Ethan:
Happy 18th Birthday, Rowen!
Our day hasn’t been rated
birthday-party-fun, but we did have game night at the Inn; so we’ve had a good
day too. We had another after-school lab
visit; so game night really was the only change from the rest of our week-so-far. The break for play time with our friends and
neighbors meant a late start to our evening work, but Mom used a time phase
again; and cut back on what we were allowed to do so that we aren’t up too
late.
The weekend is just one school day away,
and I want to be rested and ready for that real break that is sure to include a
start to the Christmas fun; so that’s all I have tonight and I’m going to head
off to sleep now.
Ethan – out!
***
Ehlana:
Happy Birthday, Rowen!
I’m going to mentally wander off for this update
and go into something that has absolutely nothing to do with any news from my
adventures of the day. It is related to
Rowen’s special day; but only because I’ve been thinking about some of the
birthday stories we’ve already heard about from Cassie and Michael.
Don’t be afraid – all stories we’ve been
told are kid-rated!
This also isn’t going to be about Rowen’s
birthday. Her special day has hopefully
been a good one, but they had classes all day, Tim had one of his night
classes; and their birthday fun has only included a lunch with their friends
and a dinner-for-four that was short because of Tim’s night class. I’ve been thinking about the lunchtime jokes
and gag gifts that Rowen’s new friends shared with her, though; and that’s
where I’m going to take this update – into the world of hometown ‘magic’ and
what a group of college teens do with that story due to their own life
experiences.
Let’s start with the Harry Potter theme for
those jokes and gifts. I’ll need to ask
around, but haven’t heard stories about other generations having the same issue
with that kind of humor. Cassie’s part
of a generation of kids that grew up with the Harry Potter mania, so it’s no
surprise that their friends would make that connection once May started them
going on the magic theories; and maybe that is going to be something new that
has everything to do with modern connectivity through the internet and other
technology. That’s funny to think about
in relation to magic jokes – or Magi power, for that matter; but I expect that
it’s a valid consideration. Sure, there
have been other famous books, movies, music, and other things that have gained
wide popularity, but it used to take time for that to happen; and now it can
happen in a YouTube minute.
The ‘why’ wasn’t where I wanted to take
this thought process. I’ve mostly been
thinking about those jokes and gifts – like the stuffed snowy owl and jokes
about apparition licenses in relation to our actual Magi talents. While Rowen’s friends have been teasing her
about all of that; I’m thinking about what we actually could and couldn’t do
with our real talents when it comes to the Harry Potter version of magic. We could, for example, make brooms fly if we
wanted to do that with our Telekinesis.
Mom basically used ‘memory charms’ at Halloween to make all of the
non-Magi witnesses of Gwyneth’s attack on us forget that they saw anything at
all; so that’s another example of fact meeting fiction. I’m not brewing potions at the lab, but what
we’re doing for the cold cure project – and others – could be compared to
making Potions at Hogwarts.
No – I am not going to try and invent real
puking pastilles!
We can’t apparate, and only the
very-strongest Magi can handle the power needed for things like a time phase,
but we can all learn to do things like color-change ‘charms’ or levitating
physical objects. There are ways that we
could at least emulate things like a body-bind, but I’m pretty sure that there
are no archive references to Magi taking on animal forms; and there are lots of
other examples of Harry Potter ‘magic’ that doesn’t fit in with known Magi
abilities. On the other hand, the entire
Harry Potter theme of Light and Dark is real-enough for us – going back
thousands of years; so maybe J.K. Rowling stumbled across one of our Magi
archives before we moved all of them here to get some of her story universe
ideas! ;^)
Okay, that didn’t happen, and I’m
almost-positive that she isn’t a closet Dark Magi; so let’s presume that she
has a strong knowledge of history and myths and move on; since my musings aren’t
about literary inspiration either.
While comparing what we can do with the
magical feats from a fictional Wizarding World is fun, there is practical
application to my thoughts tonight; and imagination is an important part of
invention. If you can’t imagine
something completely-new; you can’t create it.
Sure, it’s entertaining to ponder what we might be able to make real
from fiction, but we can also take that process a step further and dream up new
uses for our Magi talents – or maybe even new talents! For instance, I stated earlier that Magi can’t
Apparate, but for all I know; maybe we could learn to do that somehow – or do
something so close to it that it would look the same. Actually, a time phase over short distances
would look like apparating to anyone watching it, and while that wouldn’t be
true for long distances – if you could somehow track that using cameras or
something; I don’t think that we have much data on that to know for sure.
What I mean by that is simply that we – the
Magi – have often done very little when it comes to testing our limits, and
even when we have; the details aren’t documented. Maybe that’ll be something that Ethan will do
as part of his future job as our Magi Archivist. I don’t want to drag that part of this mental
meandering out; so I’ll just suggest that we don’t actually know things like
the ‘speed limit’ for a time phase.
Right now, Ethan and I think that it’s awesome to do hours of work
much-faster than we could without Mom’s help.
How amazing would it be to find out that we could use a time phase and
other Magi talents to visit Mars – or even other solar systems?
Maybe I should stick to my work at the lab;
since I don’t think that we’re quite ready for inter-stellar travel.
Actually, now that I think about it; space
is something that wasn’t explored in the Harry Potter universe. Yes, they had Astronomy class, but nobody
traveled off-planet; and none of the Witches and Wizards so much as tried to
use a bubble-head charm and orbit the planet.
Magi haven’t done that either – though I think it’d be fun to be the
first Magi astronaut. Maybe that’s
because we need to fix all of our problems here at home before thinking about
exploring the universe.
Now that would be taking an Ascension of
the Light to a whole new level!
I could wander along on this for hours, but
Ethan’s right about getting some sleep ahead of the weekend, so I’ll wrap up
that round of mental musings now; and get started on that nap time instead.
This is Ehlana Proctor; coming to you live
from what is now my past!
