Saturday, 1 September 2018

On Hermione and Reality.

You think that Harry Potter is a fantasy, don’t you? Everybody does. It’s just the product of a fertile mind closeted in an Edinburgh coffee shop on a wet Thursday afternoon. And so it is. What’s more, it’s an eminently commercial fantasy which lets us dream and smile and cheer and hiss, and then slip back into the real world duly refreshed.

But what does it tap into, I wonder? What about that?

You see, a lot of strange things have happened in my life, what with the moving shadows on the walls and floors, the footsteps on the stairs, the objects which move unaccountably, my own wraith being seen by a reliable witness walking the floor of the dorm while my body slept at the far end, doors which open and close by themselves when there’s nothing to explain it… And then there was the black dog which leapt out of the wall of my bedroom with fangs barred back in the winter. That was the best of them all; that one had even me – familiar as I am with strangenesses – shaking slightly and questioning the wisdom of turning the light back off. The dark presence which enfolded me in ice and said it had come to kill me a few weeks later was relatively minor fare compared with the black dog.

‘You must be seriously psychotic,’ I hear you scoff. Actually, I’m not. That's the point. So when I finally ring down the curtain on this latest episode of physical existence I intend to ask those in the know a question:

‘Where was Hermione when I was young and fit and free? Why did you hold her back all those years?’

But I already know what their reply will be:

You weren’t mature enough then.

And so I wasn’t.

*  *  *

I probably shouldn’t be making this stuff public, but who cares? Maybe I should mention in passing, though, that I had a good practice with the hedge trimmer today to see how my post-operative body would react. It wasn’t too bad, but I don’t think I’m ready for the tall stuff yet. The experts say I should be back to normal some time between the end of September and the end of next March. That's if I'm not asking the question by then.

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