There’s nothing that wasted college kids, retired school teachers, and seven-year-olds love to talk about more than Harry Potter. The endless debates about the death of Dumbledore (sorry, that happens in book five), how hot Emma Watson is, and what house you would be sorted into if you attended Hogwarts will never end. And for good reason. J.K. Rowling has done more than write a handful of children’s novels about magic; she’s created a living, breathing world that exists in movies, merchandising, and now a theme park. The other day, as my mind wandered to the world of muggles, potions, and Butterbeer, I started thinking about what it would be like if the world of Harry Potter was set in the United States. It’s an important distinction that the Potter-verse resides on the other side of the Atlantic, where people have a long history of getting wasted at footy matches civilized behavior and unbridled, worldwide imperialism royal traditions.
People in the United States are lazy. Sure, people in the UK are lazy too, but not on the scale and depth Americans have achieved. As an avid reader of the Harry Potter series several years ago, I would always wonder what my life would be like if I had the ability to practice magic in the confines of my own home. Countless times I imagined saying “Accio Remote!” lying in a state of atrophy, surrounded by Cheetos to no avail. Or shouted “Expecto Patronum!” at a party in hopes of impressing the hot girl in the room with your Elk/Bear/manly animal patronus. This is when I realized that as Americans, we would inevitably use spells and magic solely to make our lives easier than they already are.
Examples of which will be explored with Granger-esque thoroughness after the jump.
Henning
smpage
Lifting Fog 