A Death In The Family

It is the end of a generation.

As if all of us, suddenly passed on, into a land where we were no longer children, where we no longer had an imagination, where we could no longer say we were, truly, alive.

The Boy Who Lived was mortal after all. And it is, as Arthur C Clarke once wrote, Childhood’s End. There was a climax to Harry’s tale, a happy ending, and an after-word. But in the end, for some of us, Harry died after all.

He died the first time, when he left Hogwarts, never to return. And he died again, when he killed Voldemort. We were students at Hogwarts, as we had once been part of Fatty’s Find-Outers, or of The Famous Five, or the Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew. But it was only Harry’s magic which revealed that our homes were our Privet Drives. And that the Hogwarts Express, unlike the vehicles which took us to school, college or work, was steaming impatiently, waiting for us to hop on board and stop leading lives with no apparent overarching purpose, no sense of indelible destiny and yes, no magic.

And when the Express chugged away, carrying the children of Harry, Ron, Hermione and everyone else we have come to know so well, it took with it our entire world. And I knew I would never see it again. Except as memory. That blasted word that means everything and yet nothing. And I could not cry then. For I was so relieved that Harry had not died. Nor had Ron or Hermione. But, it is only now, that the realization dawns on me.

That Harry is family. For Harry is a part of our childhood. No matter how old or young our bodies may be. And that like family, when Harry died, or rather when Harry and Harry’s world moved from our imagination to our memory, a part of my life force has also died and moved from consciousness to memory.

And I mourn now. And weep. For it has finally sunk in, as I guess it always does when something like this happens, that I lost something unimaginably beautiful. Something that was more than what Rowling created. As living things always are.