Expecto Patronum

I love all things Harry Potter. 
From the moment my kids introduced me to the  first book, before the movies had even come out, I was a huge fan.  When I first heard the movies were going to be made, I already knew Alan Rickman should play Snape, and I knew Snape was not evil by the end of the 3rd book.  I'm still sad that Richard Harris did not make it through all 8 movies, and sadder still that Peter O'Toole was not chosen to play Dumbledore after Harris died.  I loved every moment of waiting for the release of each new book, and the joy of reading them took me straight back to the joy I felt reading the Narnia Chronicles when I was a child.  My daughter recently expressed sadness that her new nephew would grow up in a world where the end of the Potter books is simply common knowledge.   I understood.  She and her brothers grew up in a world where little kids spoke the words "Luke, I am your father" into spinning fan blades, unaware that my generation could never have known that phrase was going to exist.
One of my favorite scenes in the Potter movies is when Professor McGonagall casts the Ferreverto spell.  She makes the word sound musical, magical.  I love so many of the spells taught at Hogwarts.  My favorite spell of all is Expecto Patronum.
I am a cat person.  I currently have 8 cats.  I slept with a cat in my crib, and have had many cats in my life since I was a newborn.  I work as a veterinary assistant for cat spay/neuter clinics.  I'm a crazy cat lady.  But if I was to cast the Expecto Patronum spell with a real magical wand, my patronus would not be a cat.
When I was a child, I dreaded long trips.  My father did not tolerate a child having or expressing any needs (or even showing any signs of existence) on long road trips.  The need to pee, or puke from car-sickness, had to be held in, completely.  So, on long road trips, I would look out the car window to distract myself.  One day, when I was about 3 or 4, while we drove through the Columbia Gorge in Oregon, I saw a dark shadow appear, running alongside our car.  It was a great big beast, a shadow horse, and if I listened closely, I could hear its thundering hooves.  From then on, that horse always came to me on our trips through the Gorge.  It was never there on our long trips anywhere else. 
When I was about 9, the shadow horse disappeared, but it was not the last time I would see it.  A few years ago, someone told me about the Mount Adams horse, a large horse-shaped area on the east-facing side of the mountain, which happens to be very near the Columbia Gorge.  One day, as I drove west on Interstate 82, I looked up toward Mt. Adams, and there it was, the horse who thundered beside me on all of those long trips in my childhood.
If I ever find a wand from Hogwarts, I will lift it up, and when I say "Expecto Patronum," I know a shadow horse will appear.