If the New York Daily News is to be believed — and really, as Potter Philes, are we supposed to believe what we read in the gossip pages of the Daily Prophet? — Emma Watson is leaving Brown University. The reasons offered by the Fourth Estate? Her classmates were given to greeting her class contributions with comments like “Three points for Gryffindor!” and she was stalked by boorish Harvard Harry fans at a Harvard-Brown football game. The actress says she is just taking a break to close out her responsibilities to the film franchise in the months leading up to the release of the finale. I think we have another case of life imitating fiction here. “Rita sighting!”

UPDATE 4/24: Rita was right, sort of! According to the Daily Mail: “Emma Watson has confirmed she will be transferring from Brown University to another school this autumn…. Watson’s representative Vanessa Davies said the actress – who has a fortune estimated at £10million – had decided to pursue a course not offered at Brown, and  had ‘absolutely loved’ her time at the institution. Davies also denied reports that Watson had been picked on at the Ivy League institution by fellow students.”

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I gave a talk at SUNY-Buffalo at noon on Thursday last week to the community at large and then had a long conversation with Prof. Lydia Fish’s Folklore class later that night. In the hours between, I walked around the beautiful Buff State campus with Prof. Fish’s sister, who traveled from Virginia for the event (for more on her Harry Potter concerns, check out HedwigLives.org!). The highlight of the walk for me was the remarkable castle that overlooks the campus, the once ‘Buffalo Psychiatric Hospital,’ now the ‘H. H. Richardson Complex.’ If you hop and skip over the jump and click on the links there, you’ll get a visual tour of the closest thing to what Hogwarts might seem like to Muggles underneath its cloaking spell — an empty and dangerously neglected fin de siecle stone palace, a city block broad and at least 100 yards long, built to house the mentally disturbed. And the towers!

Seriously folks, if Donald Trump wanted to build a resort devoted to the Hogwarts Saga (using the billions he will waste running for President) and if the ghosts of many generations of patients could be exorcised, this would be the place for all future Potter Conferences. Let me know what you think!

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Sean Dailey, editor of Gilbert magazine, home of the best in Chesterton studies and Chestertonian reflections on our times, has responded to a recent outbreak of Harry Hating in the world of American Catholics (most notably, a reprinted rant of a Star Chamber priest and yet another EWTN talk with the ever amiable Michael O’Brien, who shares his insight that unrepentant Potter Philes are secretly addicted to their “spiritual pornography”). Mr. Dailey takes the high road in his retort by addressing the usual tack of Catholic culture warriors with a Rowling fixation, namely, their assertion that human beings don’t play with magic in real fantasy literature, by which they mean The Lord of the Rings. The argument he makes is cogent and has the added benefit of taking you to the American Chesterton Society website for a visit. Enjoy the counter-argument to the usual tripe and the time spent abroad among civilized people.