Adam Shelley and Aleysha Vanheusden - grown up Harry Potter fans. Credit:Craig Sillitoe Like Harry, they have come of age and are entering the workforce or university. In the immortal words of Corinthians, it is time to ''do away with childish things'', which means they should, by rights, be consigning their pointy hats, wands and wizard garb to the bin-liner meant for the nearest op-shop. ''It's time to grow up,'' concedes Adam Shelley, 20, from Coburg. ''But I don't think I can imagine my life without Harry.'' I meet Shelley, who works for Gold Buyers Australia, and his equally Potter-mad friend Aleysha Vanheusden, 20, not surprisingly at Flinders Street Station. (She is wearing a Gryffindor scarf as a means of identification). Over mugs of hot chocolate in lieu of steaming butter beer, I ask the million-dollar question: what is it about Harry Potter that's so appealing? Both struggle to capture the magnitude of their feelings with mere words. ''It's the whole story of a boy being treated horribly by his adopted family and then discovering there's a world out there that's bigger and better. It's about finding yourself, about discovering that you are needed. It's so hard to explain,'' says Shelley.

Diehard fan Erica Crombie saved money from her after-school job to finance her attendance at a Harry Potter symposium in Las Vegas. Credit:Craig Sillitoe The childhood fantasy, where you imagine the dreary adults you're stuck with are not your ''real'' parents - who are, like Harry's true parents, just amazing - is a recurring theme in children's fiction (think how happy the Ugly Duckling was when he discovered he was of a more noble lineage). Freud called it ''the family fantasy'' and while its purpose is complex, he believed it helped children cope with the disappointment they felt towards their own rather boring parents, and the inevitable separation from them. And where better to embed a story about separation than in the English boarding school? Hogwarts is an alluring mix of the modern and the mediaeval; you can run around the Gothic corridors hung with gilt-framed portraits in trainers and hoodies. The curriculum may be light years from VCE, but the themes of bullying, racism and adolescent angst are universal. It doesn't really matter whether you are studying regular biology or how to plant a mandrake; it still mirrors the reality of anyone, anywhere, who has had to force themselves out of bed and make it to class. ''I would have loved to have gone to Hogwarts,'' says Thomas Croft, from Bayswater North, who was six when his mum started reading the novels to him and his older brother around the fire at night. Now 16, he laughs when he says: ''I thought it was real. I thought that when I was 12 my letter of invitation would arrive by owl too.'' For Crombie, now 20, on a more practical level, Potter filled a hole. At the time when it first hit the shelves in June 1997, there was, she felt, a dearth of books for kids that dealt with meaty issues; grief, desire, rage, jealousy, the stuff that makes us human. She was ''not much of a reader'' before Harry, because ''books were more about teaching you how to read''.

''Harry Potter dealt with a lot of things that other children's books didn't. It answered a lot of questions I had in my mind, which I didn't know I had. There was so much about protecting kids from emotions and keeping things censored. We had nothing.'' When J.K.Rowling sat down to write in a flat in Edinburgh as a depressed single mother on welfare, she tapped into the global mindset of a voiceless generation and sang it back to them in a language they understood. Harry may be a wizard but he is also an endearingly normal hero, enduring the same romantic insecurities, friendship pressures and anger issues that any child or adolescent would. At the core of his being is the loneliness of being orphaned at such a young age, of being abused by the sadistic Dursleys and of being misunderstood by all but a handful of folk, most of whom seem to die. ''It is definitely a book about death,'' says Shelley. Rowling, who, like the Bronte sisters, once lived next door to a graveyard, began writing six months before her own mother died of multiple sclerosis. ''Everything deepened and darkened,'' she said in James Runcie's TV documentary, J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life. ''It seeped into every part of the book.'' She went on to describe her father, from whom she is estranged, as ''frightening''. In Harry Potter, there is no shortage of father figures: Dumbledore, Sirius, Hagrid surround the boy wizard with idealised versions of what he never had. But they weren't just there for Harry: ''Dumbledore was a big role model in my life,'' says Shelley, whose own parents are divorced. ''In a way he was a perfect dad and a mentor. I was actually going through my books the other day and I could still see the little tear marks on the page when he died. It was very hard because here was this great father figure and then suddenly he was gone. You don't expect that to happen. It was like losing the figure that you aspired to be, and it was like, 'What do I do now?''' Crombie, who runs the fan group Melbourne Muggles, went into a ''deep grief'' when Dumbledore died in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. ''He was like a god, he gave advice and moral lessons and life lessons and he is the person in the book you look up to, and to have him die was so tragic. ''I went to school on Monday after reading it [the book] all weekend and I was five minutes late for class and the teacher said, 'You're late Erica', and I burst into tears and she said, 'Oh, you've been reading Harry Potter'. I cried for so long. They [the characters] felt very real. I learnt a lot from them and felt attached to them. They did have a parental role and they'd teach you a lot of things. You don't just take your moral lessons from your parents; you take them from a lot of adult people in your life.''

While death stalks the pages, love underpins the whole story; namely, how a dead mother's love offers protection against the most evil of evils. The ultimate fantasy of maternal love sustains Harry time and again when he is caught in the grip of Lord Voldemort and his ilk, and that love sees him through to the bitter end. Absent or dead parents are a remarkable feature of children's literature. The Famous Five would surely not have had so many adventures if there had been more parental involvement in their lives, other than mad Uncle Quentin and ineffectual Aunt Fanny. Roald Dahl also liked to kill off the parents or make them truly awful, like the Dursleys. For Shelley, Croft and Vanheusden, the books took off for them when they were on the brink of adolescence; at an age when they were starting to form their own opinions and imagining life outside the family. And they felt the pain of Harry's abandonment, even if they weren't orphans. Supermarket worker Christian Peris, 19, was sucked into Potterdom when he was grounded as a teenager. ''The only place I was allowed to go was the library and I started to read it. I was immediately drawn in because Harry was living in a cupboard under the stairs and I was more or less confined to my room. I felt very close to him.'' ''I didn't have the best childhood,'' says Shelley. ''I guess I could identify with Harry wanting to get away to this magical place where anything was possible. My parents divorced at a young age and they always fought, so it could be quite hard at home, especially having to go from one parent to another. I felt that isolation big-time. By the age of 13, I was aware that families didn't come in one set type and they were all pretty much stuffed up in their own ways. I longed for what Harry wanted … the perfect family with two parents who loved him.''

McDonald's employee Vanheusden, 20, whose home in Frankston is adorned with posters, went through a similar experience. ''When I was 12, my parents separated and I had two younger sisters. I felt I had to be there for them all the time and not focus on how I was feeling. I had to get away from it all. Reading Harry Potter was about focusing on me for a change and not everybody else. I felt very alone. I couldn't go to anyone. I had to be there for my sisters, but there was no one really there for me, so these books were a form of escape.'' The books also served as a moral compass, informing young readers' choices on how to live. When The Philosopher's Stone first came out, it caused an outcry among some religious members because of its use of magic. But the entire story spun out over seven volumes revealed itself to be an intensely moral fable with the tenets of Christianity at its core; namely, good triumphing over evil, life and love winning out over death, and justice meted out to those who deserve it. Harry triumphs over adversity using old-fashioned courage and integrity, as well as magic. And he's so ordinary! Not blessed with film-star good looks or a particularly high IQ, like swotty Hermione, he's a shining beacon for normality. Every day, his actions are repeated around the world by regular Joe Soaps reaching unprecedented heights for causes they believe in. Says Crombie: ''It does have huge effects on the decisions I make in life. I'll base a decision I make on what happens in the book. For instance, I dropped out of school when I was 17. I didn't have much motivation, but I've gone back to do my VCE now and the main reason I chose to do it is because I want to do social work. What I learnt in Harry Potter is that if you don't have motivation to do something for yourself, you should do it for the greater good. That's Harry's whole life.'' Says Shelley: ''I definitely have Harry moments. A lot of my conflict management is paralleled with the way that Harry deals with things, being the bigger person … trying to settle things in a fairer way aspossible. I definitely draw upon his wisdom.'' When Rowling typed the last words of Deathly Hallows holed up in room 552 of the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh in November 2006, she ended a chapter in the lives of millions of fans. No one could have predicted how the chronicles of Harry, more than 17 years in the making, would become embedded in the psyche of millions of children of so many different nationalities and cultures. So far, the books have been printed in 65 languages, with the first four titles setting records as the fastest selling books in history. Deathly Hallows sold 11 million copies on its first day.

And then there are the films. Shortly after we meet, Peris is off to London to carve out a space in Trafalgar Square as close as he can to the red carpet for the premiere of Deathly Hallows Part Two. He says melodramatically that he will kill himself if he doesn't catch a glimpse of Rowling. And then what? ''I don't know how I will feel,'' he admits. ''I remember crying through the last chapter of the book, so I don't know [how] I'm to cope in the movie.'' None of the fans are ready for it to end. ''Harry has been the biggest effect on my life,'' says Crombie. ''He has been with me since I was nine and I can't really remember much of life before.'' Adds Shelley: ''Harry has shown me that you take it as it comes and it makes you a stronger person in the end. I don't think I could imagine my life without Harry. He's been part of my life for over half of it.'' Says Vanheusden: ''I will probably be very much in denial. No, this is not happening … I am not ready for this to be over. I guess I just have to accept it. Even though the film is over, Harry will be very much alive within me. He will never die off; he will always be part of my existence.'' At least Peris can take comfort from the way the story ends: ''A lot of fans don't like it but I do.'' (Spoiler alert.) For her, seeing Harry married to Ginny, having three kids and living a relatively ordinary life with a top job at the Ministry of Magic is ''comforting.'' Potter has come full circle, back in suburbia except this time he's in control. After all he has had to endure, he is finally safe, content and at peace.

It seems this is one reason why fans enjoy the books so much; because they are more about relationships and overcoming adversity than they are about magic. In Runcie's documentary, Rowling revealed that she too, is at her happiest in middle age. Even grown-ups still like to believe in the happily ever after.