and so my childhood ends.

I still remember I was in the fourth grade.  There was that girl who sat next to me who drove me absolutely crazy.  She read the books, so there was absolutely no way I was going to read them.

Toward the end of fall, my birthday came.  I opened one of my presents from mom and dad and found a paperback copy of Harry Potter and Sorcerer's Stone.  I'll be honest in saying I wasn't entirely impressed.  A book?  And this book, of all books?  This is the book that that annoying girl reads.  It's about witches and wizards, which is totally not my thing.  I don't like it.

But, because it was a present from my parents, I said yes when my mom suggested she read a chapter to me and Jalyn that night.

I still remember my mom sat leaned up against Jalyn's bed as she read the first chapter to us that night.  I remember I started out sitting on my bed, but eventually worked my way closer to my mom as she read. I remember meeting Mr. and Mrs. Dursley and then McGonagall and the one and only Dumbledore and and learning that he had a scar of a map on his leg and then Hagrid came on the flying motorcycle and I knew right then and there that I only wanted one thing.

"Please Mom, can't you just read one more chapter?"

 

And so it was that my journey with Harry Potter began.  I was there for it all, from the three-headed dog to Gilderoy Lockhart to Scabbers to the Yule Ball to Grimauld Place to an overload of snogging to the last Horcrux.

So many memories is my life revolve around this world that was created for us.  Road trips are marked by which book on tape we listened to or the time we forgot the first tape to the third book, so Jalyn just told us everything from memory.  Jim Dale's voice took us to Utah on more than one occasion.

Then there was the day the fourth book came out and Danny read it in less than a day.  Then came the time the fifth book came out and Danny took me to the bookstore on the way home from the airport so we could get it after midnight.  Then with every book there was the timer set on the kitchen oven marking how long each person could read the book for before they had to pass it on to the next person. I remember being home alone sitting on our old couch when Sirius Black died. I remember walking into my little brother's room as he just laid in his bed and listened to Jim Dale with rapt attention. I remember seeing Jalyn crying as she sat in the window seat finishing the sixth book. And I remember closing the  seventh book upon finishing it, satisfied because Voldemort was dead, yet terribly sad because Harry Potter was over.

That feeling came again last night as the credits rolled after the end of the final Harry Potter movie. It made me think about how J.K. Rowling had created an entire world for the entire world.  It is truly something that connects a large portion of the world's population.  We all know what "wingardium leviosa" and "accio" and "lumos" and "avada kedavra" and "expelliarmus" mean.  We all know we're muggles and we've all cast spells on each other and we all despise Dolores Umbridge and we all wished we could have gotten a letter when we were 11 telling us we were accepted into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

J.K. Rowling, we owe it all to you.  Thanks for giving us Harry.  Thanks for giving our generation something to call ours.  Really and truly ours.

Mischief managed.

And of course, to finish off this post, I give you my outfit from Harry Potter 7, Part 1.