Dear Ms. Rowling... Jo:

I never realized how much your books meant to me until I came to the very last page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had enjoyed them immensely, hanging on every word. I read the first on loan from the library, and the next three borrowed from a friend. It wasn't until the fifth that I became totally engrossed.

I was spending the summer with another friend who had to read regularly as a school assignment. When he started his first daily hour, I thought to join him in his "sentence" away from other summer fun, and picked up his recently-purchased copy of Order of the Phoenix. Each day, I read for an hour, until soon I couldn't contain myself to just that one. Any time I had free was spent with my nose deep between those pages.

I started my personal waiting game only with the sixth book, so I spent fewer years than some under the spell you cast on so many. When Half-Blood Prince came out, I had my Amazon preorder and received the book on the day of release. With great care, I took two weeks to finish it, and tried mightily to avoid any spoilers before I finished (I succeeded). But then the wait for the final chapters.

Again, I preordered my copy from Amazon, five months before release, and it arrived on time. Deathly Hallows took me eight days, sneaking whatever time I could away from other matters. It stands with Order of the Phoenix as my favorite of your series. Unfortunately, this time a spoiler did come to me, but as the pages that they concerned approached and passed, what I had heard didn't change how much I loved your storytelling.

Tonight I read at least the final two hundred pages of the book, and as I saw the paper on the right dwindle down, I felt the end approaching. I'd like to say it weighed more heavily with each turn, but it didn't -- instead, when I found myself first looking at the final page, the end of the entire run of Harry Potter, the gravity and finality hit me quite suddenly, and I could not stop from crying all at once. It took me a few minutes to even open my eyes, and then I was ready to read the end, through the tears. Once it was done, I needed to write to you, to add my testimony and thanks to those of your millions of fans.

I don't know if this will ever reach you, Jo, but thank you. With a force I didn't know I'd feel for Harry Potter until ten or fifteen minutes ago, thank you!

May you receive back even the slightest fraction of what you have brought to your fans, for even the tiniest shard of that happiness would empower any person through life's Dementors.

One of your many fans,
David Kuhne