A muggle's take on "the boy who lived"

It’s the end for all of us, face it, there shall not be Harry Potter books any more. We, who have shared the agony and ecstasy of the boy-wizard, are feeling hollow. The realisation is dawning upon us, like a slow and painstaking eventuality.
Unlike most potter-maniacs, I have been introduced to the Potter books quite late. I still remember the occasion, my sister was preparing for her first semester, and yours truly had been trying to help her through the long night. However, as everybody knows, undergraduate minds need some precious hours to attend to themselves. Those hours were my first glimpses into the world of wizardry, based on a borrowed book from our next-door neighbour! I was a little apprehensive about the phenomenon called Harry Potter, perhaps a little high-brow about the stuff that the book might contain. By the time I reached the middle of the first book, gone were the prudish feeling of all-knowing foolhardiness. It was like an epiphany, I had completed five of the Potter books in the next five days. The rest is history.
What amazes me about these books is the élan with which the pagan world has been combined with basic Christian values, the inner contradiction inherent in the structure actually works as the strength of the entire work, and let me add that it would not have been possible without the Polyjuice potion of Mrs Rowling’s brilliant imagination.

Thank you, Mrs Rowling, for all these years.

Like a foggy evening in a winter town here goes my serenade to you

I once walked by the river of Lethe

And found it cool; and gentle too,

I wanted to wet my palm

With its water and remember you!

Through young autumn's hue, I looked afar,

There was no star in the sunny sky, 

'Silly of me', I thought and smiled

When the mighty river shimmered and went dry.

I wanted to run from the place

Haunted by the guilt that bit into me

You, the baby of night, shot me down straight

And when I was dead, laughed in glee.

All was lost, or so it seemed,

When you found my palm wet with blood;

Then you shrieked and forgot your way

For the river came back and cooked you a flood. 

Diamonds and rust

It was two years ago that a pencil-thin boy felt quite apprehensive about his first day at a certain management school. With almost an air of cynic desperation he entered through the main gate. There were unknown faces all over the place and, worse, faces brimming with corporate confidence. Tentative and a little coy, he was determined not to show his irritation to his classmates, and quite contrary to his habit, gave himself away to the Band-wagon effect. In his heart though, he knew the futility of it all, and like a reeling tail-ender, surrendered his plastic reality to the terrifying fast bowler. Only in his case, it was a sudden impulse to throw it all away in a moment.

Suddenly, with a blast of raw verse, friends started to pour in. Tathagata and Chandreyi, they are among the best things that happened to me! Unadulterated adda sessions took the place of hard-hitting crap of management studies, safe and sweet corner of the canteen seemed like our destiny for the rest of eternity.

Now, let us get back to the present progressive, we are going through our last phase of exams, and, after it, who knows! Some friends will go to the top, with insatiable ambition; some will rue their misfortune, and I, the joker, will see everything through the stained looking-glass of an incurable cynic!

It feels bad now that everything is over. Something is lurking beneath the merriment. May be, it is the shadow of the memory of those classes I never did attend, or, perhaps, it is the dark corner of our canteen!

You can’t help some things. Miles to go before I sleep, and, miles to go before I sleep.