So I've decided to post my creative nonfiction short story from class here, on this blog. If you are at all interested in reading this, I'd really appreciate any feedback you'd be willing to give. (And I promise, it's funny--especially for any Harry Potter fans out there.)
Rachelle Hayes and the Ruined Trip to Hogwarts
Chapter One:
Hairless Legs and Dragon’s Fire
I
could have fried an egg on my back. I
would forget to protect the area of my skin that couldn’t benefit from getting
a tan since the rest of me was still pasty white and I didn’t wear clothes that
could not be described either by the words “T-shirt” or “athletic shorts.” But,
there I was, less than an hour into my Hogwarts journey, and I was crispy. My
sisters and brother-in-law were perfectly fine. They had managed to not only
put on sunscreen correctly yesterday, but to also cover every part of their
body that could suck up the sun’s extreme radiation during our escapades at Florida’s
wonderful Cocoa Beach. The next day, I’d learned my lesson. I was wearing a
large amount of sunscreen on my face, legs, arms, and even my covered-up back.
“John’s legs are weird. He doesn’t
have hair on his calves.” We had only been standing in line for thirty minutes,
waiting to get on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride and according
to the signpost, we still had approximately four hours to go, but already my
older sister, Erica, was bored enough to nit-pick her husband’s odd legs.
“It’s true.” John proceeded to stick
out his pale leg and model how there was a three-inch ring of skin around his
right calf that was completely bald.
“Can I touch it?” Tiffany, my little
sister by less than two years, and at the age of sixteen asked. She started to
reach her hand out when Erica slapped it away.
“No. That’ll look weird.” And it
probably would. John was twelve years older than her, with the physique of a
man who was comfortable at a desk job to prove it.
So we stood in line some more. And
Tiffany didn’t touch John’s leg.
The entire line wound around
Hogwarts castle. We had started out inside the castle where we had to deposit
our meager belongings. I had left my camera in a locker inside the Hogwarts entrance
hall because I wasn’t allowed to take my stuff with me on the actual ride, so I
couldn’t take pictures of the places we passed through. However, I do remember
that we were standing in the Herbology classroom, the greenhouse, when the
first bubble burst on my magical fantasy experience.
After we had stood outside on the
castle grounds for two hours, dying to get into the air conditioned portion of
our wait, a group of people started chanting. Loudly. Okay, so it wasn’t
actually chanting, it was singing, just in a language I wasn’t familiar with.
Over three dozen high school Brazilian kids were waiting in line behind us. And
I say they were Brazilian because that is what I, and my family, remember them
to be, however, we could have been wrong. The only explanation I can come up
with for our decision on their home-country was the flag I remember seeing on
their matching blue T-shirts not being the Mexican flag, and their skin color, dark
hair, and language patterns being reminiscent to people of South American heritage.
The
may-be-Brazilians had been silent up until we made it inside the greenhouse,
but I guess the suspense was getting to them, because they all exploded into a
random spout of song. Little kids who had been innocently waiting in line just like
we had were covering their ears to lower the volume on the singing. This
singing wasn’t simply like opening your door to find some Christmas carolers
outside, but more like the ruckus you hear when you are close enough to see the
musicians at a rock concert, but still far enough away that you do not come out
of the concert having a conversation with your friend through a shared dialogue
of screams because you can’t hear what the other person is saying. Parents of
those poor little kids were yelling at the singing Brazilians, and even John,
who wasn’t typically a person to confront others, was shouting at them to stop,
as well as asking the park’s workers to help out—of course the magical wizards and
witches running Hogsmeade couldn’t help out the poor muggles who had paid
hundreds and hundreds of dollars to have a fantastical experience. What was
perhaps the most disturbing was that the adults in the group of shouting kids
were encouraging this ruckus with their own enthusiastic clapping and chanting.
When we finally left the grounds and
actually started walking inside the castle, they magically shut up. And
suddenly, we were seeing Harry, Ron, and Hermione and they were encouraging us
to help them sneak everyone down to the Room of Requirement and off to a
Quidditch match! To effectively accomplish this, we had to do more standing and
waiting. But now we were able to see the Gryffindor common room and
Dumbledore’s office. Along with moving painted people and the always-cheerful
Moaning Myrtle. And once the excitement of being inside and seeing all the
awesome objects and effects had worn off, we did what we had been doing—we
waited. And waited. And waited. And when the ride was actually in sight, it was
unbelievable! Truly, it was a miracle for both our spirits and our feet! We
would never have been able to fight off a dementor after that miserably long
bout of standing.
I was the first person to step out
to get on the bench in the Room of Requirement that would take me through the
Floo Network and on my forbidden journey. That was a mistake. The floor moved,
and it wasn’t a magical happening. I don’t really know why the floor needed to
move. More specifically, I don’t know why the floor needed to move towards my
feet so that I was going against its flow in order to reach my destination,
which was a seat on the ride. Moving sidewalks going one way and the cart to
get on the ride going the opposite direction is very difficult for a person of
my ungainliness to figure out. My ankles were not happy with the strangeness
based on their sore and tingly feeling from the awkward ways my feet had been
angled and neither were the operators happy with my clumsiness—or at least, the
looks they shot me said they weren’t. (Maybe that was the park’s version of the
moving staircases?) But, I managed to get a seat and my relatives followed soon
after. We were ready to follow Harry on his broomstick through a holographic
journey of Hogwarts.
We had only been seated on the ride
for thirty seconds and in that time we had been reminded of the safety
precautions by the Sorting Hat, when a huge dragon head popped out in front of
us! Ninety percent of the ride is made up of a huge movie screen that the seats
simply tilt in front of in order to give the feeling of actual movement, so we
were surprised by the appearance of a very three-dimensional and very large
dragon head. Thankfully, it didn’t burn our faces off. It just sprayed some
water vapor gas stuff at us. My sisters and John were all perfectly fine. I
however, was not. Remember that sunscreen I mentioned earlier? Well, apparently
sunscreen and whatever made up that dragon’s wet breath are not compatible.
Somehow, the sunscreen had melted into my eyes and I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t see the ride that I had
stood in line waiting for for four hours! I managed to catch glimpses of Harry
soaring through the Forbidden Forest, and flying away from that stupid dragon,
but everything else was a pain-induced blur.
“That was awesome!” “I wish we could
do it again!” “Did you see it when-?” “Yeah that was so cool!” I said nothing.
I think I was in a sort of weird stupor. I had just come to Hogwarts and not
experienced the best part. There was no coming back from that.
Chapter Two: Wands,
Sweets, and Vampire Hunters
We met my parents outside of the
ride, past the gift shop amusement park architects include after the ride so as
to gain more galleons. My parents had a mug of Butterbeer with them. Cue the
drool.
“It’s gross.” Dad’s nose was all
scrunched up and his eyes were squinty. It was his typical
this-is-not-something-I-like face.
“What?!” Erica asked.
“It’s nasty.” I guess he thought she
couldn’t understand what the word “nasty” meant, not that she just believed he
was off his rocker.
Dad was a Vernon Dursley, except for
the fact that he wasn’t an obese business man, but a six-foot-tall warehouse
loader. He didn’t know a Dobby from a Golum, though. We found this out during
Christmas vacation one year when we all were watching the ABC reruns of the Harry
Potter movies and my dad pointed to the screen and made a “Precioussssssss”
joke. Of course, we all proceeded to laugh at him. I guess I should give him
bonus points for even knowing the names of the two completely different
creatures.
I remember a show on television once
had a camera and interview crew travel around the Hogsmeade theme park and bombard
the parents with Harry Potter trivia. None of the parents managed to answer simple
questions like “Who is Harry’s best friend?” or “Who is Harry’s archenemy?” The
kids hid their faces behind their arms in embarrassment. I’m glad they didn’t
show up the day we were there, my parents would have been the stars of the
show.
None of us believed my dad about the
Butterbeer. How could we? We’d traveled hundreds of miles to have some liquid-y
gold, so we tried it despite his insistence. And, fortunately, my dad was a
liar. Butterbeer was heaven in a plastic mug, especially when it was consumed
in front of a huge castle and a quaint little wizarding alley full of magical
odds and ends. It was a mixture of the taste of Butterscotch, the sweetness of
cream soda, and the frothiness of a root beer float. And according to John, the
Firewhiskey was good, too. I wouldn’t know. I was only 18 during the summer of
2012 and the Wizarding World has strict limitations on how old you have to be
in order to consume alcoholic fizzy magic drinks.
Throats quenched of their
sugary-sweet thirst, I conned my mother into following me back into the
overcrowded gift shop. What to buy? What to buy? A scarf? No. Too sweltering
hot outside. A sorting hat? Too expensive. Books? Do you even need to ask? And
I bought some books. Not the Harry Potter books, I already owned all of those.
Instead, I bought the companion books, Fantastical
Beast and Where to Find Them and Quidditch
Through the Ages. And there went $15 I had earned through two hours of my
hard work taking photos and editing documents for the Salem News. But the new Fantastic
Beast movie is going to come out next year (November 2016 for those who
want to know), so the purchase was definitely worth it.
Food. Food was the next priority. A
march to the Three Broomsticks ensued. Or more like waddle. Hogsmeade was very
full that day. There must have been a lot of first years getting their school
supplies.
I’m going to be entirely honest here
and say that British food sounds horrible. Shepherd’s pie? Ick. I don’t want to
eat a shepherd, nor should you. That’s cannibalism. So, I ordered a chicken
salad with more Butterbeer—not in the salad because that would have been gross.
My sister got the Shepherd’s pie. She liked it. I didn’t try it. John got smoked
turkey legs. He always gets turkey legs. He buys them, and eats them in a rapid
manner that leaves his fingers and chin in a quite unclean way, at Silver
Dollar City. My parents and little sister were even less adventurous than me
with their food choices. They went to a restaurant in a different theme park
that sold hamburgers and hot dogs. Ugh, the audacity of muggles.
So we ate in a restaurant that
appeared as if it would have been condemned should it have been sitting on the
corner of a city street. Of course, the actual foundation and structure was
sound, but the creators of the building were very good at their job. It even
had owls—that looked suspiciously like average, ordinary blackbirds—bobbing
their way into the building to grab a stray chip or two.
After shoveling down our food, which
sadly did not keep refilling on our plates, our next stop was Ollivander’s. We
needed wands. After all, you can’t perform Wingardium
Leviosa and knock out the trolls in the girl’s bathroom without a wand.
Unless you’re Dumbledore, because Dumbledore doesn’t need a wand. He’s just
that good.
Ollivander’s
was packed with a lot of first years, too. Although, the first years seemed to
have considerably aged since Harry’s time at Hogwarts. There were thirty
year-olds, sixteen-year-olds, and every other age imaginable, buying their
first wand. If there was a place to have an anxiety attack due to claustrophobia,
Ollivander’s was it. At no point in time was a part of my body not touching
someone else’s. Where was the Whomping Willow when you needed it?
“Hurry up already.” Erica was not a
patient person. I had only been looking at the wall of wands in their gray,
forest green, and black slim boxes for maybe twenty minutes. I just couldn’t
decide if I wanted a wand that was my own, or at least, not a book character’s,
or if I wanted a character wand. The non-character wands were kind of ugly, but
I wanted to feel like I had actually gone to Ollivander’s and gotten my own. I
did not want to just feel like an epic fangirl who collected her favorite
character’s wands.
“Why are you taking so long? I want
to get out of here.”
“I can’t decide!”
“Just hurry up.”
Ugh. Just because she bought the
Elder Wand with hardly any inner confliction didn’t mean that I could just rush
something like this. Did I want a holly wand or a sycamore? Veela hair or unicorn
hair? Phoenix feather or dragon heartstring? This moment could make or break my
entire future as a witch.
And with that thought, I realized I
had made my decision. The best and brightest witches of their age should always
stick together: Hermione’s wand it was.
I wormed and wiggled my way into yet
another line, stood for a good ten minutes, paid $35 and headed towards
Honeydukes with John and Erica leading the way.
Apparently, muggles don’t like
wizard sweets. There were far fewer people in Honeydukes than there were in
other parts of the theme park. I could actually browse the store without
fearing having my nose shoved into the candy when someone trips and falls on
me. That didn’t actually happen in the other stores, but at the time, it felt
like it could have.
Again, there were so many selections.
Clippy’s Clip Joint Clippings, Honeydukes Salt Water Taffy, Honeydukes Candy
Floss, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, Sugar Quill Lollipop, Chocolate
Cauldron, Honeydukes Milk Chocolate Bar, Chocolate Frog, Pepper Imps, Fizzing
Whizbees, Pumpkin Juice, Honeydukes Hard Candy, Exploding Bon Bons, and Ton-Tongue
Toffee. And unfortunately, I was too full from The Three Broomsticks to really
appreciate how awe-inducing this store really was. Especially considering this was the cheapest
place in the theme park. Almost everything was less than $13.
What I was thinking, I honestly
don’t know, because I only bought one package of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour
Beans and a Chocolate Frog. If I had been thinking properly, I would have
bought at least one of everything.
My mother rejoined as I was
purchasing my miniscule supply of teeth-rotting goodness.
She was
noticeably missing some things from when she had left, though. “Where’s dad and
Tiffany?” I asked.
“They went to watch a movie.” What?
There was no way I could possibly have heard her right. Who would leave the
enchanted land of Harry Potter to go and watch a 2D film? Crazy people. Or
worse, muggles.
“Why would they do that?” I don’t
think I wanted to come to terms with the fact that my little sister had been
converted by the Vernon Dursley in my family. She had gone to the dark side.
Oops…wrong fandom.
John and Erica had finished browsing
through the sections, and for some weird reason they had decided not to buy
anything.
“Where’s Tiffany and Dad?” Erica
asked. We go through this a lot in my family. If someone isn’t around, you’re
constantly asked where they went, what they’re doing, who they’re with, etc.
It’s very tedious if you’re the one who’s actually present. Erica had this
experience recently at a family reunion. She went to the reunion in St. James,
Missouri and John stayed in Illinois, where they live. She told me later that
she should have just stood up on the picnic table and made an announcement to
everyone that John was working and had stayed home.
“She went to see a movie.” I
answered for my mother. I wanted an answer to my question, not an answer to an
already asked question.
“Why?”
Mom didn’t seem phased by our little
gang-up on her. She just browsed some of the candy and said, “Tiffany wanted to
see that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
movie.”
No. Just no. My sister did not
abandon her family to force my father to watch a movie about extreme historical
inaccuracies in an amusement park theater when he could be instead, forced to
follow our happy, sweaty, Harry-Potter-overloaded family around.
“She didn’t want to come back. And
neither did your dad.” I ignored my disappointment by trying to weasel my
mother into buying my sweets for me. I wasn’t very good at it.
Now, I realize that our split off
for lunch was what made the trip turn from the feeling of Christmas during Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—surprising,
fantastic, and again, magical, despite the overcrowding and the Forbidden
Journey disaster—to Christmas during Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. During this book, everyone’s still
sort of happy because it’s Christmas, but Lord Voldemort is running amok and
nobody believes Harry and the Order when they say this, and Mr. Weasley almost
died from a snakebite. Their situation is just like how we were still happy
because we were actually at Hogsmeade and together, or at least less than a
mile away from each other, but things still didn’t feel quite right.
Chapter Three: The
End of a Not-So-Fantastical Journey
We’d barely
walked out the door when Erica suggested we go to another theme park. I could
feel the questions marks bouncing around in my skull. Erica had been so excited
to come to Hogwarts, Ollivander’s, and The Three Broomsticks. Why would she
want to leave so early? We hadn’t even ridden The Flight of the Hippogriff or
explored the Owl Post.
But, for some reason that I can’t
remember right now, we followed her out of Hogsmeade. I know I thoroughly
expected to return before the day was through, maybe that’s why I agreed to
leave. After all, I needed to get back on that stupid Forbidden Journey ride
and beat that evil bloody dragon to a pulp. So, our feet went from travelling
on cobblestone paths to the boring asphalt paths of the rest of the Island of
Adventure. In case you didn’t know, the Island of Adventure houses the
Wizarding World, Marvel Super Hero Island, Toon Lagoon, Jurassic Park, The Lost
Continent, and Seuss Landing. We went to the Marvel Super Hero Island first and
saw some odd-looking people in flashy, pastel costumes (because this wasn’t the
Disney version of superheroes with the subtle spandex). We then went to
Jurassic Park where John sprayed some unsuspecting people on the water ride
with those quarter-priced water guns, and then we decided rode the ride. My mom
thought this ride was just a lazy river ride; she didn’t notice the very tall
drop when we got on. Nobody sprayed us with water guns after our drop though. I’m
sure my mother appreciated that after her near-heart attack.
After that, somehow, we had walked
all the way to the front of the amusement park. My mother called my dad to see
if the movie was over, but he didn’t answer, so obviously it wasn’t. We browsed
a gift shop. And of course, the same Chocolate Frog, Bertie Bott’s Every
Flavour Beans, and books that I had bought at Hogwarts were, combined, almost
$20 cheaper at the front of the amusement park.
Bored
of looking at the same items over and over again, we left the store. And, an unexpectedly
evil thing began happening to my body. I was becoming tired. My eyes were
drooping, my legs were sore, and my feet needed a nice, elevated cushion to lie
on. I want to blame it on the sunburn, or the burning eyeballs, but honestly,
it was probably from all of the walking because I wasn’t the only one who
wanted to take a nap. Erica and my mom got some ice cream from a nearby
restaurant and plopped down on a bench. I joined them.
“I’m going to go get another
Firewhiskey.”
“Yes! Let’s go! OMG! I need to go
back to Hogsmeade ASAP!” That’s how I wish I had reacted to John’s comment.
Instead, I stayed behind and watched him walk away into the crowd, hoping to
gain my strength back before we attempted to conquer more of the park. The
three of us sat and watched those owls masquerading as blackbirds snag scraps
from the ground. The birds were even more miserable than we were. They were all
a mass of bald patches, bloody gashes, and broken wings.
In the end, somehow, we never did
conquer the park. Dad and Tiffany came out of the movie—Tiffany was very
excited about it, oddly enough (she had never been a fan of the supernatural
before)—and John came back with his drink. And we walked out of Universal
Studios. I hadn’t physically been able to see the best ride, or even get on
most of the others. I hadn’t taken enough pictures, or explored nearly enough.
People were loud and too close the entire time. And the Wizarding World just wasn’t
as fantastic as I had hoped it would be. The minute we stepped out of Universal
Studios, I decided that the next time would be better.
