BRAINERD DISPATCH

It’s never too late to make your first Hogwarts visit

By JOHN HANSEN

NOV. 23, 2006

I recently asked a Brainerd substitute teacher if she was a “Harry Potter” fan.

“Yeah,” she said, “but I’ve only read them once.”

It’s a necessary qualifier. To read the books five times each — buying paperback copies for scribbled annotations, while keeping those hardcovers pristine — is to be a true “Harry Potter” fan. To read them once is to scrape by in the gutter of pop-culture awareness.

To not know who Harry Potter is is to have lived in a cave for the last decade (if that’s you, say hi to Sirius for me). “Potter” is challenging “Star Wars” for ubiquitousness.

Despite its continued cultural impact, 2006 wasn’t a big year for the franchise: This is the only year since 1998 without a new “Potter” book or film (the first four tomes have been adapted, with “Order of the Phoenix” up next in July). But it was a big “Harry Potter” year for me, as I finally read the six books (J.K. Rowling is currently writing Book 7, which will conclude the series).

To read the “Potter” books is to like them. Granted, “Sorcerer’s Stone” can be trudge-worthy and “Chamber of Secrets” is essentially a beefed-up rewrite of “Stone.” But by the time you get to “Prisoner of Azkaban,” Rowling has cast an Imperius Curse with her words.

Rowling combines a professional’s crisp writing with a child’s sense of wonder. You’ll find the books in the young adult section at the Brainerd Public Library, but you won’t get a funny look from the librarian if you check them out. All the kids have their own copies, anyway.

But unlike other famous initialed fantasy writers, Rowling asks nothing from the reader other than to read; she takes us by the hand and brings us into her world. The makers of last year’s “Chronicles of Narnia” film had to dream up the final battle sequence themselves because the description in C.S. Lewis’s novel was so sparse.

The “Potter” series demands to be read a second time not because Rowling’s writing is hard to understand. Rather, the repeat-reading pull comes from her made-up world’s richness — the surface description is so engaging that you can’t be bothered to seek out the Book 7 foreshadowing the first time around.

Even before meeting Rowling’s characters, you practically know them from their evocative names. Dumbledore is a wise, kind and quirky headmaster; Snape has a fuse shorter than his charges’ attention spans; Umbridge is a horror of a new teacher; and Scrimgeour is a prime minister worth keeping a wary eye on. Professor Sprout, naturally, teaches Herbology.

While we already have a base knowledge of wizards, witches, dragons and giants, Rowling expands our Muggle minds by introducing us to hippogriffs (a half-horse, half-bird), thestrals (which can only be seen by someone who has witnessed a death) and blast-ended skrewts (a favorite creature of Hagrid’s, although his students would rather work with bowtruckles).

Harry, Ron and Hermione undergo life-or-death adventures every year at Hogwarts, but Rowling — who usually writes in third person over Harry’s shoulder — still portrays them as teens (they age from 11 to 17 in the series). Ron is often stuffing his face with potatoes or pudding, Hermione always has her nose in a reference book and Harry has difficulty multi-tasking — don’t ask him to simultaneously study his Quidditch playbook and remember that he won a vial of Felix Felicis from Professor Slughorn the previous semester.

By the time I got to “Half-Blood Prince,” the most recent tome, I found myself charging through it in one weekend, breaking only for meals (which I frustratingly prepared the old-fashioned way, rather than conjuring a gourmet feast by waving a wand).

I admit to a giggle when a certain pair of sixth-years hooked up and to a contemplative pause when another character’s allegiance was revealed (or was it?) with a horrifying act.

Now, when I listen to the weekly Muggle Cast at www.mugglenet.com, sure, I chuckle a bit at the “Potter”-heads’ absurdly in-depth half-hour character analysis of Luna Lovegood. These guys are so obsessed that they put out a book called “What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7,” and I have no doubt that all the answers are indeed in there.

But I’m not poking fun at them. Instead, I wish I had a voice for radio (maybe Hermione can recommend a potion) so I could join in the next Muggle Cast.

I’m not ready yet, though, because I’ve only read the books once. So far.