muggles and wizards

Thursday was Harry Potter Day in my house, and we tried to celebrate it right! Glen came over, I made English meat'n'potato pasties, Butter Beer, and Acid Pops. K wore his evil Slytherin shirt while I donned Harry, Ron, and Hermione on mine, with Hogwarts Castle in the background. I even popped the lenses out of some old 3D glasses to make some Mrs. Harry Potter specs. Glen slept over at our place (wonderful boy!) so K and I could attend the midnight premiere and it was, for lack of a better word, MAGICAL. ...okay, fine. I'm cheesy. Like you didn't know that already. The point is that the final movie was wonderful and we had a great time with all of the other nerds in Idaho Falls.

Harry Potter means a lot to me, and it was pretty special to get to go to the final movie at midnight. I was grounded my freshman year in high school and, instead of doing my homework like a good girl, I went looking for a distraction. I found it in the form of a little paperback with a boy on a broom on the cover. After the first sentence ("Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.") I was hooked. I started reading underneath the table in biology class by day and listening to the incomparable Jim Dale read to sleep at night. I made countless arguments to friends and family that the books were ageless (NO I AM NOT WAY TOO OLD FOR THEM!!) until they finally conceded and read for themselves. I even made my brother-in-law read the first book as paying "rent" for living with us not too long ago! He was so skeptical, but go ahead and ask him if he stopped after just one book.
Anyway, seven books, eight movies, almost as many midnight releases/premieres, t-shirts, notebook doodles, Halloween costumes- you get the picture- later and I still call Harry (and Ron!!) my first (literary) love(s). It was wonderful to watch the culmination of years of enchantment come to a close on screen. Though I wasn't sobbing (like the 19-year-old girl in the seat behind me who LITERALLY could not get control of her wracking sobs and grating sniffles for the last forty minutes of the film), I may have shed a few tears for Severus and Harry and Lilly and James and Sirius and the twins and Lupin and on and on (oh, and one huge WAAAHOOOOO!! for Ron and Hermione). And then a few more as we sent James Sirius and Albus Severus off to school. It felt like saying "Goodbye" to old friends. Well, not so much "Goodbye". Maybe just "See you soon". After all, I have a couple of children of my own that I hope to send off to Hogwarts someday soon.