🐺Moony 🌷, 🐀Wormtail ❄️, 🐕‍🦺Padfoot 🍁 & 🦌Prongs 🍀 

I have been reality shifting into the magical and mugglical realms in January. It all started one rainy day as I sat quietly with the daughter. The soft glow of her lampshade gave everything a mellow look, faint music was humming somewhere in the background, and the rains were pattering outside. Her room was looking neat and lived in: her bookshelves gleamed from use, her paintbrushes scattered ever so artistically on her desk, a half done painting drying by the wall.   I sat with her, my head on her shoulders as I leaned over at her bookshelf. She was in a quiet mood, but chatting with me politely (I made the most use of this rare window – before she found something else, anything else more interesting than her mother).

“Really! The book titles you have my dear. Summer I Turned Pretty!”

She chuckled.

“And what is this here? All The Young Dudes?” I said laughing and rolling my eyes in mock exasperation. 

“Ooh! Actually ma! You’ll like that series. You should read them all.” , she said pointing to the neatly stacked books. There were 3 of them. 

“I am a bit past all this summer romance stuff, my dear – Summer I Turned Pretty must be a really nice book no doubt.”

“No – no! This is more to your liking actually. I’ve told you about this before. It is a fan fiction.”

I made a clucking noise which she rose above with a raised eyebrow as reaction. 

“This is the story of the Marauders – told from Remus Lupin’s point of view. Starts from the time Remus is 5 and goes till Sirius’s death actually.”

I sat up intrigued. 

That did sound fascinating and I remembered the queer angle of the story she had mentioned that had me thoroughly intrigued. I had never thought of the story from that aspect before, but once I did, it made more and more sense. Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban is one of my absolute favorites. I cannot believe the tragic story of the best friends who were brave, loyal, funny, and kind ripped apart by one of them who betrayed them resulting in Harry Potter becoming an orphan and their world torn apart. Such a senseless thing to happen to good upstanding sensible people.

Marauders Map

By Karen Roe from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK – The Making of Harry Potter 29-05-2012, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30618966

The daughter looked at me smiling – she knew she had me in her little palms now. She had caught that gleam of interest, and she caught on. “Only one condition though…” I moaned. 

“No – no conditions. I’ll read it … just…”

“Nope! You read it but not like you usually read books. No reading 10 of them at a time. Just read this and keep going for a 100 pages. Start tonight after a shower, tuck yourself into bed and keep going. That’s it. It is a slow book, but well worth it.”

So I did. 

I usually find Januarys depressing. The fun and camaraderie of the holiday season is over. The streets look bleak: the winter trees are all bare in their abscission (shedding all winter leaves is called abscission I was delighted to learn from TheMarginalian.Org), the holiday lights are taken down, and corporates are back to work in full swing setting goals and metrics and performance targets with an energy that is entirely divorced from the languid winter scene around us. So, if I had to get through this time, why not start with a trip to Hogwarts I thought to myself. 

🐺, 🐀 , 🐕‍🦺   🦌 I solemnly swear I am up to no good! 🐺, 🐀 , 🐕‍🦺   🦌

I chuckled and started reading.

I have been astounded. I love J K Rowling’s writing of the magical world, and started reading with some trepidation (JK Rowling is the Queen of Magic). But as I keep reading, I was enthralled. I was immersed and the week-end was spent in the most marvelous company of the smart, humorous, talented marauders in the magical world. The characterization of @MsKingBean89 was even better than J K Rowling’s, and I seem to agree with the Slate’s review of All the Young Dudes – The Harry Potter series seems like a spin off from this magnificent work of art. It enhances the world so beautifully. 

It is not available for purchase as it is fan fiction. But it is available to read online at:   All The Young Dudes – by @MsKingBean89 

If you are a Harry Potter fan, I strongly recommend this fan fiction. Some parts don’t entirely mesh with my mind’s version of Remus Lupin, but I found myself loving @MsKingBean89’s version all the more for it. It is beautifully written, characterization done slowly but surely. A charm of a book.  It is also 500,000 words long spread over 188 chapters, so it is quite a trip into Hogsmeade.

There was a research paper that suggested that ardent readers of the Harry Potter series were more open -minded and inclusive. This narrative ties into that seamlessly. I felt a warmth that comes from reading well rounded characters. Afterwards, I found another great treasure: the audiobook recording by Fleur Uploads of the entire series. 

@MsKingBean89, FleurUploads, and of course J K Rowling – thank you once again for this marvelous world. 

May the magic in us never fade.

🐺, 🐀 , 🐕‍🦺   🦌 Mischief Managed! 🐺, 🐀 , 🐕‍🦺   🦌

P.S: I really wish I knew who @MsKingBean89 was just so I could read their subsequent books.