“ Stupefy!”

“Expelliarmus!”

The casting of spells drift out of the library at Hillcrest Elementary School as a pair of muggles, brandishing wands and dressed in graduation robes, stand on a table. No it’s not Halloween, it’s just a group of students dueling while taking part in teacher Reed Olson’s Hogwarts Academy.

“I started the Harry Potter camp because there were some kids in my class that just would not put these books down and finally I ended up reading them and thought, ‘This is great’,” said Olson. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen kids carry books around like they’re little babies. They just love them and take them places. As a teacher, that’s what you want them to do. I just thought, what better way to keep kids engaged during the summer than to have a camp.”

For five weeks, students lived and breathed the world of their favorite literary characters. They dressed in robes, they carried wands and they studied the subjects that all witches and wizards study while they attend Hogwarts; Defense Against The Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Care Of Magical Creatures and Astronomy.

“I really liked Potions and Herbology, because in Herbology we got to rip up plants and get the juice and gookey stuff out of them,” said Lexie Hart, 9. For Jaycen Hill, 9, it wasn’t just astronomy class that he enjoyed, but also “playing games and watching movies and learning a lot of cool stuff about Harry Potter.”