Clue's brain is a squamous place.

My Id, after spending all day yesterday in a profound sulk, has just gone and dug something truly horrific out of its toybox to play with. Howard Phillip Lovecraft. And it gets worse, the mad little wretch's other fist is still stuffed with Harry Potter, and it's bashing them together while chortling with malevolent glee, and...

*Shudders*

And they're starting to fit!

Let's begin with Professor Snape, shall we? Yeah, Snape -- slightly oily; BIG hooked nose; ill favored; named 'Severus" (which is an ancient Egyptian name, and I DO mean ancient); sallow of the sort which would be swarthy if he ever saw the sun, but because he spends all his time in the chill depths of the earth, is just yellowish; dead brilliant with bubbling, questionable substances; and with a mind slippery enough to keep Voldemort confunded perpetually? That's the one. He's Nyarlathotep -- the one and only SANE Great Old One. The Man ... er... Thing With The Plan. The one who dictated the Necronomicon to old Al Azif as he was slowly going bananas from just the words on the page. Butler to the Greater Gods, facilitator to many of their nefarious plans;

Nyarlathotep. (Pronounced either ni-ar-lat-ho-tep or nyar-lat-ho-tep).

"And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences - of electricity and psychology - and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare." -- H.P. Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep

"There was the immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers - the 'Black Man' of the witch cult, and the 'Nyarlathotep' of the Necronomicon." -- H.P. Lovecraft, The Dreams in the Witch House

"There are references to a Haunter of the Dark awaked by gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron, and insane conjectures about the black gulfs from which it was called. The being is spoken of as holding all knowledge, and demanding monstrous sacrifices." -- H.P. Lovecraft, The Haunter of the Dark

So... Yeah.
Harry's nightmares. The jars and bottles and creepy little things all over Snape's workroom. His ability to juggle the Death Eaters ("That is not dead which can Eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even Death may die.") and Dumbledore, and the Ministry, and the Tiresome Trio without missing a beat.

So just who was it who put Voldemort onto the 'live forever by any means' track, and at what cost?

Just where did the Giant Squid in the lake at Hogwarts come from? Is it really a squid at all? All Harry saw of it was tentacles and a really big eye, if I recall correctly, and nearly ALL of the Great Old Ones' guardian beasts have tentacles. And eyes too. Often a great many of same. So what if the Merfolk's city is hiding rather more than Merfolk in it? Something young Harry got a bit too close to, and had to be warned off of?

I mean who's to say the Drowned Ry'leh is drowned in the OCEAN, after all!

And are they really house elves... or just very short Deep Ones?

And just WHY is the Forbidden Forest forbidden? Could it be that the Black Goat of the Woods, Shub Niggurath is lurking in there, granting favors to would-be Dark Lords who need to outrun their deaths?

And Dementors? Come on, I don't EVEN have to draw a paralell there! And the attack-brains in the Ministry? And time turners? And Voldemort INSIDE Quirrel's head? Howard Phillip is wriggling in delight, wherever he may be.

And the arch in the Department of Mysteries, with the tattered veil and the whispering, luring voices -- Shut UP, that is SO Lovecraft, it aches! The gate into time, which might be death, or just space -- only a Great Old One could know for sure -- at the other side of which is a world which a God would recognize readily enough, but pity the hapless mortal who falls through, for even should his body return, his soul and his mind would be forever shattered by the knowledge of that which it ought never to have attempted to understand. *coughAberforthcough*

And while we're on the subject of Forbidden Knowledge -- how's THIS for an explanation of that twinkle in old Dumbly's eye: He's seen a few too many horrors, failed a few too many sanity rolls, and is now quite simply, Positively Bugfuck. Oh, he's got a plan, all right -- he's got a plan, and It's So Darned Crazy, It Just Might Work! (Have a lemon drop? Severus made them for me. They're groovy.)

Come to that, Nyarlathotep is directly linked to Azathoth, the blind, idiot god, who's presence is accompanied by a mad, fluting song which never ends. Wonder where those little silver instruments on Dumbly's desk REALLY came from, and what will keep him calm now that Harry's smashed them.

A related topic -- Trelawney being a genuine medium, and subject to flashes of mind-destroying prophecy; any wonder she's such a flake in class? She must have started OUT with a fourty per-cent sanity score, and it's only dropped with each prophetic croak, the poor thing. Gods just don't FIT inside the human mind!

And just how similar ARE a Basilisk and a Dhole, anyway? Might be pretty easy to mistake one for the other, especially if you couldn't look at it square on for fear of petrification.

Oh, and the ghosts? Can anybody say 'constant fecking Sanity Check for first term students'? Sure. I knew you could!

And the mirror of Erised -- as I recall, there was a particular mirror which is a sacred tool for Yog Sothoth (a notoriously capricious granter of wishes) which shows maddening glimpses of another city in another time, or another plane or another place, exposure to which over any amount of time will empty the human of all will, making him a fitting tool for the Great Old Ones. Again, Nyarlathotep's making, I believe that was. No actual connection there, per-se, except to point out that mirrors and glasses are risky things in Lovecraftland, and apparently in Potterworld as well. *coughprophecyspherecough*

And did anyone else happen to notice that Little Haggleton seemed to greatly resemble a town on the other side of the pond, name of Innsmouth? Perhaps Greater Haggleton is some twelve miles out off the coast, where the summer homes are? It would explain a few things about Our Tom, it would.

Ahh, but I'm forgetting the affinity to serpentia here. Perhaps Yig is a better patron to the Riddle family than Dagon, all things considered.

Somebody stop me!