When other kids would go to parties, I would resolutely ask to come. But when they said no, I would stay home and do homework. Academics are a fine consolation prize for those who never quite gain social acceptance.
So throughout high school and college I have labored – dare I say toiled – all in pursuit of that infinitely nutritious fruit: knowledge.
I have eaten that fruit, devoured it, swallowed whole that little fruit sticker that I never see until it’s too late. And now it has paid off. I am attending the school in Britain that has become synonymous with prestige.
I don’t mean to brag, but I can’t help it. I am spending a semester at an academic institution that millions of students would kill for the chance to attend.
I go to Hogwarts.
Now, you’re probably saying, “Steve, you can’t possibly go there. That school doesn’t really exist.”
And my response to you: “Well, you just talked out loud to a newspaper article. I’m 3,000 miles away. Now who’s crazy?”
—-
All summer I waited for the departure day, waited like a kid studying abroad waits for mail from his parents, day in, day out, hoping they remember, thinking maybe they’ll happen to read The Daily Free Press and send him something …
The book list that came in July was odd. I got a little worried when I saw titles like British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. “I’ll probably just get the important stuff at Diagon Alley,” I said to my brother as I spread the fluff onto a fluffernutter, ripping the bread. “I’m telling Mom. You need to see someone,” he joked with that concerned voice he uses when he’s joking.
The departure day came. I heaved two suitcases into our silver Santa Fe. “I think I’m supposed to meet everyone at platform nine and three-quarters,” I tell my Dad. “Your itinerary said Logan,” he replies.
“Hmmm?…,” I say, a little confused, “Must be the metric system.”
At the curbside drop-off, Mom hugs her goodbyes. Dad tries to convince me I can wash my socks in the shower.
Our goodbye lingers on, productive and festive, like a good after-dinner conversation. “Use plenty of lather,” Dad says with a firm handshake. “It really works.”
At the X-ray machine, the guard picks up my carry-on and pulls out my wand. “It’s got a unicorn’s hair in it,” I whisper in his ear.
“Sir, this is just a Bic pen that you shoved glitter inside,” he says.
“The hair’s my sister’s,” I confess. “And don’t spill any of my magic!”
I greet the students on the plane. Only one of them looks like a witch.
“Hey, why was Dobby always calling himself bad and beating himself up?” I ask the student next to me during the climax of the in-flight movie. “I don’t know, why?”
“He had low elf-esteem!”
The brilliance of the joke is lost on him. I can detect it in his face, and the way it stays still. “Jeez! These are supposed to be the best and the brightest,” I mean to think to myself but actually say out loud, without even actually breaking eye contact so, come to think of it, I guess I just say it to his face.
The whole rest of the trip there is like a dream, except for the parts when I am sleeping but not dreaming. Those parts are like a void I can’t describe.
As we approach the city, a patient drizzle waits for us up ahead. I think that’s why we didn’t row across the lake. Foreboding skies are not skies for boating.
Entering the city by bus has a slow, subtle beauty to it, like driving north through the line where sleet and freezing rain become snow. A patch of old stonework here, a glimpse of Gothic turrets there, and before you know it you’re surrounded by castles. The newer buildings seem like incongruous weeds, popping up at grotesque angles beside the dignified walls of crumbling blocks.
The view from the center of town is so thoroughly medieval that it is disorientating. Where modern buildings do exist, they vie with the older structures for a firmer seat in reality, side by side, like the way that if you look at a picture of a zebra long enough you can’t tell whether they are white stripes on a black horse or vice versa.
But the castles prevail through centuries of Satyagraha, a sort of fairytale ending for the setting of fairytales.
I stumble to the door of my tower and pass a fat lady perched in her painting and mumble “banana fritters” only to see her shut what turns out to be the window to her office.
The next morning, I push on the dark wood of the heavy door, making sure to duck because “wizards were smaller back then,” and enter class wearing the standard-issue wizard’s robe that was laid out on my four-poster. But when the other students in the program start throwing around words like “towel” and sentences like, “Dude, that’s a towel not a robe,” I get a little suspicious.
We begin discussing the assigned reading. That kid, the one in English class who always has to relate the book to current events or real life, starts doing his thing. Oh, this written attempt to depict the condition of humanity reverberates in everyday life? No way!? Listen, Stuart, it’s literature. It’s timeless. That’s why we don’t read cook books from 300 years ago, because they DON’T relate to us, OK?
“When are we going to get to the good stuff?” I ask, “Conjuring.”
Our teacher – wearing a monocle in each eye that she has cleverly secured and bound together in a wire frame – asks me what I mean.
“Nothing … muggle …” I say under my breath.
At night we gather for our welcome dinner. The candle light flickers and reflects off the silverware that has been laid out on the long table. We sip champagne until the dean stands and speaks. We are part of a great line of visiting students, he says, probably referring to Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. When he sits, the conversation grows more intimate and energized, like a pleasant goodbye to one’s parents. “Twenty-five percent of students at the university don’t actually apply to a specific college,” he remarks. “They just allow themselves to be placed within a …”
“A mysterious process that sorts students into the appropriate houses?”
“We call them colleges,” says the dean. “And …”
“Hufflepuff!” I blurt out. “I hope I get Hufflepuff.”
The silverware’s clanking becomes stentorian, deafening, as if to say “Wow it’s quiet in here. You can hear me? I’m just silverware.”
“Oh, well, I see you’re aware that the dining hall that inspired the set for the Hogwarts version is here. The Divinity school is the setting for the film’s hospital, too. And the library … Well, it’s all quite remarkable, really. These people come here just for that. Tourism has increased 40 percent since the movies … But we like to downplay the connections to Hog … I mean, we are a world-renowned …”
“Honestly, though,” I interrupt. “What are the chances of me making the quidditch team?”
“Young man,” he says, “Please tell me you didn’t come to Oxford because you thought it’d be like Harry Potter?!”
In my panic, I resort to the traditional conversation-with-teachers tactic of weaving in irrelevant facts to show how smart I am.
“Hogsmeade was the headquarters of the 1612 goblin rebellion.”
He bursts like a floodgate that had been holding back indignation.
“You are one of the dumbest … How did you get into this place?” he demands.
I smile.
“Magic?”