Until last week, I had never read a word of Harry Potter. Not so much as a trailer for one of the movies has ever crossed my screen. Considering that I’ve worked in entertainment and media for over a decade, that might seem surprising. But it’s not as though I’ve run screaming from 19 years worth of furious output from J.K. Rowling. The whole thing just never interested me. Why would I pick up — much less obsess over — children’s books?

The truth is that for years, not participating in Potter mania felt like a relief. It left me time for other things — you know, like high school and college. Even when I was no longer reading books for class, there were so many others I wanted to thumb through: moody New York novels, or old classics I’d long pretended to have read. Choosing not to delve into a seven-part series about wizard children — a population in which I’ve never had the slightest interest — was a no-brainer. It still is.

When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out, I was 15. A friend of mine started reading the books with her little brother, who was 9 at the time. My brother was older and still dug The Lord of the Rings books. I thought The Hobbit was pretty cool in seventh grade, but I was in high school now. The Hogwarts kids weren’t even on my radar.

When I got to college, though, I realised the craze reached further than I had thought. A group of my older friends, some of them fellow English majors, had caught wizardry fever big time. On top of the thousands of pages our professors piled on, they still made time for Potter.

“Seriously, they’re meant for grownups!” one might insist. “So are adult diapers,” I’d respond.

These are smart people. I never judged them for pre-ordering their copies of the latest release and staying up all night to tear through the story in one sitting. But I simply did not believe. Nothing could be that good, I thought. An all-nighter for the sake of binge-reading instead of beating a deadline was unthinkable to me. (These are also the same friends who’d lay down their lives for Joss Whedon, another obsession that’s beyond me.) We were just wired differently; I accepted that.