Fat Books

This is truth. 

You don't notice it until years after you first bought the book. You pick it up, and look at it. You take in the battered corners, the way the edges are peeling back on the paper of the spine. The spine is covered up and down in a thousand creases. How the paper back cover that used to lie so flat is now creased and doesn't rest flat on the page any more. The pages aren't sharp paper cut material any more, they're sort of....fluffy. And you realize just how long you've had that book and how many times you've read it. You open the front cover and a strange sort of nostalgia comes over you. It's like the excitement of opening it for the first time all over again, only you know what happens. You're walking on an old road you've traveled a hundred times, returning to meet old friends, but you still feel that sense of adventure and suspense like that first time you opened the cover. 

I read so many books over the course of my childhood, I couldn't even begin to list them. But whenever I think about the books I read when I was a kid, the dominating ones that come to mind are the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. 

I loved them. I read the Hobbit first. I've read it the most. 

I read it the for the first time in sixth grade. 

I read it because my friend said it was really good. And she was right. 

I read the bit on the first page telling about Hobbits. I adored the story. I've reread it several times over the years. 

That book say me through that awkward stage of life we call middle school, was used many times as a boring evening's entertainment, gave birth to a brief obsession of riddles, and was still listed among my favorites by my junior year of highschool when I used it in an essay. (still among my favorites. always will be.) That paper was my favorite assignment all year and I couldn't wait to write it. 

Now I open it up again and smile the way you do when you find your stuffed animal from when you were a kid. You know the one. It looks like its been soaked, run over, tread on, maybe used as a napkin. I see the familiar first page heading "And what is a Hobbit?" I flip through all the pages and find that some places lay open better than others. 

I remember that first reading and all the subsequent ones. I remember nearing the end and clutching the pages in fright in a chair in my living room. I remember reading it another time at the pool waiting for my sister. I remember reading it my room when I was bored waiting for my parent's small group to finish so my sister and I could come out. I remember all the times I reread certain parts, and searching for quotes for my paper. 

Bits of my life really are preserved for me within those pages. 

Each time I read it, I understand a bit more. I bring new experience and new knowledge to it every time I read. 

So every time I open it I'm greeted by some old friends, and younger versions of myself, getting a bit older each time. 

Sorry about this completely random, slightly not-flowing post, I'm feeling a little nostalgic over here, and kind of missing childhood. Also the Hobbit just came out, so it's on my mind. 

Love ya!

Robin

Lavender Brown

I have one more final, you guys. One. More. Tomorrow morning at 10:30. Unfortunately, because it's a group project where we're putting on a skit, I can't study for it. So in order to distract myself, I'm here.

Warning: Harry Potter character death spoilers.

Lavender Brown.

We don't know much about her early on, just that she's in the same year as harry, Ron and Hermione and sorted into Gryffindor. But by the third book, we begin to get a sense of her. She seems frivolous and shallow.  She hangs on everything that Professor Trelawney says even when its obvious that it's a bunch of nonsense. We get the idea that she's maybe an average student. Good enough to remain unnoticed in the middle; not poor or good enough to attract the attention of the teachers.

And then.

We get to sixth year. And this is where everyone loses it. For multiple reasons, but as far as relates to this post, Ron starts dating Lavender. This is the point in the story where every girl wanted Lavender to go jump in the lake, and wanted to slap Ron silly for how he was acting. The relationship was the never-stop-kissing-cheesey-nicknames-always-need-to-be-with-each-other type relationship. Finally, Ron manages to break it off. Takes some difficult circumstances, but still. No one likes Lavender at this point though. She's the kind of annoying person that we couldn't care less if she just disappeared forever.

And then the seventh book. At the end, the great Battle at Hogwarts. McGonagall tells all the first years and everyone who does not want to fight to leave. And we were all thinking, "Okay, yes, good, send the sweet little first year babies home." But then later there's s moment, just a small one, where we see Lavender dead. Killed by Fenrir Greyback, a werewolf.

And here's where I want to camp for a moment. There're a whole lot of places I could go with this, like the casualties of war and all that, but I won't. Lavender Brown, whom we all thought was silly and emotional, flighty, and out of tune to anything that really matters, stayed to fight in the battle of Hogwarts. She knew what the risks were. She knew the odds against them, she knew she didn't have to stay.

She chose to stay and fight, and was killed for it.

Looking back, we notice something not-so-noticed the first time round. Lavender joined the D.A in fifth year, despite Umbridge's reign of terror at Hogwarts. And then, during her seventh year, she joined the second Dumbledore's Army to oppose the Death Eaters at Hogwarts. She hid with the others in the Room of requirement, and she fought in the battle when that time came.

Lavender Brown, who's always dismissed for her somewhat shallow personality, showed that she was more than everyone thought she was. Just because she's not like Hermione-smart, brave, and true, or Luna-individual, unaffected by others, and intelligent, doesn't make her a Pansy Parkinson.

The ordinary people that are so easily dismissed often end up being just as brave and loyal as those of whom we expect great things. No one expected anything above average of Lavender-but she gave the ultimate sacrifice for the cause she believed in.

Lavender Brown; silly, emotional, and maybe a little boy crazy.

Lavender Brown; brave, loyal, and hero of the Battle at Hogwarts.