I started it…again

size=”5″ face=”Verdana”>So, I started it¦again. I’ve fought against something I love, trying to keep it from becoming commonplace. Try as I might, it was the simplest of things that got me hooked again. You all know what I’m talking about.

They sit there, day after day, beckoning for you to open them again. You try to stay away. Even though you know almost everything that happens and have parts of it memorized, you still find yourself surprised by things that you have forgotten, and you don’t want to lose that.

Then one day, you pick one up, only to look for the quote you want to use in your blog. You feel the raised bumps on the jacket and take a minute to look at the artwork. You open it and look quickly at the chapter titles, trying to find the one you need. You remember what each chapter is about, a funny joke you really liked in this chapter, a touching moment that made you tear up in that chapter. You find the one you need. Then you want to know exactly how it starts, you know, yet you have forgotten. You flip to the front only to read the first sentence, but you don’t stop. You read more and more, and finally you give in and decide to read it again. Only you can’t just read the one. You have to read the 6 others as well. And so it begins¦again.

At least that’s how it happened to me. I have only read through the Harry Potter series twice. After I finished reading them for the first time, I immediately started reading them again. My first read through started in August of last year. My second one started last year around the end of November. Then, I was tempted to read through them again. But, I had a stack of new books waiting on me. I had put all my other reading aside as soon as I started Harry. So I decided then that I would wait, and start reading Harry again in the fall this year, so as to finish up right before Half-Blood Prince would hit theaters. Since the movie was delayed, I hadn’t really decided when I would start reading them again. I am tempted to start again all the time.

Earlier in the year, I bought one of my friends the set of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ and “Quidditch through the Ages.” I went to visit her a few months afterward, and she still had not unwrapped the plastic from them. I didn’t ask why, but she explained anyways. “I don’t want you to think I don’t like your present. But, I know that once I read them, I’ll have to start reading Harry Potter again. Don’t get me wrong, I want to, I love them¦it’s just that when I start reading Harry Potter, it’s like nothing else matters.”

And so it seems that is the case with me as well. I am delighted to see, as I read, that there are many things that I have forgotten. And as always, I think you could re-read all the Harry Potter books and pull something new and different from them each time. I hope that I will never stop reading Harry Potter. I hope that our journey, mine and his, shall last my whole life through. The first time around, I thought that I would be sad when I finished the last book. But that wasn’t the case at all. I felt even more excited to start re-reading them. There was no sadness, in fact I believe I felt a bit¦triumphant.

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“And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading! You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed.”

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Spoken by Ron in Chapter 13 of Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets.