Because I can't be an adult and take responsibility for my failings, I blame my elementary school librarian. Try as she might, her description of this "great new book" just didn't sell me.
A young boy lives with his abusive aunt and uncle in England and then finds out he's a wizard. Then he goes to a school where he learns how to use his newly discovered magic powers.
Yawn.
I didn't want to read about some dorky-looking boy in England.
I certainly didn't want to read a story about going to school.
And what kind of name was Harry Potter?!
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| "You know what this cover needs? A kid morphing into an animal." --Ten-year-old me Image credit: Wikipedia |
I sneered over the top of my Goosebumps book at the kids in my class who pulled out Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone during silent reading time.
They wouldn't know good literature if it latched onto their faces.
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| Ha. Image credit: Wikipedia |
Luckily, I had the world's best fifth-grade teacher.
The best.
Before I could get too big-headed about my classmates' poor taste in books, she made the first Harry Potter novel assigned reading.
I groaned.
But I was hooked before the second chapter.
Harry and I grew up together. The release of every new installment in the series lined right up with my July birthday. Spending time with my best literary friend became a highlight of my summers.
I truly saw him as a friend.
He felt so real to me. His world, his friends, his teachers--when I escaped into those books, I jumped into another life.
Before I realized sharing spoilers made a person worse than Voldemort, I rehearsed entire plots to my ever-patient mother.
I gave her play-by-plays of Harry's Quidditch victories.
I reported the latest doings of Peeves the poltergeist.
I complained about Dolores Umbridge as if she were my own oppressive teacher and had given me detention.
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| I still shudder. Image credit: Harry Potter Wiki |
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released the day before my eighteenth birthday. After all the memories we made together, Harry and I were finally all grown up.
It hurt to say goodbye.
Love for Harry Potter sounds so cliché I rarely mention it when I am asked about my favorite books.
But that series made a difference in my life. It taught me so much about friendship, diversity, trust, the list goes on. I learned that even the best people aren't completely good--and that the worst people, too, can be redeemed.
I am a better person because I read Harry Potter.
Nine years have passed since I last held a brand new Harry Potter book. But earlier this month, when I picked up the latest Harry Potter story at my library, that familiar electricity returned.
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| Image credit: Pottermore |
I don't know how long I held onto Harry Potter and the Cursed Child before I opened it. I drank in the anticipation, the magic that had occupied my birthdays through my teenage years and shone like starlight every summer.
I couldn't rush that moment.
My heart pounded like it would if I were actually meeting a dear friend I hadn't seen in ages.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a book. Expectations can be dangerous . . . and perhaps that's also why I couldn't bring myself to open it.
But I finally did.
And for a while there, I got to be a kid again. Got to catch the train at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, got to explore the sprawling Hogwarts grounds, got to ooh and ahh once more at magic spells--not just the kind that shoot from wands, but the kind, too, that shoot from writers' pens.
That's why I love reading.
That's why I love writing.
Because there is a real magic in this world: the way a letter joins others to create a word; the way a word, once read or spoken, births a thought; the way a thousand words inspire depths of feeling that, ironically, no words exist to illustrate.
J.K. Rowling is a great magician.
She is one of many.
And, if I keep practicing, perhaps someday I'll wield magic just as well as they do.
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