Late to the Wizarding World: Book 3

Thoughts on reading Harry Potter for the first time at age twenty-three

I don’t really like Harry Potter, but reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Akzaban helped me realize why, after nearly eighteen years, kids are still dressing up as him for Halloween.

To be clear, I don’t dislike him, I just don’t relate to him. Maybe because I’m twenty-three.

But, then, who actually relates to Harry Potter?

At age eleven, he becomes the star player on a team of high-school-aged kids in a sport he’s never even heard of. Waking up to find out you’re a wizard and, even though you’ve been picked on your whole life, you’re actually a jock — that’s not something kids relate to, it’s something they wish would happen to them. Harry is famous for defeating the most powerful wizard without even trying, becomes bffs with the greatest wizard alive, attends a school with practical, hands-on classes severely lacking in adult supervision. Harry isn’t meant to be relatable; he’s meant to be aspirational.

Take Quidditch, for example. The sport makes no sense, yet, it’s exciting because there’s danger, but no real threat. Harry could get brutally injured at any moment (there are casual references to falling off broomsticks and taking “a bludger to the head”), but then Pomfrey will set him right in no time. We humans don’t live in the danger-without-consequences world, and most twelve-year olds wish they did.

But 23-year olds don’t.

At least, I don’t.

I like adventure, I even crave it (PSA: I’m spontaneously going to Croatia in two weeks), but I don’t crave danger, and I know the difference between the two. Being independent is great, but I don’t fantasize about living away from home and I value my parents advice too much to feel like I’m better off without them (as Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”).

So until now, I didn’t relate to Harry, and I also didn’t aspire to be him. But at the end of Book 3, that changed.

It’s the moment Sirius, Harry’s god-father who has been in hiding for a crime he didn’t commit, finally earns Harry’s trust:

“‘I’ve been living in the forest ever since… except when I come to watch the Quidditch, of course… you fly as well as your father did, Harry.’

He looked at Harry who did not look away.

‘Believe me,” croaked Black. ‘Believe me. I never betrayed James and Lily. I would have died before I betrayed them.’

And at long last, Harry believed him” (401).

It’s a beautiful moment because Harry, who has felt so alone and family-less for so long, is finally getting what he’s always wanted. I felt overwhelmingly happy for Harry; the disbelief, the happiness, the relief, all contained in that moment when his family expands to encompass Sirius is something I can finally relate to.

At the dining room table at my home, we’ve always sat in the same formation for family meals: my mom at the head; brothers Tal and Lev, and my dad to her left; my brother Shai and I to her right. When Shai first brought his girlfriend Becky home, I was a senior in high school, and I faced a harsh reality as I sat down toward the far end of the dinner table: I’d been bumped. I sulked for a bit — until Becky asked me about school, about my writing, about book recommendations. Later, Becky was the first person who actually sat down with me to weigh the pros and cons of transferring colleges. I very quickly learned to trust her and ask for advice. I had always, always wanted a sister, and if you know me, you know that I’ve found one in Becky.

Then it happened all over again.

I was planning to visit my second brother, Tal, in California over fall break. He had just started dating a girl — I knew about it, hoped I’d meet her eventually. But as the trip neared, I caught on that Polina would be joining us for our weekend hiking. When I went back through my emails with Tal, I realized that the “we” he had been talking about (we’ll get dinner at Lyfe, we’ll drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, we’ll go hiking in Muir Woods) was not “Tal and Shoshana,” it was “Tal and Polina and Shoshana.”

I’m embarrassed to say that, because of this, I spent the whole flight preparing to not like her, though I had no reason to question Tal’s judge of character.

When I landed and called Tal, he said it again: “We’re on our way.”

Really? I remember thinking. She’s coming all the way out to the airport with him in the middle of the night?

To say that I warmed up to her would be inaccurate, because I loved her from the moment I got in the car and she asked about my flight — not in a this-is-a-required-question way, but in a I-really-hope-the-trip-was-easy-and-if-you-have-funny-airport-stories-I-want-to-hear-them way. Five minutes into the car ride, we were teasing Tal for messing up Fun lyrics, turning up the volume on Taylor Swift, and I found myself thinking — seriously, after just five minutes — what have we been doing all these years without her?

Picking me up at the airport, loaning me hiking clothes, going to the ballet with me, reading the books I recommend, coming to my younger brother’s basketball games, eating the roadside pineapple straight out of the plastic bag, sending me care packages after surgery, walking with me on Shabbat, reading my writing, not to mention making my brothers so, so happy — some of these are small things, but Becky and Polina always seem to go out of their way to be devoted family members.

Both my brothers got married this summer, and after one of the weddings, in the hotel room I was sharing with my younger brother, Lev and I swapped highlights from the evening. Lev told about the moment in which we were dancing together in a circle as a family — my parents, my brothers, and I. At first, I thought he picked that moment because the six of us are so rarely together these days, but then Lev told me it was his favorite because his first thought was, “Wait, we’re not all here.” He told me how happy he was that our family had expanded, and I teared up a little bit because it was so true — our family has expanded. We’re not six anymore, we’re eight.

The moment Sirius becomes Harry’s family was, for me, the most moving moment of the book. More than the fact that Sirius Black has risked being caught by the dementors just to see Harry, or that he bought Harry the new, expensive, so-fast-it-should-be-against-regulations broomstick (risking death and outrageous gifts I put squarely in the “Twelve-Year Old Aspirational” category) — I was moved by the same thing that ultimately moved Harry to trust Sirius: the Quidditch matches, the fact that Sirius has come to all of them. It’s special because it’s not a grand gesture; it’s something so small, so relatable, but, somehow, it means so much.

In the first three books, we learn from the Durselys that it’s entirely possible to have relatives that don’t care at all about you. So it’s all the more moving when someone who isn’t even related to Harry by blood, but by choice (Sirius is Harry’s family only because someone who cared about Harry also cared about Sirius) goes out of his way to take on that role, cares enough to support Harry at all his Qudditch matches.

I think that’s what ultimately made me trust Becky and Polina: By choice, they went out of their way to be part of the family. I still see Harry mostly as a kid’s aspirational character, one whose life story I might have wanted as my own when I was a child, but now feel no desire for. So I feel beyond lucky that the way I relate to him is through his expanding family and the happiness that brings.