kali

So, reading Harry Potter has always been an oddly collaborative experience for me. I read the first book way back in 1998 in a Barnes and Noble on 86th and 3rd ave, snuggled in one of their comfy chairs with Eve, leafing over a single, paperback copy squashed between us.

I didn't like it, though I can't now remember why. I vaguely think I might not have found it gripping, or perhaps I didn't like the twinkly, tongue-in-cheekness of the writing style. I honestly don't remember. I didn't think of them again until one night in late December of 1999, when something terrible happened in my family, and I was all set to leave and never come back. This didn't happen of course, but on that night, my mother gave me her Christmas present early, and it was a boxed set of the first three books in hard-cover, and I stayed up all night, tears drying on my face and read them all in one go. For some reason, they suddenly spoke to me; they were comforting, british boarding school novels, they were magic, they were Harry, whom I loved.

I bought Book 4 from a little independent book store in Cape May, NJ, at 9am, when the store opened - I think I was the first person in South Jersey to read it

Somewhere in there, I discovered fanfiction, in a vaguely round-about way. magnetgirltold me about Buffy fic.  sykii told me about a friend of hers who was writing the stuff in HP, and I went and checked it out. (This of course turned out to be rm which is kind of funny in an All Worlds Cross and Combine sort of way.) In any event, I was hooked. I thought it was awesome, and eventually, in both cases, there sort of got to be fanfiction that I respected more than I respected The Canon.

After the immense wait between books, I bought Book 5 from the Bookery in Ithaca, NY and I read it through in one night, and then gave it to hofnarr since we thought two books would have been an extravagance. He had just moved to Ithaca, and I had given him the first four as a welcome present. We fought a lot over the books - I was into Slytherin, and Snape - he thought that Snape was the embodiment of all the teachers he had ever hated, and loathed him, until Umbridge came along and surpassed him.

I didn't like the canon pairings in HP either - I loved Hermione, but was wholly unimpressed by Ron. I loved Harry, but didn't really care a bit for Ginny one way or another. I loved Draco Malfoy, who I thought got a raw deal from the author; I loved Snape; I liked Lily Potter. I liked the Weasley twins, even if they were bullying gits as much as the Slytherins; I liked Remus and Sirius. I loved Dumbledore, even when I thought he was being unfair (which I thought A Lot.) And because they were the ones I loved, I thought they deserved to be together, although only in certain permutations. Harry/Draco, Draco/Hermione, Hermione/Snape, Harry/Hermione, Remus/Sirius.

Book Six came out, and I loved it again. It gave rise to rm 's and my shared universe - you can see its genesis in the moments between Snape and Narcissa and Bellatrix at the very beginning, from where descensus_hp sprang, nearly fully formed. We waited on the madness that was the line outside Books of Wonder and got it at midnight. I finished it that night, and it was satisfying. And writing Descensus has been one of the most important, exciting, wonderful, earth-shattering things that has ever, ever happened to me, and without Harry Potter and his world, it never would have happened.

And last night, we came to the end.

At least we had nice weather for it.

Seriously though, there were moments of shattering loveliness throughout the night. Books of Wonder did us proud, with live owls, jugglers, face-painting, stiltwalkers and a cast of Potter-verse characters. The children on line were amazing! Little Harry with his Hedwig in a stroller behind us; the Littlest Lucius with a snakestick fully a foot taller than himself whom I adored, but whose parents I pity from the bottom of my heart; miniature Harry and Draco in their quidditch regalia.

And we got our books very quickly. There was a path down the center aisle for us to exit once we had our books, and I think I may have been one of the first people down it - my number was 3, which was amazing. As I walked through the store, people kept trying to touch the book in my hands as if it were some sort of holy relic, which I really thought might be taking it just a tad too far.

And we were home, and reading by 1:30am. I read as slowly as I could, but was done by 5:30am or so.

Not only would it not have been the same without you, it might not have been at all. Thank you.