We started Harry Potter a few weeks ago. The girls are 7 and 5. They want me to read with the lights on because they think the light of the kindle on my face as I read makes the story too scary.

They want to talk about each paragraph. One empathizes and wonders out loud what could have happened to Voldemort that made him so angry and mean. One stops the reading so that she can describe the vision in her head of Hogwarts from the train, with details vibrant and wholly absent from the text. In her mind, there is a gold roof and a battalion of owls are swooping with balloons in their beaks.

We took a break from the action after reading that Dudley was heading to the hospital to have his tail removed, and talked about what we would do if we had tails. Pig tails would be removed. They’re cute but would get in the way when we sit and wear pants. A prehensile monkey tail is a different story. While it poses the same apparel and seat challenges, such a thing would be so useful to climb and swing at the playground. Yes, a monkey tail is a keeper.

Reading with them is magical. Each chapter takes twice as long as it should as a consequence of their commentary. But it is fun. And when it’s time to call it a night, because one or the other is yawning and having trouble fighting the magnetic pull of her eyelids to one another, I feel sad.

Maybe it’s just that I’m tired too. Or it’s that I feel guilty because we don’t get to read like this every night. Some nights I’m not there. Some nights there is just no time. But really it’s more than that. I’m sad because I don’t want it to end.

I know that this time is short-lived. That they won’t always let me read to them. They won’t always share their opinions, and questions, and visions with me. They won’t always think that having a prehensile tail would be cool.

Tonight I’ll be home. Tonight we’ll read some more, talk some more, and when they stop interrupting I’ll know that they are tired and it’s time to call it a night. Time to let them drift off to dreams of owls and powers of transfiguration. And I’ll try very hard not to be sad, and to appreciate that the magic of this time is a factor of its fleeting nature.

And when they begin to refuse my offers to read, and refuse to think that animal appendages are cool, I’ll look back on nights like these and remember their magic.