The Final Trip to Hogwarts

I thought I was going to make it. I really did.

Yes, barring any sort of a confundus charm to dull my wits the end of Harry Potter was going to hurt. But with True Blood’s Eric Northman-heavy season heading into episode four, and filming of my other favorite television show The Walking Dead underway around Atlanta, I thought I’d make through today without shedding a tear.

Boy was I wrong. Repeatedly.

So what’s today? Premiere night for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 if you’re living under a rock …or just couldn’t make sense of the fools in cloaks gathering at your local movie theater.

Yes, this is it. The end of a decade-long fascination with the world of Harry Potter, of countless hours spent wandering the halls of Hogwarts thanks to the brilliant mind of one J.K. Rowling. And now, my mind feels as though it’s fallen victim to an evil wizard’s casting of a crucio spell. Like the spider tormented by Mad-Eye Moody (sob) in Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire I’m twitching, screaming silently, desperate for the pain to end… and yet, when the doors fly open for the midnight showings tonight I won’t be entering the theater.

A lot has been written over the last couple days about the worldwide phenomena that is Harry Potter. The series about a young wizard coming of age amidst a battle against the most evil wizard to ever live, the story of a young man forced to fight a grownup’s battle, a story of love and friendship and triumph that captured hearts worldwide. Harry Potter’s brave fight resonated across linguistic, cultural and societal barriers to unite fans around the world in Pottermania.

It was, and is,  ..well… magical.

As Chris Heller wrote for NPR, the Potter generation – those who were children when the series’ first book was published in 1995 – lived much of Harry’s experiences, identified with each growing pain, and recognized themselves in the boy wizard’s journey from awkward childhood to capable adult.

But what about the rest of us? What possible excuse could I, or any other adult, have for knowing precisely what “avada kedavra” does or why Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore never sought the coveted Minister of Magic position?

Love.

That is the true magic of Harry Potter. From the moment any of us met “The Boy Who Lived” we were smitten. As the characters of the Potterverse battled through jealousy, power struggles, discrimination, deception, self-doubt, betrayal and all the other ills that plague the human condition, love was their only true abiding hope.

So, yeah, I shed some tears today ….and I’m not ready to let go of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and least of all Severus Snape, even though I know going to the theater this weekend for “the end” is an absolute must.

But not tonight….as Muggles flock to the theater for the final battle of Hogwarts I’ll be starting (yet another) Harry Potter marathon from the very beginning and hoping, somehow, that the story doesn’t really have to end.