And that's all she wrote

Possible Spoiler alert. PLEASE don't read this until you've finished the book for yourself. I've tried not to give too much away, but I fear that I may slip.

At 1:57 this morning, I closed the book I had been reading steadily since 7:50 last night and sent a text message to my sister:

All done. Admittedly, I should have said "Mischief Managed." I thought about it, but my brain wasn't doing the whole internal spell-checker thing at that late hour. Would have been cool though...

It was my signal that, for me, the saga of Harry Potter had come to an end. There would be no more anxious evenings of waiting for the next installment along with 700 of my closest friends. There would be no more wild speculations and theories regarding the true nature of Severus Snape, when Ron would finally man up and make his true feelings known, the true identity of Ginny Weasly (thanks for shutting down that theory about an hour after I left the house, Jules), or what exactly "Remember My Last" meant to Petunia Dursley.

Now, it's all done. Jem Blythe has come home, Beth March has died of scarlet fever, Laura Ingalls has accepted Alonzo Wilder, and Harry Potter has faced Lord Voldemort. All for the last first time.

I will say that, knowing that it was the last time that this was ever going to be new to me, I tried to savor it. I tried to read each word cautiously and carefully so that it washed over me like something dear should. Of course, that lasted about 10 minutes. Then, I found myself swept up in the story, and with every turn of the page, I was scanning, looking for names and the dreaded words: dead, dying, avada...Once the words were safely tucked away for yet another page, I read more carefully; soaking in the story, and trying to decide what each new development would mean.

I'm afraid to say that most of the time, I didn't see it coming. In fact, I usually got it so horribly wrong that I was crying for no good reason. Like JKR, I was pulling from all sorts of mythology and when Ron did what he did, said what he said, and then grabbed the thing the way he did, I was convinced that she had pulled that entire sequence straight from The Tales of King Arthur. We all know how that ended up and so a new fear was born. For the rest of the book, I was waiting for the death that I knew would come because it had to. The death that would devastate me most of all. The death that would complete this Lancelot, Guinevere, Arthur triangle that JKR had laid out from the very beginning. I thought I had the whole thing pegged, and my affinity for Ron was making this wait for death torturous. I thought about skipping to the end to make sure that he appeared on the last page in a healthy and happy form. I was in the process of flipping, when I remembered that that this was the last time I was going to read this book completely unencumbered by previous knowledge. I stopped, but not fast enough to see the illustration of a woman who could only be Ginny standing beside Harry with an ethereal glow. I slammed the book shut willing the image out of my head. It wasn't Hermione, I reasoned, the hair was too straight. It could only have been Ginny. This was another punch in the gut.

Now, there were two deaths coming. What would this mean to Harry and Hermione? Would they remain friends, possibly something more bound together by grief and the realization that their true loves, the red-heads they had spent all their time denying their true feelings for, were gone beyond the veil? Or, would they drift away from each other, unable to speak or make eye-contact because of the guilt that haunts so many survivors? Would Hermione end up with Viktor Krum or with someone kind and gentle like Dean, Seamus, or Neville? Would Harry drift away from everyone (if he survived at all) or would he accept Luna in his life? I had no illusions of him with Cho (she always annoyed me), and I figured that Fleur's little sister wouldn't have been a wise choice for anyone who was desperate to avoid the Weasley family. Therefore, it would have had to have been Luna.

I meant to stop then. I had driven for 14 hours and I was tired. I could save the heartbreak for the morning; after I had been allowed some sleep and would have been in a better position to look at the situation rationally. Instead, I turned one more page. Then another. Then....

It was 1:52 in the morning. The battle was over. The body count was high and devastating. So many mentors, friends, admirers, loves, and enemies were gone, it was impossible to know what else Rowling had planned for us. I turned the last page and began the epilogue. Emotions were running high. I read the line, and then realizing what it meant, I read it again. Harry had succeeded where Gilbert Blythe had nearly failed and Charlie Brown had never really tried. He alone had won the heart of the little red-headed girl, and had a little red-headed girl of his very own.

It was 1:57. I had finished the book. The Hogwarts Express was pulling out of King's Cross Station, and the next generation of Hogwartians were headed for their place in the sorting line and Herbology lessons with Professor Longbottom. I was wrong about so many things and right about so many others. I was laughing and sobbing at the same time. I grabbed my phone, texted my own red-headed twin, and turned off the lights eager for the sleep I so richly deserved. Whispering into the darkness, "Thank you JK Rowling."