So yes, Harry Potter mania is coming to a peak tonight at midnight with the release of the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  So everywhere tonight children will be dressed up as their favorite scarred boy wizard, partake in a host of social activities with fellow witches and wizards, and be rewarded with the actual means to the ends of one of the most epic children’s stories ever written.

As it turns out, Heartless doesn’t understand the attraction.  At first I chalked it up to its literary relevance… and how it has brought children to reading in numbers not seen in ages.  Then after I read what Sarcastica had to say about her Potter obsession, I realized it was more than just that.

Harry Potter is in fact a huge distraction.  He is a bigger distraction to some than to others, and he isn’t necessarily the same type of distraction seeing as how there are both books and movies involved, but in the end he is a distraction from an ordinary life filled with perhaps not as many magical moments as we would like.  I think its actually pretty fitting… since that was why the author started to write about him… as a distraction to herself from a desperate situation she was in.  Sure there are other distractions out there that could do the same thing… but are they as epic in the mind as they have become in real life?  Do they provide what is truly something for everyone?  Harry Potter has it all… mystery… adventure… romance… everything that might pique a person’s interest and all of it is grossly detailed to effect realism and relevance with society’s past, present, and in all likelihood future.  Best of all… its magical in a world of endless possibilities… a world not necessarily of this earth and yet a very real part of it.

So tonight I will be among the throng at the “ball” to receive the final book of distractions.  I’ve been planning on going for months… and while I find myself going with someone I did not expect to go with originally… I’m going all the same.

I could use the distraction.