Pottermania Magic

It seems that the past month has been filled by talk of the last installment of the Harry Potter series. I tend to dislike the mainstream zeitgeist more and more as the buzz increases, and my mind instructed me to muster up some ennui to deal with the maelstorm that is the Deathly Hallows. I told myself that:

A. I am too cheap to pay for a book that I would probably only read once.
B. It is not worth requesting it from my local library, as there were 396 people ahead of me with requests.
C. I was going to find out the plot twists ahead of time, no matter when I got my hands on it.

So I was resigned to getting the book in about a year when Pottermania died down. However, a stroke of luck more blinding than an Avada Kedavra curse hit me on the day of the book's release. I had to drop off a book at my library, and happened to get there right before it opened. I saw the coveted book there, under the heading of "Rental Books", which I then remembered cannot be reserved. I grabbed, without having to push away any teenagers in faux-Potter robes and glasses, the last available copy. All of a sudden, I was cool. I had it. I saw the envious look of the hordes of patrons filing into the library. I walked outside with the cover turned outward, as if to say, "See this? You won't get it for a year, sucker!" But then I thought I may get jumped, much like a inner-city teen with cool sneakers. People wanted this book, and I didn't know to what lengths they would go. So I now hid the cover, and if asked, was prepared to say it was Moby Dick, Ulysses, or some other voluminous tome. I quickly came up with a plan if I were found out. I would turn to the last pages and threaten to spoil the ending for any would-be thief...that would repel them. Long story short, I didn't have any problems, but I vowed to get my money's worth, and plow through the final installment so as to incur the least amount of charges for the rental as possible. Rowling makes this pretty easy, it turns out, and it helps that she writes in a breezy, page-turning way. Face it, this isn't Hawkings' "A Brief History of Time." But don't get me wrong, that's a good thing. I finished the book on Sunday, the day after it came out, and the whole serendipitous affair cost me all of 25 cents. Now, how's that for magical?