It's a lot brighter than I had expected, here at the end of all things...
So last night M and I went to go see the final Harry Potter movie. I'm not much for doing reviews so I will simply say that the final movie was even better than I'd dared to hope. And the audience, for the most part, was wonderful as well, which can really make or break a major movie experience for you when you're in a big theater like we were yesterday. There were many collective gasps and "Aw's" and rounds and rounds of cheering and clapping, but mostly.... silence. Everyone seemed to be striving to have their own "special movie experience" and mostly seemed unwilling to ruin it for anyone else, which was A Very Good Thing To Be Sure.
I feel it's an appropriate time to make some remarks on Harry Potter in general, now that I'm on the other side of The End of All Things.
I'm not a Fan of Harry Potter the way I was / am a Fan of Xena, seaQuest, Star Wars, His Dark Materials, etc. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe because I had already read so much fantasy that the books didn't strike me as a totally unique and novel thing like I suspect it did for a decent number of people. Maybe because I was already a Fan of other things and there wasn't room in my heart just then for another obsession. But I am definitely a fan, and he's been with me for a very long time, and I do very much care for Harry Potter. I have vivid memories of my first encounter with many of the books: the tiny ad in the Scholastic Book Club flier (Book 1), the joy of getting called off work for the evening because it's raining and nobody's going out for ice cream, which means I can stay in bed where I've been all day and finish up Book 4, the surprise of opening up my Amazon box and realizing that they sent me two books instead of one, and it's the birthday of the friend who's standing next to me, and my, can I suddenly give her a grand birthday present :) (Book 5), lying on my back on a bench in Quincy Market, hating Boston and hating the school / work transition I'm in at the moment, and burying myself in Book 6 instead, and finally, waiting at Borders all night with Sparky and M for Book 7, and getting home at an ungodly hour of the morning, and reading until dawn at which point I dozed for a few hours, then reading, reading, reading all day until at last it was dusk and The End. So. My one other memory that's very strong: coming home from my first semester of college, right around the midway point, and knowing that I'd been goofing off way more than I'd been studying, and feeling Very Bad About That Indeed. I picked up Book 4 and read into the night, because my sleep schedule was all messed up from staying up all night at school, and I watched Ron and Harry and Hermione dig in and fight for all the things they wanted, and I took heart. I did. Because they fought to do The Right Thing. Always. I went back to school and turned things around as much as I could, and averted total disaster for the fall term, and then went back and had a very successful spring semester. I did the right thing. And last night, sitting in the movie theater, I cheered and clapped and gasped and "Aw"-ed and sat totally enraptured because here at The End of All Things, all of the characters I'd known for so long were doing The Right Thing, over and over again, no matter the cost, and it was absolutely epic.
So I may not be a Fan. I may not know every nook and cranny of the Potterverse the way I knew every blaster and Ewok in the Star Wars 'verse. But I do love him dearly, because in the end, no matter what, Harry Potter does the right thing. And it's fucking brilliant to see.