Thoughts on a Re-Read; or, Potter Before Potter

I am re-reading the Harry Potter series.  I finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone this afternoon.  Reading it again after all this time felt odd-- it has probably been a good decade since the last time I read it, certainly before the publication of Deathly Hallows.  In a way, re-reading the book felt like reminiscing with old friends about long ago: "Remember the Sorting and your first night at Hogwarts?" "Remember when you thought you'd be expelled but ended up as the Seeker on the Quidditch team?"  But that same nostalgia also gives some pain.  Characters that meant little to me at the time are suddenly fleshed out in my mind with all that I've read since.  I noticed that Lavender Brown got sorted into Gryffindor.  Fred and George are still complete and happy.  Scabbers, still only a rat.  Mostly, Neville: just a meek, nice boy with a toad and a propensity to get picked on, his backstory totally unknown. 

I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when I was eleven years old.  I read it before Harry Potter was *Harry Potter.*  I read it before most of my friends, even.  There were no films, or-- to my knowledge-- even talk of films.  The whole world that Rowling so clearly and carefully built I imagined without the aid of set and costume designers, or actors.  In my mind, Hermione had darker brown hair, like me (of course).  Minerva McGonagall was younger than Dame Maggie Smith, and a bit harsher looking with black hair.  Dumbledore was slightly madder.  Upon a re-read, I notice that the whole book has a whimsical Roald Dahl-esqueness to it that the movies don't quite capture.  And, as an adult, I also notice how wonderfully Rowling controls the prose and plot.  Her world-building is astounding in a way that I could not recognize as a child.  Moreover, the depth of it becomes apparent with the totality of the series, which I did not have when first I read this book.  I remember waiting for Book 3.

Then there's the fact that I've grown up.  I think I cry more easily now.  When I was little, my mom would always read The Polar Express to me on Christmas Eve, and she would always cry at the end when the protagonist says that his sister can no longer hear the bell, but that it rings for him as it does for all true believers.  When I was small, I poked fun at her.  Then, a Christmas came a few years ago when I started crying, too.  I think Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has undergone a similar transformation for me.  I teared up when Hagrid and Harry entered Diagon Alley (it was so magical!).  I felt myself crumbling a bit when Dumbledore spoke to Harry in the infirmary about love, and when Hagrid gave Harry a scrapbook of pictures of his parents.  I almost full-on cried when Dumbledore gave Neville ten points, because I just knew how much it meant to Neville. 

I've gained so much in the last decade of my life.  Still, a distinct sense of something lost accompanied my re-read.  The closest I can come to describing it is this: I will never again wonder at the cat that reads the street sign on Privet Drive.  I already know.