It's Magic!

For a magic trick to work you have to pretend it's not a trick. You have to have an agreement with the magician that they won't show you how it's done and you won't look too hard to see how it's done. You both know it's a trick, but you both have to pretend it isn't. 

A flash is what it's called when a magician misses the trick. When they don't get their fingers closed quick enough and you see the coin in their palm, when the light on stage hits the filament line and you clearly see it. When the table cloth slips and you see the shelf under the table. Any of those is a flash. As soon as you see the flash the suspension of disbelief is over. 

Magic only works if you are willing to ignore the things that you know aren't real. And you can either do that because the magician is so good at their craft that you never see the trick or because you are willing to go along for the ride. 

Which leads us to...Harry Potter. 

Man, what a great magic ride that was! Katie and I started reading the books when she was still in elementary school. We quickly caught up to what was published and started the wait for the new book life. Harry aged with Katie. The books matured with her as well. Went from being lighter to darker stories. But the thing that didn't change is we read them together, I read them out loud to her first; even the last one that came out when she was in high school. That world holds such a special place in my heart because of those memories. 

For my 50th birthday we went to Universal in California and did their Harry Potter World. Walking into that world was so exciting. Being there with my child was thrilling. Getting to touch and feel and see so many things rendered so painstakingly. It was lovely. 

But then...

You all know how I've struggled with JK Rowling and her TERFy ways. How she just needs to keep her mouth shut about things. But she didn't. She doesn't. And so there was the flash. The pieces that made me look at the magic trick a little differently.

And it doesn't work anymore. When you look at how she lets you know you shouldn't trust Rita Skeeter she describes how manly she is. Hunh..well there it was. When you look at the world she built, it's really a mean world. Talk to people about their least favorite subplots and a lot will mention S.P.E.W. But why do they hate it? Because it's boring? Well so is wandering the woods for 300 pages more than you needed to. In my opinion it's because it's written in such a way that you are supposed to find Hermione earnest, but misguided. I mean, house elves WANT to work for no money. It's just the way they are. Dobby was an exception, not the rule. 

So... you will see that exact argument made before the Civil War. Look, they LIKE to work. They are just different than us. We are doing them a favor. Most would keep doing it even if we didn't force them to. It's a kindness really. 

Hunh.

Any magical creature is kept under the thumb of the wizards. The Forbidden Forest, the Goblins, the House Elves. It goes on and on. If you view the stories through a colonialism is actually good lens then they are perfection. If you view them through a lens of I've been soaking in this messaging all of my life so it's really easy to not notice it unless you point it out then they are also perfect.

But once that flash happens...You can't. Not anymore. They lose the magic. I've seen behind the curtain and the great and powerful Oz is a nasty little thing.

I had noticed it during the last Fantastic Beasts movie. We left the theater really confused as to what we had just seen. Was the bad guy really a good guy? Did the wizards decide fighting him was so important that they would ignore stopping WWII? And if the mentions in the book about that battle actually line up with WWII does that mean she is saying that the muggle deaths that happened and were blamed on civilians instead of the wizards that actually did it were from WWII? And does that make her a holocaust denier? I mean...surely not. And of course the next movie might just explain all of that away nicely but...I won't see it. Because the flash has happened. The magic doesn't hold. 

I gave away my Ravenclaw sweatshirt a few months ago. I had stopped wearing it. It would work its way to the top of the pile and I would put it back to the bottom. Not really thinking about why, just I didn't feel like wearing it that day. Or the next. Or any. 

When Katie was here last month I took a deep breath and told her I was thinking about getting rid of the books. Or at least packing them away so they weren't on the shelf. This was actually hard for me to bring up. Because those books are a huge part of us. Those memories of bedtime stories and couch snuggles and her liking my voices better than the actors in the movie and dissecting each movie when it came out to compare to the books and the times we both had reread the entire series and gotten something new to talk about out of them and...she said she was getting rid of her copies when she moved. 

We were on the same page. 

Which, of course we were. I mean JK is a TERF. You can't really get past that part when she's talking about your family or yourself. 

We talked about how important the memories of the books are, and that we will always hold those dear but just can't with the world anymore. 

Then I mentioned I do love my Ravenclaw notebook and maybe I would keep that and just block out the claw part and make it Ravens like Maleficent? And Katie looked at me (her face doing that MY face thing) and said, "Because it's so hard to find a good notebook?"

She's right. 

Once you see the flash the magic is gone.