One of the easiest spells to perform, as anyone who’s read any of the Harry Potter books knows, is that which makes light. You only have to say the word "lumos", and your magic wand switches on like a torch. You say, "let there be light," and...well, you don’t have to have read the 3407 pages of J.K. Rowling’s creation to know the rest: this is in no way an original idea. No, it’s the original idea, in which speaking, acting and seeing all come together for one impossible moment. Harry finds it very useful.

I really like Harry Potter, maybe too much. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve enjoyed reading the books far more than Paradise Lost, say. What does this say about me? Childish? Short attention-span? Unequal to real life, reading fantasy for release? But then, if it’s escapism I’m after, why prefer Hogwarts to Milton’s Eden? In fact, I think what appeals so much about the stories is just how close to the real world they are. Any disappointed eleven-year-old can tell you that wizard school is just an anonymous letter away, and once your invitation comes, there’s nothing beige suburbia can do to hold onto you. A tiny hole opens up in reality, and pretty soon a giant on a motorbike rides through it (apologies non-Potter-readers, this is all in the first book). Initiation into the magical world doesn’t remove you from the non-magical one, though it does unlock a few of its secrets. Hurricanes on the news are really giants. You can walk through a brick wall in King’s Cross. The people you thought were ‘everyone’ are really ‘muggles’.

Maybe that word, ‘muggle’, the only part of Rowling’s terminology to have really entered the language, is at the heart of what elicits such strong reactions to Harry Potter, whether adoration or scorn. The author, so careful elsewhere to put her Classics degree to good use inventing names that sound credible and respectable, reflects the real world back at itself in a phrase so juvenile and ungainly that I feel awkward even writing it. But that’s the attraction: it redeems the gawky blandness of reality as the flip-side of thrilling fantasy. We readers are renamed muggles, and lovers of the books embrace the word as if it gives the world a new aspect. Like switching on a light.

Join Conrad Steel for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Friday.