startled by the burglary charm and dropped it under her bed..."
"You idiot..." Luna had heard their tame Prefect hiss, "We had her dead to rights..."
"Anyway, Shortly after that, Luna's trunk disappears..." He finished.
"She'll never find it in time." One of them proudly stated, to get suspended on the spot.
They'd managed to find it, among a set of old school trunks the house elves were breaking up as part of a cleaning job. They'd managed to identify it only in time for the contents to be recovered, thankful that they were breaking them up instead of destroying them, this time including her undamaged homework, as well as several items she couldn't bear to lose.
Later, she heard Flitwick had also deducted some extra points from the Prefect for 'misuse of school policy', when Luna found her points loss for the lost homework disappeared. Apparently, Luna's 'ruined' homework was found hidden in a box in their trunk, Flitwick suspecting they planned to put the box in her trunk when it was broken up, hiding any proof she'd ever done those assignments. With the assignments now properly submitted to the teachers, her points loss reversed, and she no longer was at risk of expulsion.
Flitwick had guessed they'd put the message on her trunk, then hid the homework because they'd been very careful when searching in reality, and the writing materials hadn't even been jostled, so they couldn't enact the real policy without proving to Flitwick that one of her ink bottles had been damaged, and showing him the fact. It also explained why the Charms homework hadn't been touched. He would have verified it on the spot, maybe even done an Accio on her homework just to check a sodden piece of parchment came to him.
While Flitwick was now more on her side than before, and had even dismissed the Prefect who had colluded with them, the Punishments she got from her housemates got worse and worse, and more esoteric with how they did them. She was right now 'celebrating' Christmas in the infirmary, after a largely unknown variant of the leg-locker curse had sent her slipping off the edge of one of the moving staircases, luckily not falling far enough that even magic couldn't save her. The student who caused it was likely incredibly annoyed about that little known feature of the moving stairs.
She mentally was making up the existence of a creature that hid at the edge of unprotected ledges, waiting to pull unsuspecting people to their quick demise. But even she knew that it was a lie, designed to cover up that even reporting the bullying only meant the bullies punished her for being honest. But what she didn't know was that her salvation was coming, and it had nothing to do with her near-fatal accident, which had actually got the instigators nearly expelled, but the fact that Harry and Ron came in with a crying Hermione, and began talking to Madame Pomfrey.
Luna promptly bore witness to one of the poorest excuses possible, which, surprisingly, was also the most believable one due to, of all things, a car accident on school grounds. She didn't want, or need to, know WHY there had been a car on school grounds. All she knew was that she heard something collide with the Whomping Willow, and the fact it was Harry and Ron crashing a car had been part of the Hogwarts rumour mill for the following week. Later it was explained to be Ron's father's car, and he'd almost lost his job due to the fact it had been very poorly enchanted.
"I was doing some transfiguration revision..." Ron had said, for Harry to finish with, "Something went wrong, and..."
Luna wasn't stupid as she looked at the crying cat-girl. She knew it was polyjuice, not a spell. She'd even decided she would send a message to one of her father's more reliable contacts once she was out of here, just to make sure. However, she could tell they were lying. How they'd managed to make the potion in question she didn't want to know, since it was heavily regulated. But it was that fact which was the very reason, more than likely, they WERE lying. Otherwise, Snape would use it as an excuse to send the Gryffindor points into negative levels.
He'd probably follow it up by expelling all involved, and then the Ministry would get involved and… that was part of why she needed to get into contact with her, urgently. She didn't notice her thoughts about her bullying were falling by the wayside already, as her journeyman knowledge of magizoology actually, for once, became useful.
"Let me guess? Your wand?" Poppy offered, Ron nodding, before she sighed, "Why you haven't got that thing replaced is beyond me… You could have killed her rather than… THIS."
"With my dad's fines for what I did when I arrived, Mum told me that spellotape would be enough. She can't afford to replace it right now..." Ron sighed, Luna able to tell he wasn't lying there, only for him to use another white lie, "Course, She didn't expect me to be trying to transfigure a block of wood and end up with totally the wrong spell and it hitting Hermione to boot!… She wasn't even in that part of the room!"
"You don't have to say anything more… I'll handle it..." Poppy offered, Luna counting to five, before she heard the sighed 'Hopefully'. She was used to that line. Flitwick had used that exact turn of phrase before, shortly before something else went wrong for her. Except, unlike Flitwick, she knew Madame Pomfrey was literally clutching at straws. She didn't know where to start. Poppy proved her theory right when, rather than casting the charms needed to check what it had previously cast, she simply vanished it.
"Sampling of spells used by wand was inconclusive, damage was practically terminal..." Poppy then dictated as she wrote her 'findings', and Luna, again, had been proven right, as usual, about the truth about the world. People lied to themselves, to each other, all the time, making everything seem like there was no problems, like what had happened to her. She already knew what she would be doing that evening. A letter to her father's friend to help Hermione, since she knew what would be happening once the Ministry heard about what had happened.
She'd follow it up with a letter to her father telling him she'd be home in a few days. She'd been lying to herself, personally, about that Hogwarts would get any better for her. She'd begun disguising some of the acts by the girls who had used house unity. and Flitwick's problems with being a full-time teacher as well, as outright fictional creatures. She curled up into a ball, mentally preparing for when she told Flitwick she was dropping out of Hogwarts...
"What's wrong?" She heard, looking up in confusion. That's not how it went. She was the one who'd help Hermione, and…
Now she was seeing Hermione get up from her bed and approach her. What had changed? Why was she suddenly getting noticed in a way that didn't fit how it usually happened? What was going to go wrong now?
Hermione wasn't sure what to make of the frail-looking girl who was sat in the bed next to her, her eyes red with tears. She knew the look, she'd had it before, her parents having to come to school to avoid having her drop out due to bullying. She looked, to see no-one had come in, and Poppy didn't seem to be expecting anyone to do so. Something was wrong with how Hermione knew it went. There wasn't any parents waiting in the wings, with a teacher explaining the problem. She knew that this girl wouldn't be in Hogwarts tomorrow unless she talked her out of it.
"What's wrong?" She asked, the girl uncurling, looking confused, and looking even more confused when Hermione moved to her side.
"Something went wrong with my feet when I was going down the stairs. I think something tripped me up, probably was fiddling with my laces..." The girl offered. Hermione's eyes flicked a few times as she ticked off mentally the tells. She wasn't even convincingly lying. Hermione's choice was made as she motioned to the bed.
"Mind if I sit here?" She asked, waiting for the girl to get up haltingly, before, in a flash of inspiration, she stated, "Now, let me see..."
The girl was light, but not to the level that she'd consider it to be due to abuse, as Hermione pulled her into a backwards hug in her lap.
"Yes, this is much better..." Hermione offered, "You look like you need a good cuddle with something warm and comfortable, then, in the morning, an ear willing to listen..."
Luna was about to protest when she began to yawn. Maybe Hermione had a point about how warm and cosy this was. She'd just get a few... minutes… Snore...
When Poppy came back later, she didn't even care about that Hermione had changed her bed, just pulling up the curtain round Luna's former bed as both girls slept soundly. Somehow, she knew that the worst part of the bullying problem was over. She doubted Luna was ever going to return to Ravenclaw. Hermione, inexplicably, wouldn't allow it...