Here at Governor’s School, we have classes that we choose that meet once for one hour - just small discussion groups or workshops that you can go to without any real commitment (they only last for 60 minutes, after all). Today, I went to a discussion about Harry Potter, which comprised of 3 other guys and 24 girls, arguing for an hour about why their theory about Dumbledore or Ron or Harry etc. was right. Now, these weren’t your average Harry Potter fans. These people carried around pocket books with quotes from the books to refer to when needed, knew just about every character name every mentioned in the thousands of pages of the first six books, and have spent hours studying both the American and British covers of Book 7 just to get some clues about what’s to come. If you know who Luna Lovegood and Colin Creevy are, then you’ve got a pretty good idea about the personalities of these people.

I have friends who are obsessed with Harry Potter, and that’s fine. Sure, they may have read every book a dozen times, gone to midnight book release parties and dug through every page to look for parallels that will give hints as to Harry’s outcome, but they do keep it in check when necessary. But as I sit here typing, the rest of the group is back in the dining hall, continuing to discuss dear old Harry because they were just too excited to stop gossiping. They’ve already started to plan meetings for after the book’s released so they can talk about it some more.

But I shouldn’t make fun. Heck, even I’ve been through the trailer for the fifth movie frame by frame in high definition…

While I’m not sure I could have contributed to that discussion, it sure would have been fun to observe.

Hey Michael,

My son is at Governor’s School right now too, in Lynchburg. He went on a day trip to the mall and bought the new Harry Potter book and is reading it during freetime. Tell DJ C. (from Louisa) that I posted on your blog. And tell him to READ MY BLOG! Ha ha ha! (that was my evil laugh)