I get headaches when I read in the car. I’ve always known this, so usually I don’t bring a book with me when I’m the passenger.
But if it’s a really good book, I’ll read in the car as long as I can until I start to feel uneasy ““ usually after about a page. And only once, when I was 13, have I ever kept reading past the initial throbbing pain and into the state of nauseous car sickness.
The book that almost made me sick was “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” I was reading the part when it was revealed that Sirius Black, an accused murderer, and James Potter, Harry’s deceased father, had been best friends at Hogwarts.
To me, this was the point of no return. Each Potter book has one ““ the part of the story where suddenly all the clues from the earlier chapters start to come together and the plot accelerates at lightning speed. After the point of no return, the only time you can possibly put down the book is to sleep for a few hours before you wake up to read again.
But this moment in “Azkaban” was more significant than a regular plot twist, as it was the first sign for me that a really involved, multi-generational, multi-novel plot was developing. This was my point of no return for the whole Potter series ““ suddenly I was one of those freakish fans.
I pre-ordered the next book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” online as soon as it was available. And I waited all day that Saturday until the mail came at 3:40 p.m., which was torture. Everywhere I went that morning people were already reading it.
Needless to say, I don’t order my Potter books online anymore; I go to the bookstore at midnight.
I’m certainly not the only fan; something about these books struck a chord not just with me but with society, which means there is something extra to this series.
They are not the most beautifully written, most original, or most intricately plotted books ever published in the modern era, yet the Potter series may be the most popular; the series has sold more than 86 million books in the United States alone.
So as I get ready to put my Potter obsession behind me and attend the Barnes & Noble Midnight Magic party for the last time, I want to come to terms with why I like these books so much and why I don’t want to turn the last page.
Though it seems morbid, I think the death in the books is the main reason I love them so much. Tragedy can last a long time: A good joke is often forgotten, but grief lingers.
Mourning is also a communal activity, and beginning with the death of a student in the fourth book, readers turned to each other to ask why. The Potter community bonded over misery, speaking of the good times while peril lurked in the shadows. The death made the books real, and it became easier for casual readers to relate to them.
Also, the other characters that have died have mostly been parental figures, and their absence forces Harry to increasingly rely on his own judgment in the face of a dangerous and unsure future. Although not all readers have experienced the death of a parent or a guiding figure, most readers still relate because they too are distancing themselves from their childhood and increasingly facing more complex tasks on their own.
This community of readers that developed over deep discussions of plot details will perhaps be the legacy of Harry Potter after the series has faded into paperbacks. Providing a topic for strangers in nearly every country to discuss intelligently and passionately with each other is no small feat; for the past decade, small talk has been taken care of.
But once the last page is read, the conversations about Harry Potter will switch from hypothetical to retrospective, and there are only so many times one can rehash the past, whereas one can talk endlessly about what could happen. Maybe when there is nothing left to say about the boy who lived, and Harry Potter as a pop culture phenomenon loses relevance and fades away, we will all be able to unite in grief once more.
P.S. I want to go on the record saying I hate Snape, and I hope he is both of the two main characters reportedly dying. I hope Harry kills him, then he comes back to life, then the community bonds together to kill him again in one loud chorus of “Avada Kedavra.”
That being said, I see logically how Snape could be a good person after all, but when it comes to Harry Potter, emotion beats reason.
And I’d also like to state that Harry is not dying in this book. There is no way, right?
Do you hate Snape with all your heart and soul? E-mail Crocker at acrocker@media.ucla.edu.