Cheryl Dyson

I went to a bi speed-friending thing on Sunday (it was great) and one of the conversations I had there reminded me of this weird, hilarious moment of fandom-meets-normal-people I had a while ago.

So there were six of us sitting at a round table in a restaurant, having just done a fun activity for sodsta’s birthday. Me, sodsta, januarium, Januarium’s husband A, and our friends L and F. Importantly, L is a uni friend of A’s, and F is her partner. We’re definitely all big nerds together but I’m not sure even L knew that Januarium, Sodsta and I all met through Harry Potter fandom.

We did, though. And we’re part of a group of 11 friends who all have a lightning bolt tattoo - mostly about two inches long, on the inside of our wrists. They were drawn for us originally by lizardspots, because she wasn’t gonna get a tattoo herself but she was part of the group. None of us, I think - including the 4 or so of the group who are trans - regret the tattoos, because they’re a symbol of friendship rather than Potter in itself.

Sooooo like two years ago, we’re sitting around having dinner and F starts excitedly talking about how she’s reading HP for the first time, and really enjoying them. She’s very offline and you can tell from how she’s talking that she has no idea about JKR’s fall off the deep end - and her girlfriend L, who 100% knows, is trans. So she’s happily talking, and L is looking at us in desperation, clearly hoping we’re not about to burst F’s bubble with any information about JKR’s transphobic activism. And I think we all silently decide that if L doesn’t wanna have that conversation, we won’t inflict it. But we’re all kinda like ‘hmm, interesting’ lol, not really engaging about HP, more drawing the conversation towards like reading in general. You’d have no idea any of us had even read those books.

And then F goes something like ‘and the red dragon, the - I can’t remember, the - ’

Januarium: the Norwegian Ridgeback?

F: ???

Sodsta: the Chinese Fireball, wasn’t it?

Me, joining in for the fun of it: or the Welsh Green?

F: …wait…

Januarium, sodsta and I: :look at each other, then slowly slide our wrists onto the table and pull back our sleeves to reveal our tattoos as one:



So we basically did a big reveal that we’d secretly been in a cult the whole time, lmao.