Spoiler! :
It starts off a lot like a sappy romance novel:
It was a beautiful day in mid-May, blue of sky, green of grass, the sun shining down as children gamboled about outside.
Okay, I'm making myself puke a bit here. Thank God I don't actually write that way.
It really was gorgeous out, the day I met Harry Potter. But the difference between this meeting and a sappy romance novel (aside from my style of writing) is that I was seven at the time and not looking for love. In fact, I thought boys were stupid. But that's another story for another time.
I sat in the backseat of a mini-van beside my friend Ericka Marshall. Her seventh birthday party was that night, an epic sleepover that was to be filled with fun, terror, and absolutely no sleep at all. (In other words: We all got sugar high thanks to Faygo, watched "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island" right before bed, and then stayed awake all night convinced that the one girl who fell asleep was going to sleep-walk through the house with a knife and kill us all.) But for now, we were in her dad's car, waiting impatiently as he interacted with an ATM. Ericka had a book in her lap: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Harry Potter was not yet famous in the Muggle world. That would come a short time later, after I'd devoured the first three books. I didn't ask what the book was about because I'd heard of it - I only asked because I loved reading more than most people do (and possibly more than they should).
"What's it about?" I asked, and Ericka went off, explaining about wizards, Muggles, Quidditch, some wizard named Voldemort whose name she kept shouting at the top of her lungs ("VOL-DE-MORT!"), and many other things I didn't understand. (Of course I understand them now, but try having a second-grader explain Harry Potter, starting with an explanation of the third book and going backwards from there, to anyone who's never heard of it.) It sounded intriguing.
The sleepover was a crazy affair, but that, too, is another story. Although it turns out that I now, thanks to that sleepover, love Faygo products and "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island," the most important thing that happened to me that night was meeting Harry.
I read the first three books in record time, while my mom read the first book aloud to my then-preschool-aged younger sister. I reread the third book five hundred times as I waited for the fourth book to come out. My Dad took me to one of the many "Harry Potter Parties" happening on the night of Goblet of Fire's release.
At the time I had awful bushy hair (like Hermione's, only worse) that stayed in a permanent ponytail and huge round glasses (not unlike Harry's). I didn't wear a scar tattoo or a cape or a wizard's hat, but I did write "I'm a Harry Potter Fan" on the back of a white t-shirt in black Sharpie, with a lightning bolt for the first line of each the H and P. (It is possibly the most careful I have ever been while using a Sharpie.) I wore it to the party, and two older girls, probably around fourteen or fifteen years of age, noticed and said, "We love your shirt! Can we take a picture?"
I have a feeling that if you look hard enough, the back of that t-shirt is probably posted in a photograph online somewhere.
At 11:30 we got in line and started the real wait. At midnight the book was released, and the moment we got home I...handed it over to Mom.
Gotcha! You thought I was going to say I started reading and had the whole thing finished by dawn, didn't you?
I would've liked to do that, but with the fourth book - the first of the books to come out after I started reading them - began an interesting game. Mom liked the books. Not enough to read them over and over again (very few books receive that honor from her), but enough to read them once. And since she was the one buying them, she was the first person to read each of them as they were released. My sister and I were not allowed to read them until she was done.
But she never took them to work with her. She would hide them. When Lucy and I got home from school, we immediately began our search. We would inevitably find the newest book, not through any prodigal skill but from the dogged spirit of our hunt. We refused to stop looking until we found the book or Mom came home, whichever came first.
Finding the book always came first, and we'd squish together in a chair to read it. We pored over it, trying to read as much as we could before our mother's return, at which point we'd look at what page we were on and put the book back. Mom knew we were doing it, and we knew she knew we were doing it, but that's what made it a game. And after Mom was done reading the book we read through it again, carefully, picking out all the details we'd missed in our first, rushed reading.
Naturally we were excited when the movies came out, although they turned out to be a disappoint. Sorry to all you fans of the movies, but if you're truly, really a Harry Potter fan, someone who read all the books diligently, read and reread them, became a fan before the movies and would've been a fan still without the movies, you just can't find it in you to love the movies.
Sure, I like some of them. The acting in "Half-Blood Prince" was exceptional, especially on the part of Tom Felton (who finally got to show us that he can do more than "I'm better than you because I'm a pure-blood/My father this and my father that"). Evanna Lynch is a perfect Luna Lovegood. Michael Gambon is a less satisfactory Dumbledore but, to be fair, no one could've followed on the heels of Richard Harris and made any of us happy. "Deathly Hallows: Part One" was actually great, even despite the little differences. Helena Bonham Carter was awesome as Hermione-as-Bellatrix. But let's face it: The books came first. The books are what "really" happened. The books are amazing.
I know that no movie can ever quite be exactly the same as its corresponding book (unless, as in the case of "Star Wars," the movie came first), because there are some things you can do in books that you just can't do in movies. But some of the things the "Harry Potter" movies have done are just silly. (Cases in point: What was with the Death-Eaters randomly running through the marshes around the Burrow in "Half-Blood Prince"? And WHAT was with *spoiler warning* Voldemort HUGGING Draco Malfoy in "Deathly Hallows: Part Two"!? Totally out of character. I can't take Movie Voldemort seriously anymore.)
I say this, and yet I admit it: I have seen all the movies. I, like half the rest of the world, went to see "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two" at midnight on July 15th. (I did not yell "Mischief managed!" as the credits started rolling, even though I wanted to and even though my boyfriend did, but I couldn't help it - apparently, no one else in Marine City got the memo that that was supposed to happen, and I was too self-conscious to do it without the whole theater doing it. But I did wear a cape and bring a wand made out of electrical tape and half the dowel rod off a dollar-store flag, which is either the most patriotic wand ever or a wand worthy of a terrorist. I'll let you decide that one.)
I spend half my Harry Potter-related conversations complaining amiably with other book fans about the movies, and yet I went to see the last one, even as I saw all the rest of them. I never understood myself, until "Deathly Hallows: Part Two" began, until everyone in the theater cheered as Molly Weasley called Bellatrix Lestrange a bitch and then destroyed her, until they cheered again as Neville decapitated Nagini, until the credits started rolling.
The reason I went is because it stretched out my childhood a little bit longer.
Harry Potter is not over, it's true. Any one of us can go back whenever we want, reread the books (yet again), rewatch the movies. We can introduce Harry Potter to our children and our children's children, and we can see the excitement in their faces as they prepare to read the next book, watch the next movie in the series. Maybe they'll do as we did, and wait hopefully for their letter from Hogwarts until their eleventh birthday, when they realize with a sigh that it was just a story after all. (Admit it: You did that too, if you were under eleven when you started reading the books.) But the reason I went to see the movie was to experience, one last time, something that we will never again experience with Harry Potter: The excitement of opening the brand-new book, still unsure of what will happen next, knowing that you'll soon find out. Yes, I knew how the movie was going to end. I'd read the book. (In fact, I reread the series immediately before seeing the movie.) But there was still an air of excitement, almost exactly the same excitement - how similar, how different will the movie and book prove to be? How will the actors interpret the story? How did the writers, the director?
And of course, there was the beauty of gazing out over the jam-packed theater and feeling a welling-up of affection for these people crammed in here with you, knowing, though you can never say it to them, that you love these people, and that even though Harry Potter might be absolutely the only thing you have in common with them, it's an important connection, something that puts you in a group, no matter how weird and singled out and maybe lonely you've always been. These are our people, the Harry Potter people. Age five to ninety, it doesn't matter; we all have this one thing in common, and it draws us together in a way nothing else can. It's a weird sort of patriotism.
Thirteen years, seven books, eight movies after that fateful sleepover, the era, the excitement of something new, is finally over. I'm sorry to see it go, but I know I'll spend the rest of my life reliving the adventures I've had with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
And even though there can be no more adventures for Harry, I'm overjoyed that J.K. has another book in the works. I'm curious to see how the Dursleys handle their grandson being a wizard. It gives me one more thing to look forward to.
To close, I can only quote someone I admire: "Nitwit! Oddment! Blubber! Tweak!"
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