Our Friend Harry

We’ve been reading the Harry Potter books with The Kid since the summer. We are currently more than halfway through Order of the Phoenix. I wanted to wait until he could really appreciate them and I think my timing was pretty good. I was hoping that we’d read the first book and then read some other things, taking the series slowly. I hoped that we would not get to the later more disturbing and dark books for a while. But, alas, that was not to be. The Kid is thoroughly entranced and bedtime reading can be nothing but Harry Potter.

When we finish each book, we watch the movie. The Kid is usually not a one-sitting-movie-watcher when we’re watching DVDs at home. He’ll watch for about 45 minutes and then we’ll take a break, sometimes not getting back to the movie for a week or more.

We watched the last bit of Goblet of Fire this afternoon. We all knew what was coming, the terrible scene with Voldemort in the grave yard, the death of Cedric Diggory. These are things that I would like to protect The Kid from seeing. I feel pretty strongly that you can’t un-see something and Lefty and I are pretty careful about what we let The Kid watch. But, we had read the book, and I think he was somewhat prepared.

As surely most of you know, the scene in the grave yard is intense and truly scary. The Kid held his own through it, though he did come and sit with me in case I was scared. It was the next scene that shook us all. Harry returning to Hogwarts with Cedric’s body and then Cedric’s father’s howls of despair over the body. He cries, “My son! My son!”.

And my son sat in my lap with tears in his eyes and I cried and The Kid wiped my tears away, at first with his hands and then with his shirt. He’s got a tender heart, like me.

When the movie was over, he popped up and said, “Let’s read another chapter of Order of the Phoenix right now.” And so we did.