Unpacking Potter ... Photograph: Mark A Genito/PA
10.30 pm Right. The adrenaline is surging. I'm off to catch my cab. The race is on! - although when I do get to Waterstone's, I'll have to twiddle my thumbs till zero hour. Pah. I wonder if there'll be owls.
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Dear God. No cabs to be had. Public transport is hideous on a Friday night. I fight my way through to the staff entrance of the Piccadilly Waterstones. The press are milling like ill-tempered jackals. 'Who's that? Why do they get to go in first?' 'CNN'. 'Oh, they're American - of course they're MUCH more important than us.' Huge, baying cries go up intermittently from the unseen crowds round the corner. The harassed staff spirit me away to a dark, deserted lecture room with a couple of other journalists and instructions to stay put. Five minutes past twelve and we're handed our treasures and instructed to leave as discreetly as possible. I take a wrong turn and run the terrifying gauntlet of photographers and screaming fans directly outside the main exit.
******************* 1.35 am p.57 On the tube home, I whip out my hard-won trophy. Opening page graced with a quotation from Aeschylus and one from William Penn, both about death. I find this slightly pretentious, so read on at speed - some deliciously evil behaviour and an early Avada Kedavra from Ol' Snake Eyes, but points off for introducing a new character solely to kill her. Harry leaves the Dursleys; oddly touching, as fat old Dudley behaves almost nicely for the first time in his ten-year existence. The Order has been infiltrated! Everyone is paranoid! Everyone is Harry, courtesy of Polyjuice, that old standby! Lots of sky-high cursing action follows, with Harry's 'saving people thing' well to the fore. First lip-wobbling moment of the evening - Hedwig is killed.
**************** 2.00 am p.94 Phew. After all that botheration, I'm finally settled with my tepid coffee, sipping at distasteful intervals, gripped by the racing pace of Chapters 5 and 6. Now Harry and Hagrid, bloody but unbowed, wait anxiously for the other members of the Order to reconvene at a new safe house. George arrives with a gory wound ('The side of his head and neck were drenched in wet, shockingly scarlet blood') - an ear cursed off permanently by the turncoat Snape. The exuberant Weasley twins will no longer be identical! This upsets me far more than the death of Mad-Eye Moody, who was in any case a highly unaesthetic object and spent too much time locked in his own trunk for me to feel a rapport. Harry's wand's strange behaviour - shooting golden flames without prior orders - causes controversy. Mrs Weasley is obsessed with Bill and Fleur's wedding, and orders the Golden Trio round unmercifully, refusing to believe that Dumbledore could have left them marching orders from beyond the grave. But Hermione, never one to do things by halves, has modified her parents' memories, renamed them and sent them to Australia so that she can go off and find Horcruxes with Harry. This reminds me why I like Hermione. I need a fresh brew.
************************** 2.44 am. p 134 Harry comes of age. Ron's present is a self-help book - 'Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches'. I snort cold coffee when I read the sentence 'It's not all about wandwork, either'. I have a dirty mind. The designated brew-meister returns from the pub, pickled to the gills and carrying a shopping basket full of beer. I shout at him to go away, as Harry and Ginny's unresolved sexual tension is making me feel snappy, and he has not brought the Red Bull I requested. The Trio encounter the dastardly Minister, Scrimgeour, who has been withholding Dumbledore's bequests to them in the hope of extracting information. Harry has a nice line in adolescent wizardly rebelliousness: ''You may wear that scar like a crown, Potter, but it is not up to a seventeen-year-old boy to tell me how to do my job! It's time you learned some respect!' 'It's time you earned it,' said Harry.' Kapow! Take that, Voldemort-denier! Bill and Fleur get married. Fleur's Veela foxiness spreads to everyone around her. I get quite choky at this point, having always had a soft spot for long-haired, earring-wearing Bill ('...and once Fleur had reached him, Bill did not look as though he had ever met Fenrir Greyback.')
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3.09am p.185 Things have hotted up no end. The wedding ends in consternation, with Kingsley Shacklebolt's lynx Patronus delivering a dire message: 'The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.' I feel a genuine prickle of dread. Harry, Ron and Hermione make tracks for Tottenham Court Road; Hermione, the original Girl Guide, has the Invisibility Cloak, changes of clothing and books 'stacked by subject' in her little beaded evening bag. I love Hermione. But they are still attacked by Death Eaters in a late-night greasy spoon. My sense of ubiquitous danger intensifies. I resist the urge to turn to the last page. Holed up at Grimmauld Place, Harry discovers more tantalising half-facts about Dumbledore - it seems the old wizard might not, after all, have been 'as white as his beard'. Grappling with doubt and fear, he lashes out at Lupin, who is planning to abandon his wife and child; for the first time, he sees 'the shadow of the wolf' upon Lupin's human face. Kreacher has a clue to the whereabouts of the locket Horcrux - a trail which leads straight to the toadlike Umbridge. And Voldemort has begun his campaign to weed out Muggle-borns, with a decree that only children with verified Blood Status can now attend Hogwarts. I'm breathing shallowly with impatience. So many Horcruxes! So little time!
********************** 4.00 am p.234
Oh for goodness' sake. My bladder is sending me Howlers, but I don't want to move or stop reading. The book is not helping. 'Harry hurried up the stairs to the hall and...dashed into the bathroom', 'Feeling exceptionally foolish, Harry clambered into the toilet.' Curses! The Ministry of Magic under Voldemort is perfectly terrifying. The Atrium is now graced by a statue of a witch and wizard sitting proud upon the tortured forms of thousands of Muggles, over the grim legend MAGIC IS MIGHT. Intimidating in Order of the Phoenix, now it's reminiscent of Miniluv, all silent corridors and well-like courtrooms lined with Dementors which affect only the accused. And Umbridge is just too, too, deliciously horrid. How dare she steal Moody's eye and mount it on her office door! How dare she claim a Horcrux as a family heirloom, and paper her walls with sickening kittens and doilies! And there is something about the little pink Post-It (duly embellished with kitten) that has been stuck to Harry's picture - 'To be punished' - which puts me squarely in our angry young hero's shoes. I'm so indignant I've almost forgotten about my bladder. The Trio break out a crowd of Muggle-borns from the Ministry, and seize the Horcrux. But Grimmauld Place is infiltrated, and Ron has Splinched himself. Harry is still getting disturbing visions of You-Know-How. Why is Voldemort torturing an old wandmaker? Find out in the next exciting instalment!
*********** 5.00 am p.314
They're on the run, they're on the run. And the Horcrux is making them grumpy. And Ron, bless him, is 'used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves', hunger making him 'both unreasonable and irascible'. The fact that Hermione is 'getting better at identifying edible fungi' is scant consolation for their cold, miserable, imperilled state of incommunicado. Ron buggers off. Hermione and Harry go to Godric's Hollow. It's Christmas Eve, and Harry sees his parents' graves for the first time. A bleak moment, worsened by the advent of a mad old woman who turns out to be Nagini in disguise. Triple whammy of failure - Voldemort obtains a vital picture, they don't kill the snake, and worst of all, Harry's wand is broken. In the real world, a pigeon has just started 'vroo-crooing', and it's light outside. I cannot drink any more caffeine. But things are looking up for Harry. A mysterious silver doe leads Harry to the sword of Godric Gryffindor, and Ron, reappearing, succeeds in destroying the Horcrux. Hermione punches him repeatedly to demonstrate her pleasure at his return. I love Hermione.
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6.00am p.438
The excitement is mounting. Our magical pals have met Xenophilius Lovegood (father of the more famous Luna) and learned the secret of the Deathly Hallows, one of which is an unbeatable wand (so that's what Voldemort was after. I can't help but feel that JK Rowling's usual happy knack with names deserted her when she decided to call this important object the Deathstick.) The Trio have also been captured by Death Eaters, rescued by Dobby (who falls in the attempt), enlisted the aid of a cynical goblin and broken into Gringotts. And stolen Helga Hufflepuff's cup. And escaped. On the back of a dragon. I am SO weary. But the dreadful knowledge that at least two deaths are yet to come is forcing me onwards. And I'm still enjoying myself. The moment when Harry notices a mural of the Trio, Ginny and Neville in Luna's bedroom, linked by what appear to be fine golden chains, and realises that they're made up of 'one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends...friends...friends...' makes me feel, as he does, 'a great rush of affection for Luna'.
**************** 7.00am p.512
We return finally to Hogwarts, where it's all gonna go down. In Hogsmeade, we're lucky enough to meet Aberforth, Dumbledore's goaty brother. It seems only right that he should be working as a gratuitously bearded barman in the Hog's Head. More of Dumbledore's not-so-spotless past is revealed - but Harry has decided to trust the maddening old man once and for all. The appearance of Neville, battle-scarred, newly cynical, still infectiously good-natured, cheers me up and distracts me from my arid contact lenses, as does the fact that with Armageddon imminent, Ginny still takes the time to hiss Cho away from Harry. Excited to see Ravenclaw's common room for the first time, too. All the teachers are finally on Harry's side - apart, obviously, from Mr Greasy-Haired Git himself - and there's a perverse thrill in Minerva McGonagall's saying 'we duel to kill' to Slughorn. I can hear the martial music. It could just be the hallucinations of extreme fatigue. But Percy Weasley's back! 'I was... a fool, an idiot, a pompous prat!' Yes, you were, Percy, but we love you for realising it. All the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws get up and stand silently in front of Harry when pug-faced Pansy Parkinson wants to hand him over to Voldemort. This is pure cinema! And now they've got the diadem and Hermione's snogged Ron for standing up for elf rights! My euphoria is abruptly punctured by Fred Weasley's death.
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8.00 am THE END - SOME SPOILERS (NOT ALL!)
Who'll run Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes now? I feel mournful. I was fond of the symmetrical red-headed scamps, and now one has no ear and the other is dead. But Professor McGonagall screaming 'CHARGE!' with her hair coming down perks me up again. Through bleary eyes, I perceive that Neville is fighting with destructive herbs, and Professor Trelawney with crystal balls which she whacks at people with her wand. Gargoyles are exploding to left and right; there are fatal curses flying everywhere. Oh no! Snape has been killed by the Dark Lord! But I was fond of Snape! So he was evil after all. No, maybe he wasn't. Ugh. I feel queasy with lack of sleep. Must have resolution. Remus and Tonks are dead. The new baby with multi-coloured hair has no parents. Tears prickle, but the first and last point at which I actually cry is for poor greasy miserable Snape in love with Lily, smiling when she says his name and crying over her letter when she's dead. I was going to give away the ending, but I'm in no fit state to do it justice. It's a good ending. I recommend it. But right now I have a fixed appointment with the closest thing to a Gryffindor four-poster I can find. A fond goodbye, then, to the Boy Who Lived to keep me up all night.
