“She needs to sort out her priorities,” my brother Connor said. “Okay, who said that, who to, what movie?”
Without skipping a beat, I said, “Ron Weasley, to Harry Potter, in the Sorcerer’s Stone.” That one was easy. Now it was my turn. “I can mend bones in a heartbeat, but growing them back - !”
“Madame Pomphrey, to Harry Potter, in the Chamber of Secrets.” He paused a second to gather his thoughts. “And they say I’m mad!”
“Mad-eye Moody, to Barty Crouch, in the Goblet of Fire,” my little sister Carmalyn interjected. Then she said, “I knew I could do it, because, well, I’d already done it!”
“Harry Potter, to Hermoine Granger, in the Prisoner of Azkaban.”
The three of us could do this all day. They didn’t have to be long quotes, either. “Only one”, “We’ve heard”, “Absolutely spiffing!”, “Always”.
“Mermaid, to Harry Potter, in the Goblet of Fire.”
“Hagrid, to Bane the centaur, in the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
“Fred Weasley, to Harry Potter, in the Chamber of Secrets.”
“Severus Snape, to Dumbledore, in the Deathly Hallows.”
“Part one or part two?”
“Part two.”
Both movie and book quotes were fair game. Since all of us had read the seven book series at least three times, it was only fair. Besides, so much good stuff had been taken out of the movies! JK Rowling deserved credit as an author.
As for the movies themselves, we’d watched all of them except for the Deathly Hallows ones innumerable times. But I’d been thrilled when I got the DVDs for Part one and two of the last movie for Christmas. Finally, the collection was complete, and we could start watching the last two again and again! So many quotes to mine…
“He’s covered in blood. Why is he always covered in blood?”
“Ginny Weasley, to Ron and Hermione, in the Half Blood Prince.”
“I’ll tell my father about this!”
“Draco Malfoy, to Harry Potter, in the Prisoner of Azkaban.”
“Nice one, James!”
“Sirius Black, to Harry Potter, in the Order of the Phoenix.”
The books spanned our childhood. We’d grown up pointing sticks at each other and shouting at least two dozen memorized spells while playing in the backyard. After copying the Hogwarts school supply list from the Sorcerer’s Stone book, we pillaged the house for books on herbs, stuffed animal owls, and huge pots we dubbed “cauldrons”, pretending we were about to become first year students. The marbles in our colorful collections were named after Harry Potter characters.
“Fifty points if it goes through her HEAD!”
“Moaning Myrtle, to Harry and Ron, in the Chamber of Secrets.”
“It unscrews the other way.”
“Professor McGonagall, to Peeves, in the Order of the Phoenix.”
Even though we were all very disappointed when our letter from Hogwarts didn’t come on our eleventh birthday, we knew reality from fantasy by then and contented ourselves with our imaginings.
“Oi! There’s a war going on here!”
“Harry Potter, to Ron and Hermione, in the Deathly Hallows.”
“Part one or two?”
“Neither. That’s from the book.”
“Can you… hear me?”
“Harry Potter, to a boa constrictor, in the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
“The first sentence in the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Even if it wasn’t dialogue, we could still play the game just as well.
It’s just what we do. It’s something we all agree on. Being siblings, things like that are sometimes hard to come by. I hope the magic of the books never wanes and we never grow too old to see it.
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth does that mean it is not real?”
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