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Hermione's The Garden of the Mind: Where the Moonflowers Bloom · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: A Muggle Snuggle Special, Hermione's Library, Episode 16.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Good evening, my dear. Come in.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I have been saving this evening for you. Not the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: whole evening, mind you, but the best part of it.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: The part that comes after the day has done all
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of its shouting and rushing and demanding, and the world
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: has finally grown quiet enough to hear itself think. That
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: is the part I have saved.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: It is a.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Small part and it is soft and it smells faintly
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of night air and warm earth and I think you
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: will like it very much. My name is Hermione and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I would like to take you somewhere tonight.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Not to the library though.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: The library is always the first place one thinks of.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: And the library will be there when we return. patient
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and amber-lit and exactly where.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: We left it.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Tonight I would like to take you outside, into the grounds,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: into a part of the grounds that most students walk
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: past without noticing because they are looking for something grand,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: something dramatic, something that will look impressive in a photograph
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: or sound exciting when they tell it at dinner. But
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: this part of the grounds is not dramatic. It is
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: not grand. It is not the kind of thing anyone photographs.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It is the kind of thing that finds you when
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: you have stopped looking for things.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: There is a garden. You might not have heard of it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Most people have not. It is not on any of
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: the maps.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It is not mentioned in any of the guidebooks, and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the guidebooks, as you know, mention absolutely everything, right down
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to the precise number of cobblestones in.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: The courtyard outside the kitchens.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: But this garden has been left out, because it is
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the kind of.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Place that resists being written about.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It exists the way a feeling exists, fully, deeply, unmistakably,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: but it cannot be pinned to a page without losing
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: some of what it is. It is called the Moonflower Garden.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: It is small, no larger than a classroom, and it
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: sits behind the old greenhouses in a walled enclosure that
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was built, according to Professor Sprott, sometime in the 13th
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: century by a herbology master who believed that some plants
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: needed not just soil.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: And sunlight and water.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: But also secrecy. He built the walls high. He planted
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a hedge of hawthorns so thick that a garden gnome
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: could not push through it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And he grew.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: In the center of that enclosed space, a collection of
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: flowers that bloom only at night, only in moonlight, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: only for people who have stopped trying to find them.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: That is the trick of it, you see. You cannot
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: find the moon flyer garden by walking towards it. You
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: find it by walking slowly through the grounds, with no
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: particular destination. Letting your feet choose the direction, letting your
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: thoughts go soft and unraveling.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Letting the evening hold you.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: The way it holds, everything, gently, without preference, the way
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the dark holds the stars. Not because the stars asked
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to be held, but because holding is what the dark does.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Tonight? That is what I would like us to do.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Walk.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Slowly. Think softly.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Let the garden find us. We leave the castle through
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the side door near the astronomy tower, the one that
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: opens onto a narrow stone staircase that spirals down to
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: the grounds. The staircase is cool and slightly damp, not
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: unpleasantly so, but in the way that old stone always is.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the way that remembers being a mountain before it was
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: a staircase. My hand trails along the wall as we descend,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and the wall is rough beneath my fingers, textured with
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: centuries of weather and magic, and the faint, ghostly warmth
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: of torchlight that burned here long before we were born
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and will burn here long after we have gone. At
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the bottom, the door opens onto the grounds, and the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: evening air reaches for us. It is September air, still
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: warm from the long afternoon, but carrying within it the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: first suggestion of autumn, the faintest hint of cooler days ahead.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: The way a letter carries a scent even before you
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: open it. The sky is not yet dark. It is
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: that particular shade of blue that exists only in the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes between sunset and nightfall. Not the blue of daytime,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: which is bright and confident, but a deeper blue, a
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: quieter blue, the color of a rue lit by a
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: single candle seen from across a hall. We walk across
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the grass. It is soft beneath our feet, not the clipped,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: orderly grass of the Quidditch pitch. But the longer, wilder
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: grass that grows in the spaces between the paths. The
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: grass that nobody mows because nobody comes here often enough
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: to notice.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: It needs mowing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: It smells of late summer. Green and sweet and slightly dusty.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: The way the world smells after a warm day that
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: has not rained. Ahead of us. The greenhouses are silhouettes
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: against the darkening sky. They're beautiful at night, all those
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: glass panels reflecting the last of the light, each one
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: a small mirror showing a different piece of the sky,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: so that the greenhouses together look like a mosaic of twilight,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: a patchwork of blues and purples and the very faintest gold.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: During the day, they are busy places. full of movement
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and warmth and the chatter of students learning to tend
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: magical plants. But at night, they are silent. The plants
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: inside have.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Their own rhythms.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Some sleep, some wake, some do things at night that
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: are better not discussed, and the glass holds their secrets
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the way windows hold the light of the rooms behind them.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: showing just enough to suggest that something wonderful is happening inside,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: without revealing exactly what.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: We pass the greenhouses. The path narrows.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: The hawthorn hedge rises. On either side of us, tall
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: and dense and dark, its branches interlocking overhead like the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: vaulted ceiling of a cathedral made entirely of thorns and leaves.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: The thorns are not dangerous. Hawthorne thorns at Hogwarts are
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: more decorative than defensive, more punctuation than threat. But they
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: give the passage a sense of enclosure, a sense of
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: stepping from one world into another.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: The way a doorway does, the way the.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: First note of a lobeli does.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And then, at the end of the passage, there is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a gate.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: It is made of iron.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Or something that looks like iron but is slightly warmer
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: to the touch as though the metal remembers the sunlight
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and holds it a little longer than it should.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: The gate is not locked. It has never been locked.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: As far as I.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Know, though it is very difficult to find and that,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I suppose, is a better kind of lock than any
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: key could provide. The gate has a design worked into
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it a pattern of leaves and circles and the occasional star,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: all intertwined in the particular way that old ironwork does,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: when the person who made it was not just building
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: a gate, but writing a sentence, a sentence in a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: language that only gates can speak.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I push it open. It does not creak.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: It opens the way a book opens, easily, willingly. as
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: though it has been waiting for someone to come along
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and turn the page. And here is the garden. It
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: is smaller than I described, or perhaps it is exactly
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: the size I described, and my words made it larger
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in your.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Mind than it is in fact. It is a walled room.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Made of night air and earth and growing things. The
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: walls are high, ten feet, perhaps twelve. and they are
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: covered in ivy so thick that the stone beneath has
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: been entirely swallowed, transformed from cold gray rock into a living,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: breathing curtain of green. The ivy moves slightly in the breeze,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: though there is barely any breeze tonight, so the movement
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: is more like breathing than like swaying, a slow, barely
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: perceptible rhythm. The rhythm of something alive that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Has decided for the moment. to be still.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: The path beneath our feet is made of flat stones
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: set into the earth with small gaps between them, and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: in those gaps moss has grown, the kind of moss
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: that is softer than any fabric, The kind that gives
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: slightly underfoot, so that each step feels less like walking
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and more like pressing your feet into something that has
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: been waiting all day to be pressed. And the moonflowers.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: They are everywhere.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: They grow along the edges of the path, in clusters
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and drifts. Their stems slender and pale. There leaves a
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: particular shade of green that seems to glow in the moonlight,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: not actually glow, not the way a Lumos charm glows,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: but something close to it, something that is the plant
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: equivalent of a whisper, so quiet that you might imagine
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: it if you were not paying attention, and real enough
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: that you would swear to it if anyone asked. The
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: flowers themselves are white.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Pure white. not the white of paper or the white of.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Snow, but the white of something that has never been touched,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: the white of the inside of a shell, the white
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: of the first page of a new book before anyone
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: has written in the margins.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: They are open, fully open.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Their petals spread wide like small hands held up to
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the moon, and they are drinking the moonlight, absorbing it
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the way earth absorbs rain. taking it in slowly and
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: completely and giving it back as a faint, cool luminescence
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that hovers around each bloom like a breath.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: There is a scent. Of course there is a scent.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Flowers that bloom at night always have a scent, because
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: night is when scents travel farthest, carried on air that
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: is cooler and heavier and more willing to hold them.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: The scent of moonflowers is difficult to describe. It is sweet,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: but not the aggressive sweetness of sugar or honey. It
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: is the sweetness of something that has been quietly becoming
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: itself for a very long time, the sweetness of warm milk,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of clean linen, of the air inside a church when
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: no one is there. of the moment just before sleep
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: when your thoughts become soft and rounded and lose their edges.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: We walk slowly along the path. There is no hurry here.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: There is no destination.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: The path poves gently to the left, then to the right,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: then back again, in a pattern that seems random but that,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: after a while, you begin to recognize as something deliberate.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: The path is guiding us, not towards a specific place,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: but towards a specific state of mind. Each curve takes
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: us a little further from the concerns of the day.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Each step carries us a little deeper into the quiet.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Along the path there are benches. Small stone benches, worn
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: smooth by centuries of sitting, each one placed at a
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: point where the garden is at its most beautiful, beneath
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a spray of moonflowers or beside a pool of still water,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: or at the exact spot where the moonlight falls most
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: directly through a gap in the canopy of leaves overhead.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: We do not sit yet.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: We walk.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: But I want you to know that the benches are there,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: waiting for us, ready to hold us when we are
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: ready to be held. Halfway along the path there is
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: a pool. It is small, no larger than a bathtub,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: and it is so perfectly still that it might be
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: a piece of glass set into the earth, but it
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: is not glass.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: It is water.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Drawn up from some underground source by the roots of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the plants that surround it, ferns, mostly with fronds that
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: arch over the pool's edge like the curved fingers of
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: a hand reaching for something it has almost, but not.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Quite, touched. The water is clear.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: So clear that you can see the stones at the bottom,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: each one distinct, each one smooth. each one settling into
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: its own particular position, with the quiet certainty of a
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: person who has found exactly the right chair and does
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: not intend to move. The moonlight falls on the pool,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and the.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Pool holds it.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: There is a reflection not of the sky because the
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: canopy is too thick, but of the moonflowers that grow
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: along the pool's edge, Their white blooms doubled in the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: water so that for a moment you cannot tell which
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: is the flower and which is the reflection, and then
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you realize that it does not matter because both are
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: beautiful and both are still, and the boundary between a
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: thing and its reflection is the most peaceful boundary in
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the world. I kneel beside the pool. The moss is
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: soft beneath my knees. I cut my hands and dip
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: them into the water and the water is cool. Not
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the cold of winter, not the chill of deep caves,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: but the cool of shade, the cool of evening, the
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: cool of something that has never been touched by direct
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: sunlight and does not know what warmth is and does
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: not mind. I bring the water to my lips. The
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: taste of stone and silence and the faintest trace of
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: minerals the taste of the earth itself, unfiltered and unadorned,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the taste of water before we decided to add things
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to it. The garden is alive with small sounds, not
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the sounds of the daytime, no birdsong, no voices, no
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: distant laughter from the Quidditch pitch. Instead, there is the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: sound of the earth breathing, which is a sound you
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: can hear only when everything else has stopped, the way
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you can hear your own heartbeat only when the room
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: is very quiet. There is the sound of the moonflowers opening,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a sound so small that it is not really a
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: sound at all, more like the memory of a sound,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the ghost of a sound, the sound that a flower
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: would make if flowers could speak and chose, for once,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: to whisper. And there's the sound of the air itself,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: moving through the garden in long, slow currents, carrying the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: scent of the moonflowers, and the coolness of the night
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and the particular quality of silence that belongs to places
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: where growing things are doing the slow, patient.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Work of being alive.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And beneath all of these sounds, if you listen very carefully,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: there is the sound of the garden thinking.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Not thinking in the way that people think, with.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Words and plans and worries, but thinking in the way
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: that gardens think, which is to say, growing.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Every thought is a root. Every memory is a seed.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And the garden tends them all, quietly and patiently, the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: way it tends its moonflowers, giving them what they need
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and asking nothing in return. At the center of the garden,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: there is a clearing. It is perfectly circular, perhaps ten
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: feet across, and it is carpeted in moss so thick
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and soft that it might as well be a cushion.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: In the very center of the clearing, there is a stone.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Not a bench. Not a monument. Just a stone.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Flat and round, about the size of a small table.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: its surface worn smooth by time and weather and the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: weight of countless hands that have rested upon it. The
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: moonlight falls here more directly than anywhere else in the garden.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: It falls through a gap in the canopy like a
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: column of silver water illuminating the stone and the moss
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and the circle of earth around them with a light
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: that is not quite daylight and not quite darkness but
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: something in between. something that belongs to the night and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: carries the night's particular gifts, its coolness, its gentleness, its
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: talent for making things look softer and kinder than they
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: appear in the unforgiving light of day.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Sit on the moss.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Feel it give beneath you, soft and springy and alive,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the way the earth was meant to feel before we
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: paved over it and built things on top of it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: The moss holds you.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It adjusts to the shape of your body, filling in
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the gaps, supporting the places that need support, and releasing
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the places that.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Need to be released.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: It is the most comfortable seat in the castle and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: it has the advantage of being outdoors, which means that
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the sky is above you and the stars are watching
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and the air is is moving across your face like
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: a gentle hand.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Place your hands on the stone. It is cool.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: The moonlight has cooled it. Or perhaps the stone was
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: always cool and the moonlight merely reminds you of what
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: you already knew. Feel the smoothness of its surface, the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: way it yields nothing and takes nothing, and simply is.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: This stone has.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Been here for a very long time. It was here
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: before the castle was built. It was here before the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: first wizard set foot.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: On this hill. It was here when this was just
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: a hill.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And the only magic in the world was the magic
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: of rain and wind and the slow, patient turning of
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the earth. There is something profoundly comforting about sitting on
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a stone that old. It puts your worries in perspective,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: not by minimizing them, not by telling you that they
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: do not matter, but by placing them in the larger
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: context of time. The stone has seen many worries come
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and go. It has felt the hands of many people
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: who are troubled by many things. And it has held
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: them all, the way it holds you now, without judgment,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: without commentary, without attempting to fix anything. It simply holds,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and the holding is enough.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Close your eyes.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: If you would like to, there is no need to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: see anything right now. The garden is holding its breath,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and it will hold it for as long as you
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: need it to. The moonflowers are glowing in the dark
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: behind your eyelids. Their white light reduced to a faint,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: warm pressure, like the memory of sunlight on a closed eye.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: The air is moving across your face. The moss is
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: holding your body. The stone is beneath your hands. Everything
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: is where it should be. Everything is as it should be.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Think of something small.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Not a problem. Not a plan.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Not a thing that needs doing or a thing that
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: needs saying. Think of something small and beautiful and complete
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: in itself, the way your cup of tea looked this afternoon,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: steam rising from it in a slow, curling column. The
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: sound of rain on a window when you were already
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: in bed. The weight of a book in your hands.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: The particular pleasure of a page that turns easily, without resistance,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: as though the book, too, is glad to be read.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: The color of the sky just before dawn.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: That shade of pale blue-gray that makes everything look fresh
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and new and possible.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Hold that thought.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Let it sit in your mind the way the stone
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: sits in the moss.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Center, still, complete.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Let everything else fall away from it, the way autumn
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: leaves fall from a branch, slowly and gently, one by one,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: until only the branch remains, and the branch is enough.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: This is what the garden of the mind is for,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: my dear. It is not a place to solve problems.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: It is not a place to make plans. It is
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a place to remember that you are a person who
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: has small, beautiful, complete thoughts and that those thoughts are
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: worth holding and that holding them is a form of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: rest and that rest is a form of courage. And
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: that courage, in its quietest form, is simply the willingness
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to stop and sit and breathe and let the garden
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: hold you for a while.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: The moon has moved.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: It has been moving the whole time, of course.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: It is always moving.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Carrying the night across the sky with it, the way
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: a lantern carries its light across a dark room, but
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: only now in this moment of stillness do you notice it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: It is higher now than it was when we arrived,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and the column of light that falls through the canopy
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: has shifted slightly, illuminating a different patch of moss, a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: different cluster of moonflowers, a different angle of the stone.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Time works differently in the garden, not the way it works.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: In the room of.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Requirement, where you can lose hours and emerge to find
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that only minutes have passed. It works differently in the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: way that time works in a deep sleep, slowly, generously,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: as though time has decided that tonight.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: It will not count.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Tonight, it will simply be the way the garden is,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the way the moonlight is, the way you are right now,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: sitting on the moss with your hands on the stone
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and the night air on your face.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: The moonflowers are closing.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It is a very slow process, so slow that you
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: cannot see it happening, the way you cannot see the
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: hour hand of a clock moving.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: But they are closing.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Their petals are drawing inward, folding themselves around the moonlight
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: they have drunk during the evening, holding it inside, storing
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: it the way a cat stores warmth, preparing for the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: long hours before dawn when the moon will set and
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the garden will be left to the darkness and the stars.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: But they are not closed yet, not quite.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: They are in that.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Lovely intermediate state, Neither fully open nor fully closed. That
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: is the flower equivalent of the state you are in
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: right now. Awake but not alert. Present but not active.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Aware but not watchful. The state between states.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: The state that is its own kind of peace.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I will tell you a secret, my dear. The garden
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: does not close when we leave it. It does not vanish.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: It does not reset itself for the next person who
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: finds it.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: When we walk.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Back through the Hawthorne Hedge and cross the grounds and
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: climb the spiral staircase and re-enter the castle, the garden
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: will remain exactly as it is, the moss will hold
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the shape of our bodies for a while, the stone
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: will hold the warmth of our hands for a little longer,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: and the mood flyers will hold the moonlight they have
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: gathered keeping it safe until the next night, when they
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: will open again and drink again and wait again for
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: someone who is willing to walk slowly and think Safdu
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: and let the.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Garden find them.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: That is the gift of this place, and it is
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the gift of tonight. You do not have to earn it.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: You do not have to deserve it. You do not
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: have to do anything at all, except be here, in
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: this moment, in this moss, in this moonlight, in this
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: particular configuration of air and earth and quiet.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: That is enough. You are enough.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The garden knows this. And the moonflowers know this. And
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the stone knows this. And now you know it too.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: The fire in the library is still burning. When you
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: are ready, there is no rush. There is never any rush.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: We will walk back. But for now, stay here. Stay
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: in the clearing. Stay on the moss.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Let the moonlight fall on your face. Let the scent
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of the moonflowers fill your lungs. Let the sounds of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the garden, the breathing of the earth, the whisper of
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the flowers, the slow, patient silence of the stone, carry
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you to the place where sleep is not something you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: have to chase, but something that comes to you. the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: way the garden comes to you, the way the moonlight
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: comes to you, gently, willingly, because you have stopped trying
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to find it and have simply, beautifully let it in.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Good night, my dear. The garden is holding you. Sleep well.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: This episode was created with AI assistance. Hermione's Midnight Garden Story.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: was composed specifically for this evening's journey through the moonflower
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: paths of Hogwarts.