A post by way of being a discussion starter

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

Hallo all, I feel a bit bad for lurking for ages and then not having anything substantial to contribute, BUT it just came to my notice that the Harry Potter universe apparently had a pure blood family called... Yaxley. Which, as you probably know, is Bertie's uncle George's title.

Not exactly surprising, I suppose, but I am now plagued by various ethereal plotbunnies for a crossover or a fusion between these literary worlds. Since I don't know who else to discuss them with, I hope here is acceptable. I'll put them under cut to be ignored if of no interest though. :')

Firstly, please remind me if someone has already done something like this and I didn't know. In any case, any ideas are free for adoption whether or not I use them myself or not.

Crossovers are always more complicated, but I suppose Bertie's friends and relatives seem evil enough to be keeping dark secrets, haha. Or there would be a certain irony in Jeeves discovering his employer is secretly a wizard, considering he is the one who seems magical at times. In fact, maybe one of the acquaintances thinks he is and lets something slip?

Meanwhile, if this was a fusion instead... well, that could basically be the canon but set in the wizarding world. Which, depending on when exactly this is set, could potentially open up to some darker options. Which might be interesting but not necessary. Then again this could also be set in modern day. In school or the adult wizarding world?

And of course the most important question of all: Would a Jeeves who was a wizard be more accepting of colourful fashion choices, or extra horrified at the foibles available?

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

JK probably got the name from Wodehouse. It would give you plotbunnies though, the most obvious being Bertie (Hufflepuff) and Jeeves (Ravenclaw, or possibly even Slytherin!) at Hogwarts.

Wow, I used to be a massive fan, and just now I had to look up how to spell Hufflepuff. Hmm, Hufflepuffs are "unafraid of toil" though. I doubt Bertier's ever toiled a day in his life.

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

True that, but that, I suspect, is perhaps more down to nurture than nature? I mean, he does do quite a lot of things when suitably goaded by friends and relatives? Not necessarily succeed, but he does try his best, wouldn't you say? Anyway, it seems at least the most suitable house of the ones available... well, Gryffindor might work as well, perhaps.

Now Jeeves... yes, it would be one of those two houses, but not sure which.

I have to confess I only ever got as far as Order of the Phoenix (and then I couldn't read further because I feared the character deaths) myself, and it was a long ago.

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not complaining about him, I know doing any proper work was positively frowned on by his class! I think actually, if he had his input into the hat, he would be trying for Gryf. The Code of the Woosters! So that might be where he'd end up, and I think he'd do just fine :)

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that's a good point. : D He'd be so nervous he'd start prattling about the achievements of various Woosters in battle and the hat would sort him into Gryffindor just to shut him up. x3

[godsdaisiechain.livejournal.com]

I always thought Jeeves would be a Hufflepuff... he is certainly unafraid of toil. It was so clear to me from the Cedric arc that the Hufflepuffs had been quietly behind the scenes and allowing the Gryffindors to take the glory...

Maybe I am overromanticizing?

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

I guess it's a bit of a matter of deciding what's the deciding factor of his personality... or perhaps what it was at that point in his life? I mean, Harry could have ended up in Slytherin if he hadn't already decided only evil people went there and told the hat he wanted in Gryffindor. So Jeeves... he's smart, somewhat manipulative (though not necessarily ambitious?) and knows how to work hard (maybe even enjoys it? Or at least doing things well), my point is, the hat might very well offer him several options.

And maybe his family has been... hm, I'm not sure wizards have a servant class, since the house elves seem to fill that function, so what would Jeeves' background be anyway? Craftsmen of some sort? Maybe he was brought up to think hard work is v. important... BUT is he content to aspire for that or something more (->ambition)?

It's quite possible I'm in turn over complicating it. :')

[godsdaisiechain.livejournal.com]

Well, wizards clearly have classes... and I agree that servants do seem to be house elves. It just seemed from the Goblet of Fire plot that pretty clearly Hufflepuffs (like Hagrid) do lots of uncredited things behind the scenes. But then, Jeeves is very Machiavellian, which suggests Slytherin--except that Harry and Dumbledore clearly also do a lot of lying and sneaking about.

Hmmm....

[charie-caphine.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of Bertie's secretly magical folks assuming Jeeves has magic too due to his mysterious wonder-preforming ways! And everybody treats Bertie as an almost squib, maybe? But he's actually got some special hidden talents nonetheless. And if the Yaxleys discovered that Bertie's valet is - gasp! - a muggle, they'd flip, so: added danger... There's been a few, mostly drabble/ficlet-length HP crossovers, but I don't think anything substantial or with this premise you suggest.

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

At first I was wondering why a family of pure bloods would choose to live among muggles... but maybe it's their way of keeping themselves grandly separate (+ spells to affect the perception of any nearby muggles so they don't get discovered). Which, whether his family realizes that Jeeves doesn't have magic or not, maybe Bertie becomes worried that the spells might have a negative effect on his mind from over exposure.

Also intrigued by the idea of a hidden special ability, though not sure what it would be...

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

One of the non-Jeeves and Wooster books has both a Hermione and a Harry Potter in it. It's...um...one of the Uncle Fred books. Uncle Dynamite, a quick check of Wikipedia reminds me.

Both Wodehouse and Rowlings got their person names from English place names, as I recall, so the coincidence of the names are not quite coincidental.

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought it might be something like that (re. the place names) but I didn't know about the Harry and Hermione, that's interesting to know!

[haikitteh.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Rowlings may have read some Wodehouse, perhaps?

I've been reading a book called "The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom" (http://www.amazon.com/Heros-Guide-Saving-Your-Kingdom/dp/0062117432/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356731313&sr=1-1&keywords=the+hero%27s+guide+to+saving+your+kingdom) in which one of the princes has a smart valet called Reginald. It gave me a bit of a thrill to read that and know that the author had enjoyed some Wodehouse enough to put that little wink in his novel.

[eaivalefay.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this idea! (I adore crossovers quite a bit.) I was just thinking, I can see the Yaxley line being predominantly magical, and Bertie being a squib.

Though I can see this a lot of ways. Bertie being a wizard with a muggle!Jeeves, or Bertie being a wizard with a magical valet (and so Jeeves appears magical because he is)...

And oh my goodness, if it was kept in Jeeves & Wooster's period, the '20s, then it would be around the time of Dumbledore and Grindelwald as well as between WWI & WWII and the birth of Voldemort... Just. There's so much wizarding political stuff going on. Oh my god, I am so intrigued.

Fabulous bunny and fabulous post! I'm so glad you shared this idea! I never connected HP's Yaxley with Bertie at all. ♥

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

Me too! That is one option as well, true.

There are so many options, in fact, that it's hard to choose which I might attempt to write (and I've been hideously writer's blocked so it might be nothing, sadly. :')

But yes... I thought about that, and I'm a bit unclear if the stories do have a clear setting, but the period between the wars seems a popular candidate at least? And that would indeed be a rather turbulent time, wouldn't it? (Whether it'd show in the fic is another matter. Or how much).

I'm actually kind of tempted making it about Bertie and Jeeves as adult wizards and... whatever the plot would be. Although I'm not sure what Jeeves would do since I'm not sure if wizards employed other wizards as servants at any point in history. But perhaps some other position of employment?

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

If you're writing an AU crossover, you can certainly bend the rules to your taste so that the story works the way you want it to!

[eaivalefay.livejournal.com]

Agh! I am sorry for my heinously late response! That's true, the stories' settings are a bit vague, time-wise. You can pick any setting you want really, and any take would be interesting to explore!

Their being adult wizards would make a lot of sense, and you can play with all the details surrounding their history and association. I can see wizards employing wizard servants, especially an aristocratic family living around muggles. Because a wizard would probably want to do magic, but one can't easily do so with muggle servants unless they're in the know. Did that make sense? lol

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

Also, re. setting, it feels that the wizarding world changes rather slowly in comparison to the ours (which makes sense considering wizards live longer), so one might almost set it in modern day and still get the appropriate feel. Not that I'm going to because why make things easier for myself? (As opposed to trying to make sense of wizarding history and how it would have been like in an earlier time and all that).

I've been thinking about that... would wizarding society have an idea that a wizard serving another would be somehow weird and demeaning, or do they just employ house elves because they work for free? Maybe a bit of both/depending on the person? And if that were the case, are there other things... do wizards have secretaries, for instance? But then I'd almost have to give Bertie an actual job, which, it might be fun seeing him attempt politics or something.

Alternatively, he might meet Jeeves due to some one-time service... Jeeves as a curse-breaker? That could sort of parallel his role in canon, eh? (hope you don't mind my prattling, but it seems to help me come up with new ideas :'D)

[eaivalefay.livejournal.com]

Oh, prattling is always a good thing! It helps uncover fabulous new ideas! :D

Yes, the wizarding world does not embrace new things particularly quickly. (Perhaps partly because magic and technology are often incompatible?) The slow-moving nature of the wizarding world would totally support Jeeves' hidebound sense of fashion and behavior, though Bertie's more interested in embracing the fads.

Well, in the Ministry secretaries and such hold jobs working for other wizards, but I haven't the faintest how wizards would view wizards working in households. I can't think of any example that suggests it's normal or even acceptable. (We see no servants, and the only magical "serving class" we genuinely really see is Filch, who is a squib. *ponder* But I quite think it depends on the people involved, and the household involved. The Malfoys are aristocratic pureblood bigots, with a healthy dose of Black insanity. The Weasleys are solidly in the wizarding world, but they're poor. Harry and Hermione are muggle-raised outsiders, and others we just don't see very clearly. There's no close-up view of well-to-do wizards and how their households function. You could quite honestly make it up however you wish without a concern about canon, since canon's much too vague on this topic! (I can see Jeeves being both a secretary or a curse-breaker who forms a bond with Bertie. Or perhaps Bertie is well versed in some field, it's just not a muggle field. lol)

[disarming-smile.livejournal.com]

Just a few days ago I actually read quite a fab piece of JW/HP Crossover. The servant conundrum was solved by Jeeves, or "Reggie,", I believe he was called, being a house elf to Bertie at first. Bertie had won a a potion that could make a wish come true, which turned Jeeves human. Sadly, I can't find the link anymore.

I would love some more Crossovers with Harry Potter in this fandom, though.

I would probably put Bertram into Griffindor, if I was to decide. He seems more the kind to rush fearlessly (or foolishly, some Slytherins might say) to a friend's aid than to stand quitely back, watching others get to the glory.

Jeeves, on the other hand, would be a Huffelpuff with Slytherin cunning in my books.

(Greetings, by the way and What ho! This is my first post here, I believe)

ETA: happened upon that story in the archives. It was Bertie Wooster and the Trophy of Trouble (http://trista-zevkia.livejournal.com/51000.html) by trista_zevkia

[trista-zevkia.livejournal.com]

Hi disarming_smile! Thanks for the shout-out. I'm glad you enjoyed my story. =)


Stalkerbunny, I've not been very active this year, so I know it's a little late to chime in, but I'd love to see some crossovers. I can never get enough. I thought about it, and decided either Bertie's family was all Syltherin and he begged the Sorting hat not to put him in there (he'd be in the same common room as cousin Stiffy, and she gets him in the worst trouble), or some girl would hit on him on the train and he'd ask for whatever house she wasn't in. Could be fun, so dive in and go for it!

[stalkerbunny.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec, disarming_smile, and thanks for writing it, trista_zevkia. :D

Thinking about it, it is rather tempting to leave poor Bertie having to deal with more or less terrible pure-blood suprematists, but I don't think any amount of begging would get him into Slytherin. x''D Maybe he just gets called to all these shindigs, kind of like Professor Slughorn's... in fact, maybe just those? Which gave me the terrible image of him going to school with Tom Riddle, but I suppose Bertie might just as well be older than him.

[trista-zevkia.livejournal.com]

Imagine if Bertie's family was all Slytherian and the Sorting Hat wants to put him in Griffindore. Even a young, first year Bertie would know how that would piss off his family, as the rivalry between the houses was always there, so he has to beg the Hat to put him in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, and the Hat knows that Bertie would give up everything for friends, so it sticks him in Hufflepuff. So Bertie goes away thinking he must be too stupid to go into Ravenclaw and doesn't bother studying.