I always laugh when somebody declares James Potter on the verge of expulsion for his pranks in fic because Malfoy was literally a Death Eater trying to kill the Headmaster and Dumbledore was like “Let’s just see if we can gently guide him away from this” I’m pretty sure the only thing that gets you expelled at Hogwarts is if you have already straight up murdered someone
Tom Riddle: *straight up murdered someone*
Dumbledore: *keeps an annoyingly close eye on*
hagrid got expelled for keeping one (1) spider under his bed
Hagrid got expelled because his spider was blamed for one (1) murder
Hagrid got expelled because he was half giant and they found a convenient excuse.
So I’m watching a Sir David Attenborough (Natural Curiousities on Netflix), to cope withe the crushing lonliness of solo housesitting, and he’s on about Really Weird animals and talks about the origins of the pheonix- a bird that people travelling though Africa only rarely saw shrouded in the streamy mists of volcanic soda lakes (which are literally boiling hot and also extremely caustic).
And all they’d see is the occasional bit of bright red plumage and see these things bobbing in and out of the horrible death clouds coming off the lake, and naturally came up with the myth of a firebird what the fuck ELSE would be living IN A GODDAMN VOLCANO??
The Central Africans told this to the Egyptians who told the Greeks* about this mysterious animal, and they ran hog-wild with it to create the now-famous Pheonix, but-
The bird they were seeing in those volcanic lakes?
*There is significant academic debate about who told who what when (esp as the firebird myth has cropped up multiple times and been culturally exchanged many, MANY times) but the Flamingo>Egyptian Bennu>Greek Pheonix>European Pheonix chain is fairly well agreed upon.
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