Ten years ago tonight, the world seemed to hum with magical anticipation. Bookstores were open late. Children and adults were in costume. At midnight, the boxes would open, and the lines would begin to move forward. Readers would begin to learn whether characters who had been in their lives for years would live or die.

This was the night the story of Harry Potter got its ending with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The first Harry Potter book was released in Britain on June 26, 1997, and in the United States the next year. Soon, Harry was nearly as famous in the real world as he was in the fictional world J.K. Rowling created.

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With the fourth volume, the British and American publishers began releasing the books at midnight on the same day. The last volume sold about 10,000,000 copies in the U.S. and Britain its first weekend, by the publishers’ numbers.

Now that all seven volumes of the original story are out, Harry Potter can be read as an integrated masterpiece. But until 2007, it was a series full of open questions, even as to Harry’s survival against Voldemort. The mysteries and the discussions they spawned helped keep people in the Wizarding World, even when they weren’t reading.

So did factors that remain. The theme of love and diversity battling hatred and contempt affirms a strand in the moral culture of our time that has grown even more salient. And the most evocative magical features of Ms. Rowling’s world tap into an individual’s character in ways that let fans express their souls through her creations. To name one’s Boggart or Patronus is to reveal something of oneself.

Those and other Harry Potter references have become remarkably common; “read another book,” some complain. But invoking Harry Potter isn’t quite the same as citing a book one read at one’s own pace in a few hours or weeks. It’s calling on an experience that spanned years, an experience at once deeply personal (as beloved novels always are) and shared (as they rarely are) with millions who were, literally, on the same page, waiting for the next pages to be published. 

For many fans, Harry and his friends were about their own age, growing up, one year per book, at about their own pace. Older fans, too, lived for years with their hopes and fears for their favorite characters. And then came this night. The final pages were placed in readers’ hands. Turning them, fans could at last see their journey with Harry through —“until the very end.”

Enjoyment, adventure, and insight are found in many books. But the magic there was at midnight may never be found again.

First Published July 20, 2017, 4:00 a.m.