A Very Potter Memoir: Story 1- Expelled

Sitting on a train on my way home I feel enthused to share some memories with you.

Particularly some Harry Potter related memories and particularly because I shared one at a meetup group and I thought "Hey! Sharing this stuff is pretty fun!" Harry Potter fandom is one of those things in my life that I care about dearly and appreciate a lot, even though not everyone around me really understands it or would even take the time to see that it's more than whimsical words on a page. Some of my favorite memories both recent and growing up include Mr.Potter. So, trying to keep things in chronological order, including but not limited to almost getting expelled, meeting my first American friend, and getting a promotion, over the span of a few blogs ... I present to you A very Potter Memoir.

When I was a child, I was very strange. (Not that I'm any less strange now, in fact I can attest to having grown more uniquely than most people I know, but I'm at a point where I happily accept it and can occasionally find a group of people where my strangeness is more of a normality :) TGTSNBN ftw) I spent hours classifying rocks as part of my collection, fangirling over Star Wars (Thanks dad), obsessing over Sailor Moon, and reading countless books about catholicism, religious history, Shakespeare, and whatever else I could get my hands on from my mom's office. By the time I was 11 my parents worried about me a lot because I was so different than the other girls my age. Preferring my books, languages, science, anime and radio shows to makeup, dress up, barbies and other 11 year old girly things. My mom talked to me about how she didn't exactly love the books I was reading and how I should read the kids' stories I had in my room instead. I told her that I had already read all of those and they were generally uninteresting. (Not to mention the more she didn't want me to read a book the more keen I was on obtaining whatever information it held) My mother being the witty and intelligent woman she was (and still is) goes to a bookstore and asks the lady for a chapter book for her daughter from the children's section. Something "interesting". (I remember my mom using much more colorful language to describe the 'lady' from the bookstore who's responsible for all the events that spawned from me reading the book that she recommended, but personally I pray and give her thanks every day.) The wonderful lady at the bookstore handed my mom the first (and only at the time) installment of the Harry Potter series. It became my absolutely favorite Christmas present that year.

I read it in about 2 days, leaving my mother positively pleased at the time, and completely devouring every detail from the egg shelled colored pages that could maybe, by any means, possibly be real. I reread it several times, making notes to take back to school with me. Wondering if I could convince my parents that getting a goat farm was imperative to have lots of bezoars on hand in case we got poisoned, or at least where I could obtain devil's snare sneeds and other such things to make my own potions. (Potions has always been one of the most interesting aspects of the book to me.) I begged for an owl and to be signed up for school in England since they refused to move there all together. For the most part they thought my obsession was cute and would go away, even after I came up with drawings of how I wanted to redo my room Hogwarts style. They were happy to see me so excited about a book actually aimed at my age level. They never thought a book would get me in so much trouble.

They sent me back to school with my notes tucked away and lots of crazy magic ideas floating around in my head. Now, I need to explain a couple things about my catholic boarding school. In the morning we had classes, lunch, a little play time, more classes, dinner, homework/study time, a little play time, bed time, most weekends I was usually with my mom because I needed to stay inside due to harsh, hot weather and my too sensitive skin, but on Sundays we went to church. Between the school and the church was a little piece of fun and the thing most of us kids looked forward to the most throughout the entire week. There was a bunch of little stands and tables and carts full every kind of sweet you can imagine. Pastisset, Pestiño, Turron, Gloria, Churros, Bizcochos ... you name it. Now most of us received an allowance from our parents and most of them spent all of it the first Sunday after getting it in the mail. This is where my business, more like loan shark, abilities come in. At that point I was getting an allowance, or a 'paga' as we called it, from my mom, one from my dad, one from my great aunt Laura, and another from my madrina (I think the America equivalent would be a god mother). And I didn't usually get it all at once, so I was never in a rut come Sunday. What I started doing was lending out money for sweets and pastries on Sunday, with a 10% interest. Now I never took more than someone could pay me back and after a while I even implemented a pay over time program for the girls who didn't get as much of an allowance or only got money for holidays and on their birthday. And in the same way I also had higher interest rates for those girls who didn't pay me when they said they would and were just overall unreliable. When I came back to school after the holiday break and after having read the wonderful new book in my life I created a new program. I lowered the interest rate for the girls who agreed to play a particular game with me during play time.

The school was very strict on what they let us eat at play time snack wise, so we each took turns going to get various fruits and bowls and then in one of the corners under a tree I conducted my very own pretend potions class. I was thrilled to have an audience to explain all the details of the book and of how things were done in this made up place. I was a very strict teacher. I laugh so much when I think about how I hand picked wands (fallen branches) for each of my students and made of incantations and recipes for different things. Things went like that during play time for a while, with some girls really getting into it and having fun, some of them writing to their parents asking for the book or for a real wand and things of the sort. And I guess that's when the trouble started to brew. Between the girls' weird requests and the fact that our corner started to get pretty big after a while the nuns started to wonder what we were doing and eventually on one sunny afternoon one of the nuns slowly walked over to see what exactly it was we were doing. She asked us and got an assortment of different answers but managed to hear the word "witches" several times and spells and magic. I've never seen someone go so pale or freak out so fast. Her eyes popped out and her lips went paper thin for the minute before she started yelling at all of us to stop immediately and saying how wrong what we were doing was.

She took me to the head nun's office and explained that I was brainwashing the other girls into not believing in god and doing witchcraft and showing them how to use magic using fruit and branches. I didn't dare protest out of fear of being expelled, but when she asked me what was going on I tried to explain to her that I read this book called Harry Potter and we were just pretending like in the book. She didn't believe me and sent me to an unoccupied dormitory for the rest of the day and night. My mom was at the school the next day yelling at me. During the meeting with my mom and the 'madre superiora' I was told that I was going home for one week to be reminded of my religion and of what I believe in and I was never to speak of the book or anything from it ever again. (I remember thinking that a week away would be detrimental to the pretend potions lesson plan I had designed in the back of my french notebook) And if I did I'd be expelled. End of story. No more nonsense.

My mom was furious and frustrated and worried about me. We talked a lot when we got home and she genuinely tried to understand what had happened and why I had all these ideas in my head. She took the book away and told me that it was over. We spoke of religion a lot and she tried to push into my head that God is the only thing I should be talking about at school. She couldn't understand that I wasn't worshiping the devil or witchcraft or anything. I was just playing. It still astounds me that just because it had to do with magic it was such a big deal. I was sent back to school after my week was up and was watched very closely during play time and during any interaction with other classmates.

Will I ever be able to read the 2nd Harry Potter book when it comes out? What happened to the girls who played with me? What happened to our pretend wands? What happened to my harry potter play time and all the before mentioned questions is a story for the next installment of a Very Potter Memoir: Story 2- School Strikes Back. I think if the school had found out about my little money lending business I would've absolutely been expelled, but hey! I was just a kid :) Right? Muahaha!

Do you have any fun Harry Potter memories? I want to hear them!

Peace, Love & Pancakes
-Lib