I had actually forgotten I was supposed to get a prize for being an audience member in Game #2 of the Hogwarts Tournament of Houses, where my fellow Ravenclaws defeated Slytherin, with the help of the studio audience play-along with our handy little signal devices. After several enthusiastic emails from the company charged with sending these out, the prizes finally arrived this week.  I was rather hoping for some unique-to-the-show, available-nowhere-else item, but what we were sent was a Ravenclaw shaker bottle, available for purchase on Amazon. I had recently made a resolution to try to stay better hydrated, so I will certainly enjoy this. Still, I was a bit disappointed to get the erroneous cinematic raven emblem; especially since there is a slightly cheaper but more book-authentic version with the bronze color and the eagle available..  I wasn’t the only one disappointed, as seen here in a video posted by a fellow audience member. 

The ToH stickers on the box were pretty cool, though, and since I was lucky enough to attend with my husband we have two of them. I’m going to try to peel it off the box and recycle it for use somewhere else. Stay tuned to find out if my Ravenclaw ingenuity makes this a successful endeavor.

I am still enjoying the Covid-19 mask and the t-shirt they let me keep, though, both of which are eagle- and bronze-bedecked.

And, of course I still treasure the memories of the fun I had of seeing, and playing the game.  And I met many awesome people I met in the process, some of which have become online pals. Best of all was the joy of cheering Hogpro’s own David Martin onto victory! Look for me to be toting a my nice new water bottle around next year’s Queen City Mischief and Magic Festival, which will be back, in person, in 2022.

No, I still have not seen Secrets of Dumbledore and probably won’t for a week or two, believe it or not, between a son’s wedding in a different time zone and thesis deadlines.

I know, though, that readers are coming here for discussion and brilliant commentary on the latest Fantastic Beasts entry, so, because I haven’t posted anything this week about the movie, I have put together a list of seven interesting online pieces about Secrets for you to surf — and, I hope, a list to which you will append your favorite reviews, YouTube exegetes on fire with theories, or Hollywood rumor. It’s open microphone night at HogwartsProfessor.

Enjoy this smorgasbord of sorts, seven special opinion slices, and share some of your own!

• ‘The Real Secret is No One Cares:’ hpboy13 (Irvin Khaytman) See also ‘In Jo We Do Not Trust’ (2018)
• ‘Secrets Really Puts the Dumb in Dumbledore’ (New York Post)
• Mads Mikkelsen on ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Casting Chaos, Johnny Depp, JK Rowling and ‘Indy 5’
• ‘Fantastic Beasts’: How Scandal and Controversy Have Derailed the Wizarding Franchise
• Fantastic Beasts 3 – your biggest questions answered
• Fantastic Beasts 3: Jude Law and Eddie Redmayne explains what happened to Brazil
• The Rowling Library Review of Secrets of Dumbledore

As our Headmaster showed yesterday, J. K. Rowling enjoyed a lunch in London with some of the women she has been corresponding with over the last year. Several newspaper headlines and thousands of twitter comments later, my attention is still on the minutia of what the photographs show us.

Rowling is wearing a red badge of the type worn by school prefects in the UK as a badge of authority. The wording in schools will be either ‘PREFECT’ or ‘HEAD GIRL[BOY]’ depending on office, and the colour will be usually related to the house the prefect belongs to. The writing is indistinct but it seems J.K.R has been elected Head Girl of Gryffindor.

Simultaneously Dr Beatrice Groves and myself spotted that she is also seen holding an electronic vaporiser or vape pen. On her homepage there is a mysterious plastic bottle, next to some hand cream and hair bands. I have long thought that this might be a bottle of nicotine solution, but the lunch party is the first evidence that Rowling vapes.

Dr Groves has predicted that we will see Cormoran vaping in In Black Heart, and my guess is that he will be using, rather than a vape pen, something much more industrial, emitting clouds of distracting vapor and useful as a missile in a fight.

From our friends at The Rowling Library, the Rowling-Fry conversation that aired last night on UK television. Enjoy!

Happy Russian New Year! It is 1 January on the traditional Church Calendar, and though the liturgical New Year in the Orthodox Church is 1 September (old style) and until late in the 18th Century ‘Lady Day’ or Annunciation was the beginning of the new year in the UK and its colonies, many people, especially Slavs in my experience, celebrate today as the day of resolutions, inaugurated habits, and a personal dawn.

That being the case, despite my being anything but a Slavophile, I’d like to open the comment boxes to HogwartsProfessor readers to share their feedback about our posts, our formatting, our focus, our quirky lines of sight, whatever. Help us start the New Year with a better idea of what our readers want to read and hear about. I’m especially hopeful that one and all will share suggestions of topics, books, and authors you’d like us to explore — and if we could find a volunteer to help us pull together the pieces we have assembled for a podcast at long last, that would be the best.

So it’s ‘Open Microphone Night’ all day at HogwartsProfessor — How are we doing? What can we do better? What would you like to read more about? Less about? And, oh, yeah, who do we email to jumpstart our podcast adventure in the New Year? Thanks in advance for your feedback, requests, and help!