“Dad?” Miss9 began as we drove to pick up tonight’s pizza dinner. “If Hogwarts was real, would you let me go?”
“That’s a strange sort of question for a muggle like you to be asking,” I told her.
Harry Potter and all his friends are big news here in Devereauxville at the moment. Master8 and Miss9 are reading through the first books and I’ve watched the first two movies with them (three times each).
“But would you?” Miss9 demanded of me.
“Of course,” I said, and she looked rather pleased.
“I wouldn’t want to go,” said Master8 from the back seat.
This surprised me. I’d have thought Master8 would jump at the chance. You should see his little face light up when the feasts begin and the long tables are filled with all that great looking food.
“Freaky stuff happens there,” said Master8. “Chambers and snakes and spiders and three headed dogs. No thank you.”
Just yesterday a huge argument broke out amongst the kids because they’d made a Sorting Hat and Miss6, who hasn’t even seen the movies, let alone read the books, was horrified to be sorted into Hufflepuff.
“I’m a Griffindor!” she declared, and eventually the Sorting Hat, as played by Master8, agreed.
This isn’t the first epidemic of Harry Potter fever we’ve had in this house, having gone through it with Master21 and Miss18 ten years ago. I love the books and movies myself, which makes it a pleasant sort of thing for the kids to catch. Unlike Barbie fever and Digimon fever, which generally have had me curled in a fetal position and wishing for death to take me.
Hogwarts is definitely a subject I’m happy to discuss over the dinner table. Or, as in the case tonight, in our unairworthy car (it’s barely roadworthy).
“I think it would be wonderful to go to Hogwarts,” insisted Miss9. “I’d learn spells.”
“It would be fun to learn spells,” conceded Master8. “I’d make Dad fly up into the air and smack himself,” he said, giggling at his own suggestion.
“So you’ll come to Hogwarts?”
“Are you nuts?” Master8 quickly reverted to his original stance. “It’s dangerous there.”
“I still think it’d be fun to learn how to do magic.”
As I pulled up and jumped out to collect our dinner, Master8 was shaking his head and summing up his sister’s chances.
“You’ll end up haunting your own toilet,” he said.
They’re going to love The Prisoner of Azkaban, but I think we’ll put it off another year. I don’t want to rush through the books and movies and all these funny, funny conversations – that’s the real magic, right there.
When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’ Facebook Page.
’raising a family on little more than laughs’
I LLOOOVVVE Harry Potter… I can’t wait until my boys are old enough to share the stories of Hogwarts with them. And I’m with Miss 6, definitely NOT Hufflepuff – Griffindor is the only House to be in!
You ever ponder what might have happened if the Sorting Hat put Harry in Slytherin after all??
Never happen
My Master 6 has also caught Harry fever and i couldn’t be happier to finally have someone else in the house to share him with – His fav spell is ‘stupify’ to which he is always trying to perfect on his little brother, Master 3 LOL (who incidently goes bug-eyed at the feast scenes LOL)
Master7 is reading Order of the Phoenix at the moment. He has smashed through the books in about six months – can’t get enough of them! My dilemma now is that we have let him watch each film as he finishes the books and they get that much more intense each time. The wonderful thing about reading at the age of 7 is that it really is only as scary as you can handle. Not so, however, when Voldemort arises out of a cauldron for an overdue AGM with a circle of death eaters in a graveyard.