Adrian Catalan remembers how, as a little kid, he looked forward to curling up with his dad before bedtime to read about the fantastical adventures of Harry Potter.

Now 15 years old, Adrian said it's one of his best childhood memories.

"Growing up, of all the books I read, that series has been one of my favorites," said Adrian, an 'Iolani School student from Waikele.

Adrian is among millions of Potter fans eager to get their hands on J.K. Rowling's series-ending book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which goes on sale tonight just after midnight.

Like most devotees who have followed Harry for nearly 10 years, Adrian looks forward to flipping through those final pages — and also dreads reading the very last one.

"I would like to see the series continue," said Adrian, who has read the first six books at least twice. "It's sad."

It's a shared sentiment among big-time fans. Many who have followed the books' characters over the course of seven volumes and a decade's worth of anticipation will likely experience a sense of loss, even mourning, said Robert Thompson, professor of pop culture at Syracuse University.

"This really was an important generational phenomenon," Thompson said by phone from New York. "There are kids who barely remember a world without Harry Potter."

For many children, Rowling's books were "an important part of their growing up," Thompson said, because the stories were complex and dealt with a lot of complicated emotions, such as love and grief.

"Some (children), in fact, learned to think about some of these things through these books. That's what good literature does," said Thompson. (In his view, the Potter books are also better written than other best-selling phenomena such as Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code.")

Like Adrian, classmate Claire Mosteller, 15, has warm childhood recollections of Harry Potter story time with her dad; when she was in the second grade, the pair would sit close together on a couch and take turns reading the first book.

"Everyone loves a good fantasy book," said Claire, of Kaimuki. "Excuse my simile, but it (the series) is like a virus. ... (Rowling) knows how to infect her readers."

Youngsters aren't the only ones who got infected with the "Harry Potter" bug.

"This was by no means something that was exclusive to kids, and I think that was part of its appeal," Thompson said. "Kids didn't feel like they were reading a little kid's book, because their parents were grabbing it away from them whenever they got a chance."

For Lois Keener, 59, cozying up with the characters at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was a form of escapism.

"It's fun reading," said Keener, a bookseller and merchandiser from Foster Village. "As an adult, news can be depressing, so it's great to escape from it all at Hogwarts."

Needless to say, Keener won't be a happy camper come the last page of "Deathly Hallows."

"I'm very sad," Keener said. "Very sad."

Thompson, the pop culture professor, counts himself among those bummed there won't be any more books in the series. "But as a 47-year-old, I'm probably going to grieve it a lot less than (kids)," he said. "I mean, I remember what the world was like without Harry Potter. I can go back to that world."

Others may not be able to do that so easily, which isn't unusual, said Doug Schwartzsmith, a psychologist from Kailua.

Great authors draw their readers in with characters and story lines that readers can strongly identify with, which is part of the intrigue, Schwartzsmith said.

"If we're highly identifying (with Harry Potter) after seven books ... and all of a sudden give it the kibosh, it's sort of a sudden ending," Schwartzsmith said.

Schwartzsmith compares grieving the end of Potter to grieving the death of a favorite real-life celebrity.

"You get the same kind of effect with fictional characters," he said.

Schwartzsmith suggests readers who are saddened by the finale discuss their feelings with other fans or, for fun, maybe use their imagination to continue the Potter story on their own.

"Talk with friends (about) what would happen next," Schwartzsmith said.

Also look into new authors and discover new books to fall in love with, he said.

"Despair not," Schwartzsmith said. "Someone will come through for them, I'm sure."

Adrian, the Waikele teen, said he plans to get over his Harry Potter funk by immersing himself in author D.J. MacHale's Pendragon series, which also are fantasy adventure books.

"But the first thing I'll do is probably watch all the (Harry Potter) movies again," said Adrian, who has three younger brothers who also are huge fanatics.

But it isn't the absolute end for Harry Potter fans, Thompson noted.

"Now there's a little bit of a bone thrown to them," Thompson said. "There are still two more movies."

WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD OF HARRY POTTER

HARRY POTTER: Seriously, by now, who DOESN'T know who Harry is? But OK, here we go ... On the cusp of coming of age, Harry has a singular mission: to destroy the evil wizard who killed his parents, James and Lily, and left him an orphaned baby. Since their deaths, Harry has lived with his nonmagical and thoroughly venal relatives, the Dursleys, when he is not at Hogwarts, his magic school. He is currently dealing with the latest death of someone close to him, Albus Dumbledore, the wizard headmaster of Hogwarts. Harry is in love with Ginny Weasley, the sister of one of his best friends, but has stopped seeing her because he doesn't want to endanger her life. In the last book, he's got quite the task ahead of him: Find the pieces of Voldemort's soul and destroy them.

RON WEASLEY: From the moment they met on the train in the first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry and Ron have been friends. If Harry's running headlong into trouble, Ron's usually right there with him. There have been moments of friction, though, since Harry has more fame and more money, the lack of which is sometimes hard for Ron to take. There's romantic tension between Ron and Hermione, but the road to true love has some bumps.

HERMIONE GRANGER: Harry's other best friend, she is by far the smartest student in their class, and extremely gifted in magic. Born to nonmagical parents, Hermione is usually the voice of caution, and tries to keep Harry out of trouble — not that she's successful! But in the end, she's right there in the thick of things. She and Ron have promised Harry that they will be with him on his quest to vanquish Voldemort.

LORD VOLDEMORT: Born to a witch mother and a nonmagical father, Tom Marvolo Riddle was a Hogwarts student before becoming the evil Lord Voldemort, perhaps the most hated Dark wizard ever. Afraid of death, he separated his soul into pieces and hid most of them, so that no one could get rid of him by destroying all the fragments. Some of those pieces have already been destroyed, but Harry has to find the rest. Voldemort is just as determined to destroy Harry.

SEVERUS SNAPE: Whose side is he on? Only J.K. Rowling knows. A teacher at Hogwarts, Snape has always had it in for Harry. But he also convinced none other than Dumbledore that his days working for Voldemort were over, that he had switched to the good side. At the end of Book 6 — "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" — it was Snape who uttered the fatal spell that killed Dumbledore. Did he do it on purpose? Or was he acting on Dumbledore's orders? You can bet it's going to be a major part of the last book.

DRACO MALFOY: Harry's nemesis at Hogwarts, he's always had a thing for the dark side. And no wonder. His father, Lucius, was one of Voldemort's biggest supporters. But Draco couldn't kill Dumbledore, even though Voldemort ordered him to. While Harry still doesn't like him, by Book 6 Harry feels "the tiniest drop of pity" because he knows that Voldemort is making Draco do things under threat of death.

GINNY WEASLEY: The youngest of the Weasley children and the only girl, Ginny has had a thing for Harry since the beginning. She's smart and brave, and understands when Harry tells her they can't be together because he doesn't want anything to happen to her. But Ginny is powerful — just ask her brothers about the strength of some of the spells she's used on them!

THE DURSLEYS: Harry's nonmagical family. Petunia is his aunt, Lily's sister. Vernon is her odious husband, and Dudley is her horrible son. They've never wanted Harry, but they took him in. It had something to do with Dumbledore, and Rowling has said that Petunia has a role to play. Harry must make one final visit to the Dursley house before he sets off to find Voldemort.

THE WEASLEYS: The magical Weasleys are like surrogates to Harry. Arthur and Molly Weasley have taken him in like another child. They have plenty of their own — along with Ron and Ginny, there's Bill, Charlie, Percy (estranged) and the twins Fred and George. A Weasley wedding is coming up, with Bill marrying Fleur Delacour, the girl who competed with Harry in the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE: He may be dead, but that doesn't mean he's not a major character. Harry's mentor for years, Dumbledore died at the end of Book 6, killed by Severus Snape. But as Rowling has said, Dumbledore will only truly be gone when no one is loyal to him. Harry remains Dumbledore's man.

— Deepti Hajela, Associated Press

THE STORY SO FAR: HARRY POTTER 1-6

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (Sept. 1998): Harry Potter is an orphan who has an odd scar on his forehead shaped like a lightning bolt. Harry was orphaned at 1, when the evil Lord Voldemort killed James and Lily Potter and gave Harry his scar while trying to kill him, too. He was raised by the nonmagical Dursleys — his aunt Petunia, her horrible husband Vernon and their rotten son Dudley. They treat Harry badly. Harry learns about his background on his 11th birthday, when Hagrid, groundskeeper at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, pays him a visit. Hogwarts becomes Harry's new school, where he meets friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, and gets a mentor in headmaster Albus Dumbledore. He makes enemies, too: Draco Malfoy and Professor Severus Snape. He discovers talents, like flying. He also learns that Voldemort is around in spirit and trying to get back a physical form. Voldemort is after the Sorcerer's Stone, for its life-enhancing properties, but Harry thwarts him.

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (June 1999): Twelve-year-old Harry wonders why none of his friends have been in touch during the summer. He finds out when he gets a visit from Dobby, a magical house elf owned by the Malfoy family. Dobby has sneaked out to warn Harry he is in danger and can't go back to Hogwarts. Harry returns to Hogwarts, where weird things are going on — voices that only Harry can hear, people turning up petrified! The Chamber of Secrets, thought a myth, has been opened, and a monster is attacking students who come from nonmagical families. Ginny Weasley, Ron's younger sister, disappears, and Harry finds the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and goes to look for her. He comes across the spirit of Tom Riddle, a former Hogwarts student behind all the trouble. (It's Riddle who later becomes Lord Voldemort.)

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (Sept. 1999): Now a teen, Harry is sent to a magic inn to wait out his summer vacation. The night before he returns to Hogwarts, he finds out why: Sirius Black, a feared Voldemort supporter, has escaped from Azkaban, a prison for wizards and witches. Could he be looking for Harry at Hogwarts? At school, a tense year is capped when Black shows up. But he isn't looking for Harry — he wants Scabbers, Ron's pet rat; the animal is a transfigured Peter Pettigrew, a Voldemort follower who committed the crime for which Black was wrongly imprisoned and betrayed Harry's parents. Black hopes he will finally be exonerated, and as Harry's godfather, offers him a home. But Pettigrew escapes, and it's back to life on the lam for Black.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (July 2000): It starts with the story of how the horrible Riddle family died, then shifts to the present, where we discover that Pettigrew has been busy. He met up with Voldemort, who is still trying to give himself a human body. Voldemort's got a plan that requires the presence, and blood, of Harry Potter. And he has help, a loyal servant who can get to 14-year-old Harry when the time is right. When we meet Harry, he joins Ron and his family at the Quidditch World Cup finals, where things go badly. They don't get better when he returns to Hogwarts, where he is entered in a dangerous competition. Voldemort gets back his body but fails to kill Harry.

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (June 2003): After a shocking attack, Harry is reunited with his friends and finds out that the Order of the Phoenix, a secret society, has gathered to fight Voldemort. But the Ministry of Magic still wants to believe there's no threat. Hogwarts is not a refuge — the Ministry of Magic makes sure nothing is said about Voldemort, and sends an odious instructor to keep Harry and the others in line. Dumbledore, usually Harry's biggest ally, is strangely removed from him. Harry and friends try to prepare anyway, and he starts teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts to a group of students in secret. Tricked by Voldemort, Harry and friends visit the Ministry of Magic and run into Voldemort's servants. The Order of the Phoenix comes to help, but member Sirius Black is killed. The rest of the wizarding world realizes Voldemort is back.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (July 2005): Still struggling with Sirius' death, Harry jumps at the chance that Dumbledore offers to find out more about Voldemort and how to defeat him. Life at Hogwarts is hectic — Harry is captain of his Quidditch team, and has strong romantic feelings for Ginny. He's got suspicions of some of the people around him after a couple of near-deaths. Eventually, Dumbledore is killed, and the book ends with Harry and friends wondering if Hogwarts can even go on without him. Harry is determined to carry on the work he and Dumbledore started.

— Deepti Hajela, Associated Press

Reach Zenaida Serrano at zserrano@honoluluadvertiser.com.