{"id":809,"date":"2014-04-01T15:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=809"},"modified":"2014-04-01T15:00:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T13:00:30","slug":"the-wand-chooses-the-witch-a-story-for-potterheads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2014\/04\/01\/the-wand-chooses-the-witch-a-story-for-potterheads\/","title":{"rendered":"THE WAND CHOOSES THE WITCH: A STORY FOR POTTERHEADS<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re not a Potterhead and if you find the idea of buying movie-related merchandise absurd, you will find what I\u2019m going to narrate here simply silly. If you are a Potterhead, I\u2019m sure you will love it\u2026<\/p>\n

When I started teaching the Harry Potter<\/em> elective and about two thirds of my class declared they owned each a personal wand, I realized I should have to get my own sooner or later. My students explained they had purchased (for 40 euros!) the \u2018official\u2019 wand \u2018belonging\u2019 to their favourite character. In my case, as they all know by now, this is Sirius Black. However, as I told them, I found it impossible to choose his wand as I don\u2019t understand myself my strong emotional attachment to this very tragic figure (I\u2019m working on it). I decided to buy instead Luna Lovegood\u2019s, a character I like very much, or, perhaps even commission a tailor-made one from a sculptor that sells his wares on the internet. I never checked what each wand looked like, just how much they cost and who sells them (the Noble Collection, \u201cthe world’s premiere designer and manufacturer of high end movie prop replicas and collectibles\u201d). And I insisted to everyone who asked me that I would never buy Sirius\u2019 wand, that was totally out of the question.<\/p>\n

On Saturday afternoon my husband and I went for a totally improvised walk in Barcelona\u2019s \u2018friki\u2019 triangle (Passeig de Sant Joan\/Bail\u00e9n\/Ali Bey). We first visited the new Gigamesh shop on Bail\u00e9n street. Next we wandered into Norma Comics and the first thing we saw was this display, with fifty Harry Potter<\/em> wands. About half had the name of character \u2018owners\u2019 on them, not the rest. I checked Luna\u2019s but didn\u2019t like it much, and I spent about 15 minutes going through the whole collection, not seeing \u2018the one.\u2019<\/p>\n

My husband eventually pointed one to me, \u201cthat\u2019s the one for you\u201d, and I feel in love with it at once. I didn\u2019t care whose it was \u2013that was my wand. What a beauty. After procrastinating for as long as I could, for I sensed what was coming, we asked a shop assistant whose wand that was. He said either Snape\u2019s or Hermione\u2019s. Good, I said, either is fine for me. He asked a second shop assistant, though, and in the minutes that went by I knew it: \u201cIt\u2019s Sirius Black\u2019s wand,\u201d he said. I promise I got what I can only describe as an electric shock. My husband blanched. The kind assistant smiled a smile which said \u201cwe get this here in this shop every day.\u201d I purchased the wand, the assistant congratulated me when I explained it was not a present but for myself. Here it is now, in a place of honour among my books, below the Harry Potter set.<\/p>\n

I felt weird for hours, enjoying very much this magical moment (and I must thank my husband for sharing it with me to the full). This really is, he said, a case of the wand choosing the witch \u2013we laughed much. When we managed to rationalize a little this odd ocurrence, he theorised that perhaps I had seen the wand before and my subconcious recalled it (I don\u2019t think so). Or that, I like this better, the wand designer had perfectly captured the nature of the character and I related to that again subconsciously, which was why I chose the wand (or the wand chose me\u2026). I really don\u2019t know what happened in that shop. Can an object represent a character this well?<\/p>\n

You may call it a simple coincidence and dismiss the anecdote as a very silly accident that only shows how childish an adult (me) can be. Fair enough. After all, here I am, investing much emotional energy in possessing an outrageously overpriced piece of high-quality plastic, which is, in addition, mass manufactured. Yet if you go down that road, the world is a dreary place and I prefer going up the other road: the one suggesting that last Saturday afternoon I enjoyed the most magical moment in my forty years of reading. I\u2019m sure all my Potterhead students understand me. Also, if you own a light-sabre you will understand me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to miss the little irrational moments \u2013for this are the ones which, happening very often back in childhood or in our teenage years, finally led us to become adult literature teachers. That they were elicited by Don Quijote or Hamlet, and not by Sirius Black, is to me just a slight difference, though it may be immense to others. It\u2019s all about the magic of reading (and seeing films, of course).<\/p>\n

The wand I share with Sirius does have magical powers indeed: whenever I look at it in the future I\u2019ll recall the happy time when I taught \u2018Cultural Studies: The Harry Potter<\/em> Series\u2019\u2026 and the wand chose the witch.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re not a Potterhead and if you find the idea of buying movie-related merchandise absurd, you will find what I\u2019m going to narrate here simply silly. If you are a Potterhead, I\u2019m sure you will love it\u2026 When I started teaching the Harry Potter elective and about two thirds of my class declared they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harry-potter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}