Harry Potter Laid to Rest

When I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I was teaching eighth graders in a girls' school. My librarian friend Dianne had pre-ordered one copy of the novel, never expecting that our first reader would love it so much that Dianne would be forced to buy multiple copies more to satisfy the long waiting line. I witnessed the birth of a literary phenomenon.

When I read the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the last of the series, I was in Portland, visiting an older friend at her daughter and son-in-law's house, where she lived following a stroke. I read the book mostly sitting on a bench just outside the living room's front window, in sight of Betsy in her favorite chair. At a key point, I spontaneously jumped up, shouting, "I knew it! I knew it!" When I went inside, Betsy said, "Don't tell me. I'm going to read it." While many young people grew up with Harry Potter, I grew apart from a familiar place and from some I loved. That was my last trip to Portland to see Betsy, who died this summer, but whenever I see the novel on it the HP shelf in my bookcase, I think of her and that last shared pleasure of a reading.