Pockets of Peace in February

For us February brings a relief from the relentless onslaught of December and January. It offers the opportunity to re-centre ourselves and find a steadier heart beat in the softer days before Spring, Sleep is less troubled and a sense of normal returns - normal for us, that is, because there is no normal once your child or sibling has died. Every bit of every thing on every level is wrong somehow. But in the spirit of doing something each month which Mark would either love or hate, off  we went to Harry Potter World in Watford.
This is not something any of us were particularly interested in. None of us had read any of the books, bought a scarf or a sticker or even a DVD, but, through the crushing misery of Christmas and New Year, the films, whichever, whatever, played before our eyes and afforded some minor distraction  through the worst of it.
Leaving for London at 3pm on a cold Sunday afternoon seemed somewhat strange, but we dragged ourselves off the sofa and headed south with no idea of what to expect and not really caring either way. We had a timed entry for 5.30pm and arrived amazingly, considering the traffic, with 18 minutes to spare.

Shuffling along in the queue, we waited for the overly jolly attendant to open the doors into a  world of magic, mystery and impossible imagination. Quotes from JK Rowling adorned the walls and we read how she had built Harry's character, knowing everything about him before she began to weave the story around her hero-child. She fell in love with her creation, just as I had loved my tiny child as he grew inside me. She gave birth to Harry in The Philosopher's Stone and watched him grow for ten years through Chamber of Secrets and eventually The Deathly Hallows. She fed him with words and wonderful adventures, formed friendships for him and enabled him to grow in strength and courage as he fought the Dark Lord and championed good, eventually falling in love with sweet Jenny.
Mark was my book; the book I never got to write. Each year a new chapter of excitement, fun, frustration, awe and pride, as he grew from a shy, sensitive and reticent three year old  into the energetic, intelligent, caring dare-devil that I loved with all my heart and soul. My novel. My Odyssey. My epic poem and autobiography.

So, back to our visit..........The tour continued, room by room. The Great Hall was THE Great Hall! There was the top table all laid for the professors and the long trestles separated into the four different houses. Goblets, and plates, bowls and cutlery all waiting in anticipation of the roar of hungry Grffyndors, the screech of owls delivering post, suspended candles and Headless Nick. We were transported deeper and deeper into the layers of literature. Exquisite adjectives, carefully constructed clauses, nouns; so many nouns, all given names with thoughtful appropriateness- the Snitch, The Philospher's Stone, the Cloak of Invisibility, ( there are times when I really would have liked one of those), the Rememberall, Gobstones and Horcruxes, all leading the reader through the volumes into the darkest chasms of  excitement, fear and suspense. There was Hagrid's cottage, Dumbledore's office, the Gryffindor common room, each packed to the extremities with hundreds of objects, some mystical and some functional, but all of them necessary to breath life and immortality to the stories.

We bypassed the opportunity to climb aboard a Nimbus 2000 and take our chances in the speed defying Quiddich match, a game of impossible turns, one-handed 360's and whiplash stops, leaving it to those younger and less embarrassed than us.
The moving portraits in the films had always fascinated me and there they were, a full wall of them. The information screen told us that each one had been individually painted and that they were paintings of cameramen, film crews, catering staff and cleaners. They then filmed against a green screen and superimposed the movement onto the picture. It was intriguing and very clever. How I wish that the many photographs around our home of Mark, were able to move like those so that I could see my boy play, dive into the pool, swish down the mountain, drink his beer and skate like a demon. If only he could smile and wave, and run towards me when I entered a room. If only.......
 Next, the indominable Warwick Davies amusingly demonstrated the animatronics of Dobi, Nagini, The HippoGriff, and the painstaking complexities of the make-up department, which had us enthralled, and somewhat baffled. What patience was needed to sit for hours whilst layer upon gooey layer was applied until the perfect imperfections were just right. BUT we needed Butter beer and so we made our way to the café. We were not disappointed. Whether it had magical qualities, or for a moment turned us into Hermione, Ron and Harry ( I'll leave you to work out which might be which!), we didn't care. It was very nice indeed!
Outside, the freezing evening found us in front of the Knight Bus, and no 4 Privet Drive.

We half expected to see Hagrid on the motorbike zooming down to rescue Harry from the odious Dursleys. The Hogwarts Bridge enticed captivated visitors to walk its twisted path and we duly took the photographs that nowhere near touched the pervasive mystery surrounding it.

Gratefully, we entered the welcome warmth of the second studio. Diagon Alley lived up to every expectation with its shop fronts and well worn cobblestones.
Gringotts, The Leaky Cauldron, Flourish and Blott's bookstore all wove their magic making the impossible plausible and it was hard to imagine a world without magical owls, powerful wands and creatures whose normality was, in fact, their strange peculiarity.

We had fallen into silence, lost for words in the wonder of it all, when we entered a world of white.White walls covered in white drawings, which transposed into white models of every nook and cranny of every room, staircase, dorm, turret, tile, bridge and buttress of Hogworts castle. The models also included The Burrow, Hagrid's quirky home and every outbuilding, boathouse and conservatory. It was an architect's dream, pencilled with precision and it was breath-taking. However, little did we know, but the best was still to come.

We thought we were going into the inevitable gift shop, but instead we turned a corner to be confronted with the mystery, splendour and majesty of a magnificent model of Hogworts itself. It was there, stone by stone, window by window, towers and turrets, spires and staircases, all bathed in a spellbinding blue light adding to the other worldliness of the whole phenomena that is the World of Harry Potter.

Resisting the urge to purchase several wands just in case they didn't  work......and they were expensive, we returned to the real world, which felt duller, paler and sadly ordinary. For a few hours we had been lost inside a story, inside someone else's reality and it had afforded us a feast of fantasy where good people don't die and all is well in the end.
Our story is tragically somewhat different.............and I wish I could rewrite the sad bits and weave a different ending, most of all for Mark but, of course, for us too.