Hogwarts Professor

Here’s one:

The Albus/Rose/Scorpius trio on Christmas break their first year overhear an unreformed Death Eater just out of Azkaban telling Lucius at Malfoy Manor he has found a Time Turner. He has managed to super-charge it and intends to return to the weeks following the Battle of Hogwarts, 19 years previous.

His plan? To take the Wand of Destiny from Dumbledore’s tomb and kill Potter before Harry arrests him in his first adventure as an Auror. [Read more…]

In this month’s Touchstone magazine, there is an article by S. M. Hutchens called ‘Picture Imperfect: On the Discovery of Dirt in Potter’s Field.’ I cannot link to this piece yet because it hasn’t been posted to the magazine archives online but I am obliged to recommend the article — and the magazine as well.

Touchstone claims to be a “Journal of Mere Christianity,” and, given that hat-tip to C. S. Lewis, you’d expect it to be brilliant, eloquent, and combative, with an engaging sense of humor to boot. You’d also think it would be a place to find insightful thinking about social issues, faith, and quite a lot about literature. Touchstone is all of these things and has won the awards to prove it. [Read more…]

A new title from the undergraduates in Indiana is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

It promises “literary criticism” so I thought you’d be interested. Your thoughts?

Check out her rave about Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and Rowling family friend, in the Time magazine issue devoted to the world’s 100 most influential people… I confess to being a little surprised she didn’t make the list, which, I suppose, reflects my need to get out more, right?

Anyway, great to see she’s writing again (I should talk) if the fiction here isn’t as entertaining or as edifying as what we expect from the Bard of King’s Cross. Your thoughts?

The Holy Friday Vespers service in the Orthodox Christian tradition is known for the reading of ‘The Twelve Passion Gospels.’ In the Fifth Gospel reading (St. Matthew 27:3-32), we hear:

Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? You see to it! Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself. But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood. And they consulted together and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, and gave them for the potter’s field, as the LORD directed me. [Read more…]