StarFlatinum Wrote:My characters do not obey me. I have made peace with this. But certain plot points are still happening despite their best efforts. It’s not like this story was going to be character-driven or anything, nope.

Summary Wrote:After his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, Harry woke to a disturbing reality. The wizarding world only saw him as an expendable pawn, his carefree attitude towards studying left him struggling to survive, and he had never truly appreciated the one, constant companion at his side—Hermione Granger. It was high time for change.

Summary Wrote:When Minerva McGonagall discovers that Harry Potter's relatives intend to keep him from attending Hogwarts, she takes matters into her own hands. But when Harry comes to Diagon Alley one day early, it sets events into motion that end with him and his friend, Hermione Granger, sorted into Slytherin. Now the two of them must somehow tame the House of the Snakes

From Aesir To Yggdrasil: A Norse Primer Wrote:Weregild: Archaic term for a fine made as legal reparations for an unlawful death at the hands of an offending party to their victim's family or clan.  The precise value of the payment was based on the legal and social standing of the victim, with no division set between murder and manslaughter.  A freeman was generally used as the base payment amount, with 200 shillings being the value assigned in 8th century Anglo-Saxon law, and this amount then modified appropriately according to the local mores—for example, among the Alamanni, the weregeld for women was twice that of an equal-status man, while among the Saxons, it was half.  An envoy from Charlemagne was worth three times his normal value if killed while in active service to the king, and a priest was worth an extra hundred shillings if he was killed during the reading of Mass—presumably, both of these circumstances occurred enough to warrant the variance in the legal codes.

While these payments seem to be preposterous to a more modern outlook, it is important to note that, in their era, which lacked centralized law enforcement and more modern legal punishments, weregilds functioned as a system that allowed for deescalation of tensions, as opposed to the other option for restitution that was available: the victim's family going out and killing the killer, which would spark a cycle of revenge that would spiral into vendettas and feuds.