It is by complete and utter coincidence that All Enchanted and Wild, a book that features magic, releases on Hermione Granger’s birthday. But I’m totally delighted by this coincidence. Happy birthday, Hermione!
I couldn’t find artists to credit in this collage I found, but I’m 100% for black Hermione
While Hermione might insist that romances are too frivolous, and she’d definitely blush at the sex in this one, I hope she’d appreciate the magic.
I think one thing that the success of the Harry Potter series (aka the “Hermione Granger saves the day, but, sure, let’s name it after a boy character” series) proved to me was that I wasn’t the only person still obsessed with magic. Not Vegas guys with top hats and sparkle. Not that card game that some of my friends used to play. But, like, the idea of real magic in the world.
Am I the only one making due with bubbles and sparklers?
The idea that, secretly, you could be special and not know it.
The idea that, behind the most mundane façade, something entirely sensational might be happening.
The idea that, maybe, we didn’t have to just rely on normal and terribly limited humans to save things.
The idea that, in fact, the world wasn’t the grey and faded thing that adults seem to say (and that we as adults sometimes feel) it is.
I think we like surprise fireworks, impressive clouds, and glitter because it seems like that might be magic.
I think we savor things like crushes and the giddy feeling of looking at someone we adore (or even just want to get a little naughty with) because that feeling must be one of the ways that magic feels.
I think we’re fascinated with tech, with gadgets and gizmos, because we couldn’t build it or really explain how it works, so it feels somehow like magic. (If you’re one of those big science and engineering brains who can explain, then your brain is magical to me!)
I think even those of us who love science like to believe that a coincidence might mean more, because that might hint that there’s magic.
Even if I never get to see it, much less practice it, believing in magic–even just a little–can make normal life feel better. Especially those times when “normal” means “it’s all falling apart and is hard and I just want to curl up and cry.”
So my wish for us (hopefully it’s a magical wish) is that we find the sparkling delights, the bursts of power, the small things that are so mind-blowing in their complexity that it almost seems like magic. That our lives are never so drab that we forget to embrace the tiny charms.
But also, I wish us the courage and the discipline to learn and grow into our best selves so we can make the magic in someone else’s world. Something I bet our Ms. Granger would get behind!
Be the magic you want to see in the world. Hermione would approve. (This one is by Frida Lundqvist.)
(I shouldn’t have to say this, but Hermione Granger and Harry Potter are obviously property of JK Rowling, not me. And the awesome fanart is also, sadly, not mine.)