I have two obsessions right now. Guess what they are.

So today, at lunch, I decided to go to Barnes and Noble for two purposes. One, to buy the issue of Blender with my number one imaginary girlfriend on the cover (hotness). Two, to reserve Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I know; I was, like, six months late or whatever. And! I was just in time, because the pleasant customer service lady at my neighborhood B&N told me they were only taking reservations for the next twenty minutes. And then I would be fucked. Thank god I went at lunch instead of after work, like I had originally planned. I wonder if Mike would go with me tomorrow night, just so I don't have to stand in line by myself like a loser. Anyway, I went at lunch because I started reading Blender's article about Kelly online, got giddy, and decided I needed to read the hard copy in private. Not for dirty reasons, bitches. Just so I didn't squee out like a twelve-year-old girl at an 'N Sync concert in front of people. Okay? So I had to get it at lunch. There is no waiting for Kelly Clarkson. And now I am most definitely going to get a copy of Harry Potter and the [mother-fucking] Deathly Hallows tomorrow night. Melissa read a review of it in the New York Times today, which she said gave away what the deathly hallows were, and she was, like, no way anyone's figured that out. Now, way back in ancient days (aka January or December), I looked hallows up in the trusty...um, not the OED. Well, I looked it up somewhere, and a hallow, as I thought, is a saint or otherwise holy person, as in All Hallows' Eve, a-to-the-k-to-the-a, Halloween, the night before All Saints' Day (which must have originally been called All Hallows' Day). Some other dictionary also said a hallow could be a relic from a holy person/saint, I think, so I was, like, um maybe the hallows are the horcruxes? You know, the horcruxes the big bad LV made from Hogwarts Founder relics? But I was not impressed with that theory. That's a rather dumb thing to put in the title the book. However, so was this Half-Blood Prince. Although, I guess big bad Snape played quite the role in the book in which he was a titular character. (How do you like that, Potter? The only other character referenced in a title is the one person you hate!) So then I was, like, well...deathly--that could mean causing death. Or it could mean...like death. The hallows are like death? What! Dementors? Inferi? What the fuck? The hallows cause death? So...a relic that causes death? God dammit. A holy person that causes death? THERE ARE NO HOLY PEOPLE IN HARRY POTTER! Unless she's co-opted hallow to mean "powerful wizard" or something else without any connotation of holy by adding "deathly" in front of it. I have no idea! This has been bugging me for a long time, because of the specific meaning of the word hallow, but I let it go until Melissa started talking about that stupid book review.

Okay, so. A hallow is a saint or a saint's relic. Deathly saint. There is nothing in Harry Potter that could be a deathly saint. Unless it's dementors--where do they even come from? Or a deathly holy relic. Or she's just introducing something entirely new. How about that? In her land, hallowed means deeply magical, and these deeply magical things cause death. How about that?