Witch

If you are selected for jury duty service, they will likely say something like, “It is your duty to apply the law as it is given to you, regardless of whether you agree.” THIS IS A LIE. You have the right to nullify a charge because you believe the law is incorrect, immoral, or for whatever other reason wrongly applied to the defendant of the charges.

That being said, do not tell the judge or the attorneys that your intent going in is to nullify the law. You will not be selected.

1) Thank you, seriously. Those are fun and being included shows that my followers care enough to want to learn more about me.

And end up with this

Both Thorin and Bilbo glorify their homes in their minds, yet in both cases when they actually reach the home they’ve been dreaming about, they find them to be empty, desolate, and nightmarish. Their homes literally trap them in a downward spiral of corruption and bring them into proximity with evil objects of gold that subvert their inherent personalities and goodness as people. Their homes destroy them.

This is still wild to me. Sure there’s other, more artistic films that will deal with the idea of “home” being a toxic rather than a healthy place. But it is unusual to see the reality of their homes vs. the narrative about their homes that the characters believe to be true running so contradictory to one another in a film that isn’t otherwise too concerned with being intellectual. Even the books don’t focus on this message to that extent. Whereas in the films, there is a central theme that the idea of “home” as a fixation on a place is less healthy for us than the actions we take, and the people we choose to be with. 

It’s too much.

He gets a flat in London—Muggle London. Hermione and the Weasleys give him space. Kingsley ensures the wizarding world gives him privacy. Not that some aren’t reluctant. Rita Skeeter releases articles every day, wondering when their Boy Who Lived will return.

But Harry doesn’t see those articles.

He tries to forget who he is for awhile.

His flat is cozy. He stuffs it with plants and paintings and books. He has a cat (or three). He wears sweaters and blazers with corduroy pants. He goes to the market every morning to buy fruits and vegetables. That’s where he meets the kindly old woman who lives down the street.

She lived through World War II and so many other wars, wars that Harry has never experienced but can only imagine.

She goes to his house and she goes to hers. There’s always tea and small cakes and dinners and cocoa—apparently she believes that a teenager needs cocoa—and baking and reading and knitting.

Harry uses magic to brew the cocoa one day, not realizing that she’s standing in the doorway. She calms him by telling him that she knows all about magic. 

Their conversations shift after that. They talk about their favorite creatures and how hard it was to watch them perish before their eyes. They talk about the wall that seemingly gave way to let them enter the magical world. They talk about lions and friends and family and love and betrayals and life and death.

“When did you leave?” Harry asks one day.

She pauses, a hand resting on his cat’s head. After a moment, she looks up with a heaviness in her eyes, a heaviness that Harry sees when he looks in the mirror everyday. 

“I was young,” she says. “Younger than you are now. But I had already grown up. I didn’t want to leave, not really, but it became too much.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Some days I do, some days I don’t.” 

“Yeah…”

It’s a few months later, when he’s helping her shovel the first snow from her walkway, that he asks, “Did you ever try going back?”

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” she says, shoving a cup of cocoa into his hands. “I was shut out as soon as I hesitated.”

He pauses, nearly dropping the cocoa, before whispering, “That’s horrible.”

“What about you?” She escorts him inside, her cane tapping against the floor that he’s magically heated to warm her feet. “Would you be welcomed back?”

“Oh, yeah,” Harry says. “Til they turn on me because they don’t like the color of my shirt or because I sneezed the wrong way or because—you name it.”

She laughs and he smiles.

“Imagine that,” she softly says. “Rulers of our worlds and we’re not even allowed in them.”

“Imagine that.”