Harry Potter Readalong: The Retrospective

It’s official, friends. I hereby join the ranks of Those Who Have Read Harry Potter. It’s a big club. But only a select few members have their own wands.

Ebony with Phoenix feather core. For threatening my enemies.

I don’t know if you realize this, but organizing a group of book bloggers who live all over the world to read the same books and then talk about them on the same day every week for 6 months running is a stupendous feat. Like herding cats? Is that the saying? And only our brave and fearless leader, Alice, our collective fondness for GIFs, and the scary-brilliant imagination of Lady JK Rowling herself could have provided the motivation to keep us all onboard. Also peer pressure (not just for making children smoke the cigarettes anymore).

As some of you may know . . . the past 6 months have been maybe the most difficult of my life. My world sort of fell apart right before Christmas, and it’s taken this long just to assemble the scaffolding to BEGIN the rebuilding process. And through all that personal journeying, I was simultaneously making my steady way onward from the cupboard under the stairs at Number 4 Privet Drive. They say you never forget your first time reading the Harry Potter series, and for me that could not be more true.

TOO MANY FEELINGS.

Makes your opponent's pee smell funny for DAYS.

The heat of my passion for Neville Longbottom would have been more than enough to carry me through, but I ALSO had reading partners who made me spit coffee every Friday, right on schedule. And sometimes we also cried. But we cried together. And then we looked at more pictures of post-puberty Matthew Lewis, and all was well again.

So thank you, friends, for making this first read so memorable.

To be followed by a 10-minute group hug.