Why grown-up muggles should read 'Harry Potter'

Aspiring writer David Busis shares how reading the book was an all-consuming experience

I started reading the “Harry Potter” series, which turned 20 on Monday, in a dormitory in Hod HaSharon, Israel, alongside about two dozen other teenage muggles who had flown (by plane) from the United States. I’d completely succumbed to Potter hysteria at a friend’s urging even before I’d read the books, so the night before I left, I hadn’t hesitated to make room for the first four of them, all in hardback, by tossing out an extra pair of pants. Who needed pants? I wanted a good story.

Time on that trip had the magical quality of a “Harry Potter”