When You wish upon… A patronus?

When You wish upon… A patronus?
"I just had the most magical thing ever happen to me."

– Let me back this up a little and do a complete retelling of the story from Point A to Point B, so you too can understand what just occured and how unlikely it is; that with the power of the internet I (living in Boston, Met a guy in New York, and tracked him all the way to Arizona, without remembering his name) – Yea, that right. I was able to recount a physical description of a gentleman that I met at a sporting event in NYC, and have someone that Knew him in Arizona contact him on my behalf.

– You must think I’m crazy. I’m not Crazy. I attended the Quidditch World Cup this weekend @ Randall’s Island in New York. I got up at 3am, after 40 minutes of sleep and Took a fan bus( which takes about 4-5hrs, depending on traffic and stuff.

The Fan bus let us off at the hotel designated for the weekend. Here’s where the problems began.

1. I had all the paperwork tucked into my bag, and nobody woke me up when the bus arrived at the hotel.(everyone freaked out and called our team manager)
2. The Hotel Didn’t have us registered. (correction, they had other people registered as us) – Names of players we knew but weren’t with us at the time.
3. The Lateness of the fan bus, meant that we missed the free shuttle the Hotel offered us to take to the game.
4. The Hotel didn’t know what to do with us. They hadn’t even begun to clean and prep ¾ of our rooms.
5. The Only room we did have access to, had to take all of our fan gear. Enough for 11 people. Too little space to get everything done.
6. With being stuck at the hotel we missed Emerson’s first Game.
7. Attempting to hire a cab company, they sent us a limosine instead. (This was actually kinda fun – arriving in a limo turned a few heads.)
8. We were brought to the wrong entrance and had to walk all the way around the stadium, which kinda sucked.

That was a long list of things that shouldn’t have happened, but did. It seemed to work in our favor though. we believe that * since the fans* absorbed all the negative energy, the team won, and won, and won. We were unstoppable. – It definitely worked in our favor. Game after game, I watched so many Quidditch games. Good teams, and teams that played with gusto, teams that lost, and teams that shook hands. Over the course of 2 days, I met and spoke to so many people. Some were fans, some were spectators, some were players, and some were just there for the sake of interest in the name of the sport.

Now, in the spirit of the Long two days; and meeting SO many people, one can get brain addled. I met several really nice young men over the two days. Many were players, and good sports. Some were fans, some were musicians etc. Some that made me smile, some that regaled me with Quidditch win stories, and some that spoke of places far from where we were in NY.
The Story revolves around a young man in the 3rd category.

I met a young man from Arizona who was playing for the ASU/NAU Quidditch team. His name I could not for the life of me remember. I’m terrible with names. we were in fact introduced in a noisy outside area, with many other contributing factors. I shook his hand, and we spoke at length about everything. Home, Quidditch, and the like. He was super sweet. My team went off to play and I got lost in the game. When I returned to tent city, he was gone and his team was playing on another pitch. I was unable to see him again due to team playoffs and confusion concerning team brackets.

I did by chance speak to him a little later on, when my friend Erin and I walked over for hot chocolate at the snack bar. We spoke briefly. He was still wearing his antlers. I highly approved of this. He was much cuter with the antlers on.

My team played 2 more games and Lost in a midst of rough play, terrible referee calls and bad goal watching. We were very annoyed and amidst sparking fights, we were told it would be best to leave. As a fan, and not a player, I was stuck. I wanted to stay and watch more games, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay when there was nothing to stay for. In essence, I ran away when the clock struck midnight never to see my ASU player ever again.

Back to a fan bus that was late, Back to missing another shuttle and waiting several hours to eat at a restaurant that we almost didn’t find In the dark. Back to my miserable although somewhat accomplished life. There was a lot of high strung emotions, witty banter, and yes we all fell asleep on the bus. The lights went out, and we al curled up on the rough seats and passed out.

Back to Boston. Five hours on a bus, pulling in at 3am. I stumbled back a couple blocks to my apartment.I mumbled to my roommate, locked the door and set my alarm for 6hrs later. It was soon to be one hell of a Monday morning.

That’s Where the Internet comes into play. I came home late and went straight to bed from my departure from the Quidditch World Cup. I wasn’t able to remember or start my search for anyone I met at the the cup. Monday rolled around and I went back to being busy. I finally sat down tuesday evening and started looking through all the schedules and names and stuff I penned down. Games won, Games lost etc.

I didn’t have his name, I kinda remembered what he looked like but I could not for the life of me recall his name. What was his name? – the name was the most important part and I couldn’t remember.

After a long conversation with my roommate Alyssa, she suggested I take to the Internet. So I went to the Internet. I went to FB and tried to find pictures of the cup, but there were none of him that my friends had taken. I looked up Sun Devil Quidditch’s fan page, none of their photos were up yet. I was lost.

I decided that if All I had was a description, Why not go on another social media sharing site called Tumblr. I surfed Tumblr looking for Quidditch anything. I looked at everyone’s photos, read blogs, looked at team rosters, watched videos, clips, and the like… nothing. Then it hit me. Why not ask the digital culture to help me. Why not seek community help. I went for it.

"that’ you are so terrible with names that even if you by chance remembered part of their name you may never find them ever again. Yea, well that happened.

I met a young gentleman playing for the ASU (Sun Devil Quidditch Team) – We were introduced and hit it off right away. He was wearing very cute, but somewhat ridiculous set of reindeer antlers, and a shirt that read [Expecto Patronum].

( To make a long story short – I was unable to Remember his name past the first couple of games played, and by the end of the night was hitting myself for not having written it down. He was super friendly, and granted he plays quidditch which makes him 10x cooler in my book. I would really like tokeep in touch, even if it is a little far from Boston to Arizona.

Please, Come forward if you are/know who my mystery man is.

Thanks for Taking the time to read this… " –

(I had a picture posted ^ here, but the site won’t allow me to post it for several days due to some stupid rule about spam)

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I made the post above, and waited. Just waited. I wrote a paper and arched a movie. Then it happened. Reblogs, posts, people calling out to others that they wanted me to find him . Someone even said " we need to find this missing patronus" – I was so touched.

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The stars aligned and to my sheer amazement, someone came up with a name. Someone actually knew him. – Of everything that happened to me in that one weekend, I had his name.

I went about finding him on Facebook. I noted that he had a picture of him in his reindeer antlers. – It was the very same gentleman.

I had found him.