Timeturners and Armies.

I wish that I could have been given a crystal ball when I was twelve years old and given a glimpse of my future. If I had known how reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone would shape my life, perhaps I would have been more enthusiastic about getting to read it. The truth is that my best friend at the time pestered and pestered me for weeks to read Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets.

Eventually I relented and checked them both out of my tiny local library. I remember sitting down on my bed, opening it up and being swallowed up by the story. I broke only to call the friend and whisper frantically (because I wasn't allowed to use the phone) that "SNAPE IS LORD VOLDEMORT! SNAPE! IS! LORD! VOLDEMORT!!" I remember that so vividly. Immediately I was swallowed up again, and finishing that first book, I realise now, my life changed.

From the second I met Harry, my life was better. School was more fun as my equally obsessed friend and I reenacted scenes from the books in empty corridors and made our new secondary school our own Hogwarts. (We even scratched a snake onto the tap in one of the girls' bathrooms.) When I was thirteen and fourteen, I lived and breathed the books. In classes, I did my very best to out-Hermione my friend, and we did our homework with quills. We had a folder filled with fanfic and fan art that we found on the handful of fan sites that existed back then and it was our most prized possession, apart from the books themselves.

When Prisoner of Azkaban came out, my friend and I both put our names down on a waiting list in the library for it. (We weren't aware yet that people often just went and bought books they hadn't already read.) The depth of story completely bowled me over. It occurs to me now that I never analyse these things as they happen to me, all I knew was that suddenly there were Marauders and I was in love with two of them. But really, J.K. Rowling has a way of NOT writing things that leads the readers to fill in the gaps themselves. It came at just the right age, where that amazing childish imagination hadn't yet succumbed to teenage 'coolness.' My friend and I spent hours imagining ourselves at Hogwarts, with Harry, Ron and Hermione. We knew them as friends. I longed for friends who were just like them in real life - just as courageous, loyal, funny and caring.

I couldn't possibly write all the ways in which Harry has affected my life. When, initially the movies were announced and the tiny fandom began to grow I resented every new fan who turned up and said they loved it as much as I did, or as much as any of the people I knew online. I was a child then. In fact, I was a child until very recently and in many ways I will never stop being one. But at the time I didn't understand that people could read three, four, five, etc, books in a row and still understand, love and enjoy them as much as we did, having lived them out several times.

Again, if I'd had a crystal ball and seen what this enlarged fandom would be capable of - adopting causes, changing the world, helping not only others but each other - maybe I wouldn't have minded. And of course, I would see my wonderful friends.

There's a fierceness, I think, in a way a Harry Potter fan loves their friends. I know that among my closest friends there is an unspoken understanding that we are the Rons and Hermiones to each others' Harrys. We're going to be there for each other when we're needed.

This brings me to, if you'll allow me, the 'crux' of this post. My Rons and Hermiones. My Nevilles, Ginnys and Lunas.

In every one of Harry's friends there is an admirable quality. Ron is loyal, unassuming and does everything he can to help. Hermione is clever and prepared. Neville is ready to step up and do what he has to for the good of others. Ginny is ferocious when it comes to protecting the people she loves. And Luna sees the world in a different way, and embraces the differences she sees. Harry doesn't feel that there is anything special about him. In fact, we are led to believe for a long time that he is very average. But Harry sees these qualities in his friends - in every person he picks out something that is admirable.

I've noticed over the last few years that once you leave school, college or work, the people you were friends with may drift away from you. Often you were only friends because you were sharing a common daily life, not because you had anything in common. I have also noticed that in each of my friends now, I can tell you at least one quality in them that I admire. Harry Potter has brought me together with so many different people and I admire all of them. They're my friends. The word has taken on new meaning to me in the last few years. In a way I went through a very traumatic phase last year of examining my existing friendships and thinking about how I felt when I was with a person, or how they treated me. It resulted in me letting some friends drift away, to see if they cared enough to come back again. (Not one of those friends did.)

Even though that was difficult, it helped me to see the incredible relationships I did have and gave me more time to spend on the people with whom to spend time is its own reward. Rewarding. I give my love and more love comes back. Only today did I realise how much love I have and how many people I love, in so many different ways. And I know that if I hadn't picked up that book twelve years ago, I wouldn't have these people who make my life so much richer. I may not have the privilege of being friends with people I deeply admire.

"I longed for friends who were just like them in real life - just as courageous, loyal, funny and caring."

Thanks to Harry, I found them.









.

Dear Mr. Potter

The things I feel are worth writing about are, without fail, the things I find incredibly difficult to put into words. For instance, when I was given a piece of paper in the Room of Requirement at LeakyCon '11 to write a Dear Mr. Potter' letter, I could barely take it seriously. What did I want Harry to know about how he shaped my life? Could I just sellotape myself to the postcard? I am so implicitly formed by the Harry Potter books, my understanding of them, the experiences I've had and friends I've made because of them.

LeakyCon

'Your love reminds me why I am alive.' - When the Lights Go Out, The Whomping Willows,

It seems actually foolish to sit here and try to put into words what happened last week in Orlando, Florida, but I'm going to give it a go.

Emma and the Mel containing their excitement like pros.

For me, the weekends started out with a group of friends getting on a plane in Gatwick airport on a Monday morning. We were all excited, thrilled and a bit tired having all stayed in the same hotel the night before. When we found that we had a fancy-pants new plane with DEATHLY HALLOWS part 1 on demand, we knew we would be properly taken care of on our 9-hour flight.

Me, Lucy-the-cat, Mary, Lizzie and Harry :)

When we touched down in Orlando airport, the air-conditioning was marvelous. We shuffled aboard a cool tram and sped towards the main airport, where we would be greeted by the beautiful and massively over-sized face of our favourite wizard. We all felt fresh as daisies and knew it would be a good idea to go rock out at a Harry and the Potters concert so seven of us piled into a taxi to the Orlando Public Library.

This was such a fun show. Despite spending nine hours on a plane, we, the Europeans out-danced every single American there at the concert. At one point Kylie and I divided to dance around the room and make people dance with us and I discovered Erin Pine! It was such a nice and unexpected surprise! We got to chat for a while afterwards and I remembered just how lovely and great she is. We need more Erin over here. I'm going to have to make this happen....

When we had to get back to the hotel, it was LASHING RAIN like nothing I had ever seen before. So obviously Mel and I had to go out and get drenched. :)

Joey's Gryffindor Sax

Kylie Mouse

TUESDAY:

On Tuesday, Mary, Aileen, Kylie and I went to Disney's Magic Kingdom. Kylie showed us all the best things like Philharmagic (in which I cried), the parade (in which I cried), and we stumbled upon a show outside the castle about dreams coming true (in which I cried.) This was the day that I discovered that rollercoasters are FUN! We went to Space Mountain twice, Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain and they were soooo the best! In the end we went home because it started lashing rain and we wanted to go to Hard Rock. It was there that I got hideously drunk from a SIP of a mojito and had to divide the cocktail between Ellie, Emma, Mary and Aileen. The room spun and I had to lie down. I think I may have been rude to the waitress - I can't remember.

This night became really fun after I had dinner and things stopped spinning! We all wandered around City Walk and found a DJ who may have been there for children and/or professional dancers. Needless to say we ignored any protocol and boogied down for quite a while before getting on the boat back to the hotel all sweaty, fed and happy.

Mary, Ellie and I decided that we were buzzing too much to go to sleep and bumped into Camie Heller and Jenni Russel in the lounge of the hotel. At about midnight, a rumor reached us that registration was opening so we went downstairs to find a huge group of Wizards lining up to get registered. It was so exciting! Unfortunately they didn't have my registration then and I was told to come back in the morning.


WEDNESDAY:

Mikey, Lizzie, Emma, Mel, Emilie, Kylie, Me, Bevin, Kelsey, Ellie

This day I queued for more than six hours to get registered. BUT, my friends were lovely enough to queue with me, Emma and Emilie, who also had badge problems. Mary and Aileen were great and went to queue for park tickets and cinema tickets. It was fairly stressful but when it was over, we got to the 'Opening Festivities' which featured a guy proposing to his girlfriend and a video montage. We also met Laura, Cathrin and James there!

Kirsten the Blibbering Humdinger!

After getting soaked on some rides in Islands of Adventure and going on the Hulk Coaster, WE WENT TO HOGSMEADE! We had to run across the park and somehow, Mary and I got separated from everyone on the way but found everyone again in the Hog's Head. Outside we had our butterbeer and bumped into a very merry Alex Carpenter before heading up to the castle. Kylie wanted to be there for my first go of Forbidden Journey and the gorgeous Kirsten Humdinger came too and pointed out all the cool details in the castle as we went along. As soon as we got off the ride, we got STRAIGHT BACK ON again, it was SO GOOD!!! I just loved it, I can't believe how great it is! I want there to be a new one every year!

At the end of the surprisingly short night, I found a very sleepy Cathrin sitting alone on a bench and knew that it was definitely nearly bed time. After sampling some of the 'Traditional Bristish fare" I headed home on the last boat with Mary, Ellie and the group from the plane. Alex was also on our boat with who I now know to be the Starkid Potter people. Ellie, Mary and I started a 'Hey Jude' sing-song and everyone joined in for the 'na-na-na-nas' á la last summer in my kitchen with Joey and Paulie. (The Beatles bring people together.)

THURDSAY:

Vladimir Snape, Post Mortem

Thursday was a really busy day! I woke up and went to the ballroom on my own to watch Finding Hogwarts. Ironically, I found many of the Brits in there (this includes Kelsey and Bevin...) and we wound up watching the film together. I ended up staying in there for the next two events with Ellie on our own until we had to go get lunch.

(I don't really remember what happened  between lunch and what happened next)

We went to go see the film for about 7pm.  I didn't quite process the film but I do remember thinking it was great and clinging onto Kylie's hand for at least half of it.

That night, there was Wizard Rock on and, because I'd been to the latest showing of DH2, we only arrived in as Lauren Fairweather was on stage, meaning we missed two bands. I was still feeling a bit troubled by the film so I wandered outside and found a few witches I didn't know as well as Mikey, Emilie and Mel, all sitting in a corner. I joined them for a while until MoM and The Remus Lupins came on. It was Alex's last set. I think I was so emotionally drained from the film that after the dancing was over that I didn't know what to do with the knowledge that this was his last set.

I'm going to have to continue in Part 2!

New Things.

Hello neglected blog. The number of times that I've drafted blogs in my head over the last month is ridiculous. I've wanted to blog almost every day. The thing is, when I'm going through a period of high stress or feeling low or whatever, I tend to not want to document it. It's like the opposite of being a teenager. Now I would rather look over entries and relive times when I was happy or calm. At 10.07 on this sunny Sunday morning, as I sit in bed listening to music and lawnmowers I would say I feel content.


Kylie has a nice hairband. She made it herself!

The reason for my contentment is the prospect of waking up somewhere else from now on. I'M MOVING! This day last week I picked a house to look at, looked at it and met the lovely people living in it and tomorrow I'm moving in. Bish, bash, bosh! I can't explain how delighted I am. Something my homeopath said to me made me realise that I was spending too much time looking after the people around me and not focusing enough on myself.

My house is a building site at the moment, with bits of wood and dust everywhere. (Not to mention the furniture piled up everywhere.) That's quite stressful. Then my dad's been ill for about three weeks and finally went into hospital on Thursday for pain management. (He has chronic pain and kidney stones.) So, that and the dog keeps eating every weird thing she sees - including some broken pieces of glass. She's already on antibiotics because the vet things she may have eaten some plastic. (I'm going to buy her a mesh muzzle because she's kind of a danger to herself.)


Mel has nice fluffy cat shoes. :)

I've just found that taking care of the house, the dad and the dog have been a bit much for me of late and it's time to spend some time on myself. I'm moving into town, to a gorgeous big house full of mature student artists and musicians and a cat. What I'm MOST looking forward too are the times when I can just spend a morning practicing singing, cooking just for myself, composing in my room, I AM GOING TO READ SO MUCH OMG, having friends come to stay, and being able to focus on my diet and exercise. Over the last four weeks, my healthy diet has gotten worse and worse owing to no kitchen and stress. I'm looking forward to getting back on track before the Easter.

Last night when I needed a break from packing I started to look at places and requirements for MMus degrees in the UK. So, my new life will include a lot of sight singing, piano and learning Italian! I can do it, though. I have time now. :)



I luv dem.

Spending Time with Henry

I'm going to have a go at one of those liberating, rambly posts that I used  to enjoy writing.

It's 00.35 and I should have been asleep 1 hour ago because my body is fighting a cold virus (quite successfully) and I am unable to function mentally right now. Text looks wrong, I can't string proper sentences together and I keep forgetting how to spell halfway through words.

Today, as with yesterday and the day before, I spend every single free moment of my life cleaning the house. My birthday party will be on Saturday and I have friends arriving from Thursday onwards and basically sleeping in EVERY single room in the house. This means that the spare room, to which all of my sewing and knitting paraphernalia has been relocated over the course of about two years had to be CLEANED OUT. This took me an entire season and a half of Peep Show to accomplish, and even then it wasn't/isn't done. I am quite proud of myself for managing to organise all my fabric and wool. It's quite a feat. I should really take a photograph.

Then there's the spare front room, into which all of my clothes, books, jewelry, junk, stationary, crap, bits and things had been transferred at Christmas so that my brother and sister in law could have my bedroom. Happily that is tidy now, despite having Lucy on Skype for a few hours while I repeatedly cried "What am I doing?! What am I doing? I don't know what I'm even doing!" because the enormity of my task was just ridiculous.

Tomorrow, I will clean my bedroom, the bathroom, the hall, downstairs and put the Christmas decorations away.

And so, my friends, I have once again come to these conclusions:

1: I have TOO MUCH BLOODY STUFF
2: I don't understand punctuation well enough
3: .......................


OH MY GOD I'VE GOT AN OVERDUE LIBRARY BOOK AND IT IS STRESSING ME THE FUCK OUT.

BongBong

Usually at this time of the year I'm all excited about the challenges of the New Year's resolutions. This year I'm finding it hard to get started. Apart from bringing the doggie for daily walks and trying not to swear, I've not had a chance to have a go of my other ones. The problem being that the Christmas period doesn't just suddenly stop on the first of January. My sister is still staying in our house and I know that if we have to go out to do anything (eg, buy food, meet a friend) it will inevitably take all day.

The first part of my day is pretty good. I get up, I eat, feed and walk the dog, come home, shower. Standard morning fare. But you can't just abandon everyone in the house to go composing in the music room. For one thing, in my house people will listen which is annoying and interrupt which is beyond annoying.

We were supposed to travel to Northern Ireland to visit a friend for three days but I just sort of put my foot down. (Very carefully...) I really do want to go visit Margaret but my run up to Christmas literally went like this:

CUMBRIA -> AMSTERDAM -> BERLIN -> EDINBURGH -> CHRISTMAS


I'm tired. And worse than being tired, I feel I'm behind on my actual life. Until I get some time on my own and space to get things done, I know I'll just feel panicked and stressed. I make a to-do list before I go to sleep every night for the next day and I find that I don't have the space to get anything on the list done. Time for piano practice has run out as I have a lesson tomorrow. Oh well. In at the deep end, I suppose.




It will be interesting to spend time with the woof on our own for the first time. My dad, sister and I were invited to lunch at our friends' house on Saturday. Their son-in-law just happens to be some kind of champion dog trainer and we just happened to have Millie in the car so we got a lesson in heeling and staying and sitting. We're also going to train her to poo/wee on command. (The word is "bongbong." You say it every time they go so they make the association. Amazing.)

I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO TOMORROW, YES, YES, YES!!!

A celebratory gif. My friend Jonny made this of us in the graveyard in Edinburgh:


lol @ Elaine getting hit with a snow ball on the right.

One Step Ahead of Myself

Bonjour, mes amis. Merry Christmas!

It's that time of year again; time for reflective entries where I think about the type of person I'd like to become and ways I plan to get there. On the plane on the way home from Edinburgh, in a bid to distract myself from my fear of falling out of the sky, I made a list of resolutions. Not one of my resolutions is weight related. I think that's progress. My healthy eating and positive habits are just life now, I will continue to lose weight because I've changed. I don't need to put unnecessary focus on it.

It's mostly career-related, this list. That's fairly amazing when you consider that this time last year I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I thought event manager. Funnily, that's still part of the package.

I'm not sure if I've written about it here yet, but I've decided to pursue being a singer/songwriter. My core of family and 2 Cork friends have been just really supportive. As in, no one has tried to talk me out of it. When I told Martha she very calmly said, "Yes. I think that's probably right." As if it'd been staring us all in the face. I suppose in a way it had?

So my resolutions are as follows:


__..::  Write and/or play music every day.

__..::  Record three albums.

__..::  Record one Wizard Rock album.

__..::  Become an inspirational performer. (Totes easy, guyz.)

__..::  Achieve the next grade in piano.

__..::  Spend time promoting myself.

__..::  PLAY AT LEAKYCON!!!!!!

__..::  Book at least one live show of my own music.

__..::  Write more letters.

__..::  Gain an acceptable level of French. (Be able to hold a conversation.)


Before the 16th December I honestly thought that the Snow Ball in Edinburgh would be my last Wizard Rock show. I thought I was finished writing music about Harry Potter. Being there, spending the weekend with my friends, meeting new friends, singing, drinking endless tea, singing, hugging, eating porridge and singing.... It's just reminded me what friendship can be. It's reminded me of why I got into it. It reminded me of how amazing people can be, how you can have a group of friends around you who look out for you and care for you the way you care for them. It's something that I encountered twice in America and something I don't think I've ever really encountered in my own Irish life. It's incredible. And so, I feel inspired to keep doing it. Until I have to stop...

I'm not the kind of person who will keep flogging a dead horse. When the time comes, I will stop. If I'm not inspired, I won't write. But the people in the community, especially here in Europe and Scandinavia just surprise me with their warmth, their support and their willingness to give of themselves. When I see someone come from Norway or Germany to come to a Wizard Rock show that I'm playing at, it really amazes me. And no one is horrible. We don't seem to have any drama over here.

Okay, I need to stop gushing. Long story short: ♥

Here are some photos of what I got up to...


SONIC SCREWDRIVER!!!


Cathrin, Ellie, Laura, me, Lucy





Singin' at the Snow Ball.



Snowball fight with Kylie in the Tom Riddle Graveyard.



I wrote this.


I didn't write this.


My voice was fairly wrecked by the time I came to these two songs so please don't judge. D: