“After All This Time?”

I’ve written lots of times about reading and watching Harry Potter, sometimes as Harry Potter therapy for different things happening in my life.  In college, my roommate Kristine and I would lie on the couches, watch Harry Potter, and escape to Hogwarts when we were worried about finals. In Yantai, I bought Chinese copies of the movies, and watched them when I was lonely and missed hearing English. I read Harry Potter on a night train to Beijing, and on a flight from Seattle to New York. I stayed up all night reading Harry Potter 2, when I was a college student and should probably have been writing a paper, and stayed up all night reading Harry Potter 7, when I was teaching at the community college and should probably have been marking papers. Last winter, Harold took me to Hogsmeade at Universal in Orlando, which was really nice of him, especially considering that he hasn’t read a single one of the books and has only seen segments of the movies when I happen to be watching it. I tried to watch Harry Potter a few weeks ago when I was in Brooklyn and missing Harold. Whenever I’m stressed or unhappy, I put on Harry Potter, and fall asleep thinking about Hogwarts.

With my stupid hurt back, I’ve been having trouble getting comfortable enough to fall sleep. (Other things I can’t do right now include yoga, drinking, following simple plots, sitting still to play games, focusing long enough to write, and pretty much anything else I like doing.) So I do what I do when under stress, and turn to Harry Potter. I arranged the blankets and pillows into a special shape for me to sleep on (This is a stupid back-injury sleeping position, which is different from my usual awesome sleeping position, curled up in a little tiny ball under a big stack of blankets.) and opened HP7 on my Kindle.

The Kindle allows readers to share passages and notes with others. Of course, a  certain percentage of these notes are the expected This book is sooooo boring  y do we have 2 read this?????? SUX. But the notes for Harry Potter 7 show over a hundred readers have publicly highlighted and shared “After all this time?” “Always,” said Snape, a reassuring reminder that people aren’t always terrible. I’ve shared a couple notes from HP myself but I love it all so much that I’d probably have to highlight and share every single non-Quiddich page of the book. Plus I’d have to restrain myself from putting little hearts and smiley faces in the notes section.

While I was reading Harry Potter, for about the millionth time, and trying not to move because of my stupid back, I realized that someone else was reading HP7 at the same time on their Kindle, because they were sharing passages. Once I noticed this, I kept flipping to the notes and highlights section to see if my invisible friend had liked anything else. I didn’t know that there were any new ways left for me to enjoy Harry Potter.

I’m pretty sure technology’s catching up to magic, and I’m just waiting for my Hogwarts holodeck now.