Growing up Harry

When Candice Dobson was 9 years old, she was slightly worried that a face might start growing out of the back of her head.

She had just read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling, and the possession plotline at the end of the book had her confused and a little frightened.

Now 16 and a junior in high school, the Crest Hill resident knows why a face -- Lord Voldemort's face, to be exact -- grew out of the back of a man's head. She knows, obviously, that it can't happen to her.

Dobson is "utterly addicted" to Harry Potter. At her previous school, she was in a Harry Potter club. Her books are falling apart from carrying them around with her and re-reading them so often. She's been on a waiting list for the seventh book for four months now, and hopes to attend a midnight-release party in full costume. For four years in a row, she dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween.

She's a frequent presence in the online HP community, and is working on her own piece of fan fiction called "Ellie Potter and the Hall of Destiny." ("I decided Harry should have an older sister.") And, she can do a spot-on Hermione impression.

Dobson is just one member of the Potter generation. These are the kids who wore middle school graduation robes as Gryffindor cloaks and carved wands out of sticks from their backyards. They cast makeshift spells and pretended to brew Polyjuice Potion after school. They "flew" on their moms' brooms and played Quidditch in their neighborhoods, using one person as a human snitch and two others as bludgers.

They've been there since the first book, before J.K. Rowling was a household name and before Harry Potter's image was on billboards and lunch boxes. They've grown up with Harry, coming of age right alongside the boy wizard.

So perhaps no one will suffer more than them when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final book in Rowling's best-selling series, is published July 21.