A moment of love for Harry Potter

Well, that last final push is done. The boxes have been split open, the books piled in neat columns and distributed to an excited populace. The last Harry Potter novel, beloved by both adults and kids, has reached it's final path and will end.

For a moment the crowd stilled, moving almost at once, every movement and breath a potential for chaos, every gesture fraught with the sudden possibility that the crowd would turn. It pulsed around the desk like a tide, cutting the world away so that there was just the counter, eight booksellers, and the surging crowd. Then, as one manager stood on that counter, the crowd shivered as she cried out “7 minutes” and for a moment the counter seemed to wallow in the crowd, small waves of people would rush forward with their tickets and bracelets, saying “I'm next.”

We waited until it was close, until we could get within a few seconds of 12:01 to pull the purple sheet away. Touched it, made sure it would break away, we caressed the sheet and the boxes beneath, each one marked so that it was obvious what it was, but beneath the purple sheet, the boxes didn't hold the same potential. But, now that potential was pulsing with the crowd, the air conditioning vents raising the corners.
And, then we counted down, 10...9...8... and the crowd began to cheer, full of the realization that the moment was about to arrive.

The pallet is proudly depleted, ranks of boxes once neatly stacked are now strewn about, the volumes inside are in the hot hands of the crowd. People cheered for a book, people lined up in a huge crowd, in the heat of a bookstore too full with souls, to buy a book. A children's novel about magic, and they were excited, they jumped up and down, they screamed. The girl, who had arrived at 5:00 am that morning, nearly cried. She cheered as she stood up front, and then for a moment her face quivered and tears formed when she saw the bright orange cover. For a novel, we did all this.

Now that the last push is done, the boxes split open, and the books distributed, the last Harry Potter novel is being chewed through by children and adults. Much has been said, either way, about the Harry Potter series and it's ability to induce literacy. Some love the book, anytime kids read is great they say. Others are not so sure, they frown at the notion that a single blockbuster novel is not enough to get kids to read literature, but merely a cultural blip. Ask me tomorrow and I'm sure you'll hear a variation on the second idea, but tonight with the memory of all that excitement, of all those people overjoyed to dig into their favorite story and find its bittersweet endings, I can't help but love Harry Potter a little. I can't help but love Rowling's prose, though it be 'sturdy' and those characters, even as each is destined for the silver screen's own thin lens.

Tonight, I cannot escape the idea that around the country there are thousands breathing in the same world, each turning the page and loving a book.