Potter Spoilers

First things first. My dear friend Jeno, after a year of intense, dedicated training, finished the Lake Placid Ironman in 10 hours and 42 minutes of grueling effort. To put this in perspective, the winner did it 9 hours and 16 minutes. I am awed, I am proud, I am extatic, I am as happy as if I had done it myself. To me, it’s about pushing your own limits, tolerating your own pain, willing an exhausted body beyond what it can give. I admire physical courage like nothing else and I truly, truly, salute the ones who master it. While I’m in a gushing mode, let me salute Jeno in particular, of whom I’m a real fan, because he’s smart as a whip, funny and self-deprecating, modest and unassuming, loyal and steady, friendly and helpful and trustworthy, a gem of a person. And if he reads this, which I hope he will, he will smile in a way that creaks his eyes and shake his head modestly.

On the same weekend, another...friend of mine...I’ll call him that whether he agrees or not, was doing the Sylvan Lake 1/2 Ironman. Because it’s a lesser event, I suppose, the results are not yet online as I type this. I don’t know what his goal time was, and I don’t really care. Whatever he did, whether he’s happy with himself or not, he most likely accomplished what Jeno did as well, in terms of mind over matter. I salute you SWYRD, and I hope you are celebrating. You two rock.

So how did I spend that sunny and bright weekend, while others pushed themselves to a puking point?
I read the final Harry Potter, of course. The rest of this post is only for those who have read it as well, or don’t mind complete and absolute spoilers. You’ve been warned.

I must say I am happy. Utterly and decidedly happy. Rowling, may she be blessed to the seventh generation, chose a happy ending. After reading her very dark streak (to me, the Goblet of Fire remains her darkest book) I had NO idea whether Harry would live or die. Her last book gave me a little hope, because, I am proud to say, I guessed with certainty that Snape was no traitor and that Dumbledore had begged him to kill him, not otherwise. It was the one firm bet I made over the last book and I brilliantly won my bet.
Still, all this talk about Harry possibly dying, about main characters like Ron or Hermione possibly dying... I didn’t put it past her, because J.K. has that darkness in her. She knows despair and hopelessness, for only one who has experienced it can write about it so well.
In the end, she chose her little readers, and I can’t thank god –or her- enough for it. She created a character that millions of kids identified with. When that character underwent physical torture, in the Goblet, I was very afraid. I thought a line had been drawn from the hope and innocence of children, to the real, harsh, merciless world of aduts. A line that the father, in “La Vita è Bella”, died to avoid crossing. I feared for all the kids around the world, who had been drawned into Harry’s magical world, I feared they would be confronted to face what war, pain, death and the horror of reality really mean. And don’t get me wrong, children all over the world are faced with it as I type, to the eternal shame or mankind and ourselves.
And Rowling had a right, as the creator of something as formidable as the Lord Of The Rings, to be the absolute master of the ending But in the end, the creator of magic chose magic. In the end, she spared milllions of kids further grief and disillusion. Even though she never spared characters we had come to care for, she chose to end with the Good winning over the Bad, with a happy ending that allows us to close the last of Harry Potter’s books with the happy swelling in our hearts that the first ones had brought on.
For the first time, I, the queen of dramatic, hopeless stories, grasped... realized how important it is that children should be spared. That children should keep on believing. That happy endings, for the joy they create, are truly invaluable.
It was in the vulnerability in my son’s eyes, when he asked me to tell him whether Harry died or not. He’s condamned to wait three months for the French version. I didn’t answer right away and as I looked in his eyes, I saw two people: the child he is, who wants to believe, and the man he will become, bracing himself for the worst news. I swear the two were alternating in his eyes. That’s why I blessed Rowling, to be able to tell him: “Harry doesn’t die”, and for a couple of months or a couple of years longer, to let him keep his faith in Life.

How did I ever lose it? How do I get it back?