Harry Potter is the great equalizer in our house. Kind of sad really, but there it is.

My kids are aged from 14 (about to be 35) to 3, and with 3 girls and 2 boys it's difficult to find any one activity that pleases everybody. Harry Potter pleases everybody.



When the first book came out, my kids were too young to care. In 1997, I had a 3 year old, a 2 year old, and a newborn baby. Harry Potter was a swirl of a rumor that I read about from time to time in a magazine. I remember a very heated discussion between moms on a scrapbooking forum about how the books were evil and whispered of the occult and they would not let it in to their homes. I'm not one to take the evils of the world lightly, there are a lot of them out there. But as for as a book about a young wizard was concerned, I really had no interest either way. I chuckled to myself a little at the alarmist nature of mothers on Internet discussion forums (as I still do whenever I stumble across them) and went on my way.



By the time the books had become a worldwide phenomenon, and the frenzy had started to spread to the movie theaters, I was having another baby. I remember the alarmist mothers being in the back of my mind, but by the time the first movie was out on dvd I was ready to give it my own unbiased review.



It was then that I fell in love with the world of Harry Potter. The first movie is still my favorite. There is something, if you'll forgive the expression, magical about that first innocent voyage into the wizarding world . The colors are crisp and clean, the characters bright and complicated and Daniel Radcliff is innocence itself in a coming of age tale that is often imitated, but never duplicated. How's that for a movie review? I loved the music as well. To this day, all I have to do is hum a few bars of the Voldemort theme and it freaks out my oldest daughter. She won't admit that it still freaks her out, but she always loudly protests whenever I hum it and rolls her eyes pretending to be annoyed. I can tell she's still scared.



Having seen the first movie, there was really no reason to read the book (I thought), but by this time the second movie was ready for release and my older two kids were in love as well, so off to the theater we went. With each movie a little scarier than the last, I was afraid they wouldn't like it as much, but my son loved the huge snake and thus we were all hooked. During the following summer I decided to paint my great room using 3 different colors of paint in a faux finish, all 600 -ish square feet of it. How did I keep my kids out the paint? Nap time for the younger two, and Harry Potter on DVD for the older two. I can still smell latex paint whenever we watch the Chamber of Secrets.



By the time the next book was ready for release I had fallen in with the herds and the masses and I had to know what came next. Luckily my oldest daughter had become a great reader and when she asked for the third book at the school library, they told her they didn't carry it because it was too advanced for elementary school. Naturally, we started our own collection, and we made reading the books together a family affair. All who would listen could gather around and I would read to the younger ones. When they lost interest, my oldest daughter and I would pass the books back and forth, three chapters at a time. When we got to the end we would read the last three or four chapters out loud together so that no one would get to finish before the other.



Each time the movies came out, we made sure to be first in line. Sometimes I would even take the kids out of school early to get to a showing before the masses. We were far from Harry Potter freaks. None of us has ever dressed up as an HP Character (with the exception of the year they gave out glasses with the books and we all had a turn wearing them). And I think my mother may have taken my oldest to the bookstore at midnight on one of the release dates.



When the 5th movie's release date and the last book's release date coincided, we were on vacation together and it was always part of our plan to forgo other activities to make sure we could take advantage of both. My daughter finished the last book on the drive back home, less than 48 hours after I bought it for her.



Even now, when we travel long distances or even just out to the country, Harry Potter is in the DVD player or being read aloud. Every summer we have a HP marathon (although it's getting increasingly harder as the number of movies increase)

So, of course, on July 14th my oldest daughter was begging me to take her to the midnight showing of movie #6. We had gone to the midnight showing of Twilight during the previous year, and she was hoping for a repeat performance on my part. I honestly would have done it if I hadn't had a church appointment at 9 the next morning. She was VERY much disappointed, but really I was secretly glad that the tradition of all of us seeing it for the first time together would be repeated.

All of us girls stuffed out purses with snacks and even the 3 year old came with us, insisting that he LOVES Harry Potter. As we were all sitting there together I was enjoying the moment of being united over something so silly. I loved laughing with them and invited my 7-year old to sit on my lap when I knew it was about to get scary. (Luckily the 3 year old fell asleep about an hour in) When we got home, I was locking up the car and checking the mail so I was behind the kids by a couple of minutes. By the time I got inside, they were all gathered around my husband's desk talking about their favorite parts and quoting their favorite lines. It was very cute and endearing.

Normally this is the kind of thing I would complain about: single families dumping hundreds of dollars annually into an over publicized, highly commercialized piece of literary fluff. But I can't help being pleased about anything that brings the whole family together. Especially when it requires such minimal effort on my part.

Now if only I could get my son to read Jane Austen...