UVA is totally the new Hogwarts
We have grounds, a quidditch team, and now a Chamber of Secrets
We’ve been told that the newly discovered room in the Rotunda was used for chemistry – but as the Rotunda is one of the most studied buildings in the country, how odd is it that TJ would have hidden a room simply meant for science so very well?
A mysterious secret room containing a complex hearth and sealed off to the outside world in 1800? Sounds an awful lot like a Chamber of Secrets to me. (So far no Basilisk has been spotted.)
In fact, the newly discovered Chamber of Secrets is an addition to a long list of things that UVA and Hogwarts have in common.
First of all, unlike the rest of the unsophisticated schools in the country, we refer to students by their years, instead of “Freshman”, “sophomore”, etc. Harry might have been at Hogwarts a few more years than we stay at UVA, but the concept is the same.
We have a Quidditch team, The Whomping Wahoos, that has a better record than our football team. They proudly represented UVA at the Quidditch World Cup in 2014 and 2015. This past year they even had a Sweet 16 finish – beat that, Mike London.
The Order of the Phoenix has a branch at UVA, and they are nearly as discreet as the group Harry founded. A secret society, The Order adheres to the principles present in the Rowling series.
We have grounds.
Have you never seen the McGregor room?! Come on. People literally call it “The Harry Potter Room.”
While none of them are said to be headless, there are certainly stories of ghosts haunting grounds. Alderman Library has been said to contain quite a few.
Hogwarts thinks that they throw down at the Yule Ball (a version of which we throw as well), but in Charlottesville we Christmas like no other with Lighting of the Lawn.
We might call it Fireball, but we all know it’s really the same as firewhiskey.
The Honor Code is even stricter than Dolores Umbridge’s creepy quill. Potter and his friends know just as well as we do that “we must not tell lies.”
We don’t exactly have houses, but our schools seem to mirror some of them pretty closely. The Comm school (Slytherin), College of Arts and Sciences (Gryffindor, obviously), E-School (Ravenclaw), and A-School (Hufflepuff) are just a few.
If you’re still doubting, you can definitely go check for the giant snake yourself – be my guest.