HBO's Harry Potter series premieres on December 25 on HBO and HBO Max. Nobody expected it before 2027, and now it arrives on Christmas Day with eight full episodes devoted to the first book alone. The plan is one season per book, which means this story will be back in the culture every year for the better part of a decade.
You have nine weeks to decide how you want to meet these characters again: on the page first, or through a new cast who will define them for a new generation of kids.
My recommendation is specific. Reread the first book before December 25. Save the rest, and read each one before its season arrives. Or watch the movies. Up to you.
Cultural Controversy
J.K. Rowling's public statements about transgender people have pushed many readers away from her work, and every new adaptation restarts that argument. Plenty of readers will skip both the show and the books for that reason, which sends both a clear message and is more than a reasonable response. This post is for readers who grew up with these books and are deciding how to come back to them. A library copy, or the copies already on your shelf, lets you reread without buying new ones. For the record: I do not agree with J.K. Rowling’s beliefs, comments, and strongly stand against anti-trans rhetoric. I am constantly conflicted how to approach Harry Potter given how much I love the stories, and child-like whimsy the wizarding-world provided for me, while also wanting to be an ally and stand with the trans and LGBTQIA+ communities.
Reading the Series at Relase vs. Reading Them as an Adult
I read these books as they were released, starting in the late '90s, and finished Deathly Hallows on its release day in July 2007. Then I reread the whole series in 2020. Three things stand out as an adult rereading the books.
They're funnier than you remember. The Dursleys are pure satire of suburban respectability. Fred and George are running a comedy act in the background of every scene they appear in. The narration has a dry, deadpan edge a preteen skips over.
The adults are worse than you remember. Dumbledore keeps secrets from an orphan for years and calls it protection. Snape bullies children. The Ministry fails at every level. Read as an adult, the series becomes a long story about institutions letting kids down and kids carrying the weight anyway. Oddly prescient, n’est pas?
The structure is tighter than you remember. Details planted in the first two books pay off five books later. A reread is the only way to see the whole design.
If you want another angle on how the adults in these books lead – and fail to – I wrote about it in Leadership Lessons from Harry Potter, Dumbledore, and the Wizarding World.
The First Book Is a Mystery Novel
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone reads like a fantasy adventure. It's built like a fair-play mystery.
Every clue to the ending is on the page. A stammering teacher who never removes his turban. A Quidditch match where one teacher mutters a curse and another mutters a counter-curse, and the book lets you assume you know which is which. A dragon egg Hagrid won from a hooded stranger in a pub, who asked a few too many questions about a three-headed dog. A first-time reader misses the misdirection. An adult rereader sees how carefully it's set up, and gets to enjoy watching it work.
This is where the HBO format has an advantage. The 2001 film had about two and a half hours to cover the whole book, and the mystery got squeezed. Eight episodes give the show room to lay out the clues the way the book does. Rereading first lets you judge whether it uses that room. Not to mention, I hope we get to see several of the more subtle scenes and tests for the characters that the movie had to cut.
Note the title: HBO's first season uses the original British title, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Same book.
The Series Grows Up With the Readers
The first book runs just over 300 pages in its U.S. edition. Order of the Phoenix runs close to 900. The growth isn't only in length. The first three books are school stories with a dark edge. Goblet of Fire ends with a death, and nothing after it returns to the same whimsy and lightness. Order of the Phoenix gives Harry the anger of a teenager who has seen too much and been told too little. By Deathly Hallows, the series is a war story.
Readers who grew up alongside Harry got books that grew up with them. That design is the strongest argument for HBO's one-season-per-book plan: a young cast can age into the darker material at the pace the books intended, and an audience can age with them. It's also the strongest argument for spacing out your reread. Read Deathly Hallows this December and you'll be years ahead of its season.
What the Show Has to Get Right
The 2001 film set a high bar for casting and a low one for patience. With eight hours per book, HBO has no excuse on the second count. Three things will decide whether the show works.
Paapa Essiedu plays Snape, and the role depends on restraint. First-time viewers can't be let in on the secret early. Long time fans have to believe this version of Snape, even knowing how things end.
The early books are funny, and the show needs to be funny too. If Season 1 plays the Dursleys as a horror story and Hogwarts as grim, the darker seasons will have nowhere to go.
The first book is built on misdirection. Eight episodes give the show time to plant clues and let viewers draw the wrong conclusions. Rushing to the reveal would waste the format's biggest advantage over the films.
The cast includes Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Arabella Stanton as Hermione, Alastair Stout as Ron, John Lithgow as Dumbledore, and Nick Frost as Hagrid. Rereading the first book before December 25 gives you your own picture of these characters to measure them against.
How to Reread Before December 25
Read the first book now. At just over 300 pages, it's a weekend.
Hold the rest. Read each book in the weeks before its season premieres. The reread lasts as long as the show does, and each book will be fresh when you need it.
Keep The Tales of Beedle the Bard for later. It's a slim collection of wizarding fairy tales, and one of them, "The Tale of the Three Brothers," turns out to be the key to the last book. Save it for the year Deathly Hallows comes to the screen.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a companion, not a substitute, and it works best once you know why those stories matter.
Meet Them on the Page First
A new adaptation will shape how millions of people picture Harry, Hermione, and Ron for the next decade. The books came first, and the version of these characters in your head – built from the page, years ago – is worth refreshing before someone else's version moves in. Reread (or read!) Sorcerer's Stone before Christmas. Watch the premiere knowing which clues to look for. Then decide for yourself whether eight hours of television did the book justice.
When you're done and want something new with the same pull – a school, a mystery, a world worth returning to – join Beguiled By Books. Tell it what you loved about Hogwarts, and get recommendations from a curator who has read more than a thousand books, not from an algorithm.
