I’m currently thinking about the choicest curses for the growing market of viruses but considering the anxiety & gloom surrounding social media, I’m choosing not to. I, like countless others, have found solace in books. Not just any other book series but Rowling’s forever rolling Harry Potter.
The sort of enchantment Rowling weaves around her books is indeed fishy considering the obsessiveness of the readers. Sometimes, I doubt whether the pages of her books are drenched in a love potion or a bottle of Felix Felicis. I have found myself and my sister glued to the books even if we are reading them for a hundredth time. And let’s not forget the apparent intermittent fasts & thirsts that we accidentally face while lost in the magical world. One of my cousins once forgot to ring her doorbell while coming back from school (she was sitting outside her home) because she was reading the truth about Lord Voldemort’s most loyal servant in the 4th part.
I never understood why Barty Crouch called Percy Weasley as “Weatherby”. Or why Peeves was never evicted by Hogwarts, even by the likes of Mc Gonagall, Dumbledore or even the Bloody Baron. But I’ll never forget his sing-a-song at the end “We bashed them…..”
During these times, when people are working 13 hours a day from home and then cooking & washing utensils, I do feel like a house elf. For the Hermione Grangers out there, I take back my last sentence. This is the longest detention human kind – wizards and muggles alike – have been through.
And talking about the current situation, I sometimes get the eerie feeling that Dementors are on lose. Since we are muggles, our eyes can obviously not perceive them but can very well sense them. And even if some of us are wizards/witches, we are forbidden to break the International Statute of Secrecy. I wish that corona virus patients were detected with the same dexterity as underage wizardry. Imagine the lives saved! (Nothing against the health care workers but against the long incubation period)
We could have used the tears of Fawkes the phoenix (and her relatives) in curing the organ damage of the co-morbid patients if Rowling’s world was real. And the shrill cries of the baby mandrakes could have been effectively used against the covidiots.
The corona virus is behaving like Lord Voldemort sometimes – imagine refusing to leave Wuhan after such aggressive measures! I doubt how many horcruxes a virus can have considering it lives only in the host cells. Or, have we become the horcruxes? This sudden thought is giving me the collywobbles.
Summoning charms could have come in handy during the lockdown period – just chant the “Accio” spell and whatever you wish for comes zooming in your lap. And the post of owls too, you’ll know which posts are relevant considering the way “owls fluff their wings importantly”. Contact free deliveries at your disposal, Monsieurs and Madames.
Quite mysteriously, majority of us took the virus scare for granted, the way the wizard kind took the news of Lord Voldemort as a hoax. Imagine the mental state of the countless Harry Potters who were demanding social isolation right from the start.
While the Covid-19’s Nagini is slithering surreptitiously in the by lanes of the research labs currently testing vaccines, let us hope a cure is underway.
While the mayhem unfolds, it is prudent to take a leaf out of Luna Lovegood’s book and snap astonishing selfies in baby carrot earrings.
Let us not forget our Aurors and Healers – the health care workers, the police, the army, the airlines staff, the research scientists, the sanitation workers and the shopkeepers.
I hope our Master provides us a sock or two soon – at last so many Dobbies will be free of the virus.
P.S. Please forgive the abrupt ending, looks like I drank a bottle of the Sleeping Potion.