It’s an unlikely jump from the garish Bada Bing Go-go Bar in Newark, New Jersey to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the foggy forests of England, but Harry Potter and Tony Soprano have something in common.

First, two disclaimers, I have not read one chapter of the six – soon to be seven -- Harry Potter books. Instead, in car and office I have listened to them on unabridged cassettes or CDs.  Jim Dale, who does all the dialects and accents himself, seduced, enthralled and enchanted me with his virtuoso performance. He makes the male, female, young, old, Irish, Scotch and cockney characters come alive.  Malevolent voices, kindly voices, drunk and sober voices -- Dale does them all. More than the written word or the movies, Jim Dale made Harry Potter’s world and friends live for me.

Secondly, we do not have HBO and cannot get The Sopranos on television.  We have watched them a year later on DVD -- usually and appropriately with Italian food and wine. So my knowledge of the final year and the controversial final episode is from the media and the Internet.

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and David Chase’s television series have been overwhelming successes. The first six books of the Potter series have sold over 325 million copies.  They have been translated into 63 different languages -- including Farsi and Estonian. The Sopranos, moreover, is one of the most significant programs in television history. It has collected seventeen Emmy nominations and has won the award four times. It has also captured numerous Golden Globes.

Both the Harry Potter books and The Sopranos have had their critics. The Sopranos has been accused of anti-Italian defamation. Feminists, literary scholars and Christian fundamentalist have criticized the Potter books. Undeterred Rowling and Chase ignoring the carping and criticism have continued with their epics that now like all fiction -- and all life -- are coming to an end.

These works of fiction have something else in common: the television series, the books, the CDs and DVDs have been around for years and the people in them have changed and aged.   Harry Potter the boy is now on the cusp of manhood.  Herimone Granger his bookish, nerdy colleague and Ginny Weasley his “girl” friend are now seventeen-year-olds.   In the beginning Tony Soprano was slimmer with darker hair.  Now balder and heavier he shuffles like an older man with burdens.  His children for better or worse are now young adults.  We have watched them grow. And fascinated we wonder in their dangerous worlds what will become of the Soprano family and Harry and his friends. As these books and programs conclude we speculate whether or not and how the chief characters might die. What can this vast public interest in their ultimate fate teach us?

J. K. Rowling in speaking of Lord Voldemort, Harry’s arch villain gives us a clue. “My books are largely about death,” she says. “They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it.”

Despite our fears and denials, of course, we will never conquer death and that makes grief inevitable. Last year J. K. Rowling disclosed that two of her characters would die in the final book. In a recent BBC interview Rowling described writing the conclusion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: “I was in a hotel room on my own, I was sobbing my heart out, I downed half a bottle of champagne from the mini-bar and went home with mascara all over my face.”

Chase, who has given us The Sopranos, has also brought his characters to life.  More than that, he has made us feel Tony Soprano’s pain and confusion. Like many of us Tony is imprisoned by his culture, his job, and his obligations to his family.  He is human. A cold uncaring mother manipulated him. His uncle Junior betrayed him. He is afraid of losing face with the DeMeo and Luppertazi mafia families. He has panic attacks.  He goes to a psychiatrist. He’s on tranquilizers. Perhaps we don’t like him or approve of the cruelty and womanizing his culture expects, but we understand his human struggles – and like Harry Potter we care what will happen to him and his family.  

Lenore Skenazy of Creators Syndicate has pointed out that all this has happened before.  “In 1841, when Charles Dickens finished the last installment of The Old Curiosity Shop, his American fans were so desperate to find out the ending that [before the telephone or Transatlantic Cable] they stormed the New York piers and shouted to incoming ships, ‘Is little Nel alive?’” Little Nell died in Dicken’s last installment and grief overcame his inconsolable readers.

Dickens was a creative genius; so are Rowling and Chase.  They made their characters real and made their readers and viewers care. Rowling’s book will not end with the ambiguity of The Sopranos, but whether Harry dies or not.  (I suspect he will.) The lesson for us is the ancient Buddhist truth:  all things pass, all is impermanent, everything including our lives and the lives of those we love end.  We are left first with grief and then with the task of soldiering on.  That is much easier, of course, when we’re dealing with fiction, but it mirrors the realities which all of us eventually face.

Daniel O’Rourke is a married Catholic priest, retired from the administration at State University of New York at Fredonia. He lives in Cassadaga, NY.  His column appears the second and fourth Thursday of each month. “Spirit at Your Back,” a book of his previous columns has just been published. The book may be purchased or comments sent to orourke@netsync.net