No, I didn’t Finish Reading Harry Potter. Now, I Must Hide in a Cave.

Am I the last on Earth to know the fate of Harry Potter?

As I write this, I realize that with the release of the first film from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows coming out on Nov. 19, I am in danger now of finding out the final fate of Harry Potter.  Until now, I have sheltered the ending from myself, the final fate of Harry and He Who Must Not Be Named.  Even if I had to enter my childen’s bedrooms as they listened to the book of the same title on CD and had  to sing “Lalalalalala” to myself while I put their clean, folded laundry into their drawers.

No, I am in danger still. Because I know this blog post will be read by millions who will be clicking away at their keyboards to comment and tell me the end.

Okay, it might be read by three-dozen people who might bother to read it and then still take more of their precious time to comment and tell me. But really, please don’t. Give a mom a break!

I remember when we first started reading and/or listening to the Harry Potter Series as a family on paper and audio book format.  My patient husband read our daughter Harry Potter and the Sourcerer’s Stone and then Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , one chapter a night, when she was only in the first  and second grades.  I don’t know how we had all this time, because now I barely have time to read my third child a Dr. Seuss book.

By the time she was eight or nine, she was reading the third and fourth books on her own. She would shlep the hard-covered editions of The Prisoner of Azkaban  to whatever errand we were running. I think the novel weighed more than she did.  At the supermarket, I would shop and she would sit in the bottom of the cart, immersed in reading about Harry’s third year of wizarding school through the produce and cereal aisles.

I did my own reading and listening of the series. But, halfway through the Order of the Phoenix,  and halfway through my third pregnancy, I just stopped. My interest went elsewhere while the rest of my family, excluding the baby of the family, gobbled up the rest of the series like it was a box of Chocolate Frogs and washed it down with Butter Beer.

My kids can’t believe I haven’t finished yet. And I tell them I will finish the series before I leave this earth.

 There are a few things that I can do so I can finish the series and not have Hollywood ruin the ending for me:

• I can hire a House Elf to prepare the meals, wash the clothes and scrub the bathrooms
• I can purchase a wand from Olivander’s Wand Shop and wave it over the dinner table instead of shopping, chopping and cooking to get ready for meals.
• I can quit all three of my jobs that I work at to help pay for their Hogwarts-like overnight summer camp to free up my time.  
• I can stop reading the other amazing pieces of literature I have tackled in my post, unfinished Harry Potter era. Books that took me to places and times the Hogwarts Express does not reach. Books like The Little Stranger, The Help, The Man in the White Shark Skin Suit, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and other wonderful adult novels I have finished.  Not to mention The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

So Harry, Hermione, the Weasleys, and Headless Nick, I will not cave to popular culture. You’ll just have to wait for me to finish. And when I’m good and ready.