Harry Potter.

For some reason I had the goal this break to read through all the Harry Potter books. I practically grew up reading the books but I realized that I had not read them in a while. So I decided to read them all. I am a fast reader so it really was not a problem. The only thing that was a bummer was that I could not find the third book. So technically, I did not read that one. It took me only two days to get through the last two books. I stayed in my room 12 hours. Just reading.

I know. I'm a nerd. And I'm ok with that. But I feel like I have learned some valuable lessons from this series.

1. Play to your strengths. Harry faced dragons on his broomstick because that was what he was good at. He did not need some fancy spell to trick the dragon. He did what he was best at.

2. Don't give up hope. Ginny never gave up hope that Harry might one day like her back. She moved on and dated other people but through this she just became more comfortable around Harry and then he realized he liked who she was. There's always hope.

3. You make your own choices. Sometimes we can not determine our circumstances but we can choose how we respond to them. Harry could have been sorted into Slytherin but he asked to be put into Gryffindor. Multiple times throughout the series he could have just chosen not to act. But he always wanted to. He always chose to do the right thing.

4. Friendships always last when they are forged fighting a troll. I think it is our friends that get us through the tough times in life. Harry, Hermione and Ron became great friends after the troll incident. Sure, there were times when they didn't speak to each other because of jealousy but in the end, they only had each other. And in reality, when will we ever fight trolls but maybe there's a metaphor somewhere in there.

And last,

5. Love wins. Dumbledore continually tried to stress this to Harry but he did not get the extent of what that means. The Dark Lord could not love anyone and therefore thought it was irrelevant. But Harry was saved because the love of his mom, Harry was protected by this throughout the series so much so that the Dark Lord was not able to touch him. And sometimes love can even be found in friendship or showing mercy.

Lately, I'm having a hard time breaking up with this series since I am going to have to enter reality soon and go back to classes and clinicals and work and obstacles. And really, I do not think that I would want to go to Hogwarts. All that magic would just get annoying. I'm ok with doing things the old fashioned way.