Yesterday morning, Mister Oh So Blase about the new Harry Potter movie woke up with a start: "What time is it?" he screamed from his bedroom.

We told him the time (it was 12:30 p.m. or so, his usual weekend hour of wake up) and he told us that he needed to go out to get advanced tickets for the 7p.m. show of "Harry Potter and the Goblets of Fire." at the Pavillion.

Actually, he asked Husband, and then me, if we wanted to go out and get him a ticket. But we declined.

On Saturday night, he and his friends had tried to get into the 7 p.m. show and it was sold out. So he was determined to get in Sunday night, as his desire to see the new movie had risen to a fever pitch.

The mattter of advanced tickets was settled when word came, via cell phone, that his friend’s mother was picking up a ticket for him. A flurry of phone calls followed, "Are you going to the movie? Okay. See you there." and "You going to the movie tonight? Good. See you later…"

A plan was in place. Advanced tickets had been secured. Things were progressing in a postitive direction.

When he came home from the movie I was already reading in bed. He poked his head through my bedroom door: "Mom, do you know where all my Harry Potter books are?"

I told him to look in all the obvious places. They used to have an honored spot on the top row of his bookcase but they’d apparently moved on. I’d forgotten how after seeing each movie, Son usually wanted to  re-read the book, sometimes more than one book. Following the third movie he was so outraged by how much had been left out that he wanted to savor those missing parts.

But this time was different. I could tell that he’d thoroughly enjoyed the movie. "It put me in a Harry Potter mood. I need all my books," he said. Eventually he found them in various bookcase around the house. He was also starving. In all the excitement to see the movie, he’d forgotten to have dinner. We were all out when he left so he missed our family meal.

"Can you make me something to eat," he asked. I agreed figuring I might get some interesting insight into why he liked this film so much better than the last. "I always knew that the fourth one would make a great movie," he said. "J.K. Rowling wrote it right after the first movie came out and it’s very cinematic. There’s mystery, flashbacks, a lot of action. I somehow knew this one would be good."

I watched the eggs carefully; my son likes them perfectly sunny-side-up. "There was almost no Quidditch in the movie," he added, the only negative he had to say. He thought they did a good job of not leaving anything out. And, according to him, it wasn’t really very violent at all despite what the reviews said. "Some guy cuts his hand off but it goes by really fast." 

Son ate his fried egg sandwich in his bedroom with the fourth book lying open on his chest. There were books from the bookcase all over the floor.  He seemed eager to get back to his reading. We urged him to go to bed as he needs to be up bright and early to take the subway to school. But being in a Harry Potter kind of mood, he might just not be able to stop reading until he gets to the end. Even if it is over 500 pages long.