Harry Potter Day at Davis High School

Though Davis High School isn’t usually home to witches and wizards, swishing wands, and worn spellbooks, a recent Friday saw a new scene.
Pacing the corridors, avoiding Mr. Filch and pausing in the Great Hall to await our owls, we found school slightly more magical.
It was Harry Potter Day.
“We wanted to have it on May 2, which is the day the Dark Lord was defeated,” says 18-year-old Alex Cottle, better recognized as Ginny Weasley with her strawberry blonde hair, dark formal skirt, red tie and patterned tights, the Gryffindor emblem taped to her light gray cardigan. “But it was too long to wait.”
Conceived on a lazy afternoon in a fourth-period class on the day before Christmas break and organized diligently by a few Harry Potter-loving seniors, Davis’ Harry Potter Day was something in which I just had to participate.
With my curly hair and often-eccentric personality, I was a natural for Professor Trelawny. Donning a purple skirt and maroon apron, and digging odd shirts and scarves from my old dress-up box, I assembled a costume which I believed would have made that old batty professor proud.
Why have a Harry Potter Day?
Why not?

School — the International Baccalaureate program, in particular “is so stressful,” said Lavender Brown of Gryffindor House, though on any other day she’s 17-year-old Hannah Fisher. “This was something really fun and light-hearted.”
Purple tights, a black, flowing skirt, and red tie formed Fisher’s costume, but the lopsided maroon bow atop her head is what really “made” her quirky character.
“(Harry Potter) is such a good story,” Fisher said. “(Author J.K. Rowling) writes in a way that makes it seem like that world exists out there.”
And Feb. 5, at Davis, it did.
Spread by word of mouth and through Facebook, nearly 30 students signed up to be a particular character. Though only about 20 participated, we did so with gusto and pride.
The weird glances and scoffs aimed our way were numerous, and the length of stares could have been called rude. But I was, after all, wearing a silky shirt adorned with cranes as well as a pink-flowered vest and walking next to someone who was carrying a wand. So I suppose such reactions were warranted.
“There were never any really good Spirit Week days,” said 18-year-old Whitney Ketcham, referring to the week of themed days preceding homecoming every year. Feb. 5, she dressed as a young Professor McGonagal.

“I wanted an excuse to dress up like a Harry Potter character,” said 17-year-old Emily Eichner, who dressed as Hermione Granger. Along with Ketcham and Cottle, she helped organize the unofficial event.
“It was just for fun,” she said. “It really had no purpose.”
But I think something about imagining our school as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry made learning more fun. Biology rooms were suddenly potions labs; distilled water, a mysterious concoction simmering in a cauldron.
And words somehow formed into spells as we meandered to class.
“It’s magic!” our math teacher said as a line formed on a graphing calculator.
Cedric Diggory, though dead from a killing curse after the fourth of the Rowling novels, was at Davis that day, too. In a striped yellow and blue shirt and knitted brown sweater with “Quidditch” gloves, he confessed to being bitter towards Potter.
“I really wanted to win the Tri-Wizard Cup!” said Diggory, who — on every other day — is known as 17-year-old David Paolella. “I cannot stand to be one-upped by Harry Potter.”
No one signed up to be the main character of the series, Harry Potter.
Nonetheless, love for the books and appreciation for the story were apparent throughout Davis that day.
“I love the world that it creates,” Cottle said. “The story is full of magic and happiness. I love Harry Potter.”
And I do, too.
The monotony of school is made more bearable when broken by a day like this.
Magic has a way of doing that, I suppose. Or perhaps it’s just Harry Potter.
Either way, we were all under its spell.

— Colleen Fontana is a senior at Davis High School and a member of the Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students.