Over at Rogers' Rules of Order, a comment came in from Jessica, taking us to task for the Harry Potter story in the August issue of National Geographic.

She wrote: I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed. Being a major Harry Potter fan, I noticed a mistake in the mandrake section of "Harry Potter's Garden." The mistake is that you said that the mandrake "helps Harry's teacher reverse a turn-to-stone spell." There are two things wrong with this. The first is that it is not Harry's teacher, it is his school's nurse. Secondly, it does not "reverse a turn-to-stone spell." It "returns those who have been petrified to their original state" (this is a quote taken from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). i have never found a mistake in National Geographic before, but seriously, if you read about two pages of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, or even watched the movie, this could have been corrected. Thank you for reading my comment.

We asked our Potter correspondent, Melody Kramer, to defend the honor of National Geographic. And magically, she did. Her response:

Dear Jessica,
I must admit, I was petrified to receive your note. I’m wearing my pink fluffy earmuffs because comments like this are like the fatal cry of the mandrake … to my ego. But according to Chamber of Secrets, Professor Sprout prepared a draught of mandrake to revive petrification victims. And "reverse a turn-to-stone spell" is another way to say "returns those who have been petrified to their original state,” because people are essentially “turned to stone” when they’re petrified. I hope this clarifies things for you, and I’m glad you’re such a devoted Potter buff.

Melody

— Marc Silver

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