Closed for the Summer

The Guardian at the Gate

The doors of Hogwarts are closed for the summer, but muted activity continues within its walls: Mice stir in the corners, ghosts prowl the corridors, and a Potions Master makes frequent trips to the dungeon's ample laboratory. The brewing goes on.

Instead of "lumos", a tiny bottle on a chain full of a light-up potion serves to provide enough glow for a Snape to prowl by.

I do love this picture! It definitely reveals the "inner warlock" within the witch, the masculine side of me, which quite often manifests as this do-not-mess-with, Snapeshifted form. Fun to walk the streets and freak Muggles out.

Harry & the Potters! - Jun 21 (Solstice)

Founder of Harry & the Potters with the-Woman-who-was-Snape – rep the colors and rock on!!!

All right, confession time – I'd never been to a wizard rock concert until this June 21st, when I heard that Harry & the Potters, the first wizard rock band formed back in 2002, were coming to town!


Harry & the Potters ride the lightning!

The first I knew of it was I saw a few forelorn, loose pages of a local newspaper in the gutter on the way home. Except, one half of the page was headlined: "The Weekly Prophet". If you're like me, that last word is a neon signal, so I snatched the paper up and carted it home.




Potterheads of all ages get wild regardless of each others' eardrums.

Turned out there was a paper misprint. I rode miles north, only to find the free library concert was the previous day! However, I decided to skip the annual Solstice ritual and go to the one downtown, which I Slytherined my way into and was quite glad I did, because I met one of my friends and had much fun.












Wacky Potterhead merchandise

There were colors from all houses, but of course it was great fun to show off my incomparably Slytherin, handmade duds (not to mention the Emerald Phial necklace and snake-everything). I chatted a bit with a high school boy who was humoring his younger female cousin with "this wizard rock stuff" – he had a Slytherin tie on, and we mutually shouted, "Way to rep the colors!!"




I'm monitoring Galleons carefully lately, but I did buy a pin for a buck. Simple and direct in its message, it proclaims Potter enthusiasm and love of the magical, in the iconic words of young Severus Snape himself:

"It's real for us."

Interlude in the Park

When all I had to worry about were essays
When no one bothered me in my office
When the Dark Mark lay dormant
When the greatest pains were potion burns
Before the youngest Potter came to Hogwarts

When all I had to worry about were essays
it was a walk in the park





After tedious hours of interaction, after Slytherining my way around the horribly inefficient system that Muggles term "voice mail" in order to speak with a real person, I once again have Internet in my office again, and can post back-pictures of my agonies these past few months. Not that anyone finds them exciting.

Spring in Washington Park, and a stray Snape out for a stroll. A fragrant young tree courts an old hooked nose.

I couldn't help but notice the crows making an unusual racket, probably roused somehow by this vastly larger version of their own black-sheathed forms!