It’s been a good two weeks since the excitement began.
Those of us who have done this before ask ourselves how often it can happen in our lifetime. How many times can we anticipate something so eagerly and so publicly and then, when we have what we want, hide in a corner and keep away from everyone as we revisit J.K. Rowling’s wonderful world of witchcraft and wizardry?
We read the first Harry Potter book when my son was nearing 11 — the same age as Harry when he set out for Hogwarts. This was almost a full year after the book was published in 1997 and I still haven’t figured out why there was that time lag. What were we doing when magic took the rest of the world by storm?
Despite being late starters, however, once we began, we had no intention of stopping. Besides, we congratulated ourselves, we were able to get the second book in the series immediately and could read it right after the first. We didn’t have to wait with bated breath for a year like all those readers who had started out before us.
But, thereafter, we waited. We kept track of publishing schedules, we made inquiries at local bookshops, we booked our copies well in advance, we stood in a queue outside bookshops first thing in the morning, we went for midnight launches at bookstores across the country. Despite being a college-going young adult by then, my son was not in the least embarrassed to stand in a queue with people half his age and half his size. By then, also, both of us were hooked to the extent that we had to get separate copies because we were in different cities and we couldn’t wait to meet during the holidays to know what happened next to Harry and his friends.
All of them became beloved members of our family and were talked about and quoted often — and we hated it when some of them were sent off into fictional ‘Ever After’. But, while we were willing to accept those losses, we could not get our heads around what we thought was our final farewell to Harry nine years ago.
We fully intended to keep him in our hearts — and we did.
We were helped by the frequent re-runs of the Harry Potter movies on television and our regular re-readings of the books to make sure we didn’t forget any of the charms or spells that we used while going about everyday tasks. (We had always hoped that a ‘Reparo’ with the wave and flourish of our hand would put back the pieces of the bone china plate we had smashed, or a ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ with just the right intonation, as Hermione had shown us, would get us off the ground and out of the miserable bumper-to-bumper traffic we were stuck in, or if we became proficient enough, an ‘Expecto patronum’ would conjure our guardian spirit to give us that vital support in whichever struggle we were going through.)
With Harry back after a gap of almost a decade, the magic has come alive again. We are more-than-willing to enjoy the experiences of the next generation, we have adjusted to a different genre and taken stage directions in our stride and what we thought about the storyline hasn’t really mattered. What has mattered is that we are back with ‘close family’ and so, even when we shut the book and say goodbye reluctantly, we refuse to accept that this is the end.
Because Harry Potter didn’t really leave us the last time; and we believe — despite the author’s insistence that this is a final goodbye — that he’ll be back.
And whichever avatar he appears in, he’ll be welcomed with open arms.
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
