Austin ~ Austen

The title of this blog post was the name of the Grayline tour I took on Tuesday.  It was amazing.  As for filling an entire day with entertaining and enlightening activities, it succeeded.  I finally got to see more of the British countryside and it was beautiful.  I loved driving through the German countryside earlier this summer, but I loved this country better.  No offense, but there are even more shades of green.  It feels old and idyllic from every point of view.  This part of my trip more than any other part transported me back to another century.

We started off with a drive to … Oxford.  I felt odd visiting the school as a tourist, especially since I knew I’d be returning as a proper student in just a week.  In the end, I’m glad I went.  It made me even more excited to live there!  I couldn’t believe the gorgeous architecture.  It felt like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, which made perfect sense since they filmed many portions of it on campus.  We visited Christchurch College in the guided tour and they filmed scenes for the first movie and the second movie in one of the stairwells there.  I could almost hear the main theme as I walked up the stairs … and asked some of the other tourists to take my picture.  Christchurch also boasts two important literary graduates/past tutors: Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis.  I was so happy just to snap a few pictures of their office windows from the main quad.  But I got the most excited when we walked past Hertford!!!  I didn’t expect to see it, but I turned around there was the Bridge of Sighs replica.  The guide only pointed it out briefly and didn’t even say it was part of Hertford College.  I got a little angry.  I guess I already have some college pride.  But I forgave him when he told me he had been an extra in the Harry Potter movies.  He went in for four days, they dressed him up in a bunch of costumes, he nodded and pointed in front of a green screen, and now you can find him in as the moving portraits in Hogwarts in three of the movies!  So I forgave him.

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I have now officially been at Oxford for a week and now that I have a start for my first essay, I can finally provide myself time to share my adventures here with the rest of the world.

It’s surreal finally being here.  I couldn’t even take it in that I was staring at the Thames when I looked out my bedroom window or that when I stare straight out of the main entrance to Hertford College, I’m looking directly at the Bodleian Library.  It took so much for me to get here, both literally and figuratively, that I couldn’t believe that these weren’t more of my best dreams.  I can see why so many people see Hogwarts when they walk around the city.  The old buildings, the green meadows, the banks of the Thames, the cute shops, and the people walking around in black robes all contribute to this idea of the fantasy school.  I try not to walk around with my camera out all the time because the tourists can get really annoying, but it’s hard not to want to capture every moment.

(The view out of my window.  Over to the right, the river continues and that’s where all the boathouses are located.  Oh yeah, and the bridge to the left, which I walk over everyday, is from Saxon times.  What the heck!)

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I know that the world is going Potter-crazy right now, but regardless I want to share my personal Harry Potter history.  It’s a big event because it has touched so many lives.

My Harry Potter fandom started when I was eight.  One day my mom came home from the bookstore with a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  She said she’d heard about it on the news and thought I might like to read it.  I remember sitting on the steps and opening the book.  I remember slogging through the first fifty pages and thinking that maybe my mom had been wrong about this book.  But once Harry got to Hogwarts, that was it.  I was hooked.  Harry Potter wasn’t the first book I read on my own—in fact I was already a voracious reader by second grade—but when I was little, I was really shy.  We had just moved to a new city and I had no friends.  For the year my family lived in Illinois and the year I read the first three books, I like to think that Harry Potter was my best friend.

And even when I moved to Texas the next year and made real friends, I continued to hungrily follow Harry and his friends in the wizarding world.  In fourth grade I realized my love for creative writing, and promptly wrote my first short story—in my Harry Potter notebook.  Harry sort of followed me in my creative writing pursuits.  When I went to creative writing camp during high school, I loved having mock duels with “wands” (pencils) with the other campers and taking “Quidditch” as my elective class.  When the seventh book came out during my second summer, it was a camp-wide rule that weekend that no one was to spoil it … or else.

You might think that I’d have left this obsession behind when I entered college, but instead I used it as fodder for my application essay.  I explained that I would bring the perspective of Hermione Granger to Rice.  I got in.  I think that makes me Hermione Granger, hands down.  I don’t care if my hair is too short or you think that your time turner looks more legitimate than mine.  I am Hermione Granger.  End. Of. Story.

This week I have been so excited for the last movie.  I made “Harry Potter Generation” tank tops with a group of friends, gathered my costume together, practiced curling my hair to make it Hermione-crazy, and impatiently went through the motions of my normal schedule.  And then on Thursday I waited in line for over 6 hours to get great seats at the 12:02 showing.  It was all worth it.  I sobbed during half of the movie, but left feeling contented.  As much as I love the Potterverse, I would hate for J.K. Rowling to write only to meet the demand.  My main wish is for her to write again, even if it’s entirely unrelated to Harry Potter.  But, when I woke up the morning afterwards, I felt oddly depressed.  Even though I have a billion projects to work on, I didn’t feel like doing anything.  In spite of all the hoopla I’d been working on all week, it didn’t feel like enough.  I felt like I needed something else to really signify that it’s the end.  I mean, it is the end of over a decade of my life.

Or maybe it is like J.K. said and Hogwarts will always be there.  Even if it fades into the background of my life, the books and DVD’s will be waiting on the shelf.  And even more importantly, I have the memories of what Harry Potter has given me.  Plus, I’ll be journeying to Harry Potter’s home very soon!  I just hope the Brits and other Oxford students don’t think I’m a crazy American fan girl.  I would leave my wand at home, but when it chose me (at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter), Ollivander told me that it would give me luck on an overseas voyage …  I hope so!