not falling down

Of course I can’t get the book out of my head, here at work, and that’s making it hard to concentrate. But thinking about it has led me to a couple of fairly large questions:

• Are none of the Hogwarts teachers married? Do they date? How? The closest indication I remember reading about that any teacher had any romantic inclinations (besides the thing with Maxime) was the one time Hagrid got drunk and kissed McGonagall at the Halloween feast, and she blushed and giggled.

  Also, where do they sleep? You can’t Disapparate on the grounds, so they’d have to live in the castle or fly / Floo home at night, but they’re always around the school then so they can be inconveniently patrolling hallways. Hagrid’s hut is the only residence mentioned, I think.

  Those issues put together raise a lot of questions. McGonagall’s old, sure, but Lupin and Lockhart were swinging bachelors–didn’t they ever want to go out for a good time? Maybe they lived in Hogsmeade, but I don’t recall any mention of that.

  This is starting to turn into My Teacher Lives At School, a children’s book Mom read to us and which is apparently now out of print. It was a great book, if kind of unnecessary, since we knew she was a teacher and she lived at home with us. I think it’s the same essential knowledge that teachers do have lives outside of school, though, that causes me to wonder this. Most elementary-age kids seem to hold a subconscious belief that teachers are school fixtures who live only in a professional capacity, and maybe it’s that perception on Harry’s part (and thus on the reader’s) that makes the Hogwarts faculty seem like a religious order.

  And yeah, maybe this comes up later in the book, but there’s been no indication of that so far. I’m sure that’s been addressed in fanfic, too, and probably on fansite FAQs, but I don’t really have any desire to look around at those–fansites scare me anymore, and I don’t like to read nitpicking plot-hole analyses unless I’m the one writing them. But!

• Has it occurred to anybody else that the acronym for Defense Against the Dark Arts is DADA?

I held out, you know? I waited over a week after the initial Five Million Frenzy, thinking that I was reading an awfully good Cynthia Voigt book and I had waited this long, I could wait some more. I mean, I like the books, sure, it’s not like I’m one of the psycho clerk-threatening Potter Moms.

Then the dastardly Maria lent me her copy, and oh golly. Oh golly. I’ve had it three days and have not allowed myself to bring it to work, which has helped keep me from being wholly suctioned. But it’s so good. I’m only three hundred fifty in and I already know it’s my favorite. I honestly like it better than the third one, which I didn’t think I’d ever say.

But they’re doing things, which I’m beginning to realize is what I like best in the books. Everything I get tired of in the others, especially the second, is when it feels like they’re being pushed around by circumstances; it’s when they start coming up with their own ideas that things get interesting. Maybe that’s why I always read the last quarter of any given book in one frantic sitting. Oh golly.

Maybe the best thing, to those few who will understand it: in this book, Harry and company get together just like Sunday Night Basketball! Also, the new villain is my favorite yet. Why? Because we’ve met, and her name is KERA.