Deathly Hallows
by Titus Gee
I have not read your emails, nor anyone’s these past few days.
Forgive me.
As I was away on the weekend of June 20, I have placed myself on strict media blackout (not an easy task when one works in a newsroom) until I may finish the final volume in Ms. Rowling’s epic tale. It has become something of a contest — to reach the end before a spoiler can invade my consciousness and steal my opportunity for pure discovery.
I reached page 608 during my lunch break, today, on which I found the chapter title “The Battle of Hogwarts” and closed the book. As I turned back toward my desk I felt a sudden sinking in my gut. I had begun to quail at the thought of my adventure ending. The margin of pages that now separates me from the ending has now grown so slim that I cannot help but realize that it is fast approaching.
I do not worry how it will end, rather it simply struck me that it will end. However the last grand battle may turn out, I will reach the final page and — whether satisfied or miffed — I will be forced to stop because there will be no more.
You must understand, as a storyteller I am a great advocate of endings. The end is the most important part of any tale and far harder to pull off effectively than a beginning. In the finale a story finds its paramount meaning and thus its highest being. In the ending it either succeeds or fails. The end is the whole point. Such endless mediums as television and comic books often suffer terribly from the refusal to find an ending. They wander on and on like Jack with his Lantern of Nearly Headless Nick bemoaning his own cowardice but unable to pass on.
I BELIEVE in endings.
And yet I understand what Stephen King calls “the desire to bring Frodo back from the Grey Havens.”
I fear I am an immersive reader, and whenever I reach the end of a truly epic tale, one that I have lived with for weeks or months or years (as with young Mr. Potter), I cannot help but feel the pang of loss that comes with it. The companions of my imagination no longer will grow older with me, nor tell me the further adventures of their lives. They have ended, and though I may go back and read the story through again (something I rarely do) it will never move any further. However the heroes of Hogwarts may finish their great battle, it will be finished.
I felt this way when Garion finally took his seat at Riva and again when Errand found his place among the seven. I felt it, yes, when Sam returned from the docks to his cottage and Rosie’s warm embrace. It is the final page of Winnie the Pooh, when Christopher Robin takes his leave. It is the reason that I never read one book at a time — I need the others to console me. The fact that I feel it now is evidence that, whatever her weaknesses or rough edges, Rowling has thus far succeeded in her great undertaking. It seems I’ve fallen in love with her characters.
Some part of me grins scorn at the idea of feeling attached to ‘people’ that do not actually exist, and yet this is the ephemeral spark that drew me to writing in the first place, above all other forms of expression. I actually feel genuine affection for nonexistent characters, and another part of me prepares to miss them when they have gone.
This is true magic if ever I have encountered it.
So I understand the impulse that keeps so many epic writers from ending their stories, that draws them back again and again to the world they have created, that keeps the fans buying $25 hardbacks with no hope of finding out how it all turns out in the end.
And yet the latent tragedy of the final cover of the final book provides such power to the story. Its finality gives the story weight and so creates a part of the magic that can be captured no other way.
So now I return to page 608 to dance with my imaginary friends this final time. I think I shall read it slowly, consoling myself with the thought that Messrs. Grint and Radcliffe and Ms. Watson have yet to recreate these moments in the medium of film, and so there remains to me just a little more discovery beyond this final cover . . .
