Sobre la magia, la ciencia y Harry Potter

Hace unos años, en un taller literario en inglés, nos pidieron escribir un artículo sobre nuestro libro favorito. Elegí hacerlo sobre la saga de Harry Potter, que quizás no es mi favorito literariamente pero sí (sin dudas) por lo que representa en mi vida. Hoy hace 20 años que publicaron el primero y me animo a compartir con todos este pedacito de mi vida, porque creo firmemente en lo que dijo Albus Dumbledore: "Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."

Science, that bitch.

I’ve always belied in magic. It is everywhere: in plants blooming, in children learning new things, in cats peeing in their sandbox. In flavors combining, in the stars and the moon changing every day, in smartphones. I hate it when some analytic mind comes along and bursts my bubble. I don’t want to know about chlorophyll, neurosciences or planet’s orbits, where’s the fun in that?

So when life gets boring or too serious I usually dive into movies or a book, and that was how I got to the Harry Potter saga. In that time I was in a very consuming relationship, I was reading Nietzche and Thomas Mann. My granny had just suddenly died. My hair was literally falling of. Some afternoons I baby sitted my little cousin and occasionally some of his friends, and one day a ten year old lent me the first three books. I was so sad that weekend that I prepared a bubble bath, dove in and sat in there until I read almost all of book number one. When I got out it was dark and raining, and I was a new person. 

That day was full of magic, I don’t care what scientist say.

So the fandom began. I knitted myself a Slytherin scarf, I broke up with my boyfriend and Cynthia said she knew some guy I would marry some day so I shouldn’t be sad about it, my hair started to grow again.  I waited in line for four hours along side my friend Vero, wrapped in my scarf, waiting to buy the sixth book. It took me about a week to read it and immediately after we started a blog called “Snape, yo te banco”. I know, my friends the brains from Puán never understood my passion, but I never cared. “Cada loco con su tema” my granny used to say. For book number seven we didn’t stay in line for the night, like so many did when it came out in Spanish, because we had booked English version at the bookstore. We went there the day they started selling it, it was a Saturday and Vero as usual traveled to La Plata to stay with her boyfriend for the weekend. So we got there around eight in the morning, and of course, it was still closed. When I finished it I was mad at JK Rowling because she hadn’t killed enough characters. Maybe that was my inner Shakespeare speaking, but I guess any ending would have been the same, I would have been mad anyways. I didn’t care how it ended, it didn’t want it to end. 

So my life went on and I found new obsessions, but I never got rid of this one. I still wear my Slytherin scarf. I got married to that guy Cynthia set me up with. I’ve read the first two books to my son and watched all the movies with him, and he is a bit obsessed too. My daughter should thank me for not naming her Hermione. I love science but I still find magic everywhere.

Fuck it. When I grow up I want to be the resident Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts.