Long ago, in an age of innocence, I was a huge Harry Potter fan. The books called to me from the end of the Target endcap and once I got past the absurdity of the boy on a broomstick, I fell deeply in love. Of course this was before the true nature of the writer came out, and before I ever valued the lives of my community more than the belief that something (I could never understand) was weird. Yet you live long enough and you see your heroes turn into villains. It’s the curse of humanity. We are deeply flawed creatures, and unless we take efforts to grow and change we will slowly turn into twisted creatures.

I’m not saying that Rowling is a twisted creature, she is just not doing anything to stop it from happening. I guess that is the curse with riches. It corrupts.

There is a particular moment in my favorite book (The Half-blood Prince) of the seven volume series that has stuck with me. I never understood why until recently. I wanted to share it but… I feel like it does two things. One, that it is self serving and makes me sound like a martyr. Two, it makes me look like a monster. There is no space between for me. It is either one or the other.

When I shared it with the boyfriend he told me that it is normal when caring for someone. It is a lot and it weighs on you. There is only so much we can handle as caretakers.

The scene in particular is a chat that Dumbledore has with Harry prior to entering the cave to retrieve Voldemort’s locket. The headmaster tells his bright eyed student that no matter what he says, do not stop. Keep going. It’s cryptic and unnerving until we see it play out, and it lives up to that expectation. It’s when Harry feeds the poisoned concoction from the basin to Dumbledore. He begs and pleads with him to stop, but Harry pushes on because he made a promise that he would keep going.

That is how I feel. Everyday. I am pleading for this all to stop, but I made a promise with myself to keep going. I must. There is no stopping, because this is for the greater good.

While the rest of the Harry Potter saga is derivative, it does have it’s moments that truly shine. This, for me, is one of them. It (as the kids say) lives in my head rent free. Especially the disappointment in realizing that the entire endeavor was for naught. Dumbledore suffered for nothing. He died, for a decoy. Well… he died to fulfill the promise Snape made to help Draco kill him…. but… semantics.

All of this is summed up in the loss of childhood innocence. The series, the loss of a hero, and the death of my spouse. Everything ends at one point or another. Just like that basin of poison. It was only momentary… but you keep drinking “the poison” because you have to.