"...pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."
And this is how it ends.
The party is supposed to start at ten o’clock at night. You’ll be putting the car in park at 9:50 because there is no way in hell you’re going to miss one minute of the last Potter midnight party you’ll ever attend.
[I’ve suddenly developed a burning hatred for the word last. And end. And final.]
There will be adults, walking around in robes and hats; teenagers with temporary tattoo lightning bolts on their foreheads and “Weasley is our King” buttons pinned to their jackets; three-year-olds in footie pajamas throwing Koosh balls through hoola-hoops in an improvised game of Quidditch.
These people get it. They get why everyone’s touchy about their place in line, why you hold out your wrist and display that orange wristband so proudly: orange is the first color to get called into line, you’ve been here the longest, you’re a bigger fan. Little kids clutch wads of their parents’ money so they can “pay” for their book, even if they do have trouble reaching the counter.
There will be a countdown like it’s New Years Eve in Times Square, and the millions of pages that surround you will do nothing to soak up the roar that deafens you when zero hits and the first book is sold. And then it’s there. The book. It’s in your hands after years, months, days, hours spent sitting in your room re-reading the first six and chatting on message boards and standing in unimaginably long lines outside of a bookstore. You’re going to be left clutching the book like you’ve never seen anything so beautiful and solid and real in all your life.
It will take that voice in your head that sounds strangely like your mother to remind you not to speed on the way home.
As you rush into the house you’ll nod goodnight to your mother who has been sitting vigil in the living room until you and your brother arrive home safely. There will be pillows all over the floor of your bedroom, a notebook and pencil - writing in the margins of a brand new Potter book? Scandalous! - and a bottle of water, set close enough to reach but far enough away that if a freak earthquake were to strike and toppled the bottle, the book would not get wet. You’ll silently acknowledge the box of Kleenex and handful of granola bars your mother has left on the floor while you idly finger the edges of the new pages.
The book itself will be a thing of beauty. If a new car smells of freedom then a new book smells of places you’ve never been and ink that’s never been touched by human hands. The new binding will break with a glorious creak that makes you smile and rest the book carefully on your knees. [You’ve discovered, over the years, exactly how to hold one of these giant Potter books: wide enough to read but closed enough to preserve the binding glue. This lesson was learned after Goblet of Fire; your hardback copy is in three separate pieces that can be removed fully from the cover. You only read your paperback version now.]
I have no problem admitting it: I cried when Sirius died in Order of the Phoenix and I started crying during Half-Blood Prince back when Harry and Dumbledore were still in the cave. I finished HBP in approximately twelve hours. When I had composed myself enough to come downstairs and announce that I had finished my mother just shook her head, grinning.
“So who died?” She asked. My mother has never read any of the books but knows nearly everything about them due to my inability to shut up.
“Don’t say anything! I still have to read!” my brother howled, clamping his hands over his ears.
Mom pulled me into the next room and asked again, “Who died?”
And when I opened my mouth to whisper the demise of one beloved headmaster - God bless his fictional soul - I started crying again. I’m not a crier; the fact that two books in one series have made me cry is something akin to a crack in the time-space continuum. But standing there in the living room with my mother, announcing that Dumbledore really was dead, I started crying again. And so my mother did what mothers do best: she hugged me and patted the back of my head and whispered things like “Aww, it’ll be alright.”
And yes, Mother, I do know it’s all fiction.
But it’s fiction I’ve grown up with. I feel like I’ve sat in lessons alongside Hermione, learned chess by watching Ron, snuck out of Gryffindor Tower under Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. I grinned uncontrollably when Umbridge got her comeuppance, gasped worriedly when the dementors were bearing down on Harry, Hermione, and Sirius near the lake. I was twelve when I read Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time as part of a school project; I’ll be nineteen when I finish Deathly Hallows. I’ve grown up with Harry. We’ve all grown up with Harry, regardless of age. I may, legally, be an adult, but Harry Potter is my childhood, dammit, and my childhood isn’t over yet.
It’s appropriate, don’t you think? At the beginning of Deathly Hallows, Harry will come of age, become an adult, and by the end of the book I’ll be one, too.
Oh God, it’s really ending, isn’t it?
If this isn’t the exact definition of bittersweet I don’t know what is.
The party is supposed to start at ten o’clock at night. You’ll be putting the car in park at 9:50 because there is no way in hell you’re going to miss one minute of the last Potter midnight party you’ll ever attend.
[I’ve suddenly developed a burning hatred for the word last. And end. And final.]
There will be adults, walking around in robes and hats; teenagers with temporary tattoo lightning bolts on their foreheads and “Weasley is our King” buttons pinned to their jackets; three-year-olds in footie pajamas throwing Koosh balls through hoola-hoops in an improvised game of Quidditch.
These people get it. They get why everyone’s touchy about their place in line, why you hold out your wrist and display that orange wristband so proudly: orange is the first color to get called into line, you’ve been here the longest, you’re a bigger fan. Little kids clutch wads of their parents’ money so they can “pay” for their book, even if they do have trouble reaching the counter.
There will be a countdown like it’s New Years Eve in Times Square, and the millions of pages that surround you will do nothing to soak up the roar that deafens you when zero hits and the first book is sold. And then it’s there. The book. It’s in your hands after years, months, days, hours spent sitting in your room re-reading the first six and chatting on message boards and standing in unimaginably long lines outside of a bookstore. You’re going to be left clutching the book like you’ve never seen anything so beautiful and solid and real in all your life.
It will take that voice in your head that sounds strangely like your mother to remind you not to speed on the way home.
As you rush into the house you’ll nod goodnight to your mother who has been sitting vigil in the living room until you and your brother arrive home safely. There will be pillows all over the floor of your bedroom, a notebook and pencil - writing in the margins of a brand new Potter book? Scandalous! - and a bottle of water, set close enough to reach but far enough away that if a freak earthquake were to strike and toppled the bottle, the book would not get wet. You’ll silently acknowledge the box of Kleenex and handful of granola bars your mother has left on the floor while you idly finger the edges of the new pages.
The book itself will be a thing of beauty. If a new car smells of freedom then a new book smells of places you’ve never been and ink that’s never been touched by human hands. The new binding will break with a glorious creak that makes you smile and rest the book carefully on your knees. [You’ve discovered, over the years, exactly how to hold one of these giant Potter books: wide enough to read but closed enough to preserve the binding glue. This lesson was learned after Goblet of Fire; your hardback copy is in three separate pieces that can be removed fully from the cover. You only read your paperback version now.]
I have no problem admitting it: I cried when Sirius died in Order of the Phoenix and I started crying during Half-Blood Prince back when Harry and Dumbledore were still in the cave. I finished HBP in approximately twelve hours. When I had composed myself enough to come downstairs and announce that I had finished my mother just shook her head, grinning.
“So who died?” She asked. My mother has never read any of the books but knows nearly everything about them due to my inability to shut up.
“Don’t say anything! I still have to read!” my brother howled, clamping his hands over his ears.
Mom pulled me into the next room and asked again, “Who died?”
And when I opened my mouth to whisper the demise of one beloved headmaster - God bless his fictional soul - I started crying again. I’m not a crier; the fact that two books in one series have made me cry is something akin to a crack in the time-space continuum. But standing there in the living room with my mother, announcing that Dumbledore really was dead, I started crying again. And so my mother did what mothers do best: she hugged me and patted the back of my head and whispered things like “Aww, it’ll be alright.”
And yes, Mother, I do know it’s all fiction.
But it’s fiction I’ve grown up with. I feel like I’ve sat in lessons alongside Hermione, learned chess by watching Ron, snuck out of Gryffindor Tower under Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. I grinned uncontrollably when Umbridge got her comeuppance, gasped worriedly when the dementors were bearing down on Harry, Hermione, and Sirius near the lake. I was twelve when I read Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time as part of a school project; I’ll be nineteen when I finish Deathly Hallows. I’ve grown up with Harry. We’ve all grown up with Harry, regardless of age. I may, legally, be an adult, but Harry Potter is my childhood, dammit, and my childhood isn’t over yet.
It’s appropriate, don’t you think? At the beginning of Deathly Hallows, Harry will come of age, become an adult, and by the end of the book I’ll be one, too.
Oh God, it’s really ending, isn’t it?
If this isn’t the exact definition of bittersweet I don’t know what is.