School work

The Recruitment Cycle

"What did you do this summer?" I asked, it was the first time I'd seen my friend since before school ended. She had a tendency to cut herself off from the world once we got out of school, which was exactly what she had done this summer. I was excited to finally get to talk to her again, I had missed her during summer. But when she spoke, I didn't understand a word that she said.

I looked at her like she was crazy, whatever she had said, it wasn't in normal english-- if it was even in english to begin with. What had she done over the summer? Maybe she went to a foreign country, and was still getting used to speaking in english again, but she didn't know any languages other than english, and I doubted that even she could learn another language in three months.

I looked over her again, trying to see if anything else had changed about her this summer. She was still very pale, her hair was still the same old color, but it had grown a few inches, overall, on the surface, she had changed very little. However, it was evident that she had still undergone a huge change internally. This is going to be a very odd year, I decided, curious to see what was in store for me.

***

Why wouldn't she just shut up, already? I was beyond irritated with her insistence that I had to read Harry Potter. Harry Potter this, Dumbledore that, Severus fudging Snape and some whiny little blonde-- I didn't care! I had had it with her Harry Potter references, I missed my old friend, the one who wasn't consumed by Harry Potter.

I swear, she thought that JK Rowling was a fudging Goddess of some sort, who made the sun rise and fall as she pleased. If anyone-- even the lady that played Dolores fudging Umbridge, asked her to jump, she would ask how high (if she hadn't already jumped at that point).

But, despite how much of pain her constant references were (almost as bad as the cruciatus curse, which, I'm told, is incredibly painful), I was kind of curious about this book series, which had radically changed my once calm and meditative friend into a hyperactive, amusing, albeit slightly irritating, "Potterhead" (which I'm told is the official name for a Harry Potter fan). Maybe I'll read it this summer, just to see if it's really as great as she claims it is...

***

I didn't quite understand, the language they were using was archaic. It was like they were cavemen, and I was the unfortunate Potterhead that had accidentally turned a time turner a couple hundred extra times to a time before Harry Potter, also known as the PreHogwartic period. Their speech lacked a certain quality, and a number of unintentional references to the well-known, and practically worshipped, book series.

I had become fluent in both fangirl and Potterhead over the summer, and going back to regular english was a challenge, but, nonetheless, I attempted to reply, suppressing a number of Harry Potter references, that were on the tip of my tongue. But even with the censoring of my words before they reached the ears of the muggles, a great number of references managed to get through, And the muggles I had been trying to communicate with looked at me as if I had spoken in a different language. I sighed, this was harder than breaking out of Azkaban, how had I lived like this before?