Ten Years Gone By

Ten years ago I sat in a small theater with one of my then best friends, attempting to stifle a cough that was the straggling remains of a cold I had contracted while on a girl scout trip to the Montshire Museum. Today I sat in a much larger theater with my sister, 3-D glasses in place. 10 years between - more than half of my life. I was 8 then - much quieter and smaller with longer, wilder hair. I was always Hermione. Today I am 18 - very nearly 19. In a few weeks, I leave for my first year of college, just across the river from the Montshire.

My grandfather read me the first two books. I don't remember when we bought the first three, but the fourth came from Costco - one of three copies left. That was when I first began reading them for myself. The fifth has a page missing because my dog ate it, and my parents took my sisters and me strawberry-picking after to make me feel better. The sixth came by mail, ordered from Amazon, and I quickly devoured it before my brother returned from camp. Those days were when I felt my childhood slipping away.

My sister and I stood in the window waiting for the seventh to come. Convinced that the mail carrier had forgotten us, we moved away to make lunch. But I saw the blue and white car out of the corner of my eye, and while sending my sister down cellar for some sandwich making materials, I slipped out the side door. She realized what I had done half way down the stairs, and though I was first to the mailbox, she chased me around the house a couple times for good measure. We read it aloud to each other, trading each chapter, but when we couldn't decide who would read the epilogue, my older sister stepped in and read it to us.

When she closed the book, I ran upstairs and pulled the first off of the shelves and stared at the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page. How could so much have grown from it? What was I thinking when I first read those words? I can remember my grandfather laughing over them, trying in vain to remember all of the names of the characters. Now I'm trying to remember all the moments, while also knowing that every little sentence, every moment unfolding now, is going to grow into so much more.

I may not have had the satisfaction of graduating with the class of 007, but I did graduate with Harry Potter.