Latest ‘Potter’ an all-consuming force

Friday, July 22, 2005 | 8:30 a.m.

It has become a sickness.

What started as a reading challenge posed by a class of Mendoza Elementary School third-graders in 2003 quickly turned into full-blown Harry Potteritis, which manifested itself last weekend in pure, unadulterated obsession.

And it's a good thing "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" became a writing assignment, or I would have called in sick Monday to finish it.

I read the first chapter upon arriving home after purchasing it at midnight Saturday, then slept five hours before awaking to read more. Dinner and a movie with my other half Saturday night stole a few more hours reading time, but I nodded off in Potter around midnight Saturday.

Sunday's domestic duties plundered more reading time, so I didn't take or return any phone calls Monday until after finishing J.K. Rowling's sixth Potter tome.

If you have not finished the book or intend to read it, stop here. Plot-spoilers lie ahead.

The latest episode of the young wizard's rise to adulthood in Rowling's magical world is, by all accounts, the darkest. Some parts are disturbing, such as when Harry is, under orders of his beloved mentor, forced to feed that same aging wizard a horrible potion.

And it's sad. By the time readers arrive at the bottom of Page 652, a much-loved character is dead; the Hogwarts school for witches and wizards may end up closing, and Harry isn't planning to return for his seventh and final year even if it does remain open.

Choking back tears in the employee break room as I finished "Half-Blood Prince," I both looked forward to and feared Rowling's seventh and final Potter book.

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

But it will get better, because under it all Harry Potter is a tale of heroism, good over evil and love winning all -- even when the days look darkest. As badly as readers feel when the Hogwarts headmaster takes his fatal fall on Page 596, the wisdom he imparts to Harry some 80 pages earlier could uplift the heaviest heart.

Tyrants, he says, have a way of creating their own enemies.

"Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!" the wizard says of the ongoing tale's villain, who we discover has split his soul into parts by killing others in hopes of becoming immortal.

But power, wealth and the promise of immortality, Harry's mentor says, is no match for Harry's love of his parents (who were killed by the tale's villain -- for pity's sake, read the book).

"He was in such a such a hurry to mutilate his own soul, he never paused to understand the incomparable power of a soul that is untarnished and whole," the wizard says.

Loving your folks makes you strong. Honor their memory. Fight tyranny and injustice. Hold onto that which makes you whole.

Good lessons for a kid -- or a grown-up.

Rowling always inserts such truths and nuggets of wisdom within the pages of her books, but "Half-Blood Prince" seems to have more as the book nears its end.

Any child who has faced a mouthy playground bully or adult who has endured a self-aggrandizing co-worker can't help but smile as Rowling writes that, "Harry had long since learned that bangs and smoke were more often the marks of ineptitude than expertise."

Dang. Can I get that on a T-shirt?

Parents, experts and other Potter pundits quoted in the myriad reviews and analyses released this past week agonized whether children will be forever scarred by the death that happens on Page 596.

Though I may never be the same, I'd have to say it probably depends on the kid.

Will he be sad? Yes. Cry? Most likely. Get over it? Eventually.

But that's how death works in real life, rather than how we see in on TV and in the movies. The message only registers when it's someone you care about.

Kids can see 100 people killed every week on television, and most don't even notice. We should be happy that someone such as Rowling can spin a good yarn that makes us cry when one person dies.

Perhaps she's exactly what kids today need.

And perhaps we aren't as lost as we thought.