Oh, Harry.
It took me a while to get on the Harry Potter train.
There were a few reasons. One was the sudden, wild popularity. I was used to seeing my dear Redwall books on display in bookstores, gracing the front windows and dominating the Children/YA sections. I still remember passing a bookstore in the mall one day in middle school and receiving a nasty shock: my old friends Martin the Warrior and Mattimeo were nowhere to be seen; instead, the window was full of some dork with glasses and a scar, attempting to ride a broom. I was thoroughly miffed on behalf of Brian Jacques, and I resented dear Harry from that moment. (Poor kid. It wasn’t his fault.)
Another reason was the length. There were just so many words. I love to get lost in a good, thick book; series are even better. Still, I knew that if once I tumbled down the Harry Potter rabbit hole, it would eat me alive, and I simply had too many other things I wanted to read. It was the teenage Ruth Crews version of “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
But I was fascinated by the phenomenon, nonetheless. I worked at a bookstore through high school, and we did special orders for the new Harry Potter books when they came out. I used to hold them in my hands, savoring the thickness, reading the covers over and over to try to catch some sense of who the characters were in each picture, and maybe even a few details of the deliciously winding plot. I wanted to dive in, but still – no time.
Fast forward to college, when I was a frequent visitor in my brother’s house. The first Harry Potter movie was playing in the living room, and I happened to walk in during the scene in which Dumbledore and Harry discuss the Mirror of Erised. Like little Harry in front of the mirror, I was transfixed – not so much because of the story, though that was intriguing enough in itself, but because of the beautiful truths pouring from Dumbledore’s lips.
“There’s some good stuff in here,” I thought. “This Harry Potter business might be deeper than I thought.”
I made the leap during my first year of grad school. Halfway through the second book, I happened to spend a weekend with one of my dearest friends and soul companions, who was a Potter fan from the start. She was thrilled that I was making Harry’s acquaintance. Since we had both grown up in households where reading aloud was a favorite pastime, we agreed that we missed this activity and wouldn’t mind dipping into it again.
We read through the 2nd book together that weekend and agreed to finish it over the phone that week. By the time we finished the 2nd together, it seemed only natural to continue on to the 3rd . . . and that, my friends, is how I came to read most of the Harry Potter series over the phone in the summer of 2007. That one weekend sparked not only my lifelong love of Harry, but also a regular read-aloud phone routine with my friend that took us through seven years, countless book series, a Master’s degree for each of us, several moves, and first adult-type jobs.
Thanks, Harry.
The timing, too, was auspicious. As any true Harry fan would know, 2007 was THE summer: the 5th movie came out on July 11, and the 7th book – the FINAL BOOK – on July 21st. Furthermore, I was working as an intern in the Georgia Shakespeare box office that summer. My fellow box office-ians were all huge Potter fans, so I would have been rather out of it had I not jumped on the train. As it was, the reverse was true: I bonded with those lovely people rather freakishly that summer, and still think of them often. Harry Potter bonds are lifelong, I guess; I mean, you can’t readily forget people with whom you shared moments like these:
We planned assiduously for the midnight release of the 7th book. Dressed as a Gryffindor student and bearing one of the wands my friend Donna had found in the woods for us, I sallied forth with her and our box office boss to discover Harry’s – and Ron’s, and Hermione’s, and Lupin’s, and Tonks’s, and Ginny’s, and the Weasleys’ – fate. A few little girls were looking at me and whispering, then one plucked up the nerve to approach and tell me “You look JUST like Hermione Granger!” with shining eyes.
#daymade #achievementunlocked
Book (TOME) obtained, I rushed home and called my readaloud buddy. We devoured the first four chapters that very night, then a few more the following afternoon. We reconnected in the evening and settled down to read, hoping to get as far as possible before sleep claimed us.
We finished at dawn the next morning.
That’s right: I read the majority of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows over the phone in one epic all-night readaloud session, pausing only for bathroom breaks.
It was one of the coolest things I have ever done and one of the best nights of my life.
Somewhere, I have that journal entry I wrote after I hung up the phone, crouched by the window and scribbling feverishly in the cold light before sunrise. I remember feeling the same bleakness I always feel at the end of a truly wonderful book – bereft, and rather desolate, like I have finally found my home only to be turned away at the door. But there was another element of dear Harry that got my thought-wheels turning:
The end was so . . . normal.
After seven books of mind-blowing revelations – epic struggles between good and evil – plots with more twists than there are quills on a porcupine – it seemed almost anticlimactic to end with a bunch of parents on Platform 9 ¾, watching their children board the train to Hogwarts. (Note the careful omission of names. You won’t get a word from me about who lives and who dies, nor who marries whom. Do your worst.)
Almost like a hair-raising, earth-shaking, soul-wrenching adventure trilogy ending with a simple hobbit coming home for a simple dinner.
It all reminded me of a conversation between Jewel the Unicorn and Jill in The Last Battle, the final book (chronologically) in the Narnia series:
“Oh, this is nice!” said Jill. “Just walking along like this. I wish there could be more of this sort of adventure. It’s a pity there’s always so much happening in Narnia.”
But the Unicorn explained to her that she was quite mistaken. He said that the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve were brought out of their own strange world into Narnia only at times when Narnia was stirred and upset, but she mustn’t think it was always like that. In between their visits there were hundreds and thousands of years when peaceful King followed peaceful King till you could hardly remember their names or count their numbers, and there was really hardly anything to put into the History Books. . . .
“Oh, I do hope we can soon settle the Ape and get back to those good, ordinary times.”
Harry reminded me that the adventure is not the point. The mysteries and the excitement and the danger are all great reading, but what the characters really want is to get THROUGH the adventure to “normal” life. Classes, Quidditch, long evenings in the Common Room, dinner in the Great Hall – it all may not be as gripping as the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named, but it’s what Harry and his friends are fighting FOR.
Harry taught me not to despise the ordinary, and to be grateful for “normal” days.
For that – and for the friendships he helped me form (both with fictional and nonfictional people; I won’t say “real” and “not real”, because the folk of J.K. Rowling’s brainchild world are all very real to me), and for the countless hours of deep, whimsical, insightful, heartbreaking, hilarious enjoyment – I shall be forever grateful.
Now, for a bit of silliness:
Here’s another “Harry” treat my box office buddies introduced me to: Potter Puppet Pals. Rewatching this video was illuminating; I’d forgotten how much I still quote from it. (If I’ve ever hugged you and said “HUGGING” in a high-pitched voice while doing so . . . you can now learn why.) Enjoy!
*There’s a wee bit of swearing, but it’s bleeped out anyway.*
Here’s hugging you back! Mom says, “makes me want to read the books again!”
I just love this post so much. We were chatting the other day that it may be time to re-read this series ❤