It’s a scary time for Harry Potter lovers. Like die-hard fans in the days before the big game, we wait in nervous anticipation for the newest and final entry in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We long for the July 21st release date to arrive, but find ourselves in fear of the unknown outcome. Conversations, arguments and even betting fill the blogosphere, attempting to predict what may be, though it is completely out of our control. These discussions offer the illusion that we are somehow participating in the end, rather than just waiting for it, but they also help mask the biggest fear of all. Not that the book ends in tragedy, but the fear that we may be utterly disappointed, Phantom Menace style. For six books Rowling has managed to keep the magic going. In our hearts of heart we pray, “Please Lord may she not crap out on the seventh.”

I find myself in a difficult place with Harry Potter. As a librarian, particularly as one responsible for buying the stuff one finds on the shelves, I have an ingrained skepticism of The Phenomenon: books that rocket into the stratosphere of popularity, boosted less by quality than by marketing juggernauts. And Harry Potter is a marketing juggernaut. It’s become a carefully crafted cash cow with every kind of officially licensed swag to go with. When it finally goes on sale it will be available at every grocery store, gas station, and Costco™. If you are inclined to be suspicious of anything with a billion dollar marketing budget, than Harry Potter is custom made to make you cranky.

But, as a reader, I love Harry Potter. I have loved the books ever since I opened one up ten years ago and first read about The Dursleys of number four Privet Drive in a town called Little Whinging, and their nephew, one Harry Potter, who was required to sleep in the closet under the stairs, along with the spiders. I’ve followed his tumultuous path to adulthood and, as with any kid who grows up before ones eyes, I’ve become invested in the outcome. I’d like to see him grow to adulthood and find a satisfying career, possibly as an auror, or even the future headmaster of Hogwarts. I’d like to see his friends Ron and Hermione get sorted, have a few frizzy red-headed children over whom they argue constantly.

There are those that fume at the popularity of Harry Potter among adults, insisting that it is a sign of the infantilization of culture or the decline in educational standards or merely a harbinger of the end times. I prefer to think that the story’s popularity among people of all ages harkens back to a time where tales were told to amaze an audience, regardless of age or station. Dickens was not imagining an audience of nine year olds when he wrote Oliver Twist, originally published as a serial in the daily newspaper. Mark Twain was not thinking of generations of fifth graders searching for test answers when he wrote Huck Finn. Neither Kipling nor Stevenson sat down to write “kids books,” and literature is a better place for their results.