The Countdown Begins for HP 7 (no spoilers here, duh!)

T-Minus 31 hours until your faithful blogger e will be pushing little kids out of the way to get a better spot in line at the midnight party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Surely you didn't think I would wait until Saturday to get it, did you?

Actually, I considered it for about .15432 milliseconds because I'm a loser and my bedtime is usually 10:30 and I feel old and tired, but then I remembered that I will get a free three-foot poster of the book jacket art AND (drumroll please) a free glow-in-the-dark WAND at the party!!!! If you are wondering if I will be so cruel as to steal some eight-year-olds' wands so I have more for myself, all I can say is... maybe I will and MAYBE I WILL!!!! Watch out kiddies, Auntie e is in the hiz-ouse and she will take no prisoners when it comes to getting the final Harry Potter book and/or any related freebies! Get out tha way! What will be even funnier is when I come into work on Monday with all the wands and attempt to put hexes on people. They already think I'm crazy, why not remove all doubt?

I am debating about how early I should get there Friday night. I'm thinking 11:30 pm or so; I want to be able to bask in the excitement and anticipation for the grand finale of the series, but I don't want my patience with the other geeky fans to wear thin. I'm just hoping that they have this rice krispie treat thing with frosting on it that is shaped like Harry's lightning bolt scar that they had a few years ago at the book six party. Shout-out to my cousin Brad who went to that party with me - you will be missed this weekend!

My intention is to then go home, get a good night's sleep, and spend the majority of Saturday and Sunday reading the book, with the hopes of finishing it before the idiots in the mass media ruin it for everyone. No, I have paid no attention to all the spoilers already out there. And while we're on that subject - does anyone really understand WHY someone would leak the book or anything about it? Seriously, think about it for a few seconds... nothing good can come of it. No one's going to give you money, if they find you you're going to get sued or worse, you are ruining a truly joyful occasion for millions upon millions of people (most of whom are kids), and by and large, no one will even know who you are (as most spoilers out there seem to be posted or uploaded anonymously). Perhaps the Grinch's heart has shrunk again and he is now targeting Harry Potter events instead of Christmas? Who knows. What I will say is this - I'm reading the book no matter what, and if I should happen to hear something against my will, I will just figure that it's not right and therefore I still just have to read the book for myself.

But even though I may have stolen some kiddies' wands and pushed them out of the way to get the book in my hands - believe you me... if someone at the party ruins it for those kids, I will unleash the 'Wrath of e,' which is not a pretty sight and has only been unleashed a handful of times in the past three decades. I will kick the offender over and then pounce on him, and all of the boys and girls at the party will follow my orders to pile up on the evil-doer until he is hauled away by the police. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

I will predict my reaction to finishing the book - I'm going to bawl my head off - probably for about a half-hour. I am going to become deeply depressed. I'm not going to want to talk about it for a few days. And then about two weeks from now, I will write up my overall thoughts on the book (so those of you who are going to read it - you have 14 days to catch up with me!) and launch into a downward spiral all over again. It doesn't matter what actually happens in the book, I know I will feel all of the emotions above, because of the simple fact that it is OVER. Sure, maybe when J.K. Rowling has slipped to, say, the 4th richest woman in the galaxy, she may write more books about this wizarding world that we've come to know and love. But it will never be the same.

I read the first three books in 2000 when I was on a crazy trip around the world for The Man. I bought them in Paris and read them back-to-back in a matter of days - I finished up The Prisoner of Azkaban in Australia and remember vividly (which is a big deal, because I have no memory anymore!) lying there in the hotel bed, crying. I wasn't crying because anything was sad, I was crying because I loved the books so much. Yes, I am an overly-emotional freak, that should already be known. Lucky me, though... I then had literally only days to wait for The Goblet of Fire to come out in July of that same year. At that point, I was dating the guy who would end up becoming my husband, and I remember finishing book four on his futon and I was sobbing so hard that I forbade him from coming into the room or speaking to me for a full hour. Book five, as I mentioned in a previous post, was read on our honeymoon. And reading The Half-Blood Prince was one of the highlights of an overall crappy year in e's life - the sobbing at the end of that one occurred just a room away from where I sit now.

Now here I am, seven years after picking up the series, and I feel like stomping around and pouting in protest about coming to the end of such a fantastic journey. I can't imagine what I would feel like if I was a kid and read these books starting from when they came out in 1997... imagine being seven years old and now being 17 when it's all said and done! You literally GREW UP with Harry Potter! I'm jealous of those kids. But I will still spare no mercy if any of them get in between me and my reserved copy tomorrow night!

Until then, happy reading... and, this should go without saying, don't send me any spoilers. I will put a voodoo curse on you, you will attract extremely bad karma, and I won't post your comment anyway!

But I have a feeling none of MY readers are that mean-spirited. For those of you who love the characters just as much as I do, when I'm sitting in my fluffy robe in my recliner, sipping my tea while racing through the pages hour after hour, I will think of you and hope you are having as much fun as I am. And remember, when you're through with the book - take solace in the fact that we still have the final two movies ahead of us!

- e