I saw the final installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise this weekend. I was dreading it.

I started reading the series in college, I guess around 2000, about two years after Potter-mania gripped the rest of the world. I was skeptical at first, but like most everyone else, I lost myself in Hogwarts with Harry, Hermoine and Ron. I loved the series for its adventure, its clever allusions to myth and literature and mostly, its emphasis on the power of friendship, love and faith in oneself. I loved it so much that named my first dog, a sweet black pound hound, Potter.

When I discovered Harry and the Gryffindor gang, I was in my first serious relationship and still closeted in the Deep South. I was alienated from my family, mostly out of my own fear. I was terrified that the people I loved most wouldn’t accept me. But I had an amazing group of friends who loved me, stuck by me and pulled me through when I was too weak to do it myself. I came out to my family shortly after I started reading the series. I realized, like Harry did so many times, that fear is far nastier stuff than actual adversity. It took time and talking and healing, but I have a fantastic relationship with my family now.

In 2003, after Order of the Phoenix was released, my father died suddenly. Our relationship had been strained and sporadic during college. I didn’t visit or call. Neither did he. I never really understood how sick he was, and then he was gone.

After his funeral, I turned, as I often do in times of stress or heartbreak, to books.  I was so awash in guilt and grief at this point that I couldn’t think. All I could do was read. I read classics and bestsellers. I read graphic novels and historical sagas. I read books from my childhood, and I re-read the Harry Potter series. I read everything I could find. I needed so many stories to keep my mind off my own, and I needed Potters, both Harry and hairy, see me through my sorrow.

I healed, of course. Enough anyway, to  get a job, move, live. But, Harry, Hermoine, Ron, Dumbledore, Snape and the Order were always with me, whether in  books or the theater, throughout my 20s. As I launched a career, started and ended relationships and came to terms with who I was as an adult, our teen wizards competed at school, started snogging and battled Lord Voldemort to his eventual doom.

I grieve a little when good stories end. The final blow of the Harry Potter series struck me harder than most. So much of my growth into adulthood was intertwined with the series, that it’s hard to let it go. Sunday, I video-chatted with my parents and my one-year-old nephew. We talked about the movie, and I tried to coax Josiah to say “Harry.” I realized how eager I am to share the wizard world with him. I hope he’ll grow up with Harry too, albeit a bit more age-appropriately. That connection across time and space and souls is the power of a good story. I’ll miss Harry and Hogwarts, but I can’t wait for the next great tale to come along.