My daughter and I have tickets to opening night of the final installment of Harry Potter Thursday. The kids have gone on opening night before; this will be a first for me. We’ll see part one and part two back to back. It seemed right to do it. Paige, my youngest, heads off to college this fall.

I don’t know how my kids would have grown up without being able to do it alongside Harry Potter. Ours is a happy house, overall, one that often looks like the Weasley’s burrow, although my clock doesn’t keep very good track of the kids and I must wash dishes myself.

But their world has become a dark and scary place more than once, and there were times it seemed only the wisdom in those pages got them through.

When love didn’t go as planned, there was Harry and Ginny, and Ron and Hermoine, to remind them that respect and friendship comes first.

After their father died suddenly — and they felt all alone knowing that no one else in their world knew what they knew — along came Luna, who reassured them that she sees the thestrals, too.

And when the mother-of-all-battles came home to burn the burrow and destroy the school, they recognized how to sort the world into the truly courageous and those who can only feign bravery.

I doubt, actually, I could have communicated to Sam what is needed to get through the next few years without those final chapters.

Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for being there for my kids when all I had left to offer was the wisdom of the best coming-of-age story ever told.