Surviving Harry

[This is a spoiler-free zone - fear not.]

Yesterday I felt a way I had not in many years. There is a particular kind of depression or ennui the day following psychedelic drugs. The world simply isn’t as pretty, colors seem dull, eating a little pointless.

And I felt this way not because I had returned to my heady youthful days of mushroom consumption, but because I had finished the seventh and final Harry Potter book.

I was a late adopter, but have been pretty hardcore ever since. I picked up a paperback of the book at a friend’s house, started it a week later and finished it the day after that. The first four had been released by that time, so I bought the hardcover boxed set and proceeded to get my wife hooked as well. She bought me Order of the Phoenix a week or so after my daughter was born, and I devoured that in two evenings sitting up waiting for the 2am feeding. We actually pre-ordered number six, and stood in line at midnight for this final one.

Hell, over the last month I re-read the entire series (none of them for only the second time) so I could have the entire Potter arc in one massive marathon of reading.

I can’t imagine that I’ll ever do that kind of re-reading again. Oh, sure, I’ll read the final book at least once more, but the series has lost its mystery now that is has been concluded. Part of the joy of the books has been looking for clues, speculating on what’s to come, and now that everything has came, what’s the point?

I haven’t been able to pick up any other reading material since I finished Saturday evening. I can’t get myself beyond the lead paragraph of any of the many news articles about the book and the surrounding phenomenon.

I will sorely miss these characters, this world. The wonderful consistency of it, the way that even the names of people and places helped paint the pictures and portraits. A governing morality that understood the inevitability of evil and yet valued hope and love above all else.

I’m exceptionally thankful that I have a child to one day share this series with. I can’t wait to begin reading them to her, can’t wait to be begged for just one more chapter before bed, can’t wait until that moment I can begin reliving these stories through her in a way that I just won’t be able to again for myself.

Which I suppose has always been one of the joys of parenthood.