Harry Potter's Legend

I'm watching the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tomorrow dressed in my Gryffindor robe and a Harry Potter t-shirt, bringing my wand along with me. I'm going with my best friends and a few others, most of them very excited, but I'm both excited and depressed. Watching my childhood go by in a flash just by this one movie.

I'm too young to say that I've past my childhood, but I came to preschool on the first day with a Harry Potter backpack and a matching lunch box. I got a Harry Potter pillow from my aunt for my sixth birthday, and began to read the books when I was eight. Finished when I was nine, I was excited for my first day at Hogwarts for when I turned eleven. Ten now, I'm one of very few who will get their acceptance letter---Pottermore opens for pre-registration three days after my birthday. But a computer game isn't all that completes it. Sometimes at night, I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine that I'm waking up in the girls' dormitory, getting dressed into my robes and cleaning my glasses, then head down to the Great Hall with my two best friends, maybe getting a letter or post-card from my mom or dad. I'd take a swig of pumpkin juice and owls would swoop over my head while I panic that I hadn't quite finished my Muggle Studies homework as we sweep through the hallways towards our first few classes for the day.

Then I wake up.

One day, I might be speaking to my nieces and nephews and grandchildren and they may ask for a bedtime story. Instead of telling a story from the top of my head of nursery rhymes and the cat and the fiddle, I'll pull out the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and read a chapter or two. You may ask, "after all this time?" and I will reply, "Always." (See what I did there?)

Thank you, Harry Potter, for everything. Your legend will never end. Hogwarts will always be there to welcome me home.