My parents had our family friends over for burgers about a week after I got home from college. I sat at my kitchen table, chewing on a fry, when Katelyn, their daughter and one of my oldest friends, turned to me and said, "So I think we should try to watch all 19 hours and 38minutes of Harry Potter movies in a row."

I swallowed my fry and laughed. "Jesus, could you imagine?"

"I'm serious."

Katelyn and I love Harry Potter. My dad started reading me the books when I was 6 and by 11 I was pacing the front steps, waiting for the mailman to deliver my copy of the Deathly Hallows on the day of the release. Because Katelyn's July 14th birthday often coincided with the release of the newest film, we would be taken as part of her birthday party to see them every year. We even dressed up for the midnight premiere of the last movie - I was Hermione, she was Moaning Myrtle. We did not mess around with HP.

I considered this idea. I'm nineteen and Katelyn is twenty. We both have fulltime jobs and own cars and vote and do our own laundry. We are functioning adult women.

"Dude, let's do it."

So, as they say in the "Blair Witch Project," this recording is all that remains of that experience.

Friday

I leave my office on Friday afternoon at four and stop to get pizza and coffee. Caffeine is a must for the all-nighter that I am about to pull. (I'm also from Massachusetts and if I don’t stop for Dunkin' Donuts at least twice a day I become panicked and disoriented.) Katelyn greets me in the basement that will our home for the next day, decorated with dangling Time Turners and House banners -Hufflepuff Pride for life!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - 6:00 p.m.

• Katelyn knows every single one of Aunt Petunia’s lines. It’s a little bit weird.
• "Last year I got 37!" Dudley Dursley is the personification of white male privilege. Also, we’re really digging all the 90s grunge outfits prevalent in this 2001 Muggle world.
• I think it’s a little odd that Harry just gets in a boat with an enormous strange man who mutilated his cousin and claims to be a wizard with, like, zero follow-up questions. Katelyn thinks she would do that same thing if she was an 11-year-old indentured servant.
• Do Fred and George choose to dress identically or is it an economic necessity?
• We’ve spent the entire movie gorging ourselves on pizza, Sour Patch Kids and Junior Mints, so I had to step out and dry heave a little because I’m not nine and can’t eat like this without consequences.
• Turn-of-the-century CGI is so, so horrible.
• All the Hogwarts students throw their weird pointy dunce hats in the end of the year and they never come back down. #WhereDidAllTheHatsGo? We need answers Joanne.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - 8:32 p.m.

• I hate this one. Everyone hates this one. Katelyn says we have to watch it anyway. I’ve put on my glasses and my Hamilton sweatshirt. I’m in this for the long haul and we’re in a basement. This is no time for vanity.
• Does the DSS (or whatever the British equivalent of that is) ever come to check on Harry? I mean, he’s not adopted and there had to be some paperwork filed if custodial rights were transferred to his aunt and uncle - how did some social worker not take one look at that staircase bedroom nonsense and transfer him into foster care ten years ago?
• We’re embracing Dobby. It’s the only way to get through how goddamn annoying he is as a concept, to pretend this plotline is actually charming and not just a cloying attempt to sell elf merchandise in Harry Potter World.
• I’m feeling bloated from all the candy we ate, so I start using the fifteen-year-old elliptical machine Katelyn’s father left down here. I’m sure I looked unbelievably cool and sporty.
• Her cousin Rachel stopped by to lend us her DVD of the eighth movie and watched the scene where Professor McGonagall transfigures a rat until a drinking glass.
  • When they turn animals into cups, are the cups sentient? Are they in pain? Is it a “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” situation?
  • Rachel and I were in the same class in high school. I am already too far gone to be embarrassed by this rhapsodizing in front of her.
• A fight has broken out about whether Dobby is nice or meddling. Three guesses on which side I landed on.
• Katelyn also knows all of Moaning Myrtle's lines. I considered lightly slapping her.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 10:56 p.m.

• Due to a DVD case mix-up, we accidentally watched the first ten minutes of The Polar Express before realizing our mistake because we are idiots. Did you know almost none the characters in that movie have names? True story, look it up.
• The puberty stick has been hit, all the actors are noticeably more grown up, even though it was only two years in between the production of this movie and the last. To offset our creepiness for noticing this, Katelyn and I discuss our first Harry Potter character crushes. Her’s was Hermione. Mine was Fred and/or George, because we are both super basic.
• Katelyn is crying because her friend went to Scotland and got to hold an owl and Hedwig is apparently making her remember this.
• Fred and George are wearing different shirts but the same jacket. Baby steps towards individuality boys.
• TURN TO PAGE 394 B*TCHES!
• GOOOOOD MORNING VIETNAM! It becomes Saturday right around the time Harry sneaks into Hogsmeade.

Saturday

• We’ve invented a new game called "In the Harry Potter School of Acting, just shout the end of your last sentence a second time to show you are upset."
  • "He was their friend. HE WAS THEIR FRIENDDDDDD!"
  • "Stop it! Can't you see it's bothering him, STOP IT!"
• I wonder if people like the president or Lin-Manuel Miranda watch movies or if they’re too busy and important.
• We just found out Muhammad Ali died, so I started singing “The World’s Greatest” around the time Lupin turned into a werewolf. I think it was a nice tribute. I doubt Katelyn wanted to kill me at all.
• WHY DOES DUMBLEDORE SPEAK IN RIDDLES. JUST TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU NEED THEM TO DO INSTEAD OF BEING COY AND MYSTERIOUS FOR THE SAKE OF AESTHETIC.
• Life is Harry Potter. There is nothing else. There’s never been anything else. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - 1:08 a.m.

• It’s kind of messed up there’s only like four POC in the entire school. One of the black kids, who doesn’t even have a name, never does anything but say ominous and foreboding sh*t. That was a weird choice, director.
• To quote Rita Skeeter, our eyes are glistening with the ghosts of our past. And also exhaustion. I can barely keep them open.
• I fell asleep on the floor before the second challenge, which is a shame because the fourth movie is my favorite.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - 3:44 a.m.

• I come to and view a movie that is tinged dark blue the entire time, and nobody stops bitching. It’s a huge bummer.
• Oh wahhh, I'm Harry Potter, a guy I knew for three weeks died last movie and now I’m gonna be weird about it forever.
• Katelyn is asleep, even though this whole exercise was her idea. This is just like the time she made us sleep on the porch when our families went on vacation to Maine and then went inside and slept on the couch, leaving an 8-year-old Halle and our 6-year-old sisters at the mercy of the elements, and also the wolves.
• She told me to stop bringing that up. She said "that was eleven years ago, let it go." Oops.
• Maybe thestrals are just a feeling, you know? Maybe thestrals are inside us all.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - 6:08 a.m.

• This movie played but we both slept through it. I imagine there was a lot of Daniel Radcliffe staring pensively into the distance.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 - 8:28 a.m.

• “The Weasley’s house gets progressively smaller.” Katelyn says as we wake up during the opening credits of seven - part 1. "It's like part of the house are disappearing to remind us how very, very poor they are."
• My whole face feels greasy and gross. Sleeping on the floor is not a great look on me. All the skin creams I buy caution against doing that, as does most logic.
• Katelyn theorizes that Harry escaping from Privet Drive undetected would have gone much more smoothly if they just took a car at two in the afternoon. No one would know. Voldemort would never expect it. No one expects a taxi cab in this world.
• We’re pouring one (of our morning coffee) out for Hedwig, Mad-Eye Moody and all the other characters who will shortly die a tragic death.
• The Deathly Hallows animation is beautiful and breath-taking.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - 10:41 a.m.

• A single bank to control all of Wizard-kind's wealth seems pretty sketchy legally. This is why the studio system was broken up.
• The entire Malfoy family could use some dry shampoo. So could I, to be honest.
• I’m just gonna say it; Lord Voldemort really brings down the mood, what with all his murder and soliloquies.
• Dean and Seamus totally end up together, right? It's a better fate for Dean than having to get away with murder all the time.
• We made it! Harry turned Voldemort into a flaky, dead mess.
• The moral of the story, we've decided, is that rule breaking and letting dozens of close friends and families members die as a direct result of your own foolish choices is okay, as long as you win in the end.

I drove home at lunchtime on Sunday, my eyes burning in the undiluted sunlight after almost a full day underground. I think this is how astronauts feel when they get back to Earth; disoriented, heavy-limbed, and smelling less-than-plesant.

Still though, I was glad Katelyn had dragged me through this experiment, Harry Potter is a cultural touchstone, and it's nice to remember how much it meant to my whole generation growing up, even if it's settled into the pleasant periphery of our collective consciousness today. Hermione is still my - and every other nerdy millennial's - role model, Fred and George Wesley are still my Harry Potter crushes, and it will always be impossible to get that theme song out of my head. Duh duhduhduhduh duh duhhhhh duhhhh….