“He’ll be famous— a legend… Every child in our world will know his name… Harry Potter— the boy who lived.” - Minerva McGonagall ( J.K. Rowling)

Professor McGonagall couldn’t have been more right. These are the famous lines in the first chapter of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” that got us hooked for the rest of the series. For the next decade, the world would be captivated and consumed by the wizarding world that Rowling created, avidly following the magical adventures the boy who lived, along with his two best friends. A worldwide fan base, a seven-book series and a multi-billion-dollar movie franchise later, we’re still here. We scroll through our HP Tumblr pages and favorite Potter fan-fiction sites in between movie marathons and re-reading the novels for the thousandth time. We visit the theme parks and single-handedly keep Universal Studios afloat by spending way too much money on wands, cloaks and souvenirs (butterbeer--YUM). We would do everything and anything to keep the magic alive. And now, nine years after the release of the final Harry Potter book, we’ve been given the gift that we thought would never come. We get one more story.

“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, released July 31st, is the product of a collaboration between J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne. It is the 8th story in the Harry Potter series and picks up exactly where Deathly Hallows leaves off, 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Unlike its predecessors, it isn’t a novel from the pen of the great J.K. herself; instead, it is a slightly different medium, being the rehearsal edition script of the play premiering in London in the following months. Of course, this, and several other key differences between the novels and the latest edition to the Potter franchise, has gotten a sect of the fan-base in total disarray. Fans are raging at the fact that it’s

not a book, despite everyone involved with its promotion, including J.K. Rowling, being completely straightforward about the nature of the story.

(I mean, she used hashtags and everything! Come on people, how do you miss that?)

I’ll admit, the new format did take some adjustment. If you’re anything like me, you’ll go through a period during the first scenes of wanting to disavow everything Potter and feel both frustrated and angry as well as nostalgic for the days of the true novels. However, soon, you’ll get caught up in the story as always, you won’t even notice the format difference. You’ll be laughing and squealing, oohing and awe-ing, turning the pages quicker than your fingers can possibly manage. Without a second of hesitation, you’ll be right back in the Harry Potter universe we know and love... that’s if you’re like me.

Of course, there always has to be an ending. It’s that last page which always gets us, the one we never want to come to but know we’ll eventually have to turn. At the end of this story, when the final line is delivered and the scene fades out, a very familiar feeling falls upon you. It's the same feeling we get after staying up until 4 a.m. finishing books 1-7 the same night as their in-store midnight release parties even though we had school early the next morning. It's the incredible feeling of being immersed in a fantasy world that we've been able to call home and delight in the new twists and turns it develops with each new chapter. But something is different this time... it's not that it's a play or that it's not written word for word by our favorite author and it's definitely not that we didn't enjoy the story. No, it's that, this time, the end is definite.

With the end of every other story there was an unspoken promise of a sequel or a movie; a future, something more to hold onto. But with this one, that promise isn't there. The promises have been fulfilled seven times over and then some by granting us a generation’s worth of magic and mischief for which we are eternally grateful, but that doesn’t stop the inevitable sadness from setting in when we realize the story is over. There will always be the child in us that wants to hear Rowling say, “just kidding guys, book #9 will be hitting stores in December”, but we know the truth deep in our hearts. The reality is that all good things must come to an end, even the best ones (Dumbledore must have said that once, or something similar, right?).

The Cursed Child was as magical as every other Harry Potter tale and as a true Potterhead, I’m sure I’ll be reading it for a second time by the end of the week. For now, I’ll say my goodbyes to the series that captured all of our muggle hearts, and leave you with this:

"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light." - Albus Dumbledore