Anachronisms

I wrote exactly two Harry Potter songfics in the wake of Prisoner of Azkaban -- songfics which are, thank you very much, tasteful, and continue to be exceedingly, obscenely popular among the fanfiction.net crowd -- and, because they were written five years ago, we knew very little about Harry's parents, so I made up a few things. I randomly assigned Lily some friends, gave her a totally random last name, and chose a random House for her. The House I chose was Hufflepuff, because there's nothing wrong with Hufflepuffs but the general consensus is that they're stupid, and frankly I think J.K. makes the Houses a bit too neatly delineated: there's no such thing as a less than evil bullying Slytherin, and there's no such thing as a strong intelligent Hufflepuff. All the good characteristics are in Gryffindor. (The only crossover we've seen is that even the Ravenclaws, the studious clever ones, can be morons and misguided. I repeat that everyone with good qualities is actually in Gryffindor.)

To this day, I am still getting reviews that read "OMG your story is so sad!! It made me cry!! You are really talented!! Even though I hate this song/the Spice Girls/James/whatever, I'm crying!! But Lily is a Gryffindor so GET OVER IT ALREADY, BITCH."

Probably the songfics are full of rave reviews, except for the portion of every other review where somebody tries to reform a fanfic written five years ago because a fact that was specifically stated in the Author Notes to be imaginary nobody knows at the time of the writing of this fic please don't have a coronary. (I really did say that, predicting with my psychic talents that even five years later...) I wonder if they think they're converting some evil unbeliever, and that one day I'll wake up and go, "OH MY GOD. I've just realized that the reviewer who is self-proclaimed to be Not Your Average Idiot is totally right and Lily's in Gryffindor.  I have to dig up everything I ever wrote in my adolescence and make sure I haven't made that mistake anywhere else! Boy is my face red."

I think I'm almost disappointed in J.K. for making Lily a Gryffindor, if only because I really want those girls to get a swift kick in the teeth.