i. Tathève Simonyan / ii. Jonathan Rosenbaum / iii. Euripides / iv. Succession / v. Louise Glück / vi. The Front Bottoms

Here's a question: Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?

Is it because of its scaly skin? Because of the sharp, poisonous teeth bared from its mouth? Because of its fathomless eyes that scream hunger for your flesh, your blood, your bones? Or is it because it looks at you like it hasn't been fed in weeks, months, years, and you will be its next meal? Does it scare you? Does it make you cower behind your mother or father, searching for safety that is fickle, even if they don't see it there? Does it make you feel fear course through your veins, sending you into a state of fight-or-flight, and you freeze instead?

Why is it a monster?

Is it because it reminds you of what you're afraid of? Of the man with red eyes and pale skin? The man cloaked in black and blood, with a reptile weaving in and out of his legs who haunted your life from the moment you were born. How you see him haunting your nightmares every night, screaming at you wordlessly, but you can still hear the words: You will die. When the day comes, I will find you and kill you and you will fail. You worthless half-blood! You will die! Is it because you still remember what he did? How he slaughtered countless innocents before you and stripped you of everything that made you. How he ruined your life with two words. How you can still hear his laugh to this day.

Why is it a monster, and he is not?

Here's the truth: he is. Everyone knows it. They are both monsters, and you know that, but you are far more scared to admit a human, or someone who is at least somewhat human, with flesh and bones and blood, could be that horrible. It goes against your nature not to see the good in people. They are both monsters, but you were never the child who was afraid of the monsters hiding in your closet; you were the one who comforted your sibling and scared them away.

You were never afraid once upon a time, and now all you feel is fear when you turn your back. Is that okay?

The real question is: Am I a monster?

Willow Potter wonders that every day. She sees herself in mirrors; sees the faded lightning bolt on her neck, raised white scar standing stark out against the soft tanned porcelain skin; sees the haunted look in her eyes, and the bloodthirst and the rage and the pain. When she is asked to draw a monster, why does she draw herself? Is it because she is human? Because she cast too many Unforgivables that she doesn't even remember anymore? Because when the person she wanted to watch suffer the most managed to live and those she loved died? Because she saved herself when no one else could?

Because half of her soul is gone, and the rest is blackened and dead?

She feels guilt when she recalls upon that day, and all the days before it. She did what she needed to survive; she knows this. But why does she feel like she did something so wrong in order to live? (Because she is human. Humans with souls feel remorse, but those who are not truly human and resemble the demons they hunt more than those who hunt them are not.) She feels shame when she sees herself, because she knows she is scarred just as he was and will never be anything but scarred (and scared, her subconscious whispers.)

Willow Potter is like her father's family before her: she is full of bitter rage, and prideful, and sees the bad in herself before she sees the good. There is self-hatred within her, simmering beside the guilt, and she resorts to the only way she can let herself feel: she rages and destroys. Her anger grows like weeds in a garden, sprouting faster and faster in a small amount of time.

You can see it in how she takes to the makeshift infirmary, working herself to death in order to prevent someone from dying, with nothing but sheer will and rage lacing her actions; when someone dies, wishing it was her. You can see it when she is tasked with taking down a Death Eater, using her abilities to both the best and the worst of her. Blood splatters across her skin, fresh cuts and lingered curses littering her bare skin, and even if she feels it as she is supposed to, she does not feel it until she comes down from the red-hot rage glaze. Willow is angry and none of the self-hatred leaves her, no matter how angry she becomes in order to release it.

But she was not always this angry. She is Harry's sister. (Or, at least, she was.) He loved her when she didn't, loving her in a way that only a brother could, a way that only someone who was the last person alive beside you could; he saved her life, and she saved his, and that was enough. Harry loved her and he was her brother and he died for her. She is good beneath the emotions that war inside of her.

Yet there is a deep rage simmering inside of her. It's the product of hatred; of self-hatred and guilt; of fear and shame. There is her father's rage inside of her, her grandfather's, and his fathers and brothers and so on and so forth, and it simmers. The people born into the Potter line have always been filled with more bitter vengefulness and rage than any other, but hers has been strengthened by the grit taken to survive from persecution. Every day, she keeps it inside and lets it out when she is alone in small increments, but one day . . . one day she will let it grow and let it seep out of her into the world.

And her formerly simmering rage would no longer be simmering anymore. And when it is gone, it will explode.

Back to the question: Draw a monster? Why is it a monster? Why is it you? Why is it the man you who haunts your dreams at night, with the pale skin and the blood red eyes? Why is it the boy with the silver eyes and soft hair, who rarely hands out smiles and when he does, it feels like a knife to the heart? When is it not a monster?

(Oh, when you love it.)

Alicia Josipovic. WILLOW POTTER.

𓃥 HI! so i've recently been in a very dark mood and i honestly wanted to bring out those feelings and write them into a character that can definitely understand the dark feelings that i'm dealing w right now! so here's willow!! for those of you who remember, willow is my potter oc from over the summer, and she's def one of my favorite characters ever!

𓃥 also it's actually fall now in texas so i can write more harry potter bc it fits the mood. its 73 and raining so i'm happy. but anyways, willow is definitely one of my most traumatized characters. i mean, as harry's sister, that's a given, but in the og version, she was just a SA victim who coped unhealthily with sex and tried to deal with her emotions in ways that were unproductive. in this version, simply because i've been reading way too many voldemort wins aus, willow is quite literally a fucking mess. harry is dead, and so is a lot of the order, so whatever is left is whats keeping her going. she's very revenge motivated and quite literally everything that harry saw to be bad personified. willow has little to no morals left but is willing to do whatever she can to protect those she loves. definitely a shiv roy, rhaenyra targaryen, cat adams hybrid. she's literally one of the craziest bitches in the order. but we love her.

𓃥 but this is very dark, it's sexy, it's sad, it's everything that i want willow to be. she's got horrible survivor's guilt and ptsd, and so she's a very unreliable narrator. she sees things the way she feels is best, not in a good or bad light, just in the way that someone so accustomed to being a pig raised to slaughter would see them. her brother was killed, and he died in her place (more on that bc that'll be FUN), and she feels that it's her fault that she didn't die instead, so willow is suffering and angry and grieving and vengeful and she only wants to have harry back. all she wants is a happy ending.

𓃥 so, in other words, there's some crappy shit in here. this isn't a post-war fic where people live happily ever after, no, this is a fic where voldemort won the battle of hogwarts and the second wizarding war. most of the magical world is either dead, dying, or under his rule because of it. the order isn't good, but they're better than the death eaters, because they aren't trying to seek world domination. there are some aspects that should be covered in most fics of harry potter fics, such as the survivor's guilt, ptsd, depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome, etc. she's harry potter's sister, so she's bound to suffer.

𓃥 therefore, trigger warnings: descriptions of graphic violence and murder, death of major and minor characters, war, gore, addiction, smoking and drinking, heavy profanity, various mental health problems, sexism, homophobia, racism, classicism, genocide, depictions of depression, anxiety, ptsd, and imposter syndrome, mentions of incestuous practices, pregnancy, abuse (child, verbal, physical, sexual, mental), sexual assault/rape, and lord voldemort

𓃥 dedications: maenadscult lannisports cainflu loversrocks lotusqueens vulpines bIoodforbIood salemology