Harry Potter and the Clue of the Screeching Owl: Harry Potter characters in a Hardy Boys Setting (2)

Ron led them to a shed behind the house and opened the door.

“It’s Dad’s muggle car.”

“Didn’t the ministry fine your dad 50 galleons for bewitching his muggle car last year” asked Hermione, looking around nervously, as if the minister of magic might appear at any moment. (Read book three to find out what sort of adventures the two friends had the previous year with a flying muggle car, a carnivorous tree, a hippogriff, and loads of other stuff. I don’t want to slow down this nascent plot with those details at this point. You’ll like it, I promise. If you don’t, then you don’t like Harry Potter and you certainly won’t like the rest of my story either.)

“I’s one’s not bewitched” said Ron. His lowbrow accent had sunk even lower since the trio had befriended Hagrid, the friendly, kind, and unusually large Hogwarts games keeper who lived in a smelly one-room shack near the school. “I’s up to us three to do that.”

Hermione looked as if she was about to say something about underage magic. Ron cut her off before she could open her mouth.  

“Don’t be such a spoiled sport, ‘Ermione” he said. “it’s only 11:00 and Dad won’t be back from the ministry until supper. We have plenty of time to put some spells on this car and then take them off again. Course, you’ll ‘ave to ‘elp us with the spell part seeing that ‘Arry and I never study.”

“Wait a minute, Ron” said Harry. “I thought you didn’t want an adventure until we have to save the school again?”

“We’re not saving the school, ‘Arry” Ron said, winking. “We’re jus ‘aving a bit o’ fun.”

“Brilliant” said Harry, grinning from ear to ear.

“But, Ron; your parents.” Hermione’s face was terror stricken. She was an only child who had been careful to never give her Muggle parents a moment of concern.

“Don’t worry, ‘Ermione” said Ron. I know Dad secretly wants me to do this. “Ave a look.”

He proudly pulled a letter out of a book he had been hiding under his shirt. The letter was on ministry letterhead addressed to Mr. Weasley, telling him that there had been some “odd goings-on around White Hollow”, a distinctly non-magical place about three miles away. Since Arthur Weasley lived the closest of anyone else in the Ministry of Magic to White Hollow, he had been asked to ”look into it.”

“But why don’t you let your father take care of it, Ron?” asked Harry.

“He slipped it into one of my books. I know he wanted me to see it.”

“Let me see that book” said Hermione, grabbing it from Ron’s hand.

“This is MY book, Ronald.”

Ron scratched his head. No one said a word for several long, uncomfortable moments.

Harry broke the silence. “Does anyone have a wand?”

“’Ere’s mine” said Ron, triumphantly. He pulled what used to be a wand out of his back pocket. It was now in three pieces.

This had happened to Ron before (see book two).

Ron was ashen-faced. “Must ‘have broken when I took my tumble down the stairs.”

“Bloody hell” said Hermione.

Ron and Harry stared at her.

“Isn’t there a spell that brings stuff to you?” Harry asked.

“Yes, Harold” said Hermione. She was beyond imperious at this point. The boys could tell because she always called Harry Harold when she’d crossed the line.  “But we’re not supposed to use magic, remember? I’ll go back into the house and get mine.”

As they waited, Harry could feel someone’s eyes watching them. He looked up to the window next to Ron’s and saw a ginger head with two piercing blue eyes and one smug smile. He poked Ron, motioning to the window with his eyes.  They book looked up to the window. Above the head was a prefect badge which seemed to be polishing itself with a rag. On closer observation, Harry could see a wand moving in slight circles that matched the movement of the rag. The badge, the hair, eyes, and smile all belonged to Percy, Ron’s brother who nobody in the family liked because he didn't have a sense of humor and was a chronic tattle-tale. He was a few years older than Ron and could use magic outside of school but he generally used it for boring things like folding his clothes and popping his pimples. Percy knew how much Ron loved the muggle car and hoped that the famous trio might do something reportable.

“Now what?” sighed Ron, nodding to the window as Hermione returned with her wand.

“Prefect Badge Runaway-us” said Hermione, waving her wand behind her back. Suddenly Percy’s prefect badge disappeared. His head did too, and the trio could hear the clattering of footsteps followed by Mrs. Weasley’s shrill voice and then the sound of someone tumbling down the stairs and screaming in pain.

“Now!” said Ron. The three friends rushed into the shed.

“Automobile-us Carpe Diem!” cried Hermione, waving her wand at the car.

“Never learned that one in school” muttered Ron to a grinning Harry.”

“You never learned anything in school, Ronald” Hermione retorted.

The Looking Glass Bookstore in Oak Park

I've been wanting to write up a little opinion piece on this store for the longest time and finally did so last month. Read it here.

The Curse of the Crystal Palace

(Another writing exercise)

In a crumbling section of Cicero sits the Crystal Palace Restaurant, an eatery once frequented by none other than Al Capone. When that mobster went to jail for tax evasion, legend tells of a celebration hosted by his enemy, Bugsy McGillicuty, at the Crystal Palace (which after that night was renamed, for a few months, the Palace of Broken Crystals for reasons you will learn in a moment. Capone might have been behind bars but his henchmen were not).

A grinning Bugsy had just raised his glass to his imprisoned enemy, or so the story goes, when a bullet shot the goblet out of his hand. It was embarrassing to be interrupted like that right in the middle of a gloat. Everyone dove to the floor except Bugsy, who was determined to finish the toast, despite the obvious presence of a hit man. He had been working on the speech for days, had committed it to memory, and didn’t want to see all that work go to waste, come what may. Faced with such determined courage (some might, and did, call it idiocy), the hit man stopped his work for one stunned moment. Bugsy was enormously flattered. “Here’s to that piece rancid pastrami who is now behind bars, will likely rot there, and so can’t do anything else to hurt any of u—”

His last word was cut short by the assassin’s bullet who, though a killer, was a very honest man, and couldn’t bear to hear a lie being told, especially in a public place. It would have been an extremely embarrassing moment for Bugsy, had he still been alive, to know that not one person clapped for his toast. They were all dead or fleeing into the parking lot.

From that moment on, anyone who ever raised a glass at the Crystal Palace suffered some sort of  public humiliation. There was the woman who swallowed her glass eye while toasting her doctor; the tiny elderly man who fell out of his elevator shoes when announcing his betrothal to his tall fiance; and the young girl who, while toasting herself at her 15th birthday party, suffered something akin to face rearrangement. She had spent hours applying her makeup but had unfortunately forgotten to take her antihistamine, so, during one enormous sneeze her false eyelashes fell off and landed above her lip, of all places. While she had earnestly hoped that her beautiful image would reverberate throughout the revered temple of social media, she couldn't have possibly foreseen that this would come to pass only because she appeared to be wearing a mustache.

The following year, her cousin suffered an even more cruel public humiliation. As she began to toast her beloved mother on the event of that woman's 41st birthday, she reverted to her odd second language, as she always did when she was nervous. Lifting her trembling goblet into the air, she began: “Etslay allyay aiseray ourhay lassesgay…” Crushed with the realization that she wouldn’t be able to speak anything but Pig Latin for the rest of the evening, she ran, weeping, into the bathroom and refused to come out, wishing to the dark skies above that she had believed her mother’s warnings about the curse of the Crystal Palace.

Harry Potter and the Clue of the Screeching Owl: Harry Potter characters in a Hardy Boys Setting

“Summer vacation!” Ron Weasley exclaimed. “No more saving the school until September!” He was sitting in his room with his friends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Harry and Hermione smiled. It was true that they had saved Hogwarts School—and the entire British wizarding world—three times in a row, always risking their lives and academic status to do so. They loved Ron but he was never much serious help during their adventures because he was a bit thick. Ron's contribution was lowbrow humor peppered with mild swearing that anyone who could understand his accent valued for its tension-breaking effect. That sort of thing came in very handy while repeatedly facing mortal danger.

“Sure, Ron, no more saving the school” said Harry, who was at that moment stunning some tiny woddle-hoppers that were trying to scurry under the rug. 

“Of course, Ron" said Hermione. "We aren’t allowed to use magic yet, outside of Hogwarts." She slapped Harry’s want out of his hand and returned to her favorite book, Hogwarts, a History. Although it was often the retention of her extensive reading that saved Ron and Harry during their repeated attempts to save the school, Hermione never let her extracurricular activities interfere with her studies and she still had dark circles under her eyes to prove it. 

“Let’s go for a ride, then” said Ron. “In Dad’s muggle car” he added in a whisper. Muggle was the perky slur used by magical people to refer to average human beings.

“Won’t your parents be ups-“ said Hermione in a nervous voice.

But Harry was already on his feet, following Ron, who was nearly flying down the stairs.

“Will you stop running down the stairs, Ronald Weasley!” his mother shouted angrily. Mrs. Weasley was supervising some spoons that were stirring three big pots on the stove. Although she used magic to do most of her chores, she was generally at loose ends, her face red and sweaty, her temper sharp.  Ron should have expected his mother’s outburst—she had mentioned the bit about running through the house once or twice—but it still took him by surprise and he tumbled down the remaining stairs. 

Harry froze. Hermione, following close behind, bumped into him and would have sent him flying if Mrs. Weasley hadn’t stepped over Ron's crumpled body, run up the stairs, and thrown her arms around Harry.

“I didn’t mean you, Harry dear”, said Mrs. Weasley in a sweet voice, patting Harry on the head and pinching his cheek. “You don’t have to look so worried. You can run through our house any time you like!”

“Um, thanks" said Harry.

“Bloody ‘hew” shouted Ron, who was still at the bottom of the stairway, curled up in the fetal position, and groaning in pain. “Mum, I think my ankle’s broken.”

“Ronald! What have I said to you about swearing in this house! Go on now, off with you three. Supper’s at six!”

Although Harry never knew what to do when Mrs. Weasley pinched or patted him, one of the things he loved best about staying at Ron's were the regular meals he enjoyed there. He usually spent the summers at the home of his inexplicably cruel muggle relatives and he had nearly been starved by them once or twice, partly because his obese cousin stole all of Harry’s food while his aunt and uncle looked on with approving smiles. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would have been more than happy to see their nephew die but only if it was completely, or nearly, accidental since their reputations mattered to them almost more than their morbidly obese son.

But here at Ron’s house, there was no threat of death by starvation. The constant kitchen-related fretting of the plump but attractive lady of the house always resulted in something delicious which she then proceeded to force upon everyone present, challenging them to eat “just one more bite.” It was a miracle that none of her children had grown as plump as she but perhaps that’s because they took after their slim but slightly less attractive father who, at six feet two, towered over his plump but attractive wife.

“Don’t worry, Mum!” cried Ron, limping out the door.

“Keep them out of trouble, Hermione!” Mrs. Weasley’s called over her shoulder. Hermione’s shoulders sagged. Just once she would like to be assumed to be the life of the party instead of the babysitter.

Part two.

Part three.

Part four. 

Some charmingly dark humor from Barbara Pym

"Mrs. Dyer went on to tell them all about a 'mystery tour', taken by the old people's association of a neighbouring village (the Evergreen Oldsters), on just such a hot afternoon as this on which they were now setting out. One of the old people on the journey home had been observed to be curiously silent, not joining in the sing-song.

'And do you know what?' Mrs. Dyer waited for an answer.

'He was dead?' said Emma brightly. 'Or was it an old woman?'

'No, it was an old gentleman.'

'I thought as much -- a woman would have more consideration than to do a thing like that, to die on an outing, with all the inconvenience.'"

Excerpted from page 109-110, A Few Green Leaves, E.P. Dutton edition.

Bumblebuzz, Rosalie K. Fry's first book

Bumblebuzz, Rosalie K. Fry’s first in a long illustrious line of children's titles, is a 20-page picture book about an anthropomorphic bumble bee who meets some new friends and gains a roommate. Simple enough, but as a Fry fan, I was fascinated to see in this little book a few seeds of Fry’s future work, especially her crème de la crème, The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry, published in 1957, nineteen years after Bumblebuzz.

Bumblebuzz lives in the roots of a tree and is befriended by two beetles, a snail, and a ladybird. All of Fry's books prominently feature some aspect of nature (not surprising considering Fry's bucolic childhood) . This is magically true in Ron Mor Skerry where the protagonist, Fiona, discovers a selkie in her family tree and learns that nature has powerfully impacted her immediate family as well.

Colorized Rosalie K. Fry Sketch. From The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry

After setting up the premise—Bumblebuzz is busy but lonely—Fry introduces the other tiny creatures who knock on Bumblebuzz’s door and ask if they can build a house on her field. When their new thatched roof house is demolished in a rain storm, Bumblebuzz suggests they rehab a deserted house around the corner from her, in the roots of the same tree. This activity winds up solving two problems: the homeless insects (and the crustacean) have a home and, as one of them moves in with Bumblebuzz, she is no longer lonely. 

Most of Fry’s books feature children solving problems by joining forces in a very similar way. In Ron Mor Skerry. Fiona, the protagonist, and her cousin, Rory, take it upon themselves to restore their family's abandoned, decaying cottages on Ron Mor Skerry to their original coziness, a prerequisite action for the story’s magical denouement.

From The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry

Bumblebuzz is a charming look at the first attempt of a beloved children’s author and a fascinating window into her future work. 

Discovering James Whitcomb Riley

I once paid tuition dollars to learn that 19^th century English poetry was subpar. Not all of it, of course, but one professor, while explaining how “The Wasteland” was revolutionary for its time, constantly referred back to the following schmaltzy line from Shelly: “I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed.” That, in his estimation, was the essence of what T.S. Eliot et al were trying to overturn in the early 20th century.

While Eliot was my favorite poet back then, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman (both, of course, iconoclastic in their day) have long overtaken the author of “The Waste Land” in my heart and in the number of minutes I spend reading poetry for pure pleasure. Eliot’s intellectualism seems bare and ascetic compared to Dickinson’s beautiful, pithy, mysterious brilliance or Whitman’s verbose exuberance.

But I've remained wary when it comes to 19^th century poetry collections, so when my library page daughter brought home three century-old books of poetry, I tried to remain unimpressed with the beautiful illustrations, inside and out, and the lovely thick paper that made the books quite heavy for their size. They were all written by someone named James Whitcomb Riley. 

I Googled him. In a nutshell, Riley was a Hoosier who celebrated the Midwest in his poetry. As a born and bred Midwesterner, I dove in and discovered some serious poetry chops in action, clearly displayed in the following lines from a poem titled “The Circus Parade”:

The Circus!—The Circus!—The throb of the drums,

And the blare of the horns, as the Band-wagon comes;

The clash and the clang of the cymbals that beat,

As the glittering pageant winds down the long street.

In the Circus parade there is glory clean down

From the first spangled horse to the mule of the Clown

With the gleam and the glint and the glamour and glare

Of the days of enchantment all glimmering there!

I could almost feel the excitement of a sleepy Midwestern town jolting to life as The Greatest Show on Earth rolled in. I could almost hear it too—Riley had some serious onomatopoeia going on, a few of the lines reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells." 

He could also be funny, as seen in "At Ninety in the Shade":

Hot weather? Yes; but really not,

Compared with weather twice as hot.

Find comfort, then, in arguing thus,

And you’ll pull through victorious!—

For instance, while you gasp and pant

And try to cool yourself—and can’t—

With soda, cream and lemonade,

The heat at ninety in the shade,--

Just calmly sit and ponder o’er

These same degrees, with ninety more

On top of them, and so concede

The weather now is cool indeed!

A painfully accurate description of a Midwestern summer! And while, perhaps, not as sharply humorous as an Ogden Nash poem, the above lines brought the latter immediately to mind (see “Lines to be Scribbled on Somebody Else’s Thirtieth Milestone”).

Thirty today? Cheer up my lad!

The good old thirties aren’t so bad.

Life doesn’t end at twenty nine

So come on in, the water’s fine…

I kept reading and discovered that Riley also did pathos. He did it well. While I knew that Americans of that period absolutely loved to drench themselves in mawkish emotion, I couldn’t find an ounce of it in the following poem entitled “He and I”, describing the quiet love of an elderly couple. It could have easily turned maudlin. It didn’t, and I loved it so much I’ve included the entire poem below:

Just drifting on together—

He and I—

As through the balmy weather

Of July

Drift two thistle-tufts imbedded

Each in each—by zephyrs wedded—

Touring upward, giddy-headed,

For the sky.

And, veering up and onward,

Do we seem

Forever drifting downward

In a dream,

Where we meeting song-birds that know us,

And the winds their kisses blow us,

While the years flow far below us

Like a stream.

And we are happy—very—

He and I—

Aye, even glad and merry

Though on high

The heavens are sometimes shrouded

By the midnight storm, and clouded

Till the pallid moon is crowded

From the sky

My spirit ne’er expresses

Any choice

But to clothe him with caresses

And rejoice;

And as he laughs, it is in

Such a tone that moonbeams glisten

And the stars come out to listen

To his voice.

And so, what’er the weather,

He and I,--

With our lives linked thus together,

Float and fly

As two thistle-tufts imbedded

Each in each—by zephyrs wedded—

Touring upward, giddy-headed,

For the sky.

I'm not sure how Riley was able to capture the quiet beauty of long-enduring love so perfectly since he never married. But it’s crystal clear how he became one of the most popular American poets in his own time, even if he has been forgotten in ours.