The Rigel Black Chronicles / Tropes A to D

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#-A

• 11th-Hour Superpower: After months of fruitless work, Harry is trapped (due to the reveal of "Rigel's" blood status) and her desperation to get away finally enables her to shift into her Animagus form and fly away.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Herbert Flint is a danger to his wife and son; Harry eventually helps them to hide from him.
  • There's no direct evidence of physical abuse in the Lestrange household, but plenty of signs of emotional abuse and neglect, from the fact that Caelum's parents have no plans to attend the open house where he'll present the results of his internship, to the way that Bellatrix congratulates "Rigel" on finding a way to make Caelum immediately walk away and wishes she knew how to do the same. And, of course, in canon she was a complete psychopath who revelled in causing pain.
• Accidental Hero: Some of Harry's actions in the Chamber of Secrets are genuinely heroic, but she really doesn't like the fact that people fuss about her slaying the basilisk. Voldemort commanded it to kill itself, and it did; she didn't have anything to do with that part, and in fact considered its death to be horribly cruel.
• The Ace: Leo is smart, handsome, physically fit, the best duelist in the Lower Alleys, and competent enough at brewing to be a useful assistant to Harry. Largely justified, though, because the reason he first noticed her was his position as king of the alleys, and that crown is won by beating all comers at free-dueling; if he hadn't had those talents, they wouldn't have met. And his potions talent is a result of his father being the Potions Guild aldermaster; he doesn't have the passion for it, just workmanlike skill.
• Achilles' Heel: After the World Cup fiasco, where patrons were trapped inside the anti-apparition wards until an expert could be called in, Blaise Zabini is commissioned to design wards that are nigh-impenetrable from the outside but deliberately easy for a single caster to take down from the inside. Naturally, they're later used against Harry.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Not quite immunity in the sense of being unaffected, but Harry deliberately exposes herself to various poisons, under Professor Snape's supervision, so that she can practise flushing them from her system and healing herself — including dealing with their effects after first allowing them to progress. She develops enough skill to win the Fifth Task despite having been given a hallucinogen dose calibrated for an older and larger recipient.
• Action Girl:
  • Antiope comes from a girls-only school that emphasises combat skills and teaches free-dueling. She gets permission from the judges to use a sword alongside her wand in the Triwizard Tournament, and wins her first duel without casting a single spell.
  • Harry is initially very much a scholar, but gets serious about self-defence after seeing a vicious gang fight in the Lower Alleys, motivating her to get training from Remus and then from Leo. By the time she starts her fourth year of school, she's a force to be reckoned with, dominating the Duelling Club and going on to win the Triwizard duelling task.
• Actually Pretty Funny: The Samhain flowers are an aggravation for Harry, but her friends have a good laugh. She can see the humour in it eventually, but she still plots revenge on the Weasley twins.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Harry gets along differently (usually better) with several characters, but perhaps the most notable is Professor Snape, whose personality is largely similar to canon, but who is impressed by her talent and passion for his subject. He has a hard time believing that he's taken on Sirius Black's son as a protegé (and he wouldn't be any happier if he knew she's actually James Potter's daughter), but she's just too good for him to ignore.
  The trouble was that Severus Snape had shown sympathy and even kindness for someone who was not just a student, not just a Slytherin, but a Black. A Black. He hated the Blacks. Hated the whole, diseased family. Sirius Black was a name etched with hate on Severus' every schoolyard memory, and to behave in such a way toward his son—to show kindness and go out of his way to avoid hurting the child—such a thing even Albus would have considered beyond him. Yet so it was.
• Adaptational Villainy: As a result of the Marauders surviving, the Jordan family has been pushed out of the joke market, leading Lee Jordan to want both revenge and a chance to ensure "Rigel" can't follow in their footsteps. He later throws in his lot with the Voldemort construct.
• Adults Are Useless: Downplayed. Harry values the support of a number of adults, but when push comes to shove, they're normally more helping with the cleanup than actually solving the crisis.
  • Professor Snape destroys the sleeping plague from students' minds, but only after Harry finds a way to get him inside.
  • All the teachers together can only get into the Chamber of Secrets once Ginny opens the door for them, although their help is then vital. Especially Fawkes' tears.
  • Adult help is crucial in rescuing Harry from Peter Pettigrew's prison, but only after Harry has already removed the threat. Her magic defeated Peter and she saw the Dominion Jewel kill him for his failure.
• Affair? Blame the Bastard: Daphne Greengrass tearfully protests this, that she's being punished for her parents' infidelity, when she's revealed to be a half-blood and expelled from Hogwarts. She had no idea until her ancestry potion showed her true father.
• Afraid of Their Own Strength:
  • Harry's early incidents of accidental magic tended toward the destructive side, which made her fear and try to suppress them, which meant that further incidents leaned even more toward "rare, but powerful and dangerous." By the time she went to purchase a wand, she could barely get a non-violent reaction out of any of them. Eventually she learns that it first started when she accidentally erased her cousin's memory out of fear of getting in trouble, and she herself had repressed that memory.^note The Archive of Our Own rewrite plays this up, highlighting Harry's awareness of the leashed power inside her and her fear to let any of it out.
  • Lily had it even worse, and now wears a power-suppressing bracelet full-time (engraved "Harriet" as a reminder), ever since she selfishly wished that newborn Harry looked a little more like her — and, to her horror, her magic permanently turned Harry's eyes green like hers.
• Allohistorical Allusion: The story is packed with references to canon events, some overt and some subtle.
  • Not at Halloween, but when Archie and Hermione are stealing Polyjuice Potion. "TRROOOLLL IN THE BASEMENT! <beat> Thought you ought to know."
  • When helping Harry to learn better magical control through visualisation, Draco tells her that, "Look, just because it's in your mind doesn't mean it's not real."^note In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry's vision of Dumbledore talking to him explained their conversation this way.
  • In canon, Hermione illegally brewed Polyjuice potion, in an unused bathroom stall, from stolen ingredients, in second year, in order to infiltrate the Slytherin dorms. Here, Hermione steals completed Polyjuice in first year to help Harry protect her infiltration of Slytherin. Harry later illegally brews it in second year.
  • Archie later tells Harry that he had to talk Hermione out of brewing Potentialis Potion in an unused bathroom stall.
  • Draco finds the very idea of being petrified by a first-year student so ridiculous that he tells Pansy and "Rigel", if it happens, to instead tell his parents that he was mauled by a hippogriff.
    Pansy: Mauled by a what? Draco, where do you come up with these things?
  • When Harry's friends hear that Remus Lupin will be teaching at Hogwarts, Draco remarks that Dumbledore's control extends so far that he could hire an escaped Azkaban criminal if he wanted.
    Millicent: Well if anyone ever actually escapes from Azkaban, we'll know where to find them.
  • When Sirius jokes about how Harry isn't allowed to be comfortable schmoozing with politicians at Riddle's gala, Harry replies, "I'll just stand in a corner, make no noise, and pretend not to exist."
  • Sirius asserts that no one has ever escaped Azkaban, and Archie offers to use his animagus form to slip between the bars.
  • The third message left by the Diary ends with "You Know Who To Blame" — even though, in this timeline, the "You-Know-Who" moniker never arose.
• Amplifier Artifact: Leo's crystal knife strengthens his spells when his wand is inside it (as well as protecting his wand from damage). He only uses it when he's in a serious fight for high stakes, though.
• Analogy Backfire: Adrian Pucey tries to argue that non-purebloods should be kept at a distance like weeds being kept from contaminating a garden. Rigel and Hermione point out that cross-breeding tame and wild plants is actually very useful, and that many of the plants found in gardens are pretty but poisonous.
  Rigel: Then there are those 'garden plants' that, if grown unchecked, can strangle the garden entirely despite 'belonging' there. No, Pucey, I don't think this is what you're trying to say at all.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Lampshaded by Harry after reaching the midpoint of the first Triwizard Task (and mostly intended as a Take That! to Riddle).
  Rigel: All this way for a fancy ribbon.
• Anger Montage:
  • Lord Riddle is not happy about what the Diary construct did and said after it left his supervision. Harry's first clue is an explosion from inside the room, followed by angry Parseltongue, and then more furniture breaking. When she finally comes inside, she's treated to the sight of him torturing a bookcase to death, not just burning it but making it twist and writhe in the flames before exploding, and she's unable to have a seat as there are no surviving chairs — although Riddle is skilled enough to quickly recreate them.
  • Harry does somewhat understand the appeal, when she needs to vent about Caelum Lestrange.
    Harry: Can you just burn that, please? I need some visceral satisfaction, but I can Vanish something into Non-Being if you'd rather.
• Animal Stampede: The Dominion Jewel affects all the non-human creatures around Hogwarts, even sapient beings like merfolk (and Remus Lupin near the full moon), causing them to rampage.
• Apology Gift: Harry is definitely bemused, but not entirely unmoved, by Caelum giving her a Qilin that he rescued from the black market.
  Harry: You…illegally acquired me one of the rarest creatures in the world to apologize for helping a violent extremist make a potion using my own technique that trapped my good friend and contributed to the unraveling of a ruse that upended my life. Am I getting that right?
  Caelum: It wasn't my first plan.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Pansy finds Draco moping about finding out that "Rigel Black" was a lie and sets out to snap him out of it.
  Draco: You weren't there, Pansy. I caught him erasing traces of himself in our dorm room. You didn't hear what he said—
  Pansy: Forget what he said. Honestly, Draco. You find out your best friend has lied to you for four years and then you decide to believe everything he says? Is Rigel Black a liar, or is he not?
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After their grand conspiracy to commit blood identity theft, punishable by life in Azkaban, along with academic fraud, lying to every one of their friends and family except each other, and both stealing and illegally brewing Polyjuice — Archie is horrified by the mere suggestion that they might misuse their magic to prematurely find out where their Christmas presents are hidden.
• Artifact of Doom: The Dominion Jewel. Harry finds historical records of prior holders suddenly gaining inexplicable power and going on campaigns of conquest, only to later crash and burn. It changes Peter Pettigrew to desire power and control. In the process, it gives him the ability to subdue the wills of others, starting with weaker targets like animals and building up as far as he can achieve. However, if he fails to dominate others, the Jewel will turn on him instead and consume him.
• Artistic License: Harry is hit with a jinx that was intended to be Jelly-Legs, but due to a miscast, is actually Jelly-Brains. However, the characters go on to talk about it in a way that's clearly using the American meaning of "jelly", ie a fruit-based spread for toast ("jam" in Britain), rather than the British meaning of "jelly", which is a gelatine-based dessert (known in America as "jello"). Specifically, the dialogue refers to grape jelly, which is widespread in America, while grape jam is not common in Britain even if the correct name were used. There are some good puns based on it, though.
• Ascended Extra: Pansy Parkinson is a particularly notable example, with just a name and one or two lines in canon, but here fleshed out into one of Harry's best friends, generally sweet and harmless, but socially savvy and wearing so many different masks that she feels they really are her personality at this point.
• Assassination Attempt:
  • The tampered love potion recipe that almost blows Harry up is suspected to be a targeted attack on Krait, by someone trying to undermine Leo's base of support. Whether Krait brews it himself, or one of his subcontractors tries it, either way his business is harmed.
  • Tiberius Ogden survives two attempts with Rigel's help, both involving poison. The prime suspects are his heirs, who lack both money and patience.
• Assimilation Backfire: The Dominion Jewel invades Harry's mind, intending to take control of her, but failed to anticipate that she had a perfect cage already prepared, an experimental magical construct chained to obey her, with no will of its own. Dominion soon finds itself enslaved and has to turn to diplomacy to regain some influence.
• Attack Reflector: Goblins can't use wands, but they are able to forge armour and swords that will return spells to sender. (Harry also discovers that they tend to dissipate spells that don't form an actual ray and thus can't be reflected.)
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Professor Snape's suggested approach for getting past a Snallygaster is to distract it, because "they're unhesitantly inquisitive." Since they also have nearly impenetrable hides and razor sharp talons, a direct fight isn't really an option.

B

• Bad People Abuse Animals: Unlike canon, where Mrs Norris was merely petrified, here she's killed and nailed to the wall, and her six new kittens alongside her, in the shape of a smiley face, to emphasize the threatening message.
  Diarymort: Do I Have Your Attention Yet?
• Bait-and-Switch Comment:
  • Exasperated at James and Sirius' ongoing ridicule of Severus Snape after all these years, Lily calls on Remus for his opinion. Remus agrees that there's no need to continue going on about their old rivalry.
    Remus: I'm sure by now he's washed his hair.
  • Flint lets the Beater hopefuls know that he decided not to make them try to hit Bludgers through the goal hoops — to Harry's momentary relief, because the hoops are much smaller targets than Bludgers were designed for. But instead, he makes them hit Bludgers through hoops attached to the brooms of the Seeker candidates; either the target has nerves of steel and complete confidence in the Beater, or the hoop will be moving around too much to have a chance of hitting it.
  • Sirius offers to help Harry get drunk at the World Cup, to James and Lily's disapproval, but James doesn't have much moral standing there after their own teenage exploits. Lily, however, invites Harry to confirm that she'll have no part of it.
    Harry: I am a bit thirsty. <beat> Do you have milk at the tent, Dad?

As a Veela, Fleur is accustomed to having admirers, so the bouquet from rival competitor Jacob Owens is annoying but doesn't mean much to her. Until Rigel recognises the species and warns her that once the flowers bloom, they'll smell like a corpse — presumably a message and warning from Owens about her*Battered Bouquet: chances against him. Fleur screeches and Vanishes the flowers with her wand, while bursting into a torrent of angry French that starts with "Zat boy is a-" before Rigel loses track.

• Battle in the Center of the Mind:
  • Harry's battle against the sleeping sickness becomes this when she feels it entering her mind, creeping mindlessly but steadily forward to cover everything in black mist. She doesn't know how to fight it directly, but is able to get into Draco's mind and help to free him.
  • She later has to free Ginny Weasley from a mental cage that's almost impenetrable from the inside, but vulnerable from the outside.
  • The Diary-construct Voldemort tries to invade Harry's mind and take over her magic. The first time, she cuts it off from Ginny's magic and it flees, without the strength to continue. The second time, the Dominion Jewel beats it up and kicks it out.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Professor Snape gives Harry the task of making as many Sweat Inducers as she can, without overworking herself or neglecting her studies, in two weeks, so he can gauge her production level. He takes pains to emphasise that quality is better than quantity; "better three satisfactory potions than a dozen useless ones." However, what neither of them realise is that Harry has unusually large magical reserves; he checks after two weeks, expecting perhaps a crateful, but instead finds that "as many as she could brew" means she's filled a room with 33 crates containing hundreds of bottles (over 2000 individual doses).
• Becoming the Mask: Draco and Pansy know that Rigel lies about a lot of things, but the lies have become so entrenched that they might as well be true.
  Draco: It would be like if he said his favorite food was turnips when really he hates turnips, but he wants us to think he likes turnips so much that he eats them all the time, and he'd want us to get him turnips for Christmas even if he doesn't actually like them, so what does it matter if he doesn't like them? For all intents and purposes, he's a turnip-eater.
• Best Served Cold:
  • The Weasley Twins make "Rigel" the centerpiece of an epic prank on the school, signing her name to dozens out of the hundreds of flower messages that target students and staff with highly personalised compliments. Most of the smart people can tell she wasn't really responsible, and it's not precisely bad attention anyway, but she doesn't appreciate the spotlight — so she meticulously prepares and delivers a potion that will cause both of them to pour floods of pink goo out of every pore.
  • Harry's revenge for Valentine's Day — ambushing the Twins in a secret passage and covering them in "just desserts" — is even colder, waiting months and being set up well in advance with a Paranoia Gambit. For maximum coldness, once it's sprung, Harry turns up eating an ice cream.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Harry generally has quite good control of her temper and magic, but that makes the times that she does explode all the more violent. Aldon Rosier notes this tendency and is fascinated.
  Underneath his lifeless facial expressions and almost insulting dismissal of anything that couldn't be diced, reduced, or boiled into unappetizing slime, Rigel was one of the most volatile things Aldon had ever encountered. Rigel Black didn't care, he didn't care, and then all of a sudden he did, and Merlin help anyone standing in his way at that moment. Rigel Black had lines, and the very instant one of his lines was crossed, his demeanor went from dormant to volcanic eruption in the space between heartbeats.
• Bewildering Punishment: Harry is at a loss to explain why someone knocked her down the stairs and tried to poison her. Even after she finds out, it still seems pretty questionable.
  Rigel: That's what this is about? The Marauders' joke line at Zonkos?
• Black Comedy Cannibalism: Harry's thirteenth birthday cake sings Happy Birthday as it's eaten, becoming increasingly frantic and high-pitched as less and less remains.
• Blackmail:
  • Marcus Flint works out that "Rigel Black" isn't really Arcturus, but since the real Arcturus is a friend of his, he can guess why Archie is doing this, and doesn't want to just ruin it. He does, however, make Harry help with his schoolwork to earn his silence.
  • Riddle attempts to put pressure on "Rigel" by threatening to ruin Harry's career, but Rigel rejects his demands and challenges him to do his worst.
    Rigel: Do whatever you want to us. We won't be leveraged against one another. I know you don't understand. You can't imagine a bond so strong that two people would be willing to do anything for one another. Suffice to say, all your threats are meaningless. Harry would never allow herself to be used against me. She'd die first.
• Blood Magic:
  • Harry doesn't make a deep study of it, but she knows enough basics to ensure that, for example, any blood she spills is properly cleaned away, lest it be used against her.
  • Her opponent in a Triwizard duel is less cautious, carelessly spitting out blood after being struck in the face, and pays for it.
  • Harry suggests to Professor Snape the possibility of incorporating blood into a protection potion, in order to make it much more difficult for witches and wizards besides the blood's owner to take down. He can see great potential in it, but considers providing blood magic to the masses a risky proposition.
• Bookworm: Harry is quite an academic, but she still can't quite measure up to Hermione, as per canon.
  Dumbledore: Yes, Madam Pince mentioned the young American girl with rather ferocious reading habits.
  Rigel: Hermione swallows books whole before they can fight back.
• Boring, but Practical: Harry gives the Weasley Twins a recipe for an experimental preservation oil that extends the shelf life of potions, for their birthday. It's not spectacular, but it's worth a mint to the right people.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: James bristles and reaches for the nearest weapon, though it be only a butter knife, at the mere mention of Harry having male friends. He's especially perturbed when she wants to spend hours alone "brewing" with Leo or Caelum. Funnily enough, they really do just brew potions, but if he were paying a little less attention to the fact that she's alone with a boy, and a little more attention to what they're actually doing, perhaps he would have noticed, for example, that brewing Seifer's Solution without a licence is illegal, and they made it in his basement. And he's the Head Auror.
• Broken Pedestal: James and Lily are deeply hurt and confused when they learn that Harry has been lying to them for years. They monitor her closely, and block the Floo so she can't go off on her own, for weeks.
  Eventually, the wounds of trust would have to heal.
• Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage: Riddle's ideal marriage law outcome would have him hand-picking couples that are likely to produce magically powerful children. Because that's the kind of Control Freak and arguably Well-Intentioned Extremist he is. Harry doesn't want that for herself or for her cousin.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Inverted by Rigel, who downplays her "cousin Harry's" good qualities.
  Millicent: Is she pretty, your cousin?
  Rigel: Not particularly.
  <Beat>
  Pansy: You're not supposed to say that about a Lady, Rigel, how many times must I tell you that?
  Rigel: Harry wouldn't mind me saying so. She appreciates honesty.
• Buzzing the Deck: Harry and Archie have been flying together since they were four years old, and they make a game of diving as close as possible to the ground and snatching an item as they pull up. When they try it in the summer before third year, Archie presents a handful of dandelions, while Harry has gone one better and picked up a bottle cap from the ground.

C

• Calling the Old Man Out: Archie gives a loving but firm chastisement to James, about how his disapproval of Harry's potions interest has pushed her away. At the same time, he does understand why James acted as he did.
  James: It was for her own good. Every kid I ever knew who was too into potions had a miserable life. I didn't want her to be the weird smelly kid at school, all right? I didn't want her to be picked on, laughed at. Not my sweet girl.
  Archie: I know. I think you underestimated Harry's strength of character, though, and overestimated your ability to change her. Harry would never let anyone bully her, not even you.
• Cassandra Truth: Harry is stunned to learn that witches and wizards don't create magic, they just absorb it from the environment — meaning that it doesn't belong to them, they're not stewards over it, they're just leeching it. However, she also realises that despite the importance of this discovery, and its potential to open new fields of research, she can't just go around telling people, because it flies in the face of what many powerful and influential people believe; naive disclosure would invite severe retaliation without achieving anything.
• Cast from Calories: After expending large amounts of magic, witches and wizards become quite hungry to help them recover. The fact that Harry rarely needs to, because she has so much magic that she's rarely exhausted, is a clue to the ruse that Riddle doesn't know how to interpret; he is perplexed when he sees them in their real identities and Archie, not Harry, is ravenous after intense casting.
• Caught Coming Home Late: Harry is grounded after getting caught in the middle of a gang brawl in the Lower Alleys and taking refuge at a shelter causes her to arrive home far past curfew. It doesn't help that the identity swap means she's not very good at answering security questions.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: A crowd of students arrives in response to Harry's scream, just a little too late for her confrontation with Lee Jordan.
• Challenging the Chief:
  • The Rogue's position is based on this, being won in single "open" combat. Notably, it's not meant to be a Klingon Promotion; subterfuge and other such methods are forbidden. Leo remarks to Harry that it's a rather poor deal for the king, who doesn't get any kind of reward for winning.
    Harry: You get to stay King.
    Leo: I'd get that if Marek didn't challenge me. For a lot less trouble.
  • It's also the eventual solution to Marcus Flint's situation. Marcus beats his father in a duel and becomes the new Lord Flint, allowing him to deny his father the resources to hunt Merriam down.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • When assigned to choose a potion ingredient and write an essay about its uses and dangers, Harry chooses Nimue's Breath, which is used to conceal poisons. Some time later, she spots a drink spiked with it, and saves the drink's owner.
  • After a discussion with Ginny, Harry starts experimenting with creating a guardian construct within her mind, to fend off intrusions when she's unconscious or otherwise unavailable, but she doesn't have much success; she can make a shell that will follow orders, but it has no initiative or consciousness of its own, so it's of little use. Until she needs a prison for the Dominion Jewel, which provides exactly what the construct was missing.
  • There's an unfired gun as of the end of book four: the watch that Archie gives her, which looks like it opens but she couldn't figure out how.
• Childhood Friends: Harry and Archie are officially second cousins, refer to each other as cousins because their fathers act like brothers, but grew up together like siblings. Despite having very different personalities, they get along well and are deeply loyal to each other. Archie values Harry's safety too much to risk telling even Hermione about the ruse, and Harry's backup cover story — that she's been living in the alleys alone for years just so Archie could follow his dreams — is premised on how devoted they are to each other. Everyone buys it.
• Chocolate Baby: Narcissa Black's blonde hair was a big surprise to her parents, and almost triggered a duel between Cygnus Black and Abraxas Malfoy, but Cygnus calmed down upon recognising that she had exactly his nose, and a potion was later able to confirm her paternity. Unfortunately, by the time he decided to acknowledge her, he had already (in his indignation) named her after a flower, instead of the Black tradition of naming her in the light of a star, and so she was unable to use any of the family's Star Light heirlooms.
• Classified Information: Harry deduces that the reason she can't find any papers published by her mentor, Master Thompson, is because the information is dangerous and restricted by the Guild.
• Claustrophobia: Originally, Harry quite liked enclosed spaces, but after spending two weeks imprisoned underground, one of those weeks without enough room to stand upright, she prefers to be outdoors.
• Close-Knit Community: The Lower Alleys are a rougher and more dangerous example than most, which is at least partially due to their low socio-economic status, but that same poverty is a large part of the reason for their closeness; they work together by necessity, for mutual protection and support, forming their own government because the Ministry doesn't bother to look after them. Harry becomes part of the community through her backup plan (establishing an apartment and a job there as a cover story to explain her absence from AIM without admitting her presence at Hogwarts), and once she's accepted, they look after her, keeping her safe in the Alleys and supporting her false narrative.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Defied by Harry — although it's actually a hot-blooded kind. She flatly refuses to brew, even for purely academic reasons, a batch of "Coquere Cerebrum", a torture potion that steadily raises the drinker's body temperature until it scrambles their brains.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • The "free dueling" tournaments of the Lower Alley do have rules, but they are far looser than traditional combat sports, and allow all manner of dirty tactics; it's perfectly acceptable to throw sand in your opponent's face, release nerve gas, and then kick him where it hurts. They're illegal because there's so much potential for permanent injury or accidental death, but still occur in the Alleys, because they're used to choose a leader who can defend his people in a real fight.
  • Subverted in Harry's aiming practice when she gets tired of missing the skeet, and succeeds by firing three shots instead of one. Remus calls that cheating, but Harry claims it would work against a real enemy and winning is what counts — so Remus launches three targets at once, and of course she can't hit them all.
    Remus: So it seems a 33% success rate is only a problem when there are multiple enemies. Ah, well, that probably won't happen.
    Harry: Point taken. Let it fly, Remus.
  • Despite — or even because of — the overall practicality of a knife, Leo points out that in cold hard reality, knife fights only happen in sport.
    Leo: Outside of the dueling ring, if someone pulls a knife on you they can only have two practical plans of action. Either they draw it where you can see, in which case they are attempting to frighten you off and probably don't want to use it, or you don't know they have it until they've stabbed you in the back, in the dark, in a secluded alley where no one will hear your screams.
    Harry: That's very reassuring.
    Leo: It's the truth. A knife is a lethal weapon. If it's in play in real life, someone wants someone else dead or someone is frightened for his life.
• Complexity Addiction: As part of her internship, Harry has to brew Jourdain's Amalgamation, a horrendously complex potion that does nothing at all if made properly. She doesn't carry the majority of the (dozens of) ingredients in her Potions kit, from chicken feathers to snow, because they're useless for making anything else, but preparing them requires knives of at least four different materials, while the potion itself will go through multiple different stages, and the fact that the cauldron has to be treated with snake oil may be a joke by the author.
  It was extraordinarily complicated simply for the sake of being complicated. It was created by some sadistic individual to test how well aspiring brewers could follow directions and successfully complete a potion they were unfamiliar with.
• Confess to a Lesser Crime: Harry is very familiar with this technique.
  • When her friends are upset about how much she lies and conceals things, she lets them have lesser secrets, like the fact that she's a Parselmouth.
  • When Krait learns that she's Harry Potter and is a girl, Leo is upset on her behalf that Krait found out all her secrets. Harry is amused by his assumption; her most important secrets are still locked down, but the things that were revealed are enough to satisfy curiosity about why she kept quiet.
  • Harry remembers a childhood incident where Lily caught her out of bed, sneaking back upstairs after brewing without permission — so she gave The Look and 'admitted' that "I only had one!" Lily assumed that she was sneaking into the biscuit tin, and only lightly scolded her before sending her to bed.
• Consummate Professional: Master Montmorency is known for being very slow to publish his papers, but never retracting anything, because he tests his results exhaustively and tediously until he's completely certain before releasing them.
  Montmorency the Meticulous, some called him.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: In the aftermath of Rigel's exposure as a half-blood, Sirius gets so many death threats that he's lost count — but he and his family have filed over two dozen court cases for harassment.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After the ruse is blown, Sirius amuses himself by imposing arbitrary rules on Archie as punishment — such as making him go an entire day without using any form of the verb "to be".
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Harry has the foresight to ask her family not to come to the Triwizard tasks after the first one, knowing that her dueling skills will raise too many questions — especially from Remus, who has tutored both Harry and Archie and has seen Harry free-duel over the summer. They do attend the last Task, and both Remus and Sirius can tell that something's not right when they see "Rigel" out-duel an Auror (albeit not fighting lethally) and a Sphinx. But it becomes moot a few minutes later when Voldemort makes his move.
• Covered in Gunge: After the Weasley Twins give the school the impression that Rigel is a softhearted "puddle of goo", she decides to turn the tables. The envelopes that explode glitter all over them seem amateurish, but once she persuades them to accept an "apology" bag of sweets, her revenge is completed, as liquid oozes from their every pore and orifice to combine with the glitter and cover them in pink goo.
• Crossover: The world is distinctly Harry Potter, but many plot elements are recognisable from the Song of the Lioness, from the gender and identity swap, to the back alleys ruled by the Court of the Rogue, the sleeping plague, and the Dominion Jewel.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Aldon Rosier decides that "Rigel" is too reserved, and takes it upon himself to break him out of his comfort zone, by deliberately making him uncomfortable and provoking emotional reactions.
• Cry into Chest:
  • Draco is very surprised to be on the receiving end of this from "Rigel", but in fairness, Harry had just been through the Chamber of Secrets, watched one horrible death and almost suffered another — or, alternatively, nearly became a puppet to infiltrate and destroy her friends and family. Tears are quite understandable.
  • Harry properly breaks down sobbing into Leo's chest when he reveals that he knows she's Rigel.
• Crystal Weapon: Downplayed. Leo has a special crystal knife for serious fights, which can fit his wand inside. When teaching Harry, though, he emphasises that her primary weapon is her wand, and the knife is mostly to hold off an enemy while she casts spells.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • A mugger goes after Harry and finds himself tangling with Leo, who regularly free-duels all challengers to keep his crown. The attacker doesn't literally bite curb, but he gets a broken wrist.
  • Harry's mind is remarkably well defended by the Dominion Jewel. Voldemort's presence gets beaten up, set on fire, and kicked out, leaving him spasming on the ground.
• Curse: Something done by his mother has left Regulus Black barren, even many years later, which complicates the continuation of the family.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: When Professor Snape discovers that Peter Pettigrew's animagus form is associated with Rigel's imprisonment in the Forbidden Forest, he promises to skin the culprit alive.
• Cynical Mentor: Master Thompson initially appears to be this, mentoring Harry because the Potions Guild assigned him there, but bored by it and with very low expectations for what Harry can actually achieve. When he observes Harry's shaped imbuing technique, however, he regains a spark of real interest.
  Thompson: Why can't you pick something easy? Study…I don't know, the effects of different soil compositions on limbus grass or something.
  Harry: Everyone knows the effect of soil compositions on limbus grass. DeBlanc did an extensive survey on the subject a few decades ago.
  Thompson: No one expects you to come up with original research. It's an internship. You just have to do something not-wrong, and the Guild will publish your project in the newsletter, and the PR will be good all around. Your actual topic doesn't matter that much.
  Harry: It matters to me. I'm not here to waste my time.
  Thompson: Just mine, apparently.

D

• Dead Animal Warning: Canonically, Mrs Norris was merely petrified and hung up on a sconce as a warning, to be eventually revived. Here, she's killed and nailed to the wall. Along with her six newborn kittens. In the shape of a smiley face.
  Written on the wall in blood: Do I Have Your Attention Yet?
• Deadly Prank: The Jordan family came up with a number of prank items a good deal more dangerous than the Weasley Twins' usual fare, such as tablets that transform a drink into a completely different substance while maintaining the same appearance, and a scorpion-like creature that causes permanent nerve damage and wipes the victim's memory of being bitten. Harry narrowly escapes being on the receiving end.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Harry's sense of humor tends to this, probably as a self-defence mechanism from growing up in a family of Marauders.
    George: Rigel, Rigel, Rigel. What is the fastest way to a man's heart?
    Rigel: Between the fourth and fifth ribs.
    
    Rigel: <looks at nose after surviving dragon fire with an Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway absorption spray> Does this look sunburned to you?
  • Sirius sees his estranged brother at Draco's birthday party.
    Sirius: Reggie! How nice to…well, you're here.
• Death Course: The obstacle course for Quidditch tryouts in second year rapidly intimidates many hopefuls into walking away, although it wouldn't actually kill you. Probably. No doubt someone would step in to provide medical attention if you crashed into the invisible ceiling and landed on the swinging blade, caught fire after being struck by artificial lightning, or slipped off a rain-slick broom upon being attacked by six Bludgers at once.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Sort of. After Harry overpowers Peter Pettigrew, with the Dominion Jewel devouring him and moving into Harry's head, they eventually develop a relationship of arm's-length trust, since she's apparently proved her worthiness (not that she wanted to). It's unclear just how far the friendship extends, but since the Jewel is inside her head, she really needs to be able to trust it to some degree. It does do an admirable job of protecting her mind from intrusion, even trouncing an attempt by Voldemort himself.
• Demonic Possession: In canon, the Diary was able to possess Ginny after she'd spent a long time writing to Tom, pouring her soul into it. Here, it's able to jump hosts with a Legilimency assault, and even animate the dead body of the basilisk.
• Destroy the Evidence: Harry burns or Vanishes all of her own possessions from her Hogwarts dormitory, so that she can't be tracked. Once she gets to safety, she even Vanishes her beloved, but recognisable, boots.
• Did I Say That Out Loud: Harry didn't intend for anyone to hear her internally deride the idea that she was lucky to go to Slytherin. Pansy is initially offended, but Harry is quickly able to explain that the reason for her reaction is that it wasn't a matter of luck; she deliberately chose it.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Harry pioneers the idea of imbuing potions with magic that is already shaped into a spell, but not actually cast. When she tries to teach others, she finds that only a very few potioneers can replicate her method, as it requires not only a good grasp of wandless magic (which is already unfortunately rare, despite its usefulness for true mastery of brewing), but also sufficient Occlumency skill to monitor one's own magical core and separate magic shaping from casting. Successfully learning the technique, however, allows the brewer to embed a spell in a potion, making it far more enduring, independent of the drinker's own skill or magical reserves, and harder to dispel — thus opening up entirely new avenues of usefulness for potions.
  • Leo's crystal knife isn't like a regular knife; it's actually a triangular prism with a handle on one end. Using it requires different techniques from a flat blade, and Harry notices Leo having to constantly alter his grip to turn it to different angles. If you have the skill, though, it's an exceptional weapon, acting both as a blade and as an Amplifier Artifact for a wand placed inside (as well as protecting the wand from damage), so with another knife in your off hand, you can effectively fight with three weapons at once.
• Disintegrator Ray: Harry tries to channel her intensely overwhelming magic into a Bombardment Hex to get it under control, but the spell is so overloaded that instead of exploding her target desk into splinters, it dissolves and consumes the desk in seconds, leaving not even dust. Riddle is impressed by the artistry.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • A magical dodgeball game where the teacher has already established that the ball won't actually hurt if it hits you is pretty minor. However, Harry is so naturally paranoid and living on a hair-trigger that when she realises she won't be able to block it in time, she subconsciously uses a shield that disintegrates anything on contact, instantly vaporising the ball. Draco gets quite upset that she overreacted like that.
  • Alastor Moody is underwhelmed by the severity of a child attending a school under a false name and dismissive toward the level of response it's getting.
    Moody: I have real Dark Wizards to hunt.
• Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do: Lily starts to say this to Harriett but then realises that she's in the presence of both James and Sirius (two mischievous troublemakers) and settles for "don't do anything Remus wouldn't do". Like in canon, Remus is more responsible than his friends and therefore a better role model for her daughter to emulate.
• Don't Think, Feel: Remus explicitly encourages this when teaching Harry to dodge spells, until she's repeating it as a mantra in her head as she throws herself around the mats; she has to develop dodging into an automatic behaviour rather than a conscious one if she wants it to be usable. It's a long, sweaty and painful learning process, but she does improve.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Caelum Lestrange is furious about Harry vouching for him and getting his credit approved when his Guild research allowance doesn't quite cover the ingredients he needs. He can't really afford to turn down her help, though, unless he instead wants to ask for money from his psychotic sadistic mother.
• Doorstopper: Not only is the series over 1.3 million words and counting, but individual chapters tend to be extremely large, and growing longer as the series progresses. Book 4 averages over 30000 words per chapter (33000 if you don't count the 500-word epilogue).
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Defied. Harry quickly decides that the teenage Voldemort from the Diary is very different from the Tom Riddle who leads the SOW party.
• Double Entendre: Quite a lot of these go over Harry's head — which makes sense at her age, even if she does have some amount of sex education.
  • After her first time playing on the Quidditch team, the older team members are chatting.
    Bletchley: Man, did you see Wood's face when he figured out the whistling thing on that opening chaser play? That ought to keep Flint in visual ammunition for at least a month.
  • After Aldon Rosier gets tipsy at the New Year's Eve gala and kisses his friend Edmund Rookwood on the cheek, Rookwood gently knocks him out and asks "Rigel" to watch him until he wakes up.
    Rigel: I do owe you a favor. But I am somewhat concerned about what this will look like once you leave.
    Rookwood: I doubt anyone would think that about a boy your age.
    Rigel: I don't think age has much to do with it, if you've got a wand.^note She's worried that people will think she attacked Rosier, but...
  • Alesana Selwyn chastises Harry for lack of situational awareness when she doesn't even instantly know which pocket her wand is in.
    Rosier: Thank you, Alice. I'm sure Rigel understands your meaning perfectly. He won't forget anymore, will you Rigel? I'll help Rigel practice stowing his wand right now, in fact—
  • On Rigel's first visit to the Burrow, Ginny asks whether she couldn't get out of coming, which Mrs Weasley chastises her for.
    Rigel: It's quite all right, Mrs Weasley. I like Ginny rude.
  • James is already suspicious about Harry planning to spend an entire day brewing in the basement with an older boy, and then, as he's leaving for work, she reassures him with, "You can check in when you get home from work—I don't doubt we'll still be at it."
    James mumbled something about her saying such things on purpose before sulking his way into the kitchen.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The identity swap leads to many darkly amusing lines.
    Snape: Go to breakfast, Mr. Black, and if I ever catch you entering a women's bathroom again, with or without a teacher, I will excommunicate you from Slytherin House faster than you can say Salazar.
    
    Regulus: Do you think if you look and act like the Black Heir society will really see you as interchangeable? Do be sensible, girl. No matter that you were raised together, you ought to have been told by now that your place and my nephew's are worlds apart.
    
    Snape: The two are closer than most siblings. Black would no sooner relinquish Harriet Potter than he would give up studying Potions.
    Riddle: You will persuade him otherwise. Rigel Black is to be the perfect poster-boy for Pureblood preeminence. He cannot be so closely connected to a Halfblood.
    
    Pansy: Will you carry Draco's favour in your pocket for good luck?
    Draco: Pansy! I am not the girl in this relationship!
  • An upset Pansy Parkinson tells Harry that only Rigel is allowed to call her "Pan".
  • In her first few days at Hogwarts, Harry tries to avoid Draco Malfoy, on the basis that she can't afford attention from the wrong kind of people, and "if Malfoy didn't qualify as wrong, she'd eat her Potions ingredients." When she's trapped by Peter Pettigrew, forced to eat and drink the contents of her Potions kit to survive, she's rescued by Professor Snape because Draco had been paying attention to her movements, and had placed a tracker on her boots in order to work out where she was going all the time.

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