Poutini's on NBC!

Greetings from Hogwarts!

Admittedly, at the beginning of last week I wasn't so sure about this law school thing... everyone seemed so serious! So I spent the first week sniffing around every corner like a cat, cautiously investigating my new home. Down every hallway, in every nook of the library, under desks... I finally made a remarkable discovery. I'm at Hogwarts!

What with the vellum-covered, gilded volumes of ancient spells and traditions, black-robed portraits of austere alumni tipped over slightly, looking down over the Great Hall (Starr Reading Room). They even talk to me when there's something pressing and belittling they have to say. ("I passed the bar the first time around... will you??") The campus is a small compound of gothic stone buildings, there's quidditch (frisbee) in the quad and geeks abound! (Of whom I am Queen, if you haven't guessed by now.)

As for classes, I have McGonagall for Transfiguration (Civil Procedure). She's all elbows and points, but teaches us how to physically turn wrecked cars into solid gold and a broken foot into a mile of paper. It's fascinating!

Then there's Professor Trelawney for Divination (Lawyering Process) - a lovely and loopy waif (some say she talks like she's on painkillers... really she's just not of this planet) who makes circular answers to all our questions about the art of reading tea leaves. (By tea leaves I mean cases, the only things in the world that might be able to predict the future.)

We learn Potions (Contracts) from a man with a delightful Southern inflection, which is probably the only reason I can follow a word he says. And Lawd, if you don't get every ingredient in there, have you ever got a mess on your hands!

Ancient Runes (Torts) is taught by an actual ancient whose eyebrows precede him in every good thing.

Finally, Defense Against the Dark Arts (Criminal Law), literally meets in the dungeon (basement) of the library. There, we learn how to combat all manner of dark works with only the use of a well-chosen and mighty... pen.

After a long day labouring over massive volumes of ancient spells, our Phantom Grey 3000 conveys me home to Ron and Crookshanks, both of whom are settling in nicely. To think two weeks ago I thought I had seen the end of magic for a long time (for nothing is more magical than a gypsy masquerade...) and now here I am in the thick of it! Just reading this stuff conjures the spirits of the men and (more recently) women who wrote them. I nestle into wood-paneled nooks to commune with them, absorbing all of it... Awaiting the day that I'm allowed to use it all as a full-fledged Witch (...lawyer).