Disclaimer: This is going to be free of spoilers, so if you haven’t read the series and have somehow managed the impossible task of steering clear of Potter spoilers for 14 years, feel free to continue reading. (But, um, what are you doing with your life? Drop the APUSH! Burn the Bio! Potter is more important!)

For months, I had planned to attend the final premiere on July 15 with a few friends. We began stalking Ticketmaster and Yahoo! Movies months in advance, pouncing on the tickets the day they were available for purchase.

But as we bought tickets to a Harry Potter premiere for the last time, reality began to sink in. This was it. This was the final one. There would be no more thrill of anticipation, no more tears as the last credits rolled.

It symbolized the end of an era, the end of an entire generation’s childhood, and in all honesty I dreaded July 15 much more than I willed it closer. (It certainly didn’t help that all my favorite Internet haunts suddenly began emitting mass amounts of Potter nostalgia. I’m tearing your childhood apart, piece by agonizing piece, the looming calendar seemed to mock. Cry, because you have an embarrassing amount of feelings for a fictional universe! Cry, because this is the emotional equivalent of helplessly watching your own puppy drown! Cry!)

When the date finally came, I was A.) ridiculously sleep-deprived because I’d spent the past 20 hours marathon-ing the first seven movies, B.) ridiculously sad because of all the aforementioned reasons (and also because I couldn’t figure out how to make my Dobby ears attach), and C.) ridiculously hungry, just because.

And although we got to the theater nine hours in advance, we were somehow still shunted behind several hundred people who had probably slept there overnight. (Sorry, do I still sound bitter? Guess what? I AM.)

Frankly, though, the hours leading up to the movie were probably the highlight of my entire summer. Watching the mall fill up with legions of overenthusiastic fans in die-hard costumes filled me with a sense of unmistakable camaraderie, despite the fact that I had never spoken to any of them. There were Dobbies. There were Weasleys. There were Umbridges, Dumbledores, and Snitches galore. There were groups of Death Eaters, one of which I thought had legitimately terrifying costumes until mall security made them take their masks off and grumpy-looking teenagers slurping Starbucks emerged. There were Bellatrixes, Malfoys, and a couple of people who tried in vain to conceal their noses and pass as Voldemort. There may even have been a Hagrid, although I’m still not sure if he was a guy in costume or just an abnormally large and hairy man.

And, because it was our very last time, my friends and I completely threw dignity to the winds and ran down the halls hollering after costumed strangers we wanted pictures with. Yeah, we received plenty of funny looks (“Kids these days,” clucked an old lady judgmentally as we bypassed her on our sprint to a particularly well-made Dumbledore, and it made my night)—but the payoff was so worth all the stares that came our way. I now have dozens of photos of us smiling with strangers we’ll never know beyond what wonderful costume they wore to the final Harry Potter premiere, and I regret absolutely nothing.

As for the movie itself? Well, I’ll let you form your own opinions on it. My own reaction, however, was nicely summed up by my friend’s Facebook comment: “Honestly, Jackie flooded the theater with her tears and all I could hear was her blubbering. It was great.”

It was the aftermath of the movie that really got to me, though. For a few days I refused to leave the house, rereading the books and wallowing in despair. Eventually, I resumed my lurking of the Internet and was forced to return to day-to-day life. But it was only when I picked up on fanfiction (don’t lie; I know you read it too) that I sincerely realized—Harry Potter will never be over. Our generation of youths, transformed by the truly magical power of fiction, will never stop dreaming and scheming about the world that really isn’t fictional for us.

So while we’ve been given a temporary sense of closure, it isn’t really ending. When I am eighty years old, sitting in an armchair and rereading my tattered copy of Deathly Hallows for the umpteenth time, my grandchildren will ask me, After all this time? And I will reply, Always.