Oh To Be In England

My name is Suzanne Pallard. I'm not French. I'm abominably bad at French, in fact. My great-great-grandfather was from Quebec, but if you're going by blood I'm more a mix of Scottish, Irish, and a little Norwegian. Don't go by blood, though. I'm a Canadian. At times, I've wanted to be English. Who hasn't? 

England is less a place than an idea. England is Sir John Falstaff and it's also Winnie the Pooh. Robin Hood and Bertie Wooster. Beowulf and Oswald Bastable. I hold Oswald Bastable personally responsible for my jealousy of English children. And boarding school stories about prefects named Hilary, and the girls of the fourth form, one of whom was always named Marge. Although I never could have thought of going to a boarding school. In my part of Canada,  boarding schools are in remote British Columbia or Saskatchewan, and one sends troublemakers there. 

When I was eleven though, everything changed. I got the letter. 

You remember what that was like, don't you? If you were from a wizarding family, you still could have jumped for joy. If you were muggleborn, like myself, it took a while to accept, but once you did you could barely stop from exploding. 

"Miss Suzanne Pallard, we are pleased to inform you that you have been select to attend St. George's College of Magic."

Look at the name. So hopelessly wanna-be English. Everything I could have dreamed of.

But you want to hear about Harry Potter, not Calgary, Alberta (where I live), St. George's College (hidden somewhere in the interior of British Columbia), or the family history of the Pallards.

* * * * *

Harry Potter was born July 31, 1980, four years after myself,  born September 22, 1976.  I won't go into the mundane details of how he inexplicably escaped Voldemort's killing curse and everything he's done since to make himself famous. I will pass over the Harry Potter cult that developed at our school. If he ever knew that many of the younger girls at St. George's have pictures of him all over their walls, he'd probably have a heart-attack. My younger sister Phyllis, in fact, writes stories in which she transfers to Hogwarts, is sorted into Gryffindor, and Harry falls in love with her. That's going a bit too far, in my humble opinion. She also writes self-insertion fics about Gilderoy Lockhart. 

My personal connection to Harry Potter came through my correspondence with a Hogwarts student named Terrence Higgs. Terrence had problems. He is roughly my age, in his sixth year when we first began writing, and he had been kicked off the Slytherin (that's the evil Hogwarts house for those of you living in a cave the last few years) Quidditch  team to make room for an obnoxiously rich obnoxious brat by the name of Draco Malfoy. It was a pen pal program, mandatorily enforced, I suspect, by some authority in his life. We boring Canadians, however, jump at the chance of actually having real live English pen pals. Before Terrence, my pen pals had been a complete disappointment. There was Ronald Munro of Texas who wrote one letter and then stopped answering. There was Anna Kingsley of Australia who wrote one letter a month, and they all went, I am fine. How are you? The weather has been really nice recently. I have to go. Bye! Terrence's first letter, on the other hand, was something else.

Dear Suzanne,

I'm sorry that I don't know any French. I hope you can understand English. My name is Terrence Higgs and I'm a sixth year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am in Slytherin House, the best and most illustrious of the four Hogwarts houses.

My best friend Virgilia choked when I read that bit out aloud.

He was a reasonably good writer, and gave a complete biography of himself. No mention of Harry Potter, though. As Phyllis puts it, what is the point of having a Hogwarts pen pal if they don't write about Harry Potter? 

"Write back and ask him about Harry Potter," she said.

"Phyllis, he's in Slytherin. It might offend him."

"Slytherin? YUCK."

I wrote Terrence back after awhile, giving a little bit of my background. It's always a little tense, introducing yourself as a muggleborn in the wizarding world. You never know what the reaction might be. And, Slytherin has got to be world famous for being evil. Which was one of the reasons I was hoping Terrence would write back. We don't have anything quite as exciting as Slytherin at St. George's. We have only two houses, and the sorting process is almost completely random. 

Terrence did write back, and his letter was extremely entertaining. His new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher was Gilderoy Lockhart, and Phyllis was quite annoyed by his descriptions of Lockhart, which I read out over breakfast. Also a mention of Harry Potter, of how he hoped Potter would show Malfoy up, though he really didn't know if he had the heart to root against Slytherin.

What do you think of Potter? I asked, after I felt comfortable with the correspondence.

You asked what I thought of Harry Potter. I don't think much of him. To you, I suppose, Harry Potter is bound up with Hogwarts, and Hogwarts with Harry Potter, but here, he is just another student, and in fact, another Gryffindor: a point against him. Besides, he's four years younger than either of us. I thought a good deal more about him when I was on the Quidditch team. He is good. I'll give him that, though I can't help but thinking that, had the powers that be kept me on the team, I could have dealt better with him than Malfoy is now doing. Malfoy hates Potter and is obsessed by him. He is under the fond illusion that the entire common room cares to hear about Potter's latest infamies.

"Potter's infamies?" asked Virgilia.

"He can't be all perfect," I said.

"No, he's not a Slytherin," she said, "Of course, he couldn't be perfect." I threw a pillow at her head.

After that there was no word on Potter for awhile. And that won't interest a crowd as obsessed with Potter as readers always are. Who wants to read about Terrence Higgs, after all? Only myself. After we got to writing each other once a week even Virgilia quit wanting to hear them. When Terrence sent a picture of himself, in his Slytherin reserve team robes, the teasing began in earnest. 

And then, the Chamber of Secrets was opened and Potter came back into the letters. Terrence thought Potter was the one who had opened the Chamber. You can't blame him too much for that. Everyone did then. As Rita Skeeter wrote in "Witch's Weekly," he is a parseltongue. Not that I read "Witch's Weekly," of course. I stick to serious newspapers like "The Globe and Owlpost." And people were even saying that Potter was the Heir of Slytherin.

The Heir of Slytherin. No-one here is too sure what the Heir of Slytherin actually means. It said "Enemies of the Heir, Beware!" Technically, that could mean anything, but there is a legend that Salazar Slytherin, the founder of my house, left a monster in a secret room somewhere in the school and that his heir will reopen the chamber and let the monster loose on his enemies. But is the heir anyone descended from Slytherin or some particular descendant? 

Later

I'm sorry if this is a short letter. We're in a state of shock. Another attack. A Gryffindor by the name of  Creevey, as well as the Gryffindor ghost. Worse still, they are some people ... Would you think too terribly of my house if I said that there are quite a few Slytherins who believe in this purity of blood nonsense? They make me ill. Is it like that in Canada? Anyway, it's nonsense, since some of the same people are convinced Potter is the heir, and Potter is a half-blood. 

I wrote to tell him that the same feelings existed in Canada, but I thought most people were a little more tolerant. Do you think Potter is the heir?

I don't know if Potter is the heir. He's only twelve, though. Twelve year olds usually don't set loose monsters on their schools, though we've all dreamed of it. 

I can't say I've ever dreamed of setting monsters loose at St. George's. Must be a boys' thing. I had a dream once that St. George's burned down, and we were all celebrating that final exams had been cancelled, but it was someone else who had done it. Cancellation of final exams was exactly what happened to Terrence though. Great was the rejoicing in all his letters. Here's what he wrote about Potter.

Harry Potter saved us from our exams! I take back any snarky comment I have ever made about the boy. No-one knows precisely what he did down in the Chamber, but as usual, the rumours are tremendous. Furthermore, Malfoy's father was sacked from the Board of Governors, and Potter probably had something to do with it. Do you think it's undignified for me to so hate Draco Malfoy? 

And I wrote back, Dear Terence, yes I do think it's undignified of you. Serves that little brat right! 

Have you ever fallen in love through correspondence? It's better than falling in love with a fiction character, something I have done. No, I won't reveal their names. I'll hint, though, that one is in Tolstoy's "War and Peace." I got Terrence to read "War and Peace:" the first Muggle novel he had ever read, I think, and a spat ensued when he took a violent dislike to the character I'm secretly in love with. And the book is rather long. I'm considering skipping the Peace sections. 

DON'T YOU DARE! was my reply. You can skip the hundred page essay at the end of the book, but you will read every word of it otherwise, or I will send you a hex with my next letter. I wrote some long passionate paragraphs about the perfections of the book. 

Next question. Are you in love with Andrey Bolkonsky? I have no idea where he got the idea that I was in love with a character. I don't think I'm obliged to answer your impertinent questions about my fictional lovelife. Would you like if I pestered you over your alleged attachment to Nastasha Rostova? The answer surprised me. You've paired me with Nastasha? I could strangle that girl. Marya Bolkonsky is the girl of my dreams. Flirting through the post over literature is both fun and easy.

This is not much to do with Harry Potter, is it?

It's amazing that we're still writing to each other, Suzanne. Every other participant in this pen pal program dropped it long ago. I suppose one of the reasons that I, an indifferent writer at the least, so look forward to your letters is that they are so infinitely sensible. No offense to your girlish sensibilities, but except for Andrey Bolkonsky, you don't write about the more obscure matters of the feminine psyche (just kidding), or the weather, or which band you like the best. We have discussed literature, philosophy, politics, and Quidditch quite thoroughly, though, and it's been an immense pleasure on my part.

I had a confession to make. Terrence, prepare for a startling revelation. Make sure you're sitting down and have calmed yourself before you read the following, that may cause you to drop my letter, and never again give reply to my missives. I used to hate England. "-ed" past tense. There, are you feeling better? You see, a lot of my ancestors were involved in various rebellions on the Scottish and Irish sides. As well, I resented the English conquest of Quebec in  1759. You will be happy to hear, however, that I have long since reformed. Though I have only a very few drops of English blood (which in my salad days I was ashamed of), I realized that my language is English and so is my literature. So, I've switched to be very jealous of y'all, with your wonderful accents, and the historic atmosphere.

And so, wrote Terrence, jealousy, the green eyed monster, makes its appearance. You shan't have any sympathy from me. I believe that this is the best country in the world, so you can be jealous of it if you want to go ahead. Don't you have any similar patriotic feelings about yours?

Patriotic feelings.... I mused. I have them... in moderation. That's supposed to be the Canadian trait. But I could never see myself boasting at length about my country. I used to boast of how tolerant we were, but then I realized I was sounding arrogant, and since then have shut up on the subject.

If you're that desperate, why don't you move here? You could be a transfer student: our first transfer student ever. I have a nasty feeling though that you wouldn't be a Slytherin, and we'd probably have less contact that we do here. Inter-house rivalry is becoming increasingly bitter. 

You don't think I would be a Slytherin? You might be right. Hufflepuff might actually be my house. Does that bother you?

My Dear Would-Be Hufflepuff, I have no objection to the followers of the badger (that's the Hufflepuff emblem). As long as you don't take any fancies to the House of Gryffindor, we can keep writing to each other.

After awhile, we quit writing to each other quite as often. I was seventeen, and I met an awfully nice boy who asked me to the end-of-the-year dance. My crush on him was enormous, and I find it faintly disturbing that it's taken a minute to recall his name. James Connelly. Only about a year ago now. Despite being more rewarding in certain aspects, falling in love with a pen pal has some of the drawbacks of falling in love with a fictional character, after all. And I sometimes suspected that, in real life,  Terrence wouldn't have felt comfortable to be seen with me. Despite his defense of House Slytherin, it does have its nastier facets. We didn't completely lose touch. After school, Terrence was employed by the Daily Prophet, and I went to the Muggle University of McGill to take a degree in Classics. 

And now, this morning's letter.

Dear Suzanne, should I be writing this now that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned? For he has returned. I'll brook no opposition on that front. And you, who were always so sensible (a Hufflepuff trait?) will not offer it. Albus Dumbledore, my old headmaster, says so, and I'll believe Dumbledore over Minister Fudge any day. You said in your last letter, which I have put off answering so long, that you were thinking of doing a term in England........... You should come to England. I am feeling blue, and I realized yesterday that I miss your constant letters, and miss even more what I have never done: talked face to face with you. I'm not being too rude, am I? I mean, yes, England is now deadly dangerous, but I would really like to see you. My greatest fear is that when I meet you, you'll turn out to be a Gryffindor. Now, that would be interesting. But, if you come, I'll take you on a tour of London (Muggle and wizard,) sparing no expence, eating at the most expensive restaurants, doing things I consider completely boring. I'll do anything to have you come. 

"Typical Slytherin," I said softly.

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!! - Robert Browning, Home Thoughts from Abroad