Fanfic / The Parselmouth of Gryffindor

The Parselmouth of Gryffindor is a Harry Potter fanfiction written by Achille Talon, a.k.a. Algie Crane.

What would happen if Hermione Granger, the original series' Badass Bookworm, had been born with Parseltongue (the gift of innately knowing the Language of Snakes) and lived with it her entire life? The result is a Hermione who starts her studies of magic with a much more open mind when it comes to wizardly weirdness, a more… flexible attitude to breaking the rules, and a mission to make wizards understand that snakes are people too. And boggarts. And goblins. And house-elves. And portraits. And gargoyles. Be wary, reader, for you are in for a ride that features such highlights as dragon-riding spiders, Voldemort the Silver Monkey, and lots, lots and lots of ruthless Rules Lawyering.

The story has a humorous tone comparable to Like a Red-Headed Stepchild, although a little bit on the saner side, and the same tendency to kick The Stations of the Canon in the backside and leave them out in the rain. The tone has once been described as "Douglas Adams does Harry Potter", and to this the author replied, “Guilty as charged.” That said, since the story was last updated in August, 2019, it must now be considered a Dead Fic.

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The Parselmouth of Gryffindor includes examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Max the Boggart gains full sentience after he copies Professor Max. Because the man was present, Max the Boggart copied his mind fully to better scare his victim, which resulted in his sentience.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • When the Sorting Hat finds out how Hermione and Harry got past the Griffin statue to get into Dumbledore's office (Hermione kept poking it until it let them pass), he laughs so hard that he wakes all of the portraits in the office.
  • Dumbledore breaks down laughing when, during their first lesson on Occlumency, Hermione figures out how to defend herself: closing her eyes.
  • He also laughs good-naturedly when the Weasley twins send him a cuckoo clock that always claims it is the 38th of March.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Quentin the Quick-Quotes Quill. To a lesser extent, Pili Psusennes.
• Alien Geometry: Not only is Hogwarts still an unmappable, Bigger on the Inside architect's worst nightmare of a castle, but the Forbidden Forest is like that too, making it into a full Enchanted Forest. For instance, have to hop through certain clearings on one foot and then pass the same bush twice if you actually want to progress forward.
• Alucard: Dracula was one of Hogwarts's many evil Defence Professors a few years before the story begins. He went by Professor Vladimir Alucard (and chalked up his sunlight-intolerance to a "rare skin condition").
• Amulet of Dependency: A variation with the Diary. It's not of any use to Apophis, but if he gets too far away from it for too long, he'll start to wither away and eventually die. It's all an incentive given by Voldemort for Lucius to keep the Diary as safe as possible.
• Androcles' Lion: Hermione promises to heal Apophis after learning it needs Voldemort's diary to survive. When Draco tries to have Apophis kill her, it instead winds around Draco's body and threatens him.
• Animate Inanimate Object: There are quite a few of these in the Wizarding World, and naturally Hermione is campaigning for their rights as well. The most obvious one is the Sorting Hat, but there is also Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill and various others.
• A Rare Sentence:
  [Hermione] unceremoniously kicked the petrified statue. (There was a weird sentence)
• Arrested for Heroism: In Chapter 63, Hermione breaks the Statute of Secrecy to save a Muggle man she finds dying in the street. She promptly gets shipped to Azkaban.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Hermione sums up her experience on the Horcrux-hunting mission in Little Hangleton: "we investigated a cursed forest, fought a zombie and had a wonderful time in a very picturesque inn".
• Ascended Meme: Dumbledore says something calmly and yells it all that the same time.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Dumbledore's cool insistence that clearly he wasn't doing anything wrong by intruding on a crime scene, and he really should get going home or he'll miss tea time, convinces the distraught Durmstrang defenders to let him go. Downplayed in that Dumbledore really has a lot of authority and influence, allowing him to pull this off so successfully; it was just null and void in this particular situation.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Supposedly Sirius' reason for killing himself at the end of Second Year. Of course, he's actually Faking the Dead.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Do not mess with the Hogwarts Express or its passengers around the Trolley Lady. Not only can she grow Wolverine Claws but she also has a patronus of the train itself to deal with Dementors.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Exaggerated by Dumbledore as he messes with the people trying to arrest him in Durmstrang. Owing to the several nationalities represented among his accusers, he keeps saying every other sentence in a different language, from French to Polish, to the utter confusion of everyone else.
• Blackmail:
  • Hermione not-so-reluctantly blackmails Mr. Filch with the secret of his being a Squib so that he'll permanently lay off her and her friends' backs.
  • She also blackmails Lucius Malfoy in order to ensure he will stop trying to manipulate Fudge. Officially, Lucius is still a free man, but Hermione has enough leverage that she effectively controls his bank account and even gets him to sacrifice an arm. Twice. He gets better both times.
  • Grindelwald ends up being on the receiving end of a slightly nicer version, as Dumbledore ends up making him the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for the fourth year in the hopes that it would help Grindelwald start on the path to redemption.
• Birdcaged: Grindelwald is brought to Hogwarts in a large brass birdcage on wheels.
• Blatant Lies: Disguised as Jester White with a Paper-Thin Disguise, Sirius Black denies having even ever heard of such a person as Sirius Black. To Snape. Who just saw him put on the disguise.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: An in-universe example: many of the characters who originally spoke English and learned Parseltongue the slow way (or the other way around) struggle to render English phrases in Parseltongue and translate them literally, losing all meaning. For instance, Tsh trying to express "girlfriend" only comes up with an expression that literally means "female friend".
• The Bus Came Back: In Chapter 52, Professor Max, who had been bussed off to Azkaban forty installments earlier (in Chapter 15), finally makes a return.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Seems to be the main cause of the Quibbler's… inaccuracies. Chapter 20 shows that Mr Lovegood apparently took The Wizard of Oz at face value, deeming it a groundbreaking documentary on the wrongdoings of the American Dark Wizard Oz.
• Capital Letters Are Magic: The Wolves, as opposed to the wolves. Lampshaded (since it causes a bit of confusion), and explained as Hagrid just plain not thinking of a better name and deciding Wolves was good enough.
• Chekhov's Gag: The chimpanzee statue that Gilderoy Lockhart accidentally brought to life is initially a recurring background gag… until it becomes Locket Voldemort's new body in Fourth Year.
• Christmas Elves: For Christmas in Second Year, Dumbledore has a contingent of Hogwarts House-Elves fulfill the roles of Christmas Elves while he dresses up as Santa Claus.
• Clock Roaches: Luna Lovegood believes they're real and asks Hermione if she's seen any after she gets her Time-Turner. According to her, they're also known as Time-Tigers or Langoliers, and they eat time-travelers with onions and hot sauce.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: To discipline Lucius Malfoy, Hermione forces him to donate money to Muggle charities.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: The Quibbler's Conspiracy Theories concerning Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew aren't all wrong. They did guess correctly that Pettigrew was the real traitor who'd framed Sirius. That doesn't make the parts about rock-singers, a lovesick Dementor in disguise and a metamorphmagus any less ludicrous.
• Conlang: Due to the story's focus on it, Parseltongue, while still usually rendered as italicized English, is sometimes shown "as it is" and rudiments of vocabulary and grammar are beginning to surface.
• Cool Versus Awesome: A Basilisk versus a dragon-riding giant spider. No, we're not making this up.
• Creating Life Is Unforeseen: Walking catastrophe of a wizard Professor Lockhart tried to "de-spell" a perfectly ordinary statue, believing it to be a disguised monster. Somehow, his backfiring spell ended up actually giving life to the statue instead.
• Creator Cameo: The Man in the Top Hat in Chapter 72-B (the April Fools' Day chapter) is quite explicitly the author of the story.
• Curse Escape Clause: The basilisk is bound to obey the commands of the Heir of Slytherin. The Sorting Hat, containing a copy of the mind of Slytherin, figures out that the escape clause is to give her clothes — it's literally just the house-elf bond, somehow repurposed.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Parodied in Chapter 44, where Snape and Dumbledore get into a hissy-fit over whose backstory is more tragic and therefore has the right to use the Resurrection Stone first. Hermione is not pleased, and insists on solving the dilemma with actual reasons.
• Dead Hat Shot: When Cornelius Fudge mysteriously disappears, all that's left in his office is his iconic green bowler.
• Death Glare: Snape remains a master of this, but let's not forget Hermione and Grindelwald in Chapter 43:
  Of course, noticing that she was staying, a few curious students had wanted to stay too and see what would happen; but Hermione Granger and Gellert Grindelwald, both glaring — well, it would have taken no less than Professor Snape to top that.
• Determinator: Hermione, when faced with something everyone thinks is impossible.
  Dumbledore: I have found that the likelihood of something being possible often turns out to be directly proportional to how determined you are to make it happen.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Hermione, Harry and Ron become friends with the Basilisk, since she's actually Not Evil, Just Misunderstood.
• Didn't Think This Through: To confirm that Hufflepuff's Cup is a Horcrux, Hermione puts the Sorting Hat onto it. Afterwards the pseudo-possessed Hat calls her a mountain-sized idiot and yells at her to get Dumbledore immediately.
• Dinner with the Boss: A friendlier variation, where Minister Fudge invites Hermione to the Fudges' Christmas dinner.
• Disapproving Look: Dumbledore gives Ringdemort one of these after he once again demonstrates his inability to keep his emotions under control and pulls the rug from under his own feet by revealing the secret of the Horcruxes in his rant.
• Dracula: Off-handedly mentioned as part of Hogwarts's dismaying track record of Defence Professors. He went by Professor Alucard.
• Dragon Ascendant: Voldemort is permanently incapacitated in First Year with no casualties… but by the Third Year, Barty Crouch Junior has taken up the mantle of fear, and what he lacks in raw magical power he makes up for in stealth, intelligence, and unpredictability.
• Dragon Rider: Marchog the Acromantula tamed a dragon and rode it into battle during the Acromantula Colony's attack on Hogwarts.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: How Hermione tricks Snape into giving Gryffindor 20,000 points and taking 30,000 points from Slytherin.
• Due to the Dead: During the investigation of the Gaunt Shack, Hermione insists they bury the snake nailed to the door by Gaunt. Dumbledore complies.
• Dungeon Bypass: The Third Floor Corridor's obstacles prove no match for the Basilisk as whatever is immune to its stare is not immune to being hit by a fifty foot snake.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Hermione knows a fair bit of mythology and assumes Goblins are part of the Fey; thus she makes sure to be extra polite to them. Afterwards, her teller mutters about the "barmy witch thinking he's a hippogriff."
  • Harry, Ron, and Hermione come to the conclusion that Quirrell's turban is both sentient and evil, not knowing the man is possessed by Voldemort.
• Everyone Has Standards: Cornelius Fudge is a simpering little wimp of a politician... but Umbridge going on a power trip against the Sorting Hat over being mouthed off to, which quickly escalates to legal threats and actual violence, is enough to royally tick him off, and he gives her a thorough chewing-out for making the Ministry look foolish.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: After Pettigrew's guilt is revealed, it comes to light that Moody suspected everyone of being the traitor in the Order of the Phoenix. Even himself.
• Evil Gloating: Voldemort is catastrophically prone to it.
  It looked like the Horcrux was momentarily having the upper hand. She knew because the moment he did, Riddle had started gloating again. That man, whether he be a monkey or a necklace or a hat, was obviously incapable of just shutting up no matter what was at stake. She didn't even try to listen to what he was saying, only catching phrases like 'absolute power', 'bow to me', and 'unlimited rice pudding is mine!'. (…Well, she might have been imagining that last one.)
• Exact Words:
  • When explaining why he invited Hermione to a small Christmas dinner with his family, Fudge explains that he's been corresponding with her about governmental manners. He manages to frame this so that it sounds like he's just keeping in touch with the youth perspective — given that what he's actually been doing amounts to asking Hermione for so much advice that she's practically running the government for him, she deems this sleight-of-hand one of the most Slytherin things Fudge has managed to do.
  • Every student of Hogwarts since Dumbledore became headmaster has been told "Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it." The Dementors of Azkaban see no reason it shouldn't apply to them as well.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • In the middle of reassuring Fudge that the escaped Death Eaters aren't a threat, including that the Dementor ship they escaped on wouldn't have any supplies because they don't care about food or cold, Hermione has the sudden realization that because the Dementors don't care about food or cold, knocking them into the ocean doesn't mean they aren't still alive and heading for the mainland.
  • While trying to figure out just where the Dementors are going after Azkaban has been destroyed, Hermione figures out they're all headed to Hogwarts.
• Faking the Dead: Hermione, Dumbledore and Maximilian help Sirius make the Ministry believe he committed suicide so as to get the Dementors off everyone's back.
• Floating Continent: The Castle Hogwarts gets turned into one of these halfway through the story by Hermione as a ploy to prevent its invasion by Death Eaters.
• Foregone Conclusion: Even though the fic skewers The Stations of the Canon basically from the word go, it stays faithful to events that happened prior to the gang's time at Hogwarts. As a result, details such as the locations and containers of the Horcruxes or Dumbledore's possession of the Elder Wand remain consistent. Of course, the characters still have to learn all of this information for themselves, setting up several Internal Reveals and a ton of Dramatic Irony.
• Full-Name Basis: Both Elvish and Parseltongue usually refer to people by their full name (even when talking to them)
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: A downplayed, Played for Laughs example is the Herbal Tea of Ultimate Serenity. A potent mix of several calming and cheering potions, it is used on Professor Snape to hilarious effect in Chapter 35.
  "No…" Snape said slowly, resisting, with every fibre of his being, his sudden urge to smile widely and hum a tune. "This… potion… it… is… an… insult… to… the… Art…"
  (…)
  "Just… leave me… alone… and… let… me… die…" Snape mumbled, almost choking as he held in his impulse to whistle in the sunshine and pet a unicorn.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: The Basilisk gets a pair that cancel her lethal Gaze if needed.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: To make sure whether Hufflepuff's Cup contains a part of Voldemort's soul, she makes it "wear" the Sorting Hat to see if he detects a mind in there. He does — but the soul-shard proceeds to possess the poor Hat.
• He Was Right There All Along: Chapter 66 has a non-villainous example: after Umbridge has finished about how Hermione can't possibly compete in the Tournament on account of being in Azkaban, she reveals that she has been in the Great Hall all along.
• Hilarity Ensues: Hermione curiously asks if the Quick Quotes Quill is sentient, leading to it revolting against Rita because it's the one that actually writes all her articles without getting any credit.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Dumbledore asks for a cucumber sandwich, simply because he always wanted to say it.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Hermione cut off Snape's hand. She had a good reason, and it was ultimately to protect him, but not everyone sees it that way.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: When Hermione begins to explain to Snape the (carefully edited) events behind Quirrell's attempted robbery of the Philosopher's Stone, he grabs a nettle wine bottle from his potion riddle.
• Indy Ploy: After Hermione is recognized by the Goblin King as being not quite human, she spins a tale that ends with her freeing all the dragons in Gringotts.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Ron and Peter Pettigrew; later Hermione and Sirius Black, and arguably Hermione and Dumbledore.
• Interspecies Friendship: Hermione, being most of all a defender of the rights of nonhumans, has many nonhuman friends of her own. They include the Boggart Maximilian, several snakes (most notably the Basilisk, Apophis, Nettle and Tsh), and the magical portrait Minerva.
• Irony: The very potion/ritual that resurrected Voldemort in canon is used to give Hermione a new body after her old one was destroyed by a curse on one of Voldemort's horcruxes.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: As they are investigating the Gaunt Shack's surroundings, Moody notices how odd it is that they haven't run into any magical protections, and does so with a long periphrase. This ensues:
  Hermione: "So in essence, what you're saying, is that it's quiet… too quiet."
  Moody: "…Yes, but I was hoping to sidestep the cliché there. Points for concision though."
  Sirius: "I hate to disturb… No, wait, I love it. But anyway, if you know we're diving headfirst into the Land of Clichés, you know what comes up, don't you?"
• Just Ignore It: This approach actually neatly solves some of the problems that stumped the characters in canon. Thoroughly ignoring Draco's taunts over and over throughout first year gets them mostly rid of him by Second Year, and Hermione and Ron aren't involved at all in First Year's Troll shenanigans, which end up being easily solved by Peeves.
• Karmic Death: In an interesting twist, this story has a karmic near-death for Hermione. Being her usual confident Rules Lawyer self, she went after the Horcrux a bit too quickly, convinced that her ten-seconds rules-lawyering would be enough to bypass the protections. Turns out  It wasn't, and it's sheer luck that she comes Back from the Dead afterwards.
• Kidnapped Scientist: A fantasy variation with the Alizor King, who wants to keep Hermione and her friends prisoner so they'll teach him magic.
• Kill It with Fire: The story shows Fiendfyre to be one of the only things that can harm Dementors. Barty Crouch Jr (and Hermione herself) don't have to be told twice.
• Kirk Summation: Dumbledore delivers an unusual one to the Alizors in Chapter 76, which, behind the general rhetoric, is less about the fact that they are doing wrong (as while the extent to which the end justifies the means is debatable, the attackers have very valid reasons to be attacking) and more about the fact that their strategy is nonsensical and they'll get slaughtered if they try to fight it out there and then. It is, of course, answered with a curse in his direction from the leader.
• Knighting: In a mock ceremony, Fred and George Weasley knight Hermione, Ron, Harry, Maximilian and Hedwig as "Knights of the Order of the Junior Marauders", with all of Gryffindor House present.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Acromantula Army's attack is portrayed much more seriously than most other events in the story, and is the first time someone dies in the story, although only nameless Red Shirts.
• Language of Magic: Ancient Runes (the exact nature of which is ambiguous in the canon novels) are shown to be a variation of this - a hieroglyph-like writing system that was designed specifically to be very efficient at writing down magic. Apparently, the incantation, pronunciation, wand movement and effect of a spell can all be coded into a single Runic sentence.
• Line-of-Sight Name: The Boggart-Boy comes up with his first name (Maximilian) more or less on his own, but is still looking for a last name when he happens to visit Professor Dumbledore, who offers him a sherbet lemon. After a bit of refining on this idea, he ends up as Maximilian Candy.
• Loads and Loads of Races: Seems to be the case, to Hermione's growing dismay, between regular sapient species whom the Ministry of Magic overlooks (goblins, giants, dementors, serpents, etc.) to artificial beings (portraits, gargoyles, the Sorting Hat) to the more confusing creatures that can become sapient, but aren't always, like owls and boggarts.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Neville was the only one in Hermione's group of friends who didn't know about Maximilian actually being a Boggart rather than a human being. When he off-handedly learns it after a whole year of considering himself, Harry and Neville best friends, he... doesn't take it well.
• Locked Room Mystery: The overnight disappearance of Professor Igor Karkaroff, who had been hiding out in the extremely protected Iron Tower of Durmstrang Institute.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • A notable case is how Hermione gets around Tom Riddle's orders to the Basilisk. He forbids her to "take any such initiatives as befriending a muggle-born child" ever again, and she replies by ordering the Basilisk to be friends with her — so it's not actually the Basilisk taking an initiative anymore.
  • Hermione follows Ron's insistence on telling others about the Basilisk by giving a Sarcastic Confession to Percy.
  • When Harry finds out that the Basilisk is forbidden from revealing any details about Tom Riddle's Horcruxes, he says he knows nothing about those - and the Basilisk promptly returns and starts to speak about the Horcruxes while "ignoring" Hermione and using euphemisms to sort her way around the limits Voldemort put on her.
  • The Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery forbids young wizards and witches from using active magic out of school. Thus, Hermioen has Harry buy himself a krait (which he names Kaiser) and uses Parseltongue to scare the Dursleys off from trying to bully him.
    • The next year, Vernon tells Harry he knows that kraits are illegal without a permit, and that he will have the police put Kaiser down. Harry points out that, since Vernon is Harry's guardian, he'd be legally responsible for Harry's actions. Vernon is left silent.
    • Then, Vernon tries to bring his shotgun around, so he can kill Kaiser if left alone. Harry starts to bring the snake around with him.
  • Later on, a Boggart manages to purchase a wand. Wait, you say! Does wizarding law not forbid non-human creatures from owning wands? Well, yes, but wizarding law also classifies Boggarts as "amortal non-beings" — not creatures.
  • Hermione gets so good at this that at one point Dumbledore asks her to come for a way for the Sorting Hat to reveal important information.
  • Dumbledore does, however, tell her that this has its limits - the Prophecy involving Harry and Voldemort, at least at first sight, does not seem to have any loopholes that would allow Hermione to save and rehabilitate Voldemort. Not that she doesn't also loophole the Prophecy later on.
• Lots of Luggage: Inverts this trope. When the Dementors (the entire Dementor race) move away from Azkaban permanently, all they take is one old rickety suitcase.
• Merger of Souls: The Sorting Hat ends up absorbing the part of Voldemort inside the Cup of Hufflepuff.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: When part of Lord Voldemort's soul is transferred into one of the Hogwarts statues, said Horcrux finds himself unable to harm anyone or leave the castle, because all of the statues, whether animated or not, are bewitched to be loyal to the Castle as one of their core values — so that they may act as protectors of Hogwarts in cases of emergency.
• Mood Whiplash: Chapter 50 mostly sees the heartwarming, somewhat sad reunion of Lily with Harry and Snape. Then at the very last moment, crashing down comes Mad-Eye Moody saying that every Death Eater in Azkaban has escaped.
• Mundane Afterlife: According to Igor Karkaroff, a positive version of this trope; aside from watching over the goings-on of the mortal world, the dead spend most of their time on hobbies. He, for one, likes to play poker with Emeric the Evil, a long-dead Dark Wizard. (Who cheats.)
• Naked on Revival: Realizing this would be the case with the Resurrection Ritual, Hermione has Dumbledore cast a preemptive Modesty Charm above the Cauldron before they go through with it.
• Noodle Implements: The materials Hermione needs to loophole out the Prophecy include a hamster, some ants, and magical paint. A subversion, as the scheme is eventually made clear, long though the characters (and readers) may be kept in the dark a la Noodle before then.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently, Dracula was one of Hogwarts's many evil Defence Professors a few years before the story begins. He went by Professor Vladimir Alucard, and chalked his sunlight-intolerance to a vague skin condition.
• Not So Stoic: The usually-stoic Golden Griffin ends up forced to drop his façade by Hermione.
• Obliviously Beautiful: Hermione is (as in canon) somewhat plain-looking as a human, and makes no attempts to make herself look prettier. She is quite surprised (and embarrassed) to discover that her snake form is apparently extremely attractive.
• Oddly Common Rarity: For all that Harry and Hermione being parselmouths is supposed to be remarkably rare, plenty of people have been taught the language at some point, including Ron, Dumbledore, and Moody. Though Madame Pince doesn't know the parseltongue specifically, but knows how to demand silence in any language.
• Open Secret: The average Hogwarts student might not know, but any wizard who's halfway smart has heard of Time-Turners. People still act like it's supposed to be a secret, more out of habit. Hermione is particularly non-discreet at that.
  Hermione (to Lupin, in an open space, with a crowd nearby) : I did that with my Time-Turner
  Moody (from a distance) : Your what?
  Hermione (shouting) : My Time-Turner! But don't tell anyone! It's a secret!
• Opposites Theme Naming: Played With with Sirius Black and Jester White — the latter being an outrageous alias (complete with Paper-Thin Disguise) of the former. The name "Jester White" is literally the opposite of "Sirius Black" to an absurdly literal extent, which is all the better to back up Sirius's equally outrageous claims that Jester is clearly a completely different person.
• Original Character: Several:
  • Professor Alexander Max, the somewhat insane Ghoul Studies Professor.
  • Minister Fudge's daughter Clementine, brother Clifford and sister-in-law Gwen.
  • Several House-Elves, including the Hogwarts Elf Toddy and the Fudge family elf, Pompy.
• Our Souls Are Different: Expounded a bit more than in canon, thanks to the "inside perspective" of Maximilian, who, being a Boggart, was born with the ability to perceive souls. For instance, he describes the soul of a Dementor as "a predatory thing" that is entirely built to be able to parasitically penetrate and feed off other souls; he notes that a wizard's soul can be "twisted" in a similar way, albeit only artificially (which is hinted to be how Legilimency works).
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • Early on Luna thinks that wearing a pillowcase (and nothing else) and speaking in broken English is all it takes for House-Elves to confuse her for one of their own. A mortified Hermione quickly talks her out of it.
  • Sirius Black, Faking the Dead, disguises himself as "Mr Jester White, from Canada". His disguise consists of a pair of glasses and a false beard. Everyone but Snape either falls for it, or pretends to.
  • Apparently, Dracula was one of Hogwarts's many evil Defence Professors a few years before the story begins. He went by Professor Vladimir Alucard, and chalked his sunlight-intolerance to a vague skin condition.
• The Pardon:
  • Umbridge tried to have the Sorting Hat arrested. Dumbledore forces a pardon out of Minister Fudge, who is not happy that Umbridge forced him to do something so ridiculous as issue an official pardon to a piece of headwear.
  • Later, Hermione obtains one for Hagrid from Fudge and gives it to him on Christmas.
• Perception Filter: Something like this was used by the Dementors to hide their ship. (It wasn't enough to fool Mad-Eye Moody, however.)
• Place Beyond Time: The state of being one enters while turning a time-turner, sometimes known as the Land of Never Time, the Void Between the Worlds or the Time Vortex, is akin to this.
• The Prankster: The Weasley Twins, naturally... but in first-year, Ron spends great effort giving as good as he gets with Peter Pettigrew's help. And of course, once Sirius returns, he takes the throne back from the Twins in driving Snape up the wall with miscellaneous crazy pranks.
• Prophecies Rhyme All the Time: Harry Potter's Prophecy famously averts this trope, which Hermione finds surprisingly underwhelming. Leading to this bit of dialogue:
  Hermione: "Blah. That doesn't even rhyme."
  Dumbledore: "Miss Granger!"
  Hermione: "Sorry. Sorry. That was uncalled for."
• Put on a Bus: Only natural for Defence Professors, whose job description includes disappearing after a year, but Professor Max and Professor Lupin went off to Azkaban Island and America, respectively, and haven't been heard of since.
• Refuge in Audacity: Dumbledore revels in this when dealing with the Durmstrang defenders. "Dear me, jail? That sounds quite boring. I think I'd rather go home."
• Respected by the Respected: Hermione, naturally — by Dumbledore, the Sorting Hat, Nicholas Flamel, and many more.
• Running Gag: During the first two years, Hermione uses utterly ridiculous names for Crabbe and Goyle, because she never remembers their names (such as "Lobster and Boil").
• Sapient Pet: Owls are essentially this of the first category, not so much out of choice as because wizards can't (or don't want to) see how intelligent they are. Meanwhile, Peter Pettigrew claims to be a magical rat and Ron's "secret pet", thus of the second sort. And snakes in general are more or less of the second sort as well, since Parselmouths know them to be sapient but most other people don't.
• Sarcastic Confession: Hermione tells Percy there's a basilisk underneath the school that she's good friends with. Naturally, Percy thinks it's a prank.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Golden Griffin is fine with guarding a room in the Third Floor Corridor... but not if he has to guard it from Hermione Granger.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy: According to Dumbledore, this is why Trelawney's predictions rarely seem true, because they were only accurate as long as Trelawney didn't alter fate by saying them. Hermione thinks that just sounds like a bad excuse. At any rate, that sets small-p predictions apart from true Prophecies, which, as in canon, are the opposite, only coming true if their targets act on their information.
• Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear: The part of Voldemort's soul originally in Slytherin's Locket ends up transferred into an animated statue of… a chimp. He is not amused.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Minor character Hengist Rawkes always talks like this — or at least, his portrait does.
  "Ron weasley has been manhandled by a humanoid specimen entitled Sirius Black!"
• Shout-Out:
  • Luna creates a portrait of a large pile of ash (which constantly spouts Botnik-inspired nonsense, too). She also namedrops Hogswatch and Langoliers.
  • The Quibbler decides that the Quick-Quotes Quill business is the work of a goblin named Scruge Makduk. They similarly think The Wizard of Oz is a documentary about real events. Their article on Vampires classifies them as sparkling woodland creatures closely related to Trolls.
  • One of the Weasleys' ancestors had the first name Wistram.
  • The school of magic that animates statues and other inanimate objects more lastingly than Charms (as seen at the Battle of Hogwarts in canon) is called Substitutiary Locomotion.
  • Hermione insists that a comically-reluctant Harry wear the ruddy hat. (Somewhat ironic in that, from their personalities, you'd expect Hermione to be the unwilling hat-ee…)
  • A handful to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Dumbledore points out that were the Forbidden Forest permitted, it would in fact be called the Permitted Forest. Hermione's Time-Turner is "officially" a Spimster Wicket.
  • Among the things Voldemort rants about during a bout of Evil Gloating is that unlimited rice pudding is now his, though Hermione may have been imaging that particular boast.
• Shown Their Work: The Sphinx's name, Pili Psusennes of the Nassor Clan, is in fact a plausible Ancient Egyptian name. The password to the very old secret Ravenclaw room is also in plausible Middle English.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: The Cup Horcrux, possessing the Sorting Hat, launches into what is basically Voldemort's third-favorite thing in the Parselverse (after being a Dark Lord, and flying), namely, Evil Gloating — with a healthy dose of insults aimed at her, Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat and Dumbledore. She utterly refuses to listen and declares him a nuisance.
• Slasher Smile: Hermione's smile when forming a plan to deal with the Dementors is noted as "looking more at home on the face of a Death Eater who had a foolproof plan to murder Dumbledore".
• Smug Smiler: Harry Potter fanfictions are strangely fixated on making the Slytherins' only facial expressions sneering or smirking. This fandom quirk is parodied here, where smirking and sneering are skills that all Slytherins are supposed to master for public relations as a matter of house pride, and students are casually noted as "master Slytherins" because they manage to communicate their moods solely through sneers and smirks.
• Spy Speak: Ever since first year, Harry, Ron, and Hermione refer to any situation/conversation dealing with Voldemort as a Turban situation/conversation.
• Stingy Jack: The Weasley Twins create an animated magical puppet resembling him for Halloween in Third Year.
• Succession Crisis: The story sees such a situation within the confines of the Ministry of Magic after Fudge disappears. Senior Undersecretary Slughorn and Hermione run through every possible candidate for an acting minister, and can only come up with Percy Weasley.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Barty Crouch Jr. gets Fiendfyre to destroy Azkaban and the Dementors.
• Super Smoke: Maximilian, being a Boggart, can do this; indeed, that is how Boggarts usually shapeshift — they turn into smoke and then reform into a new shape, and part of his training involved learning how to shapeshift without the intermediate. He can also use this ability to seemingly "vanish" by scattering the particles that make up the fog.
• Super-Toughness: The Dementors' bodies (unlike their robes) are utterly indestructible by anything short of Fiendfyre, even being able to No-Sell the Trolley Witch's claws.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When the Goblin King mistakes Hermione for a member of a long existing species rather than an entirely new one, Hermione both agrees with him and starts making up facts about her species on the spot.
• Take That!: Chapter 70 offers a much-needed Take-That to the fandom-decried way Cedric Diggory turned evil because he was embarrassed at losing the Tournament in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Cedric is not chosen as Hogwarts Champion at all in this continuity — Helen Monroe is (then Hermione, then Wesley, then Hedwig). This seems to offend him. But then this happens:
  Before he could protest, however, a friend of his forcefully sat him down and made clear to him the many good reasons why joining the Death Eaters to kill Helen Monroe was not an acceptable reaction to this situation.
• Tele-Frag: One of the rules to using a Time-Turner is to never use it somewhere where something happened to be at your arrival point. Hermione has to carefully plan out where she can safely go back in time without ending up inside something/someone.
• Temporal Mutability: See Timey-Wimey Ball below.
• Threshold Guardians: Since solvable trials seem to be wizards' idea of good protection, the Third Floor Corridor naturally gets some living one on top of the enchantments from First Year when it gets upgraded in 1992. They include a Sphinx, an Acromantula, a Gargoyle, and, most recently, Sirius Black.
• Title Drop: Only in Chapter 45 is Hermione finally referred to as the "Parselmouth of Gryffindor", as part of her Resurrection Ritual.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Time-travel magic only exists thanks to a loophole in the rules of the universe, and so while theoretically it ought to allow you to change the past, in practice, magic does its best to manipulate probability so that the result is a Stable Time Loop. The farther back in time you go and the more efforts you make to change the past, the more unstable space-time becomes until you're either obliterated or kicked back to your home time period. As a result, it's advised to never travel back to any time you've already traveled back to, so as to keep new factors to a minimum.
• Token Evil Teammate: Lucius Malfoy ends up working for Hermione Granger. That does not mean he has any sort of moral compass — he's just obeying because Voldemort is out of the picture and she has got enough on him to send him to Azkaban if he disobeys.
• Torment by Annoyance: Trying to get inside the Headmaster's Office, Hermione resorts to poking the Golden Griffin with her wand repeatedly until it abandons its stoic demeanor.
• Trampled Underfoot: Alastair the Acromantula was stomped on by Vernon Dursley when he was just a baby (and thus the size of a regular spider). He's had a painful, broken shell ever since.
• Translator Microbes: One of Hermione's many goals is to invent a spell that can automatically translate speech on the fly. Thus far, she's only been able to create a prototype in the form of an enchanted book that displays whatever speech it hears in the desired language.
• Trap Door: Gringotts Bank has one that leads down a chute directly from the Gringotts hall to a special meeting room with the Goblin King. It is sprung on an unsuspecting Hermione in Chapter 71.
• Tricked Out Time: How Time-Turners work. Contradicting the past would lead to a Time Crash, so a time-traveler should do their best not to contradict the past up to their knowledge, and magically-induced good luck will do the rest.
• Unexpected Successor: Lowly clerk Percy Weasley becomes the Acting Minister after Cornelius Fudge disappears.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Lockhart flees the castle before his trickery has even been exposed, and (so far) disappears from the story.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Once he's gained sapience, the Boggart begins exercising to allow himself to take any shape he wishes instead of automatically transforming into a passerby's worst fear.
• Weird Trade Union: Subverted; Douglas Wilkes mentions a union for evil minions, prompting a You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! from the person he's speaking to, but he's just joking.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 41 ends with Hermione struck by the Withering Curse and told she has a week to live.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Wizarding society seems to answer "anything that isn't a Homo Sapiens or maybe a goblin". Hermione disagrees. Vehemently.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Upon learning that no one told him about Max being a boggart for months, Neville tearfully chews out Hermione over being "all set to declare her shoe a person at the drop of a hat" yet treating him like "part of the scenery". Later on, Hermione gets this again from everybody after she cut off Snape's arm.
• When Trees Attack: It is revealed that a tree monster was among the protections around the Gaunt Shack, but it's already down by the time the heroes get there.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: In Chapter 27, upon learning about the Prophecy, Hermione screeches: "Who writes this reality?" and goes on to list off in exactly what ridiculous ways her (or, rather, Harry's) life looks like a clichéd fantasy novel.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • In Chapter 27, Hermione expresses her disappointment at the fact that there is so much she can think about but cannot do. Dumbledore replies by pointing out that she has powerful and loyal friends (Harry, Sirius, Max, the Basilisk, Dumbledore), has found the cure to Lycanthropy (which has vexed wizardkind for centuries), saved Sirius from being Kissed by a Dementor and is pretty much the most powerful person in Magical Britain (as she has become the girl behind Cornelius Fudge).
  • Hermione later spends rather a lot of time reassuring Dumbledore and Grindelwald that they are in fact awesome and that it's been way too long for them to still mope about how much they regret the errors of their youth and what terrible people they must be deep down, and reminding them that their time and abilities would be better spent actually going out and doing good than feeling sorry for themselves.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Hermione is left stunned when she was away just for a weekend, and Fudge somehow managed to screw up twice (by starting a diplomatic incident with Magical Albania (apparently The Dreaded) and taking Lucius Malfoy's advice in regards to inheritance law.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: This is what happens if you kill a Judge of the Triwizard — and, for that matter, it's the only way to switch out Judges. Helen Monroe exploits this by killing the Durmstrang Headmaster and claiming the title for her Lord, Grindelwald.
• Your Days Are Numbered: After being struck with the Withering Curse, Hermione is told out that she has only a week to live at most.
• Zany Scheme: One of the trademarks of Slytherins; for instance, Pike goes to ridiculous lengths to pretend to be a Dementor so he can steal something from the Gryffindor dorms. Also, Hermione's plot to loophole out the Prophecy, which involves indelible writing on the walls of Hogwarts, a hamster, and an ant.

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