Almost everyone I know in my age group has read at least some Harry Potter. Like it or not, it’s a fundamental part of the culture of kids growing up in what they’re now calling the “aughties.” The books came to their conclusion three whole years ago now, and while there are two more movies left to be excited for, I know I’m not the only one who misses the breathtaking anticipation of wondering what happens next, of staying up till midnight with friends and siblings debating whether Snape would turn out to be good or bad – and for the record, I always came down on the good side.

Yet lately I’ve heard this from more than one person: “Harry Potter was fun and all, but I’m ‘over’ it.”

This boggles my mind.

OK, so my love for these books goes far beyond your average Harry Potter-reading kid. I’m the one you see twitching in my seat through the films, agonizing over every wrong detail, the one who’s read the first book at least fifteen, twenty times in the last twelve years. I love that Harry grew up with me, or that I grew up with him; I love that his birthday, July 31, is the day before mine; that all the little pieces of the world J.K. Rowling invented fit together so convincingly; that I can reread the books every summer and still feel captured by a story that never grows old no matter how well-worn it becomes.

I know there are people who disliked Harry Potter from the beginning, either because they found it over-hyped or because they took moral exception to its magical elements.

To the first group I can only say that I would still love Harry even if no one else had ever heard of him, for the same reasons I would tell the second that the real magic of Harry Potter has nothing to do with wand-waving and funny words. The books are not about that kind of magic, any more than they are about selling copies.

They are about the value of friendship and courage. They are about realizing that good people can do bad things and bad people can do right, because everyone has some of each in them. They are about fighting for what you believe in even when there’s no hope of winning. They are about life and death – and above all they are about the transformative power of love. The magic world in which Harry lives isn’t real, but these themes are, in a sense, magical themselves. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to these stories, even when at 19 I could easily have let them slip away.

Harry Potter is a piece of my childhood, yes, but the books are not just for children. I re-read them every summer for the memories, for love of the characters, for seeing the complexity of plot pieces falling into place (and smiling when people complain that it’s too complicated to follow – they must not be reading it enough times). Most of all, though, it’s for the themes that I now appreciate so much more than in childhood. I will never be “over” Harry Potter, because even if some summer I forget to re-read the books, or decide that maybe I don’t love them as much as I thought, that essential magic will always be with me.

Brynne Haug is a rising junior at Whitman College in Walla Walla, majoring in history, and in her free time she enjoys writing, cooking, constructing languages and sewing. She and her family have lived in Pendleton since 2002.