The Boy Who Lived

Jude & the Half-Blood Prince

Tuesday night I finished reading the Harry Potter series to my son.  We started the summer after first grade; he is now half-way through third.  This last book was the hardest for me, and the only one for which I went against my promise and read ahead.  I justified it at first with protection -- I wanted knowledge of anything too frightening or disturbing so I could prepare him.  I stopped reading ahead though, when it became too stressful for me.   

But when it got to the point where I could no longer read aloud because I was sobbing, I decided to read ahead once more.  Here is a conversation we had after a particularly sad chapter in which Harry digs a rather large hole in Bill's garden:

Me (sniffling): Could you please bring me a tissue?
Jude (sighing): I'll bring you the whole box.

And so, that night, I stayed up until 2am finishing the book.  The idea was that if I did all my crying alone, I would be able to control my emotions when I continued to read to Jude.

I was wrong.  Still I cried and sniffled and had to stop reading to try to compose myself.  When we finished, when I read aloud those last three words, all was well, Jude toppled me with a hug.  "I can't believe we've finished!" he said.

And now, a year and a half after we first opened Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a small part of me has died.

I will never again read those seven books for the first time.

I will read them aloud to my daughter, who is almost five now and already admires Hermione.  She will have her own set and I have decided to buy a set of hardcovers for myself.  I have my eye on this:

Harry Potter Hardcover Boxed Set, Barnes & Noble

The Boy Who Lived will live on.  The magic will endure.  But it will never be quite the same.