Hotter Potter March Meme

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hotter potter, meme

What? It’s March already? Time flies!!! This means it’s time to join the Hotter Potter monthly meme. For March, the question is (this is actually my suggestion, thanks Melisa to include it in the meme) :

From all fantastical beasts (and creatures) in Harry Potter series, which one would you like to see? 

I will answer this in the following short story. Hope you’ll like it 🙂

Ever since I was a kid, I had always wanted to see the creatures. But my mom said, it’s better for me not to see them, because it would take too much pain to be able to see the invisible creatures.

I didn’t understand. Did it mean that I had to memorize a special spell? Or had a certain skills that could only be learned in Hogwarts? Did I have to pass an exam or get as many OWLs as I could? My mom won’t answer my questions. She kept saying to me, “Just hope that you would never see the creatures until you get really really old”.

When I got into Hogwarts, my curiosity was piqued again, after I realized that the carriages we took from train station to the castle were drawn by those mysterious creatures. At that time, I still couldn’t see them, but some of my friends could, and I felt that I wanted to give anything just to see a glimpse of those animals.

At the time I already knew that to see the creatures, you need to witness and accept death. And I realized that I was pretty lucky because I haven’t mourned anyone’s death until that time. But still, I wanted to see them! My mysterious creatures. My everlasting obsession.

Today is almost 20 years since I had the conversation with my mom. And today, I can finally see the creatures. People call them the thestrals. They are drawing our carriage to the cemetery. They have long, black manes, and great leathery wings, and the skeletal body of a black winged horse. Their eyes are blank and white, and they have a face like dragon. I can’t take my eyes off of them. They are scarily beautiful.

And suddenly I remember vividly what was the last thing my mom said to me, “Now finally..you can see your dream creature, dear”.

Gosh, Mom.. Today, today I would give anything in my life, to make me unable to see them again. To take me to my beautiful childhood days. And above all, to see you and told you the truth. That I chose you above this creature. That I was sorry, because I never believed what you said before.

they’re different. Pic from here

So… Thestral. My everlasting dilemma. A mysterious creature that not all people can see. And how sad it is, how ironic that would be, for people to be able to see something that is so bizarre and beautiful, they need to go through a certain phase, a phase that everybody would be very happy to avoid: death, and mourn.

To see thestral is one thing, but not to see it, is also another adventure. I remember when Ron and Hermione are flying with the Thestrals and  not able to see them. They can only see the sky and lights and cities underneath. Crazy!

Anyway, there’s a famous question that every Potterhead likes to ask: Why can’t Harry see the thestrals before book 5? He saw his parents dead, right?

JK Rowling answered this in one of the interviews, sources from here (WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!):

That is a really good question, because it enables me to clear up a point. The letters that I’ve had about the Thestrals! Everyone has said to me that Harry saw people die before could see the Thestrals. Just to clear this up once and for all, this was not a mistake. I would be the first to say that I have made mistakes in the books, but this was not a mistake. I really thought this one through. Harry did not see his parents die. He was one year old and in a cot at the time. Although you never see that scene, I wrote it and then cut it. He didn’t see it; he was too young to appreciate it. When you find out about the Thestrals, you find that you can see them only when you really understand death in a broader sense, when you really know what it means. Someone said that Harry saw Quirrell die, but that is not true. He was unconscious when Quirrell died, in Philosopher’s Stone. He did not know until he came around that Quirrell had died when Voldemort left his body. Then you have Cedric. With Cedric, fair point. Harry had just seen Cedric die when he got back into the carriages to go back to Hogsmeade station. I thought about that at the end of Goblet, because I have known from the word go what was drawing the carriages. From Chamber of Secrets, in which there are carriages drawn by invisible things, I have known what was there. I decided that it would be an odd thing to do right at the end of a book. Anyone who has suffered a bereavement knows that there is the immediate shock but that it takes a little while to appreciate fully that you will never see that person again. Until that had happened, I did not think that Harry could see the Thestrals.

So, do you want to see the thestrals? Or do you think you already can see one, if it is there right now, standing in front of you?