Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Tonight, I'll be at my local Waterstones.

The forecast is of rain in my part of the world.

At best, it will be a drizzle tap-dancing on our umbrellas, dampening the hems of our robes, the damp cockling the brims of our makeshift magical hats.

Tonight, I'll be wearing the first Harry Potter scarf that I ever knitted. It will be wrapped around my neck, a hug against the cold. For the last time, I'll share the wonder of magic with the children in the city.

I might knit too, while I’m in line – since it was the thought of a Harry Potter scarf that spurred me on to learn the craft- a sort of homage in my own way.

I’ll be knitting a hat for an imaginary house elf.

Our faces will be sticky from sweets that the store has given us, our excitement almost palpable as we jostle for space and to be one of the first in line, and we'll be counting down to magic at midnight.

I’ve heard tell that there’ll be magicians at the event and bets to see who’ll make it through the war, and who won’t. My partner has asked me if I want to go alone, because he knows the tears I’ll shed. Over the past two days, I have been felled by sentiment, emotions hitting me at odd angles.

I’ve run the gamut of Snape worthy sneers and invectives to an almost Luna like dismissal, and I’m happy about it, because I’m not indifferent.

I cannot be indifferent.

I’ve asked him to come with me, to soothe the tremor when I hand over the reserve slip and get the long awaited tome in return -because magic is stronger when it’s shared.

When I've finished the book, it will be dawn (I'm a fast reader).

As the sun rises, daylight will touch on magic, and turn the gilt of gold on my adult copy of Harry Potter to paper, and I'll smile sadly, knowing that this part of my life is over, and remember that I believed in enchantment, just for a little.

I'll genuflect on Harry, the spunky orphan that charmed my heart because of his innate decency and his two friends, no less great because they were his sidekicks.

I'll remember the generation before him: Remus Lupin, Severus Snape, James Potter Sr., Peter Pettigrew – because it is right that his name should be here - and Sirius Black, who probably thought that they'd live forever, that after Hogwarts life would be perennial summer, before The Dark Time of Voldemort, and the dawn of twilight that marks adulthood in some ways.

The twilight that says that life at thirty is not what one imagined, nor would one imagine even as a worst case scenario. Why, with prisons of the mind and body, treachery in the heart and fear of the known dwelling in the attic, it is easy for people to fade away, to live as they can, not as they should, and how each action is a choice, and each choice a consequence.

I’ll remember how much I appreciated Rowling’s nod to all that, to the hazardous terrain of adulthood, and how it’s easy to class people as good wizards and Death Eaters, not realizing that for most of us, we live in the nuance of the in between.

*sighs*

I'll miss Harry Potter, thank you JK Rowling.