Enjoying the same fairy-tale makes for great dinner-table conversation, but we have to be able to bring it back. Magic is simply the crystallization of a power to change, and becomes wizardry or sorcery depending on how it is used. In Harry Potter's world, there is a third option: to be a Muggle, one without magic.

But this is not an option in ours. We must beware that greatest of all temptations: the belief that all that time leading up to the moment of choice is morally neutral. This temptation promises that we're not responsible for electing a president unless we vote; we're not responsible for our actions until we become self-aware; that we haven't really picked a post-graduate job until we are happy with it.

Change is a burning-away, like the dragon's egg hatched in fire: a sudden birth, sometimes painful. Power comes in the ability to transform, the ability to withstand transformation, and to prevent it when necessary.

But power is not simply the ability to pick: it is the responsibility to not not pick.

Not all transformation is positive; there is a huge difference in the transformation of power and transformation by agency. Evil is that which takes you over and changes you in ways you cannot control--like unicorn's blood in Harry's woods.

Our charge, as minor magicians, begins simply: to stand up for the change we like and defend that which we do not; to recognize the world as interconnected enough that our actions matter. Because after being chosen, we have to choose--and it's scarier, larger, harder than being chosen. But it completes us.

Maryanthe E. Malliaris '01 is a mathematics concentrator in Lowell House.