Dear Gossips,
I am Wampus.
If you don’t know what that means you haven’t been keeping pace on Pottermore, slacker. Yesterday was a busy day on Pottermore. Yesterday we were invited to Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Are you into the name Isolt? I haven’t consulted with Duana. She’d probably roll her eyes at me. But isn’t Isolt a better option than Isabel?
Anyway, after learning about Ilvermorny, it’s time to be sorted. At Hogwarts I am proudly cunning, ambitiously green and silver and Slytherin. At Ilvermorny I am a …warrior? Weird. Because bravery is not my core attribute. I am a coward. However, Wampus is also, apparently, for the “argumentative but fiercely loyal”. Argumentative I can do. And loyalty too. But it still wasn’t clear to me initially as Wampus is the least explained of the four new houses. This plunged me into an identity crisis, until I read the piece for the third time and picked out the detail about Wampus hair being used for wands. That explains the narcissistic relationship I have with my hair; I’m like Samson that way. And there are cultural connections too. In a paper published in Beijing Science and Technology Life in 2005, Zhang Minglu wrote that historically, for the Chinese, “hair’s foremost function was a declaration of political alignment and a political weapon”. Hair was also a symbol of status and class. You know how in the Western world, a ring on a certain finger can tell you if someone is married? Back in the day, in China, you didn’t have to look at a woman’s hand. You could tell by her head. Once a woman was married, there was a social requirement for her to wear her hair up.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that JK Rowling’s new magical installment is making me think about myself a lot. Which is probably not her intention, to turn us into self-absorbed assholes. Have I failed before it’s even started?
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
