It's as if I went to Hogwarts...and graduated.

July 15th proved itself to be exactly what the majority of the world expected - one of the most emotional endings to the era we had all grown to love over the last 14 years. The opening night of the last Harry Potter movie was, to say the least, magical.

Before you throw me into the categories with the HP fanatics and envision me walking around wearing Gryffindor robes and waving a fake wand, let me explain. I'm a HP fan, yes. I've read all the books within a day or two of them coming out, and I've seen each movie multiple times in theaters. However, I don't love the series because I want to be a witch and do magic (though I do wish I had an English accent like the characters), but more so because it was the one series that followed me through my childhood, that kept me reading instead of watching mindless TV, that opened up my mind to a whole different set of rules I was unaccustomed to. I've grown up with these characters and the story, and I've found myself escaping into their mythical world ever since I opened Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at the age of 7.

My best friend said it perfectly - Harry Potter has been the Star Wars of my generation. The end of the series is sad; I will miss standing in lines for hours waiting for the newest movie to start the night it comes out while making up ridiculous HP card games with my sister. However, the end of the series hits home a little harder. For me, Harry Potter was my entire childhood, and as I was sitting in the movie theater seat watching (spoiler alert!) Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny all grown up in the last scene of the last movie, I realized that I was all grown up too.

Just as Harry will never be returning back to Hogwarts, I will never be returning to SCU. I've graduated college, and it was only two days after the actual graduation that was I sitting in an office chair in my grown-up job, struggling my way through legal documents that seemed far beyond my own intelligence and feeling more overwhelmed than I did when I was writing my thesis for my senior seminar class. Terrifying, to say the least.

Well, it's been a month since graduation and I feel like it's been years. I'm fully immersed in my job - competent, confident and excited about the work I'm doing and the opportunities that I can see so clearly. I've got my alumni license plate frame on, I'm moving into a brand new apartment and watching my (what I used to think were awesomely large) paychecks dwindle away to rent, car insurance, gas and so on. Sometimes it sucks, but hey, this beats having to fight Voldemort ;)

The end of HP coincided with the end of my childhood perfectly. Both have given me memories that I will take with me through adulthood, and then pass on to my own children when the time comes. Until then - well, it's been magical.

C.