In 2007, we became Hermione.
Fried hair frazzled, eyes crossed,
twisting limited pages
into an endless rope to freedom.
Now, with new momentum,
we book-worms barrel back to childhood,
seeking the invisible platform
and tumbling, red headed,
onto a filmmaker's British paradise.
Oh, if we were only muggles modified--
worthy of wielding parseltongue snippets
or whispering wand tricks at whittled sticks...
Instead we watch, petrified, totalus,
stocked and stacked in theater seats,
mouths agape and gorging,
as if with chocolate frogs,
on a fancy that never truly faded.
We inhale lines like starving flobberworms:
lips curling draconian in indignation
or, when the tea leaves strain victorious,
triumphant as time turners.
We, the fantastic youths since '97,
the face painted, polyjuice parched
Lestrange impersonators,
and the pillowcase-clad creatures,
who lovingly cling to dirty black socks,
come to open ourselves at the ultimate close.
Tonight, Harry's besting his boggarts,
and though we're fortune attuned,
we convulse with the crucios and fall,
once more, for Snivelus' staggered speech
and the gentle gleam behind half-moon glass.
Even Voldemort's looking teary,
silver face smudged, betraying the inner human,
and it feels as if we've taken a jelly-legs to the heart.
We leave, longing to pull a Lockhart,
and forget we'd seen it end,
but instead we slither home,
humming the theme, and seeking
Hedwig in the parking-lot sky.
And this is how we end an era: glowing,
patronused in the moonlight, with two fingers raised,
idly itching paint from foreheads:
the lightning scar, saluted.
