Voldemort

I love a good story. That’s what makes Harry Potter the best, its a complicated story full of twists and turns, foreshadowing, and hidden messages. The best part about stories is that they all come from somewhere, they are all secrets inside each author’s chest and mind just waiting to get out and be shared with the world. How does this relate to law school? Well law school teaches us that it’s all about the story. Each case is based on a series of stories from both sides. Each policy or law is built off a story, a desire for change (or greed) from those who write and enact it. It’s interesting really when you think about the stories behind everything the law touches, and for a lot of us, those stories began before law school. Before we dive into that though, let’s dive into the Harry Potter Story we’ve been tracking.

Chapter 30- The Pensieve

So Dumbledore leaves Harry alone in his office, what’s a kid to do? Snoop, of course! I mean, who wouldn’t?? Harry finds the pensieve, a magical memory holder that Dumbledore uses like a giant bowl shaped jigsaw puzzle. Harry swoops into some magical memories of Barty Crouch sentencing his son to Azkaban and then Dumbledore shows up (the real one, not the memory one who apparently looks the same exact way as the current one) and is all like “Harry lesssssgo, you’ve snooped into my personal life enough now.” Then Dumbledore is all like, “oh of course you are curious, and of course I didn’t lock that thing up tight enough. It’s not like I was hoping you’d snoop.” Which I don’t buy, Dumbledore never does anything uncalculated, sort of like Beyonce or Taylor Swift, everything they do is done on purpose. They talk about Voldemort and Snape and the Crouch family. The end of the chapter.

Chapter 31- The Third Task

sphnix The final task is here! Can I get a drumroll??? Okay, it’s actually pretty cool… the movie makes it look pretty lame, but this huge maze is pretty awesome! There’s even a sphinx with a riddle! Why the heck was that left out of the movie, the CGI on that alone would have been cool to see. Instead the movie just glosses over Krum’s eyes, has him attack everyone, and there’s mysterious wind that blows the shrubs around. Cedric’s and Harry’s hero complexes come out to play like normal and they both end up saving each other at some point. THere’s a giant spider. Then Harry and Cedric play a round of “you can have the cup, you are a true hero” “Oh no you take the cup, you deserve it.” They both grab the cup and BOOM, it’s a portkey! *mic drop*

Chapter 32- Flesh, Blood, and Bone

The movie and this chapter go hand in hand a bit well. Harry and Cedric find themselves in a graveyard. Cedric gets murdered by some weird little rotting baby corpse that Wormtail is carrying. A bubbling cauldron is made. Flesh. Blood. Bone. Baby Corpse. and BAM! Voldemort sans nose is back! I wonder if we will ever find out why he doesn’t have a nose. Does anyone knows why?? (See what I did there!? lol!) Voldemortreborn

Chapter 33- The Death Eaters

(Also known as our current Government Leaders…sorry I had to!) Well Voldey is back, he calls his servants (the Death Eaters), lectures them about loyalty, says some stuff about his old family, talks about how he created a new family out of these Death Eaters. He hints towards horocruxes. He talks about immortality and the legacy he wants to have. Then he tells Harry “ohhh look I can touch you… because your blood is in my body now so no more magically love blood bonds from your mama.” Then he makes Wormtail untie Harry and is all like “let’s duel so I can kill you.”

I guess you could say almost everyone in these chapters has some sort of hero complex and who doesn’t? We all want to champion something and we all think that our mission and values are the best. We all have a good reason for what we do. I had a friend during my first year of law school who wants to become a District Attorney so that he/she could put people who do hard drugs in jail. I fundamentally disagreed with her, but I never asked the question as to why this was her mission in life. I had another friend who wants to dismantle the current prison system and stop systematic racism. Other friends want to simply make a lot of money. Some friends want to help save the environment. We all come to law school with some sort of mission and we think that our mission is more valuable than many others (even if we don’t want to admit it). The hard part is that we don’t always see the ramifications and potential consequences of this mission.

A good example of this comes from a huge research project I’ve been working on for our school’s Water Law Review. The Glen Canyon Dam which is located in Arizona, not too far away from the Utah border is a dam that’s created a lot of controversy since it was built. The dam was supposed to be in Utah, but after the Sierra Club and a couple other big voices fought against that decision since it would of course flood an area they wanted to preserve it was moved down to Glen Canyon. The head of the Sierra Club at the time in later years said this was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. He fought so hard to have the dam moved down stream that he didn’t stop to look at what it would do to the Glen Canyon area. He later said that it ruined that area, which is something he deeply regretted.

The gist of this all is that we all have a reason we fight for something. We all have something that drives us. For me, wanting to better our food system and create equal access to healthy foods for all people is because when my mom and step-dad divorced I saw first hand how a lack of money will affect your diet and your access to healthy foods. It’s not okay that people have to choose between making a healthy meal for their family and paying for electricity. And please know that money is not the only issue, so is time, there is not always time to make a healthy meal, shop for healthy ingredients and such, so a lot of times processed food is the cheapest and the easiest option for lower income families.

grave For Voldemort, his whole reasoning behind his movement is the reaction his family had to him growing up. He’s not even a pure-blood wizard, but because his dad reacted in a way that ensured a hard life for Voldemort, he made it his life mission to go and seek revenge. He had a sad life, a hard life and he made life choices that reflected his inner angst. Sure, it’s not okay that he then wanted to kill all muggles, but once you know his backstory a bit, it can change the way you see him.

That’s the thing, you have to ask the right questions before jumping to conclusions about a person’s decisions. You have to see things through their eyes before sealing in your mind who you think they are. You have to be willing to take a step back and get to know them before outcasting them or thinking they are mean or a bitch to begin with. And on the flip side, we have to be willing to put aside our own baggage and let people in, people who will care about us and show us that maybe, just maybe our world views and our mission isn’t 100% the best thing there ever was and will come with some big consequences that we just might regret later down the line. Think about what could have happened if Voldemort had done just that, or if the head of the Sierra Club could have foreseen the consequences of his actions.

So, take some time in this new year and ask some questions, get to know people’s backstories and then make decisions about them. You don’t have to agree with them, you don’t even have to like them afterwards, but at least you’ll better understand them.

Until Next Time,

Mischief Managed

Starting a new book is always a fun adventure, but starting a new book the same time you move into a new place on the one year anniversary of this blog is the BEST ADVENTURE… oh and there was some sort of eclipse thing today too if you were like super interested in that.

Well ladies and gentleman and scholars and muggles and wizards and aliens alike… we did it, we’ve made it to book 4 of the Harry Potter series. The Goblet of Fire is where things start to take a truly dark turn in the series. It’s also the movie that I punched my sister in the arm after because she made fun of me for crying at it. Anyways, like every book, JK Rowling reconfigures the story for us, setting it off on the right path, picking up from where she left off. Except, in true Rowling fashion, this book doesn’t start off with Harry… instead we get a little story about the Riddle family and their gardner.

The Riddles were a nasty rich family who one day all fell over dead into their dinner. The gardner was taken in by police and questioned, since he was the only other person seen at the house that day. His release only happened after the autopsies of the Riddle family came back clean… no signs of poison or violence as the cause of their death. The whole family seemed to be terrified to death! Years later and the gardner still worked on the premises, paid by a man who did not live at the house but instead owned it for tax purposes. One night he is awoken by knee pain and sees a light in the old house. He assumes its just brave children who snuck into the abandoned place and lit a fire. He goes to check it out, only to find its 2 men planning the death of some person named Harry Potter and discussing the recent murder of a woman. He tries to escape but is caught by a snake which one of the men can communicate with. He is summoned into the room, only to be murdered with a flash of a green light. Harry awakes having dreamt all of this. His scar hurts. He searches his mind to make sense of it all, identifying the two men as Wormtail and Voldemort. Uncertain as to what to do next he writes to Sirius explaining the pain of his scar.

What’s interesting about law school is listening to the stories people tell. Having just finished the first week of school and now starting the second week you hear a lot of stories from 2Ls and 3Ls recapping their summers and discussing their class schedules and you hear the woes of 1Ls talking about their classes, teachers, classmates and bragging about their resumés. It’s fun to catch up, to hear about people’s jobs this past summer, to hear about their adventures, and to share my Italy stories. It’s also good practice to get back into the swing of advocating and presenting information in an intriguing but to the point way.

AS part of my classes this year I will be participating in a Community Economic Development Clinic, which is fancy way of saying we help people start businesses and non-profits that help redevelop low-income communities. As part of our orientation we went down to Five Points, a “dangerous” part of Denver. We took a tour of this historic city, known as the “Harlem of the West” and heard about the great Rossonian Hotel which once saw jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. We listened to stories and hardships belonging to the neighborhood. We visited an exhibit showcasing memorabilia collected from residents in the neighborhood. We asked questions. We digested the stories, and we took them with us back to the classroom.

While digesting these stories and feeling inspired by the work that lies ahead it made me think of one of my own stories. Now, I’m talking about a book I wrote, but also about a time in my life where I wanted to make a difference so bad I rushed through the process of writing, editing, publishing and marketing a book. I quickly started a not-for-profit business to sell this book and ended up selling 64 copies. I used the money to then purchase 64 books for a local elementary school (books they needed for classes). Eventually, I felt like it wasn’t enough, I need to do more, I needed to crank out another book, keep a blog going, sell more copies of my current book and keep going and going and going…. until I ended the whole thing altogether. But the desire to do more for local communities never ended… and look where I am now.

Stories are what drive us in law school. We collect stories from clients. We take in and reframe stories into arguments. We weave together sentences and calculated pauses to create a narrative that will hopefully help us win our case. We have stories that push us, motivate us to go further than ever before. Everything we do is tied up in a greater story. We live for these stories. We feed off these stories… we are always looking for the next one. It’s what we do. It’s who we are, even if we hate it.

At my core there is a writer. I’ve spent my entire life piecing together stories. From playing barbies, to playing in the woods, to sitting alone at my desk creating new worlds… for a second last year, I though for sure I had lost my drive to tell stories. I thought I lost my ability to create new worlds, to truly get lost in the worlds hidden in my mind. I thought I would only ever be able to reach them again in movies or if I stumbled into some free time to read for fun. Even with this blog, I still felt as though my desire to write these grand stories was fading away… and then I went to my clinic orientation and there stood a neighborhood, a hidden jewel of history and stories. There stood a hotel full of music and life, waiting to be re-released onto the people rushing past it. There stood my inspiration.

I tell you this because I think it’s important that we never lose sight of the story inside us. The story may seem out of focus, it may seem to get a little off track, we may stray from the usual patterns and rhythms of our normal stories, but in the end, it all has a purpose. Rowling started this book with a different beginning than the last three. She started it with a brief backstory, a brief insight into a few not so new characters. She started it with a purpose in mind. And while we may not see that purpose unfolded in the first two chapters, when we get to it, when we watch it completely revealed to us, we won’t be disappointed.

So, as the new school year begins, what stories are you telling to the world and yourself? What stories are you collecting and reframing? What voice are you using? Dig deep. Find your story if you lost it. Check in with your story if you’ve been adding to it. Enjoy your story as it unfolds and keep writing… you’ll never know who needs the inspiration.

Until Next Time,

Mischief Managed

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The Wizarding World of Law School

The Pensieve Task of Flesh and Death Eaters (GoF 30-33)

The Riddle House and The Scar (GoF 1&2)