The wizarding magic of Harry Potter is taking the Hogwarts express to LZHS through the new Harry Potter club.
“It’s going to be someplace where all the Harry Potter fans in the school – and I know a lot of Harry Potter fans – can come and talk all together,” Rachel Pope, sophomore and club co-founder, said.
The Harry Potter club was created by Pope and Veronika Paprocka, sophomore, as a club where students can come to discuss all things Harry Potter. The club is in the process of becoming an official club and is just awaiting approval from the administration. The idea for the club came after seeing the final Harry Potter movie last summer.
“After me and Veronika saw part two of the seventh movie last summer, we realized it was the last Harry Potter thing,” Pope said. “We just didn’t want [Harry Potter] to end, so we decided to continue it ourselves.”
Harry Potter will continue at LZHS as a club that incorporates the entire Harry Potter realm: books, movies, and all of the magic in between.
“The club will be an organized way to focus on the Harry Potter series and tie in other things that have branched out from the books, like the movies and some of the games and activities that the kids do in Harry Potter,” Megan Counts, club sponsor and social studies teacher, said.
According to Pope and Paprocka, the club would first sort students into four houses, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, just like Hogwarts does in the Harry Potter books and movies. The sorting will be based on a quiz members take. For those unfamiliar with Harry Potter, the houses each have distinguishing traits the sorting is based on: Gryffindor is bravery; Hufflepuff is loyalty and honesty; Ravenclaw is intelligence; and Slytherin is cunning.
After the initial sorting, the club will then “watch movies, play trivia games, expand upon Harry Potter, and also play Quidditch,” Paprocka said.
JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, created Quidditch as a game wizards play in the books. Quidditch is a game in which two teams flying on broomsticks score points by throwing a ball, the Quaffle, through hoops on either end of the field, according to the Harry Potter Lexicon website.
The Harry Potter club will play Muggle Quidditch based on the rulebook found at the International Quidditch website, according to Pope. Muggle is a Harry Potter term for non-wizards, and the main difference between Muggle Quidditch and Wizard Quidditch is the absence of flying broomsticks for Muggles. The basic rules of Muggle Quidditch involve players keeping a broomstick between his or her legs at all times, scoring ten point goals using a volleyball as the Quaffle, and catching the snitch to receive a bonus thirty points. In Muggle Quidditch, the snitch is a player affiliated with neither team that must be caught to end the game.
The club will try to include a range of activities beyond Quidditch to keep the meetings exciting.
“I think one of the keys for the club is variety, so at different meetings, we do different things because anything can get monotonous if you’re not careful,” Counts said.
Students who are unsure about making a commitment to the club might be encouraged by the welcoming policy of the Harry Potter club.
“I would hope we have an open door policy and kids could stop by a meeting even if they weren’t official members,” Counts said. “They could stop by and check it out, and if the club’s not for them, they don’t have to come back, but I think we would have a very welcoming attitude about that.”
The magic of Harry Potter has not only inspired a club, but has also touched people everywhere.
“I like the fact that it’s a book series that people from everywhere know,” Pope said. “And it’s magic, it’s a different world that when you read it, you can get out of your little Lake Zurich town and be someplace else.”