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Happy Halloween!

I love Harry Potter. It’s the book series that inspired me to become an author. That being said, the series isn’t without its plot holes. The worst example, in my opinion, are the Department of Mysteries chapters in “Order of the Phoenix.”

Any Harry Potter fan knows what happened. While Harry is taking his History of Magic exam at the end of the school year, he receives a dream message from Voldemort and believes that Sirius is being tortured. Harry, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Ron, and Ginny go to Umbridge’s office and Harry tries to use the Floo network to see if Sirius is still in Grimmauld Place. They are promptly captured by Umbridge. Harry and Hermione led her into the forest and Umbridge is carried off by the centaurs. At sundown, the six heroes ride thestrals to the Ministry of Magic, travel through the Department of Mysteries, and find the Death Eaters. There’s a fight, the Order of the Phoenix arrive, and Sirius is killed. Dumbledore and Voldemort have their duel and Harry is transported back to Hogwarts just as the sun rises.

On the surface, this sounds like a pretty straight-forward, action-packed plot. Normally, I would find this enjoyable and just accept it for what it is. The problem is the timing. In June, the sun goes down in northern Scotland at about 9:15pm and the sun rises at about 4:45am. This means from the time Harry and the others leave on the thestrals to when Harry appears in Dumbledore’s office, we have seven and a half hours in between.

Going back a bit, Harry starts his History of Magic test at 2:00pm. The book doesn’t say for sure, but I think the test lasted about two hours. Harry has the dream vision right before the test ends, so our starting point is 4:00pm. Harry talks to Hermione and Ron and explains the vision, while they try and convince him it was all a dream. Then, Harry has to race upstairs to get the invisibility cloak and enter Umbridge’s office. He talks to Kreacher, who lies and says that Sirius is gone. Umbridge then catches Harry in her office. Hermione convinces her to follow her and Harry into the Forbidden Forest. I can’t see any of this taking too long. It should be about 4:30pm by this point.

Harry, Hermione, and Umbridge enter the forest and wander around for a while. The book says that they walked for a long time, but Umbridge isn’t too patient. So, while it may have seemed like a long time to Harry (who is worried about Sirius, so of course it feels like a long time), it probably wasn’t any more than thirty minutes. Their confrontation with the centaurs couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. We’re now at about 5:15pm.

Luna, Neville, Ron, and Ginny catch up to Harry and Hermione almost immediately after Umbridge is dragged off. They then have a short argument about who’s going to save Sirius and who’s staying behind. During this time, quite a few thestrals show up. Luna helps Hermione, Ginny, and Ron onto their thestrals. This can’t have taken long. It’s now about 5:30pm.

Now, we come to our first problem. By my calculations, it should have only been about an hour and a half since Harry had his dream vision. If that was the case, though, Harry’s team would have left Hogwarts roughly four hours before sundown. The only way for them to leave at 9:15-9:30pm would be for Harry to have his dream vision at about 8:00pm. But that would have been a six hour History of Magic test.

Assuming that Harry leaves at sundown, however, now we have another problem with time. Harry says that he had never moved so fast. That would make sense. The Hogwarts Express leaves at 11:00am and presumably gets to the school at about 7:00pm. That would be an eight hour trip. If we’re at about 9:15pm, we still have seven and a half hours to go.

Harry and the others get to the Ministry and race to the Department of Mysteries. They then spend some time going through the brain room, the Veil of Death room, are stopped by the room where the Unspeakables study love, and finally make it to the Hall of Prophecies. Honestly, they don’t seem to spend much time in any of these rooms, so I’m saying it’s been thirty minutes since they entered the Ministry.

They have their confrontation with the Death Eaters (fifteen minutes), followed by a battle, where they get split up into two groups and reunite in the Veil of Death room (forty-five minutes). That adds another hour.

Only now do the Order of the Phoenix show up. It’s been about a hour and a half since they entered the Ministry. There’s another short battle, where Sirius sadly dies at the end and Harry chases after Bellatrix (fifteen minutes). Dumbledore and Voldemort have their duel. It is impressive, but again, I don’t think it took too long (fifteen minutes). Two hours after Harry arrives at the Ministry, Fudge enters and sees Voldemort. Harry is then sent back to Hogwarts at 4:45am, just in time for sunrise.

If the Department of Mysteries battle really took about two hours, then Harry would have reached the Ministry at 2:45am. That is five and a half hours on his thestral. So, yeah, it does work. Harry still travels faster on a thestral than on the Hogwarts Express. He can still make it back to Hogwarts on time. The problem is: why was Harry so slow?

Harry believes that Sirius is being tortured by Voldemort. He doesn’t find out he’s been tricked until at least half-an-hour after he enters the Ministry. That’s about 3:15am. If the vision happened at 4:00pm the previous day, that’s over eleven hours. Why would Voldemort still be torturing Sirius eleven hours later? Wouldn’t he have gotten bored and simply killed Sirius long before Harry made it to the Hall of Prophecies?

For that matter, what took the Order of the Phoenix so long to get there? They don’t show up until about 4:15am. Dumbledore said Snape warned the Order that Harry was gone and they left immediately. I don’t think it would take Snape too long to search the Forbidden Forest for Harry and Hermione. So, either Snape told the Order and they took their sweet time getting there or, more likely, Snape delayed as long as possible and only told the Order at the last minute.

Any way you look at this, there are problems with the timing. There are just too many things that could have gone wrong. The biggest is that Voldemort could have killed Sirius at any point during that five-and-a-half hour flight. Why didn’t Harry simply ask his thestral to fly him back to the castle or Hogsmede? He could have Flooed directly to the Ministry. If Harry was as worried about Sirius as we know he is, why wouldn’t he go for the fastest option?

I love Harry Potter, despite my criticisms. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have gone through all these calculations. I just wish the author had thought this sequence through a bit more. If she had sent Harry directly to the Ministry through the Floo network, it would have kept the readers’ adrenaline up, ready for an action scene. Instead, the tour through the Department of Mysteries, while interesting, ruined the pacing for me.

Still, you can’t deny J.K. Rowling is an amazing author. People are still talking about Harry Potter, even after all these years. Thanks for all your hard work, J.K. Rowling. I will always love your books.

My kittens, Jenny and Cannoli, are about four months old. Jenny is a black cat when yellow eyes, while Cannoli has a white underbelly, chest, and legs, while his top half is a grayish-brown horseshoe pattern. They are both extremely active and athletic, especially Jenny. When surprised, she’s been known to jump a foot in the air. Cannoli, meanwhile, loves trying to steal food off the table, so we’ve taken to closing them both off in my room when we eat. They don’t seem to mind, as long as I give them treats to keep them occupied.

A few days ago, I opened the door after we finished dinner. Cannoli came running out, like usual, looking for any remaining food he could steal. I didn’t see Jenny, but I wasn’t too worried. My room is connected to a hallway and you can only see a tiny strip of the bedroom from the hallway door. Since I had to go help my brother wash dishes, I shrugged it off, thinking she was just further in the room.

We finished the dishes and I headed into my room. I found Jenny clinging to the side of my bed, my laundry hamper sitting next to her on the floor. It’s one of those collapsible mesh kinds. I’ve had it since college. Usually, I leave the laundry hamper across the room, so I figured Jenny and Cannoli must have been playing and knocked it toward the bed. That’s when I noticed the hamper’s strap. It was tangled and twisted around Jenny’s middle. She couldn’t get out on her own.

Picking up Jenny and the hamper, I hurried into the living room, where my parents were watching tv. We tried to untangle her, but she was well and truly stuck. We decided to cut the strap. As long as Jenny was free, I didn’t care about losing that strap. Jenny, meanwhile, have been flailing her paws, in a desperate attempt to free herself. She scratched both me and my mom. While I held Jenny steady, my mom cut her loose. The poor kitten was shaking. I returned the hamper to my room, while Cannoli comforted her. When I checked on Jenny again, she was happily eating. Apparently, she had forgotten about the laundry hamper. She was free now and that was all that mattered. It was time to return to her normal kitten routine, starting with a snack.

Never a dull moment.

After rescuing Jenny the kitten last month, we tried to introduce her to our adult cat, Rufus. This didn’t work out too well. Rufus is a senior cat and he doesn’t want to be bothered by a boisterous little kitten like Jenny. So, what were we to do? Jenny needed a playmate and it certainly wasn’t going to be Rufus. My parents and I decided to adopt another kitten, around Jenny’s age, so the two could play with each other.

We weren’t entirely sure how this would work out. Rufus already didn’t like Jenny. How would he react to another ball of energy? My parents headed down to the local animal shelter and talked to a very nice lady, who agreed that Jenny should have a playmate. If the two kittens were focused on each other, they would be less likely to bother Rufus.

I got off work later that same day and we all headed down to the animal shelter. We asked about two cats my parents had seen earlier in the day. They had both been adopted. I then saw a beautiful little kitten named Cannoli and I asked if I could hold him. The volunteer opened the door to where Cannoli was sleeping. He seemed confused for a moment over why a strange human was holding him, before clinging to the collar of my shirt. He started to purr. I think he was pleading with me to take him home. We decided right there and then to adopt him.

We got home with Cannoli and introduced him to Jenny. She was very interested. There was a bit of hissing, but once the two were face-to-face, they did what came naturally to kittens. They started to play. They must have spent a good two hours chasing each other, before they finally feel asleep. I love how, even though they knew nothing about each other, their first inclination was to play. They both just wanted a friend and Rufus can have the peace and quiet he deserves.

I am a cat person. I’ve known this since I was thirteen and raised five orphan kittens in my bedroom. Last month, I sadly lost my dear cat Fred. I’m still devastated by his lost, but I recently got a new kitten, one who desperately needed my help. I’ve been working at a local grocery store for the past two months as a cashier. I learned on Saturday that a stray cat was living out by the shopping carts. I live in the desert and temperatures can get up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. I couldn’t just leave the kitten there. I decided to trap the cat.

It took a few days, but we were ready on Monday night. My mom and brother had picked up a “Have a Heart” trap from the local animal shelter and they, along with my dad, met me in front of the grocery store after we had closed and I had finished my shift. We set up the trap and waited. After a hour and a half, we admitted defeat. We just couldn’t see the black cat in the dark. The next morning, my mom and I returned to the store. It was my day off and I was willing to wait as long as I had to. I reset the trap and retreated out of the shopping cart area. That kitten must have gone in and out of that trap at least four times, before we caught it. The cat hissed once, but otherwise, didn’t make a sound.

Once we got the cat home, we had to decide what to do with it. My mom had talked to a very nice woman who ran a feral cat program and we borrowed a large dog crate from her, so the kitten could live there, instead of the trap. The woman told us repeatedly that this process will take two or three months and that we would have to be patient. We agreed, ready to do whatever it took to help the cat.

I woke up Wednesday morning and checked on the cat. It had now been twenty-four hours since we caught it. To my surprise, the kitten wasn’t cowering, but playing! The kitten is a ball of energy, who loves to play. This cat didn’t seem to be feral. My mom and I talked to a vet on the morning I wrote this. The vet told us the kitten is a girl and confirmed what we already believed. She isn’t a feral cat, but a stray who was probably born in a house, but now has no owner. The kitten has no microchip, so it was decided that we’re going to keep her.

After going through various name ideas, I settled on the name Jenny, after a book called Jenny and the Cat Club by Esther Averill. Originally published in 1944, it’s a really sweet story of a black cat named Jenny, who discovers her talent and joins a group of cats, also with special talents. The talents range from reading to singing to dancing on their hind legs.

As for my new little kitten, Jenny, I think she’s going to fit into my house just fine. We all love her already and she stares back at us with her great, yellow eyes, thanking us for rescuing her from the shopping carts. My oldest brother says that cats and dogs find their people. This certainly is true for Jenny.

When I first became a writer, one of the first pieces of advice I got was “write about what you know.” Since I know my family, I thought I should base half my characters off of them. All I would have to do was change their names slightly and give them the same personalities. Simple, right? It turns out it’s harder than you may think.

Creating a character from scratch means that you decide everything, from their personality to their appearance. If you have a specific plan for the character, like they need to be a snobbish aristocrat, you just write them as such. You don’t have to worry about a real person’s reactions. But, if you want to base the snobbish aristocrat on someone you know in real life, you have to tread carefully. This could no only cause hurt feelings, but it also limits creativity.

As an example, in my earliest draft of Silver Rose, I wanted to throw my brother in as a rival to my main character. He was supposed to be better at magic than her and flaunt it a bit, but I didn’t want to hurt my brother’s feelings. He’s actually quite protective of me in real life and wouldn’t flaunt being better than me. (Maybe at video games). With this in mind, I started to write the rival as kinder and, frankly, more generic. There was no rivalry anymore, no substance to the character. I was writing him as “nice” so I wouldn’t offend anyone. It was rather boring.

I stopped trying to base characters off of real people and I think my writing improved. I was no longer constricted by real people’s personalities. I could create brand new personalities for my characters, make them act how I wanted them to act, and see how they grew as characters. My imagination was my guide, which in my opinion, is a fiction author’s greatest tool during the writing process. Without it, I never would have finished Silver Rose.