How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Patronus

When it was announced that the Harry Potter site Pottermore had a new quiz that would reveal your inner patronus, I dropped everything.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a J.K. Rowling fanboy or maybe sites like Buzzfeed have proven that people just really, really love taking pop culture quizzes, but, for whatever reason, I was stupidly excited to take the test.

If you’re unfamiliar, a patronus is a kind of ghostly magical guardian that a wizard or witch can summon, an anthropomorphic animal representation of your warmest emotions. Harry Potter’s patronus was a mighty stag. Ginny Weasley had a majestic horse. Albus Dumbledore had a fiery phoenix. So I was incredibly curious to see which patronus would represent me the best.

Now I’ve had some issues with Pottermore quizzes in the past. When I took the Hogwarts sorting test, I was sorted into Hufflepuff — the Jan Brady of Hogwarts houses — and, I’m not proud to admit, it took me a long while to be okay with that result.

But I was confident that the patronus test would be different. I was going to find out my magical spirit animal. My noble, inner beast. My equivalent of a daemon from Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials books.

So I took the test. I clicked on answers as quickly as I could. (They said they were measuring my reaction time.) I tried to give the answers that best reflected my inner self. And then the test was over.

I dragged my cursor across the screen to summon my patronus. (And I might’ve yelled out loud “Expecto Patronum!” when I did it.) It started to materialize and…

My patronus was a polecat.

A polecat.

Huh?

So, the first thing I did was Google “polecat,” because who the bleep knows what a polecat is?

When you Google “polecat,” this is the description that shows up at the top of the results page.

“a weasel-like Eurasian mammal…” (Weasel?)

“… with mainly dark brown fur and a darker mask across the eyes…” (Not so bad.)

“…noted for ejecting a fetid fluid when threatened.”

WHAT?

“Another term for skunk.”

WHAT?!

My beautiful inner spirit animal is best known for “ejecting a fetid fluid when threatened.”

REALLY?

I don’t even care that it’s small. Like a scarab beetle or a flying squirrel… I’d be fine with those. But my extremely personal magical guardian, an animal defined by my very being, is a poor man’s skunk who sprays poop water out of its own body?!

So, if I died suddenly and there was a wizard or a witch who was deeply in love with me, they’d have to assume my patronus as a tribute and, one day, someone would ask them, “So you’ve had that patronus ever since Tom died?”

“Yes.”

“A polecat? And you’re going to keep it?”

“Always.”

“Really?”

(long pause) “I mean, I didn’t really think it through at the time…”

I am not going to lie. It was a blow. It was a harsh blow.

Everyone in my office was taking the test, and I should say I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t totally on board with their patronus. Someone got a salmon, another person was a field mouse. And there were lots of cats. But you could tell that the general consensus was that NO ONE had it worse than a polecat. My patronus existed, apparently, to make other people feel better.

It turns out that patronus dissatisfaction was an internet wide phenomenon. Joss Whedon was inconsolable about having a weasel patronus. (Hey Joss, does your weasel spray fetid fluid? No? Poor baby.) Others lamented that they didn’t receive the rare unicorn patronus. And J.K. Rowling herself had to turn to Twitter to convince people that rat and mole patronuses were actually pretty cool.

That was the moment that turned me around actually. Seeing the author of some of my favorite books having to take time out of her day to sell a stranger on the merits of a rat patronus. It opened my eyes.

We’re lucky.

We’re all so lucky to have this brilliant, bizarre world of wizards and witches to play in. A woman created this magical universe out of nothing and gave it to the world in seven amazing books, two stage-plays, some theme parks, and a whole bunch of movies.

Harry Potter shouldn’t be about wish fulfilment. It should be about letting your imagination run wild in one of the greatest literary sandboxes ever created. And if that means I have to stretch the limits of my personal fantasy to make hanging out with a ghost polecat cool — so be it.

My patronus IS a polecat.

I’m just owning it now. If a Death Eater or Dementor ever comes at me, guess what they’re getting right in the face? That’s right — FETID FLUID.

That’s a little bit more awesome than just getting attacked by a claw or a tooth, am I right? That’s some Fred and George Weasley nonsense right there.

I have a weird, gross patronus and I LOVE IT.

So, let’s see some patronus pride, Potter fans. The world would be pretty boring if we were all lions and hippogriffs. Let’s proudly venture out into the world with our odd little animal friends by our side, and show J.K. Rowling that we couldn’t be happier to be as unusually diverse as the literary world she created.

(But, seriously, a polecat? I win the “unfortunate patronus” award, right?)