I solemnly swear

Welcome to my profile thingy. I suppose I should just start with introducing myself so we can get that out of the way. In light of that: Online I go by DutchSlytherpuff, because I am Dutch and my two favourite Houses are Hufflepuff and Slytherin. That wasn't always the case, though. When I was younger, and Pottermore was new and still exciting and fun, I took the original Sorting Hat Quiz. Back then you could be a Hatstall and then you had to choose between the Houses it thought would fit you best. It gave me the choice between Hufflepuff and Slytherin. At the time, I was pretty firmly anti-Slytherin. I was young so I had this idea that Slytherins were just... well, evil. So I chose Hufflepuff. In my mind back then, it seemed better to be dumb (as I thought Hufflepuff was) than to be evil.

That was over a decade ago, and a lot has changed since then, not least of all my understanding of the Houses, but the name has stuck. As has the fandom. I remain obsessed with Harry Potter and I don't see this changing anytime soon. Harry Potter will always be an important part of me, and always has been, though it's hard to say exactly when or how it started. I didn't grow up as the books were being published, but my mother did read them to me and my brother when we were quite young, and I do know I liked them from the start, though my obsession didn't start until a few years later, after I'd heard, watched, and read them all in my native language.

Since then, I have read the entire series in English more times than I can count. I've also read them a fair number of times in my own language, as well as once in French and once in German (I had to learn these languages for school; what better way to practise than by reading Harry Potter?) and I still want to reread them in those languages sometime. I find that reading it in another language adds something to the whole experience.

So, to come back to the topic of me being obsessed with Harry Potter. My obsession tends to manifest itself in a way some might find rather obnoxious: an incessant stream of facts, corrections, and the occasional correction (especially when it comes to the films). This all in a way that is heavily aided by my autism, which gives me the somewhat useless ability to become something of a walking encyclopaedia of Harry Potter facts. My knowledge spans primarily the original books and officially sanctioned material released up to about 2015 or 2016. I do not, as a rule, include The Cursed Child or the Fantastic Beasts films in my personally accepted headcanon-universe, though I might steal some things I like from either, such as the friendship between Scorpius and Albus and the portrayal of Newt Scamander.

But, fear not, I do, in fact, have a lighter side and can occasionally even be fun to be around, or so I've been told. I enjoy coming up with headcanons, worldbuilding, creating Original Characters, fleshing out background characters... yet I spend far too much time thinking about magical infrastructure, demographics, family trees, what exactly Walburga Black's handwriting looks like, that sort of thing.

Speaking of Walburga, I have a slightly unorthodox list of favourite characters. Among those I hold in particularly high regard are indeed Walburga, or the version of her I've created, I should say, and other minor characters with an interesting premise, but also, most especially, Lord Voldemort himself, Bellatrix and her husband Rodolphus and his brother Rabastan and also other Death Eaters. I like Death Eaters on the whole. I am obsessed with the Blacks and the extended family in particular but I also love the Malfoys, they're very dear to me. Then I also really like Albus Dumbledore, Gilderoy Lockhart, Arabella Figg, Argus Filch, Dolores Umbridge (yes, truly), Lily and James Potter, the Dursleys, Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin (as a flawed man), Severus Snape, ... Overall, if a character is morally grey (or just outright villainous), tragic, misunderstood, or otherwise terribly flawed, there's a good chance I'm interested.

As for ships, I'm not much of a multishipper. Truth be told, I don't ship very much at all. I mostly read genfic or stories where relationships exist but aren't the focal point, and I don't really write romance either (though that might change in the future, I don't know). That said, I do have some favourite ships, those being Bellamort (Bellatrix/Voldemort) and Lucissa (Lucius/Narcissa). I also quite like unrequited Peter Pettigrew/James Potter and unrequited Severus Snape/Lily Evans.

(As a sidenote, I find the so-called shipping wars to be terribly silly. These are fictional characters, after all. I'm very much of the opinion that people should write whatever they want.)