Expecto Patronum! - Day 8

(Credits - Pinterest: Society6)

Yesterday I couldn't publish anything because at night I felt shrouded in dark energies both because of a migraine on the right side of my head and because of negative energies looming in the public spaces outside of my home. So I sat and tried to breathe the pain away. I felt that every time I tried to breathe in to make sure that oxygen reached all the cells of my head where the migraine persisted, I also had to think of positive thoughts to relieve the pain. At that moment, the physical and emotional pain seemed inextricably intertwined, so that every time that I had a negative thought, a sharper pang of pain traveled through the right side of my head and face. Thus, I started to recall memories with all the good people that I knew in my life, starting from old familiar faces to more recent ones. I began to focus on each of their vibrant soulful energies and would keep filling in the gaps in my thoughts when negative figures would also want to enter, with more happy memories that I had felt with people and even animals throughout my life. I did this so fiercely, that there wasn't even a tiny bit of space left over for any negative thought or feeling associated with darker energies to enter in. In doing so, my migraine started to slowly reduce in pain. As I engaged in this fight against negative memories and energies did I realize that I had unwittingly cast a Patronus charm.

Hopefully, you'll know this reference from Harry Potter, but just in case you don't, a Patronus charm is a spell that the brilliant author of Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling envisioned, conjured up when one is confronted by black-hooded, faceless creatures called Dementors, who feed on people's fears and dark memories and make them relive those memories. They are essentially "soulless creatures... among the foulest beings on Earth": a species who, gradually deprive human minds of happiness and intelligence. Normally in charge of guarding the wizard prison (Azkaban) in the Harry Potter series, the Dementors make their way into the Wizarding school of Hogwarts in part three of the Harry Potter series to find an escaped prisoner. Harry, who is filled with many dark memories and fears, having been orphaned when he was merely a year old by the dark Lord Voldemort, is not prepared when the Dementors get a hold of him.

You see, the thing about Dementors is that they are more drawn to people who carry darker memories than those who don't. Harry gets knocked out defenseless multiple times by the Dementors as a result. But finally, he requests his Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lupin, to teach him how to fight against these Dementors. Lupin tells him that this is famously one of the hardest spells to cast even in the Wizarding World, but proceeds to help him learn it upon his insistence. Called a Patronus charm, the way that it works is that when confronted by a Dementor (hovering over you eager to feed on your dark memories), you must visualize the happiest memory that you can think of, and it has to be a moment that genuinely makes you spark with joy. Once you do that, you must focus on that memory intensely above everything else, and cast the spell with your wand as you utter, "Expecto Patronum!". Doing so will produce a silvery-white guardian, which takes the form of an animal that will create a physical shield to deter the Dementors. The Dementors cannot bear the intense energy of hope and happiness that the Patronus charm creates and are immediately repelled away. After several failed attempts, Harry eventually holds on to a memory of his mother playing with him before she was killed, and that small moment holds so much happiness and hope, that it allows him to conjure up one of the biggest Patronus charms ever done in the Wizarding World, where he casts it over not just one, but dozens of rotten Dementors at the same time.

(Credits - Wizarding World)

(Credits - ScreenRant)

One of the reasons I respect J.K Rowling immensely is that as I realize various truths about life, I manage to find parallels in the Harry Potter series, and every time it helps unlock a deeper level of understanding about a character or a moment in the series. The profundity of such realizations is startling, in all honesty, as is the case with the Patronus charm, which I'm convinced is a real-life charm, as I physically experienced it last night. The energy produced from envisioning positive, happy memories was able to cast light to fight away the dark memories that wanted a piece of my mind but weren't allowed to enter.