holding out for a hero

Confession: I haven't read the seventh Harry Potter book. Or the sixth. I got part way through number five and stopped. It's not that I don't want to finish, I just haven't gotten around to finishing. I haven't finished the fifth, which means I can't start the sixth, and so on. Harry has to win, right?

This one little confession makes me an outcast in my family. I'm the Quasimodo of the bunch, sent up to the bell tower, shamefully aware of the Harry hunch on my back. I spent the first few months after the last book came out with cotton in my ears (so to speak) trying to avoid hearing how it all ended up. I might have to refresh your memory, but the world was all abuzz about the happenings at Hogwarts. Girls and boys, the old and the young, would emerge from dark basement reading rooms and comfy couches, with tears in their eyes, desperately wanting to discuss the details. I would politely excuse myself as to avoid finding out the fate of my favorite fictitious wizarding friends.

Last summer my brother, an avid fan, gave me an ultimatum. He said I had until January 1, 2009 to finish the series, or he'd spill the Bertie Bott Beans. In the end, his plan was to tell me everything. The summer came and went. Book five came and went with me, on an airplane ride or two; to the beach; I packed it in my swim bag to read after laps at the pool. But always in the end, I found something I was more excited to read, and I pushed Harry Potter to the back of the proverbial bookshelf in my mind.

"The End" was used and abused as a threat. Rich would want something...something bad. Like a Frosty from Wendy's or something equally as life-sustaining and slash or important. "If you don't go now I'll tell you the end of Harry Potter!" he'd shout, like he was the captain of the Quiddich team. Feet up on the ottoman, remote in hand, he'd watch shows he likes to DVR while I ran out, fingers in my ears. Let's just say Rich ate a lot of Frosty's that summer. When D Day arrived, instead of Happy New Year, I got a very somber, "Martha, it is now time to tell you what happens at the end of Harry Potter" Auld Lang Syne a la mon frere. But, somehow I managed to squeeze a little more life out of the threat hanging over my hallowed head.

Tonight, over dishes, I heard it all. While Rich and Dad scrubbed, Sunday shirt elbows deep in suds, they spoke of spells and wizard weddings. Of horcruxes and deathly hallows. They told me that Harry dies but, after a discussion with the beloved Dumbledore, he lives again. For all I know, they could be making it up. I guess I'll have to read and find out. To my credit, I've gone almost a whole year (give or take) without knowing who dies at the end of the Seventh Harry Potter.

The folks over at the Wendy's drive-thru are really going to miss me.