Grace O'Hara couldn't wait to finish the new Harry Potter book, so she kept right at it.
The 14-year-old Haligonian lined up with hundreds of others before midnight Friday to be one of the first to get a copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' then took the book home and read it until 4 a.m. After a six-hour snooze, O'Hara had her nose in the book again, finishing just before 3 p.m. Saturday.
O'Hara was just one of several youngsters from across Canada who spoke Sunday with The Canadian Press about spending the weekend lost in the magical world created by author J.K. Rowling, who has said this will be the last book in the popular series that has made her the world's richest author.
Book retailer Indigo reported Saturday the seventh Harry Potter volume is its fastest and best-selling book. The chain says it sold three books per second at midnight events across the country.
Muggles of all ages took part in celebrations early Saturday, with major parties in Halifax, St. John's, N.L., Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver.
But as the nighttime revelry wound down, the weekend was tinged by some sadness as Harry Potter lovers closed the final chapter on their boy wizard.
O'Hara, who read the book, cover-to-cover in her bedroom, says she wasn't disappointed by the final instalment of the Harry Potter series.
As readers have matured since the release of the first Potter book a decade ago, so too have Rowling's characters, she says.
"We were talking about how Quidditch used to matter so much to everybody, and now, it's not even mentioned,'' she says.
"Everything else is just so overshadowed and everyone is just so much more serious.''
The Halifax teen banned herself from the computer to avoid accidentally stumbling across online spoilers. She hasn't called a friend who's also reading the book because she's worried she might let plot points slip.
Across town, 11-year old Harry Potter fan Alexander Sapp spent his weekend cramming in pages between meeting family, playing piano and going sailing.
"I didn't finish it cause we had a family thing on, but I'm on page 259 and it's really good so far,'' Sapp says.
Sapp was first introduced to the young wizard when he was five by his father, John Sapp, and has read every book since.
As a five-year-old, his father would read to him and by the time they were on the fourth book, he says they were taking turns reading.
Sapp says now, after he goes to bed, his father reads the book to his younger brothers, David and Robert.
The young reader's mom, Heidi Sapp, says it's a great way to get the family together.
Even when the family is already together -- on long car trips, for example -- she says it's a good way to pass time.
Rather than switching drivers on those car trips, the parents switch readers.
"It's really hard on your voice. As soon as your voice wears out, we change drivers,'' she says.
Sapp says his plans for the rest of the day were to "read a couple-hundred more pages.'' He says finishing quick is the only way to make sure no one spoils the ending.
Potter-mania also gripped Toronto, where 16-year-old Madeleine Cummings was first in line to buy the book at a downtown Indigo store at the stroke of midnight.
She read until her parents ordered her go to bed at 4 a.m. Then, she read on the car ride to Muskoka, Ont., cottage country north of Toronto, and spent the rest of the weekend reading the book on a dock, stopping only to eat.
"I basically read the whole day,'' she says.
"There are a lot of people out here, so when it gets really noisy, I have to go into a room.''
Cummings has grown up with the Harry Potter books -- she was nine years old when the first one was published -- and says she's sad the series is over.
"I'm disappointed to have lost the stories of Harry, but I really liked how she ended it,'' Cummings says.
"I hope maybe she'll keep writing.''
In Vancouver, brothers Hamish and Isaac Clark are only on page 22. Most nights, their dad, Gordon, reads to them. Hamish, 11, says it usually takes about two months to get through a Harry Potter book, so there's still lots of time to enjoy "The Deathly Hallows.''
But Isaac, 9, says he'll be sad when his dad closes the book for the last time.
"They're such good books, I wish they could continue them for a long time,'' he says.
