the chosen ones

to: charlie
from: laurie
re: invisibility cloaks and backpacks

I was 12 when Harry Potter started at Hogwarts, only a year older then the young wizard himself. Except unlike Harry I was not so quick to embrace the magic of his word. My parents came home from a trip to London with the first two books in hand raving that Harry was simply all the rage across the pond. Did I mention I was 12, and in SEVENTH GRADE – you know the grade where you get a real full-length locker, with a real lock, like the eighth graders. So, you see, someone that cool could never be caught reading a children’s book. Not to mention I took the bus, a girl from my class, my Malfoy if you will, rode with me. We never got along and I lived in fear that she would discover my love for Potter and I would be the laughing stock of the entire seventh grade. It was bad enough I was growing my bangs out and had to wear the same purple headband everyday for a year! I digress. Point was, when I finally decided to dive into Harry Potter I hid it in my backpack. It wasn’t until the third book when I was comfortable to read them in public.

After three I was hooked, I remember wanting to bring my book everywhere to sneak in a few pages here and there. I reread one, two and three so many times to ease the pain before the arrival of four. I remember exactly how I pictured the maze in the Goblet of Fire and how horrified I was when I first read an Avada Kedavra. A few years later, I remember reading Entertainment Weekly’s list of 200 new classics, on which they included Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. “Sure Rowling was all fun and games in the first three but she took it up a notch in Goblet, when she killed a kid.” So she did. By this time I was in College and actually waited until Christmas break to enjoy number five. Then it stopped. For no particular reason that I can remember I “look time off” from Harry and held off picking up six. Seven came, I saw everyone on the subway, in the office, on the train, on the street, in every Starbucks, young, old, EVERYONE was reading Harry Potter. Not me. I had morphed back into that disinterested seventh grader who wouldn’t be caught dead in Diagon Alley.

Senior year of college, the night before my last final of the semester, instead of studying Irish history I ate pancakes and watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And sure enough as Fudge put it “He’s back!” Harry was back for me. There was something about enjoying Harry with my piers that made me remember what I loved about him in the first place. I even remember one of my friends coaxing me to blow off studding, saying “you will remember this night for the rest of your life, you won’t remember your essay question next week.” He was half kidding, but he ended up being 100% right. As soon as I was home for break I cracked open six and didn’t leave my room for days. Christmas Eve I started seven and a few days after that I had only pages to go in the entire series. As Harry made his way though the woods, I paused. The real reason I had been putting this off was staring me right in the face – it was going to be over. The series complete the journey finished. The end. By some mystery or magic I had been able to resist skipping to the final paragraphs or even hearing from another, if Harry had lived or died. We had already lost so many I really convinced myself that Rowling could go either way on this one. I really didn’t know how it was all going to end.

When I think of that moment I savor it. Never again will a generation be able to grow up with Harry. To hid books in backpacks instead of under invisibility cloaks. However, perhaps of even more consequence, never again will anyone live in a world where we don’t know if Harry Potter will live or die. We are the chosen ones. Chosen for nothing more than our imagination, our ability to see beyond the page and imagine a word of broomsticks and butter beers. I feel sorry for this next crop of Harry fans, as they will inevitably catch a Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family and have the entire saga played out for them in a mere eighteen hours instead of a little more than a decade. How fortunate I was to become so intimately acquainted with, the boy who lived.