It's All Over

Finished the latest Harry Potter book last night and now I’m D-pressed. This post-reading melancholy happens every time, but this one is particularly difficult due to much shock and grief experienced in the last chapters. Here’s how I tend to deal with my post-HP-traumatic-stress:

a) Cry. I don’t mean to, but dammit, I’m a weeper.
b) Call everyone I know and leave a message telling them to hurry up with the book already and call me back.
c) Talk to Moviegirl who, thank god, finishes the books before I do. What is 30 peak minutes on the cell phone compared with the agony of not dissecting the book or predicting the next one with another HP enthusiast?
d) Divulge, with permission, the secrets of the book to best girlfriend, jm, who is not an HP reader, but is there for me when I need her and knows to react with the appropriate degree of flabbergastedness (which is not a word, I know).

In the end, it’s probably for the best that the whole experience is over. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but reading HP books disrupts my sleep.

More than once this week I awoke in the middle of the night and was startled by the light coming from my charging cell phone. Each time I determined that the light was Lord Voldemort waiting to kill me. Shaking that off and reminding myself that I was still dreaming, I determined instead that it wasn’t the Dark Lord, but my own Patronus emerging from the phone/wand – because that makes more sense.

After I shake that off, I trudge to the bathroom and return to my bed only to lie awake for the next ten minutes contemplating the shape of my Patronus. I’d like it to be something elegant like a unicorn or phoenix, but figure it’s probably something clumsier like a monkey. How could anyone sleep before solving this problem?

As much as those dreams make it seem like a good thing to be done reading, I can’t help but feel that I’ve lost something or someone. And I hate that.