Just Like Magic

I didn't finish the Harry Potter series until this year.  I knew the ending before I read it, and had forgotten the majority of events characterizing the first six books by the time I was told the ending.  In other words, I'm not your average Potterhead.  What I learned when a Potter-drunk friend of mine convinced me to revisit the series is that J.K. Rowling is quite possibly the only modern author I consider in the league of my precious classics authors.  Rowling is a master of plot development, managing a steady pace that leaves the reader neither bored nor whiplashed, and painstakingly darkening the world of wizards with each successive novel.  She beautifully combines Harry's life as an unwanted addition to a muggle family, a bumbling idiot around cute girls, a procrastinator, and a bad dancer with his life as "the Chosen One," greatest weapon against dark forces and soon-to-be savior of the wizarding world.  Harry is real because he's confused, and frightened, and lovestruck, and sarcastic, and angry, and powerful, and small; even Ron, who has "the emotional range of a teaspoon," is brought to life on the page by Harry's side, in all his awkward, ginger glory.  I admire Rowling because she created such truly real characters that they needn't have been impersonated by actors to come alive: when I read her words, I might as well have been sitting in the Gryffindor common room leaning in to hear Harry's whispers on polyjuice potion, or tensed at my desk with Snape breathing down my neck.  More impressive still was the depth of her writing: each successive read brought new information previously skated over--phrases with double meanings, names derived from ancient stories, characters based on previously existing people.  Rowling's novels are treasure troves of information, encompassing reality within this folklorish world of dragons and witches, both in her three-dimensional characters and her reality-based inspiration.

Rowling envelopes me in her world: I often found myself wondering where my Hogwarts letter was, and why it was six years late.  Harry Potter was no longer a piece of another's imagination, a peak inside the writer's head, and yet he was so much more than a person strolling through a wall at King's Cross: he came to represent to me that childish wonder at the possibilities reality had in store--the belief that what hasn't been proven false is practically true.  Hogwarts was the magic hidden away in my jacket pockets and the unturned stones on my street; Voldemort was my fear of plane crashes and midnight robbers and my own mortality; Dumbledore was my reason and discipline and all other responsibilities accompanying adulthood; Hermione was my obsessive compulsive tendencies and my love of academic excellence and rules; Ron was my cheesy jokes and hours spent watching mindless television with friends; and Harry was my courage, and my passion, and my humbling self-consciousness. Harry Potter was my life.