No spoilers

It's finished.

Twelve hours after I cracked Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I finally reached page 607 and the end of the series. That twelve hours began at 12:45 this morning, when I got home from Blackwell's Potter party, got comfortable, and cracked the book, and includes a five-hour break for sleep and half an hour out for a shower this morning. I got by with a piece of candy and a Coke Zero for breakfast, and quite happily made myself oatmeal around one.

It's rather surreal, having finished the series. I remember beginning it back in high school, sitting in the library every afternoon for a week, waiting for Jen to finish being a camp counselor. ISS had the first four books on hand, and I plowed through them in the little side space behind the shelves, hoping no one saw me with kids' books. It was the same space in which I read The Gunslinger, in which I stumbled upon my first taste of non-vampiric Anne Rice erotica (and didn't get much beyond the chapter, to be honest), in which I found enough forgotten galleys to keep me happy for a good while. It's a good table, and during the summer, the library was mercifully quiet and air conditioned, a real perk in June in Alabama. In the years that followed, I waited for books five through seven to be released, making sure to pick up my copy at midnight so I could get in on the fun.

Last night was my first actual release party - complete with trivia and Sorting - and while Warwick Davis pulled out at the last minute, the staff really got into it, especially the folks playing Rita Skeeter, Snape, and the Golden Snitch. I was wearing all black, and one girl thought I was part of the staff. The great part was that many of the people there weren't kids - while we waited to go inside, Ella and I stood between a mother and son who had been on the Harry Potter tour reported on the news this week, and a group of grad students from UT, half of whom were in costume.

Plot aside, the one thing that really surprised me about the book was the strength of the profanity. Maybe it's just a British thing, but somehow I didn't expect to see "effing" in a kids' book...