Presence and Presents of Potter

Episode One

It was a bright, crispy sort of day, one of those days where the seasons melt together and create a dizzying sort of barometric blur. The cold was too warm, the sun was too milky, and the wind was at once too harsh and too mild to retain a coherent identity.

The school bus whined to the corner, and after landing flat-footed from our hop down from that oversteep last step, my sister and I began to make our way home. We were engaged in an ongoing and well-disguisedly monumental battle of wills.

The words of the argument, I do not recall, but the sentiment of "No, I told you, I'm not going to read it!" had certainly emanated from my side of the discourse. "It's really, really, really good!" was just as surely the force of my sister's answering argument."

Just tell me what happens," I know I said, brassly displaying my 12-year-old aptitude for literary flippancy. "Fine," said she. "So there's this boy named Harry-"

"Well, duh."

"And he's an orphan, and he lives with his aunt and uncle, who don't like him. They tell him to go to his room while they have a dinner party... but when he gets there, there's an elf called Dobby on his bed. Then-"

"OK!" I said. My eyes slipped to the sidewalk beneath my feet, a small span of concrete that remains dear to me to this day. "OK," I said, without really knowing why. "I'll read it."