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Growing up, every night before bed, my mom read the Harry Potter books to me. This nighttime ritual of ours grew into a tradition that has been passed down through each of my siblings and has come to be a unifying factor in our family. Over the past couple of years, if I strolled through the living room at just the right time, I could catch a snippet of my mother’s soothing voice recounting the tales of Harry, Ron and Hermione or hear the animated gasps of my two youngest siblings, Noah and Reggie, as they listened in rapture. It was in those moments that I could travel the distance back to my childhood in a split second. Suddenly I’m seven years old again—scurrying into my pink-doused bedroom, worn blue security blanket rippling in my pudgy hands, bouncing into a nest of pillows as my mom cracks open our copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (SPOILERS AHEAD).
