The Girl Who Lived

"You can't help but wish that maybe you aren't really all Muggle -- non-magic folk -- but have some bit of wizard blood in your veins that would allow you the chance to visit Hogwarts....and so I've had my nose pressed into the pages of the first four books--rather lengthy, they all are. I've been obsessed with Harry, because in Harry's world, there is no graduate school. A fire-breathing dragon or a life-ending curse, but nothing as bad as moving to the next state."
-- Journal dated August 8, 2001, three weeks before relocating to N.C.

I've just finished rereading Goblet of Fire for the I-don't-know-how-many-times, and I can't help but think of the first time I read Harry Potter. It was six years ago to the summer that Niki convinced me that I had to read Socerer's Stone. I remember reading that first chapter with Dumbledore and the Put-Outer and the flying motorcycle and thinking, "What is this?" I don't recall exactly the point at which I got hooked, but once I was hooked, I was all the way hooked.

It was a tough summer. I'd just graduated from college, and on my graduation day, I had no plans. No job. No apartment. I was waiting to hear from UNC Wilmywood to see if a spot had come open in its MFA program. And on top of that, I decided not to get a job that summer, owing to the fact that Mom needed my help since Anna and Justin decided to get married less than 30 days apart. Did I mention that my boyfriend at the time was in D.C. doing an internship?

Everything was changing, my whole world upended and the future totally uncertain. I was lonely and worried. And I was suffering the fate of the youngest child, which is that everyone else goes on to the next stage of life without you. I suddenly felt like the classic which-one-of-these-doesn't-belong?

But in the midst of it all, I found Harry Potter, who was suffering a bit himself in a world so far removed from my own that I could almost forget what was going on here. I was insatiable; I carried the books with me everywhere. Car trips, waiting rooms, dress fittings, hotel rooms. At 2 in the morning, I sat in the recliner in the den deep into the graveyard scene in Goblet of Fire, and was more than a little spooked by the dark yard outside the sliding glass door. Upon finishing, it took me a bit to calm down enough to brave walking past the big glass door and go to bed. I may have finished the book, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. But it was okay that the next book wasn't around yet - it was time for me to go to North Carolina.

It was two years after that when Order of the Phoenix hit the stands, and I made myself nearly sick and hysterical reading that giant tome for such a stretch. And the death in that one hit me particularly hard, and I was inconsolable for days. Two years after that came Half-Blood Prince, whose release caused an absolute temper-tantrum when it wasn't delivered as expected. But that was nothing compared to the quivering mass I was after the outcome of the book.

And now it's coming down to the wire. Less than 25 days before all will be revealed in Deathly Hallows, Potter's last stop. I'm on schedule to plow through OOTP and HBP before the big day gets here. Today, I read an article with a massive spoiler, a possibility that I hadn't considered, and it was the first time during all my conjecturing that it really hit me that, whatever the outcome, this is it. Whatever's on those final pages, whether it's Harry's death or happily-ever-after or a mysterious sentence ending in "scar," it's the end of the story and we'll all have to live with whatever ending Rowling penned.

I can't help but recognize that there are eerie parallels between reading those first pages of Sorcer's Stone and now anticipating Deathly Hallows: the waiting, the need to escape reality, this strange station between one chapter of life and the next (a Platform 9 3/4 time in life, if you will). There are similar trappings - temporarily living at home, my stuff scattered everywhere, and me not really belonging anywhere. And more than once in the last couple of weeks, I've thrown up my hands at the job search and buried myself in Potterdom just like I did way back when, only then I was trying to avoid registering for classes and folding wedding programs.

Me and Harry have been through a lot together. (Like the development of my slightly unhealthy obsession. ) The intervening years have been as much an adventure for me as him. And whether or not he lives or dies, his adventure is coming to an end. But me? I'll get to be the girl who lived. For me, there will be another chapter.