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The magic years

Along with Harry, we've all grown up to find a more complex, darker world

Erin O'Loughlin approaches a rite of passage. She's 18. A little more than a month ago, she graduated from Enloe High School in Raleigh. In not too many weeks more, she takes the first step toward whatever comes next at UNC-Asheville.

Enloe and Asheville -- two fine schools, no doubt. But for her, the events at another school more powerfully mark this transition. She's thinking less of Enloe than of Hogwarts.

"The series is ending," she says. "When I finish this book, it's like ... that's it."

No more Harry Potter.

Her childhood, and Harry's, will be over.

When the first Harry Potter book came out in the United States, Erin was 9, at the young end of the 9-to-11 age group toward which the book -- not yet a series -- was marketed. She was a couple of years behind Harry, who was approaching his 11th birthday as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" opened, but she has caught up with him as the series lurched along -- the second and third books in the summer of 1999, the fourth in 2000, then a three-year stretch to Book 5 and waits of two years each for Books 6 and 7.

The result is that Erin has turned 18 and graduated just as Harry turns 17 and enters his final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. By the time she finishes "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she and Harry will take their first steps into the world together -- assuming Harry is still alive.

Erin has grown up with Harry Potter. So, in a way, have we all. The U.S. release of the first book came in 1998, when "scary" had something to do with President Clinton and his intern, and though Harry faced real dangers, he was mostly interested in winning the House Championship Cup at Hogwarts.

As Harry has grown, the books have gotten darker, and so has the view from our windows. Whether it's terrorism, war or climatic catastrophe, Harry isn't the only one facing uncertainty, rising evil and untrustworthy persons in positions of power.

"It's the good versus evil thing," says Ceil O'Loughlin, Erin's mother. "Harry is my hero."

We've all had to grow up a bit over the last decade, and perhaps we all regret seeing Harry go. But nobody feels it like Harry's peers.

Cole Leiter, 16, a rising junior at Enloe, says that for him the books have become central: "It's like the MTV of my generation." He started the series when he was about 8, reading the books chapter by chapter with his mom. He has dressed as Harry for Halloween and participated in launch parties at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh.

Now he's 16 -- "I'm almost responsible," he jokes -- and as the release of the final book approaches, "to be honest I'm a little bit upset about it."

Transitions are never easy.

Darkness falls

The degree to which the series has darkened is demonstrated elegantly in the Wake County Libraries.

"The first four books are in the children's collection here," says April Franklin, children's librarian at Holly Springs Library. "The next two are in teens. They're in a separate collection."

More, she points out, in the first books, adults commonly come to the aid of Harry and his friends. In the third book, "The Prisoner of Azkaban," when Sirius Black emerges and is perceived as a threat, "the adults don't even want to tell [Harry] what's going on at first," Franklin notes. "By the fifth book, he's realized that some of the adults are even in denial about how dangerous the world has become, and he strikes out on his own. And he's 15 in that book."

Most readers are certain that Harry growing up, not current events, caused the darkening of the series and more toxic turns in the magic. In the second book, "Chamber of Secrets," 12-year-old Harry faces school nemesis Draco Malfoy with a tickling spell. By Book 6, 16-year-old Harry's spell causes Draco to bleed uncontrollably.