10 Things You Can Bet I Would Do With a Wand If I Suddenly Had One
The more I re-read Harry Potter, the more I am given to understand that I was supposed to be a wizard. Magic is all about sporting questionable outfits and shouting nonsense in public, and I already do both of those things. Let’s just be real: if you were to stick a magic wand in my hand and tell me to make with the sorcery, I’d immediately do every single one of these things with nary a follow-up question because I would know that this is what was always meant to be:
1. I would drop my keys into a sewer grate just to Accio them back out again. I’ve always secretly been horrified that this will happen to me, and now that I have a workable solution, I’m going to exorcise the fear impulse in my brain and get it over with already.
2. Summon things, like snacks. I don’t know what else. Right now I’m just thinking of snacks.
3. On that note, cook. I am never going to learn to adequately prepare lasagna without ruining it, and that’s just the reality we’re living in.
4. I would Expecto Patronum away all my anxieties and inner demons.
5. I would ask someone to punch me in the face so that I could heal myself with Episkey. No one has ever punched me in the face before, probably because I’m obnoxious but I always stop just short of reaping actual consequences for my actions, and I just feel like this would be the time to try it out.
6. Clean everything that I own with Scourgify. Particularly the dusty, overstocked, and largely abandoned industrial warehouse that is my bedroom, because there are things in my closet that I haven’t seen in four years.
7. Be invisible so I can see what my dog does when I’m not home. What is she even like when she’s not sniffing people’s butts with a vigor heretofore unseen?
8. I would dye my hair. Immediately. I see all the roving youths with their incandescent, brightly colored coifs, and I want in. The problem: I spent all of high school and most of college dyeing my hair various hues of red. I know the drill. It is messy if you’re doing it by yourself—expensive if you’re not. I don’t have the time or the patience or frankly the legal tender to revert to the old ways. But if I could have a head of pink with just a wave of my wand? Yes. A thousand times yes. I want to look like both a troll doll and Frenchy from Grease, in equal measure.
9. Free the spider that’s been trapped in my kitchen under a Tupperware container for the past three days. I would Wingardium Leviosa it out of my house and out of my life and possibly out of this planet.
10. I’d Reparo the hell out of my dumb idiot printer. I can’t tell you how many essays I’ve had to panic-print at the school library five minutes before class because my printer chose that moment to say “screw this, I’m out.” Alternate solutions: I could learn to manage my time more effectively, or I could simply buy a new printer. But I’m not going to do either of those things. I am who I am, which is a trash person. Besides, this printer and I are engaged in a deathless war, and I won’t be the one to back down first. I can’t.
Until the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts I & II. Pre-order now.
