My Harry Potter Experience
Okay, it’s 3:46 in the morning (as I begin typing this) and instead of being sound asleep, I am wide awake eating cold pizza and drinking a glass of Arizona Ice Tea. Why? Because I just saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two and now have to face the fact that my childhood has officially ended. Of course, that’s not to say that I will no longer be a child at heart, because I most definitely will, or that I will now take Harry Potter and its fandom and lock it tightly away, because that would simply be something I am completely and utterly incapable of doing; no, what I am saying here is that there is now no more Harry Potter.
The final book of the Harry Potter series may have been completed four years and six days ago, but the fandom (and myself) still had the mantra of “But there are still the movies!” bouncing around in our heads, making it so that the impact that Harry’s story was now done became a bit less impacting and diluted.
However, today was the end of Harry’s journey.
Harry’s tale is now over and out, and half my brain is still trying to work this all out, while the other half already has it all figured out and is trying to keep the tears at bay (though, it should be duly noted that tears were shed when I watched the final installment of this series and that that box of tissues came in handy).
Speaking of the final installment, for the most part I was pleased by it. After all, it has been so very long since I’ve been able to immerse myself so heavily into the world of Harry Potter through the movies. For the past couple I’ve felt like the spectator I was meant to be looking in on scenes that were flashing before the screen and only connecting to each other fleetingly, with Part Two this was not the case at all and I felt as if everything flowed together really wonderfully and the acting was taken up a notch. The combination of these two things allowed me to feel as if I was in the movie, rather than simply watching it, which allowed for me to feel the proper emotional impact of some very certain scenes.
There were many other fantastic elements in this final installment, but I don’t want to get too specific. The same goes for the few things that just didn’t sit well with me. Most of them are more on the nit-picking side and things that would probably only upset fans who have read the books. Though, the one scene that is still ghastly and just plain awful is that scene. I’ll only leave it at that, because I am quite certain that everyone knows what that scene is.
Anyway, over all I want to see that movie once again and right away. It’s been such a long time since I really, really, really wanted to go and watch the movies again (outside of the mandatory second viewing that just comes with being a long-time, dedicated fan).
Right now, before I start my look back on being a Harry Potter fan, I just want to say that after I finished my pizza at around 4:00 in the morning I crashed and fell fast asleep and then woke up at 9:30 am. So, it is now 11:21 in the morning and I’m finishing up this look back. Really though, this last movie was just so emotionally draining. Why is this? The answer: because Harry Potter has been with me through my childhood, my tween years, my teens, and now through my adulthood. I’ve been with this series for roughly thirteen years of my life and I still haven’t cried that it’s is all over.
Instead, I keep getting bombarded by memories. The first time I heard about Harry Potter was from Maribeth, my dear childhood friend, who I have had the pleasure to still be friends with sixteen years later, and then I went to my elementary school library and asked the librarian (Miss Sara, if I recall correctly) if they had any Harry Potter books.
She told me that they did, but that the first book had been taken out, so they only had the second book: Chamber of Secrets. Even then, before I had touched the books and read what was inside them, I desperately wanted to read them. So, I snatched it up and brought it over to the counter so I could sign it out. I remember, quite clearly, the way Miss Sara had looked at me. She stared me straight in the face and had asked if I had read the first book first, and explained that because this was a series that I wouldn’t understand what was going on unless I read the first one first. I then looked right back at her and lied.
“Oh yes, I’ve already read the first one.”
I was a horrible liar as a child (I probably still am) and she probably saw right through my false words. Still, she stamped the book and I walked away with the second book, not the first, held tightly against my chest. My fingers eager to rip open the book and my eyes longing to take in all of the words.
Ever since I can remember I always loved books. I was part of a book club, so I used to have children’s books sent to the house all the time when I was younger and I used to devour them, and when I was really small (before I could even read words) my mother and grandmother had to drag me away, kicking and screaming, from a picture book in Barnes and Noble. So, wanting to badly get my hands on and read the Harry Potter series was no great leap or unexpected turn along my own path of life.
And while I want to say that I was most likely fated to read and be a fan of this series, I should probably take into account the wise words of Albus Dumbledore:
“It is our choices, Harry, that show who we really are, far more than our abilities.”
So, instead of saying that I was fated or destined to be a Harry Potter fan, I think I’m going to word it like this instead:
In the countless worlds, in the countless alternate universes, and even with the countless possibilities that were presented before me in that moment when I learned about the Harry Potter series, I am certain beyond even a shadow of a doubt that I would have chosen to read the Harry Potter books in every single one of them.
No matter the choices laid out before me, I would have always chose to read that second book of Harry Potter and then head over to the first one and then continue on to read the third one and read those three all over again because the fourth was still, painfully, not out yet. I would have always chose to get a Harry Potter backpack that was read and gold and pouch like in its appearance and be, at first, a bit afraid that others would make fun of me for being so dorky and passionate about a series. And I would have always chose to, upon her I-talk-a-mile-a-minute-and-have-bushy-hair entrance, admire Hermione Granger as one of my fictional female role models, right there alongside Lisa Simpson.
I could also say that I would always chose to read the third book so much that the pages are now broken up into three parts and it is quite literally a mess, though I have no intention of buying a new book in the immediate future. I also have no one to blame, not even Ms. Rowling herself, for the fact that I read the Harry Potter books so much that I’m positive that I killed my own eyesight and now need to wear glasses (not that I mind any).
I also didn’t mind the year wait that was between the third book and the fourth, because it had been then (in 2000) that the real whisperings of this series, this Harry Potter person, started to buzz among the media and general public. It was also then that news of the first movie came onto the scene.
I had been so ridiculously excited about that first movie. The crystal clear memory of heading into New York City for the first time with my mother, grandmother, aunt, and cousin on a bus in August 2001 (yes, a month before the tragedy of 9/11), and nearly jumping right out of my seat and through the bus window at the sight of a billboard ad for the first Harry Potter movie with the boats gliding up to Hogwarts and the text: The Magic Begins November 16th, still plays out like a movie clip of its own in my mind.
As does the recollection of me fidgeting in my seat, anxious for the previews and trailers to be done so the first movie could just start. Maribeth had been there by my side and we had been flanked by our parents, who then took us to Twin Pines afterward, where they got “breakfast food,” like eggs and such, and Mar and I got chicken wings that we shared.
Very nearly the same exact thing played itself out when we went to see Chamber of Secrets, except that we had had another friend with us, and all three of us had been giddy at the thought of seeing Remus and Sirius in the next installment (I had been the lone Sirius fangirl with Mar and our other friend being Remus fangirls first and foremost).
And, before heading into my experience with the third movie (and the fifth book), both of which were turning points for me as a fan and as an individual in general, I should note that I spent hours listening to the wonderful melodies that had been created for the movies soundtracks and that I had wasted away time playing the video games (and feeling extremely accomplished over the fact that I was able to beat those games with no outside help at all).
Anyway, like I mentioned above, the third movie and the fifth book were turning points for me. The third movie was the one that they hyped up as being “dark” and “grown up,” at least, in comparison to the rather child-like and innocent first two films. And it was. The look was much duller and more scratchy and “real” than the first two movies had been, but it was in this one that the omissions started and when the directors started playing with the plot and the script writer started making Hermione feel so out of character.
I had been hugely disappointed with the Prisoner of Azkaban.
My favorite book had been destroyed on the silver screen. I still feel this way about this movie, finding the only saving grace to be the touching scenes between Harry and Sirius, which had been made all more poignant by the fact that when the third film came out the fifth book had been out and read and that death was still so very, very raw and painful for me.
It was because of that that I cried for the first time while watching a Harry Potter movie, and I had been near bawling.
I cried for the first time while reading the books in the fifth one. The death of Cedric in the fourth hadn’t brought me to tears, but it had been the turning point for the series as a whole, the war was brewing just under the surface, and even though I had been young, I had been fully aware of that. Yet, I had squashed such depressing thoughts away by reading all of the amazing fanfiction (and looking at all of the beautiful, especially in concerns to the Marauders, fanart) that had literally come to life during that three year wait between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. It had also been during that three year wait that I had visited forums more (discussing the likelihood of Harry/Ginny, the SS Orange Crush, and the absolute absurdity of Harry/Hermione shippers, the SS Pumpkin Pie or “Harmony”), and watched wonderful fan creations such as Potter Puppet Pals.
The fandom, in my opinion, had really flourished and had been at its best during those three years, when books popped up all over the place about what the second leg of Harry’s journey would entail, and fan speculation over an “Order of the Phoenix” gave rise to a plethora of Fifth Year fanfics; a tradition that would be carried on for the sixth and seventh books respectively.
Despite this though, the fanfiction and the fandom’s take on certain characters’ personalities really ended up skewering not only my own views on the series as a whole, but many others. The feeling that the fifth book felt more like a fanfic than the actual, honest to goodness book, can still be felt in my chest and the internet exploding with fans not really feeling the CAPS LOCK!HARRY and that death were overwhelming.
Yet, I think that was the shock that the fandom really needed.
We had been so involved in our own fan created world of Harry Potter that we needed a dose of “reality” to set us straight. Or just set us off like a broken faucet that was broken it was beyond repair. After all, it had been with waterworks and anger that I had flung my copy (the first that I had gotten at midnight) across the room when Sirius fell through that veil and I, like Harry, was simply waiting for him to pop right back out-fine and dandy.
As we all know that never happened.
I had been depressed for a week. I’m also fairly sure that I had gone, a blabbering and sobbing mess, over to Mar’s house because I had needed someone to help me get over that horrid depression. Even though, for a while there, I had been upset with JK Rowling, I now thank her from the bottom of my heart. She had prepared me for the death of my favorite characters in series and she had given me that dose of complete and utter sadness that I had never quite felt before, but it had all helped me grow as a person and really brought home the fact that this story wasn’t going to end like a Disney movie or many other children shows, movies, and books.
This book was about a boy growing up, and so, just as Harry grew and evolved, so did the books and so did I.
After the fifth book and third movie, the fourth movie came along and made me sob quite a bit for Cedric Diggory, more so than the book ever had, but that was mostly because of Cedric’s father’s reaction and the way they used the music in that scene. Even now, just thinking about it can get a bit of a tear from me. Still, I had my issues with this movie as well, though it hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as with Prisoner of Azkaban. And it had been the first Harry Potter movie that I had seen at midnight. That had been a truly fantastic experience and is a memory that has been scorched into my brain.
It was also around the time of the fourth movie that the sixth book came out. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot actually, because the pairing I had been rooting for, for years, actually happened. It had made me elated, only to then bring me to a pile of sniffing, bugger inducing tears with the death of Dumbledore. And at that moment I had hated Snape with a fiery passion.
These later Harry Potter books really ended up becoming extremely personal: I would lock myself up in my room all day and night and just read them straight through, stopping only to eat, take a shower, and go to the bathroom. I would constantly send my emotions on a speeding roller coaster ride that would always chug-chug-chug its way slowly at first, only to hurl be downward and right to the end of the ride far faster than I would have liked. But I simply did not have the willpower to not do this each and every time.
The thrill was just far too much of a temptation.
The movies never quite reached that same level for me. The characters were always just a bit off, the pacing not leaving any room for that chug-chug-chug to really pull me in, and the story and plot only vaguely being similar to the words that had created scenes that had come to nestle themselves in my brain. Still, I found myself at the midnight showing for Half-Blood Prince (simply relieved that I was, at last, finally seeing it, since the delayed release was a huge annoyance) and I did get enjoyment out of it, even though the chemistry between Harry and Ginny was lacking and some very serious no-no’s had been made; a fact that had been rather upsetting considering the fact that the seventh book had already been out and the mistakes that the sixth movie had made had been glaringly obvious.
The seventh book: it came out when I was 17. It had been the first and only time when I had been the same age as Harry, Ron, and Hermione when I had been reading a Harry Potter book for the first time. That made everything about that book extremely special. Added to the fact that I had been eight or so when I first read Sorcerer’s Stone and was reading the last book when I was heading into my senior year of high school really spoke volumes to me.
That night while I waited in line outside of the North Haven Barnes and Nobles, when I saw nearly my whole high school pass me by, waving and smiling, a part of me knew that all of this was coming to an end. But I had pushed it all aside. I had snatched up my own large, orange Harry Potter book and let the tears pour right on down as I read the inside flap. Where the summary should have been was instead just a very straightforward blurb:
“We now present the seventh and final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter.”
That had been the beginning of the end. I ate up the book, like I had done with all of the rest. I had my mind blown to pieces at certain parts, had my eyes blood shot red by the end, and had my inner fangirl pleased by various outcomes, devastated by others, and intrigued by a possible relationship that the slasher in me was pleased to find out was (at least one-sidedly) canon.
When I had closed that book I hadn’t cried. I think that I was perhaps in shock; either that or it was just not real to me that Harry Potter was over yet. We still had some movies to go and some years left with Harry and friends (and enemies). So everything was fine and everything was dandy.
Then the countdown for Part One of Deathly Hallows was upon me. I was seeing it all the way on the other side of the world in Japan. And while it was beyond words to describe seeing posters and advertisements for Harry Potter in Japanese and to have all of your Chinese and Korean friends getting eager to see it…There was no midnight showing for me this time. I saw it with friends, but not the friends I was accustomed to seeing it with. There were no costumes, the previews were all for movies that, while a few actually looked really good, I knew I would never be seeing, and running along the bottom of the screen were subtitles. It was a completely new and odd experience for me.
I had been abroad, so I hadn't had the time to watch and prepare myself for some of the changes that had been made to the film, so I was harsher on Deathly Hallows Part I than I had been on any other. The atmosphere, in which I’m quite certain there had been a lot of “lost in translation” moments, and the cheering and excitement that is usually so out and in your face at the midnight showing events were just missing. This caused everything to feel more tense than it should have and for the majority of the movie to just not sit right with me.
It had been at this moment in time that I found Harry Potter fandom frustrating and confusing. Fans were ripping other fans apart (either fans were annoyed by other fans who were too loyal to the book or by fans who were too loyal to the movies), unneeded jabs and pokes at Twilight were becoming old and stale, and so many fans were over the moon about A Very Potter Musical, which had been a play that I had tried to watch, but simply could not get into.
I had felt distant to the fandom, alienated by the way it was growing and changing. I felt like I was slowly starting to leave it behind and grow apathy for it. I had missed when I had been armored by it all, series and fandom, when I had felt my breath stopping when I heard JK Rowling read (live) from Half-Blood Prince in New York City, talk about her shoes, and basically confirm (without a doubt) that Ron and Hermione were going to end up together. Or when the fanfiction had used to be, well, good; I longed for a Harry Potter of the past.
And perhaps, just perhaps, this was a defense mechanism of mine. For with the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, here was also the End of the End staring me right in the face. There was no going back, all the speculating that had been done on forums or on episodes of MuggleCast about the possibilities of where the series would go or what JK Rowling was going to reveal on her website were done and past. MuggleNet, which used to flood in with news all the time would only occasionally update with news stories here and there…
It was all coming to an end and at a very rapid pace.
But then, somewhere along the way I was able to bring peace to my fears and anxieties. I was getting used to the idea that when I saw the screen go black this time at the movies it meant a literal THE END. As I think about it, it wasn’t the announcement of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park nor was it the notion of an online Harry Potter convention that basically anyone and everyone would be able to attend that elevated my worries and put me at ease with parting with this series.
It was Pottermore.
Here was the encyclopedia that JK Rowling had promised us mixed with an interactive Harry Potter game all finely crafted and supervised by Ms. Rowling herself. Here was a way for me to safely say that Harry Potter, and Harry’s story in particular, would not be coming to a complete and utter end. Here was a way for Harry’s story to expand without having to embark on another epic voyage.
There are other ways that I know my Harry Potter experience will continue to live on and prosper. I have yet to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a place where Hogwarts and the Wizarding World are made as real as they possibly can be. I have yet to go to a Harry Potter convention, which is an experience that I am sorely wishing to have, since I think it would be far different, and yet very nearly the same as conventions I am used to going to. One of my wishes is to have a class on Harry Potter during my years at college, the thought of being able to write essays about themes and motifs found within the series or the thought of debating the actions of characters (did Harry cross that invisible line between good and bad when he used the Unforgivable Curses in Deathly Hallows? Was Dumbledore really just a manipulative, old man or did he really come to love and care for Harry and use his manipulate for “the Greater Good”?) and other such things in a classroom setting is one that I long for.
Along with all of that, I still have to try watching A Very Potter Musical again and get around to listening to some more Wrock (Wizarding Rock). Never mind the fact that I, an individual who usually hates watching sporting events, would love to watch a real life Quidditch match.
So yes, me and the Harry Potter series still have a lot of experiences laid out before us. Will I be able to get around to them all? Rightfully, I don’t know, though I’m going to guess probably not. Still, I will always find myself wandering back to one of the books with a desire to go back to Hogwarts and hang out with Harry, Ron, and Hermione and I want to one day try listening to the audio books, a whole new way of experiencing the world that Ms. Rowling has created and that all of us have nurtured and have been able to bring to life.
Finally, if I, one day, do get married and have a child (or children) then the books and movies will be on the bookshelf in my home ready for them to read and watch for the first time. Hopefully they will latch onto the series just like I had and allow for Harry to continue living on through a whole new generation. It will be a generation that will have the completed series, both in book and movie format, waiting for them right there at their fingertips, and that’s okay. It will just be another way for the Harry Potter series to be experienced and I am looking forward to it one day.
I got on the Hogwarts express, heading for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizarding, when I was a child still in elementary school, and I am now getting off it as a twenty-one year old adult woman entering her senior year of college.
Harry has been with me through all of my personal happenings in life and he has been with me through major, life changing events in what will now become history.
Harry will continue to stay with me as I venture further into my adulthood and eventually into my middle ages and even to when I am an elderly woman unable to properly hear or see anything anymore. I would vouch now to say that he will be with me to my deathbed, when I will find myself at Kings Cross Station, ready to “catch a train,” as Dumbledore had so nicely and elegantly put it, knowing that Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, all the Weasleys, all the Hogwarts students and staff, the Marauders and Lily, all of those names that were even just mentioned in passing, and even the bad guys such as Voldemort and Bellatrix and the Malfoys with their albino peacocks, were with me basically my whole life.
And I will glad to finally part with them all then because, by then, all of my mischief will have been managed and I will simply be departing on the next great adventure in life.
The Harry Potter series is not simply just a book series or a box office, blockbuster movie franchise: it is a living and breathing entity that was magical brought to life through Ms. Rowling, through the people who put their heart and soul into creating the movies, and through the fans who have been with Harry until the very end. And Harry Potter will continue to live on, so long as there are those who believe in the Boy-Who-Lived.
I just now finished typing this at 6:16 at night. It literally took me all day to write, and I am perfectly fine with this. If any of my friends have actually read this far, then know that I am highly impressed! If not, then that is okay with me too, since this was more for me than for anyone else. This has been my experience with the Harry Potter series in a nutshell, from the beginning until “the end” and I felt as if it was necessary for me to write all of this down, right here and right now when my heart is still bounding from seeing the final film in theaters.
Now, I bid you all adieu...As I go to watch the movie once more tonight with my parents! ; P
The final book of the Harry Potter series may have been completed four years and six days ago, but the fandom (and myself) still had the mantra of “But there are still the movies!” bouncing around in our heads, making it so that the impact that Harry’s story was now done became a bit less impacting and diluted.
However, today was the end of Harry’s journey.
Harry’s tale is now over and out, and half my brain is still trying to work this all out, while the other half already has it all figured out and is trying to keep the tears at bay (though, it should be duly noted that tears were shed when I watched the final installment of this series and that that box of tissues came in handy).
Speaking of the final installment, for the most part I was pleased by it. After all, it has been so very long since I’ve been able to immerse myself so heavily into the world of Harry Potter through the movies. For the past couple I’ve felt like the spectator I was meant to be looking in on scenes that were flashing before the screen and only connecting to each other fleetingly, with Part Two this was not the case at all and I felt as if everything flowed together really wonderfully and the acting was taken up a notch. The combination of these two things allowed me to feel as if I was in the movie, rather than simply watching it, which allowed for me to feel the proper emotional impact of some very certain scenes.
There were many other fantastic elements in this final installment, but I don’t want to get too specific. The same goes for the few things that just didn’t sit well with me. Most of them are more on the nit-picking side and things that would probably only upset fans who have read the books. Though, the one scene that is still ghastly and just plain awful is that scene. I’ll only leave it at that, because I am quite certain that everyone knows what that scene is.
Anyway, over all I want to see that movie once again and right away. It’s been such a long time since I really, really, really wanted to go and watch the movies again (outside of the mandatory second viewing that just comes with being a long-time, dedicated fan).
Right now, before I start my look back on being a Harry Potter fan, I just want to say that after I finished my pizza at around 4:00 in the morning I crashed and fell fast asleep and then woke up at 9:30 am. So, it is now 11:21 in the morning and I’m finishing up this look back. Really though, this last movie was just so emotionally draining. Why is this? The answer: because Harry Potter has been with me through my childhood, my tween years, my teens, and now through my adulthood. I’ve been with this series for roughly thirteen years of my life and I still haven’t cried that it’s is all over.
Instead, I keep getting bombarded by memories. The first time I heard about Harry Potter was from Maribeth, my dear childhood friend, who I have had the pleasure to still be friends with sixteen years later, and then I went to my elementary school library and asked the librarian (Miss Sara, if I recall correctly) if they had any Harry Potter books.
She told me that they did, but that the first book had been taken out, so they only had the second book: Chamber of Secrets. Even then, before I had touched the books and read what was inside them, I desperately wanted to read them. So, I snatched it up and brought it over to the counter so I could sign it out. I remember, quite clearly, the way Miss Sara had looked at me. She stared me straight in the face and had asked if I had read the first book first, and explained that because this was a series that I wouldn’t understand what was going on unless I read the first one first. I then looked right back at her and lied.
“Oh yes, I’ve already read the first one.”
I was a horrible liar as a child (I probably still am) and she probably saw right through my false words. Still, she stamped the book and I walked away with the second book, not the first, held tightly against my chest. My fingers eager to rip open the book and my eyes longing to take in all of the words.
Ever since I can remember I always loved books. I was part of a book club, so I used to have children’s books sent to the house all the time when I was younger and I used to devour them, and when I was really small (before I could even read words) my mother and grandmother had to drag me away, kicking and screaming, from a picture book in Barnes and Noble. So, wanting to badly get my hands on and read the Harry Potter series was no great leap or unexpected turn along my own path of life.
And while I want to say that I was most likely fated to read and be a fan of this series, I should probably take into account the wise words of Albus Dumbledore:
“It is our choices, Harry, that show who we really are, far more than our abilities.”
So, instead of saying that I was fated or destined to be a Harry Potter fan, I think I’m going to word it like this instead:
In the countless worlds, in the countless alternate universes, and even with the countless possibilities that were presented before me in that moment when I learned about the Harry Potter series, I am certain beyond even a shadow of a doubt that I would have chosen to read the Harry Potter books in every single one of them.
No matter the choices laid out before me, I would have always chose to read that second book of Harry Potter and then head over to the first one and then continue on to read the third one and read those three all over again because the fourth was still, painfully, not out yet. I would have always chose to get a Harry Potter backpack that was read and gold and pouch like in its appearance and be, at first, a bit afraid that others would make fun of me for being so dorky and passionate about a series. And I would have always chose to, upon her I-talk-a-mile-a-minute-and-have-bushy-hair entrance, admire Hermione Granger as one of my fictional female role models, right there alongside Lisa Simpson.
I could also say that I would always chose to read the third book so much that the pages are now broken up into three parts and it is quite literally a mess, though I have no intention of buying a new book in the immediate future. I also have no one to blame, not even Ms. Rowling herself, for the fact that I read the Harry Potter books so much that I’m positive that I killed my own eyesight and now need to wear glasses (not that I mind any).
I also didn’t mind the year wait that was between the third book and the fourth, because it had been then (in 2000) that the real whisperings of this series, this Harry Potter person, started to buzz among the media and general public. It was also then that news of the first movie came onto the scene.
I had been so ridiculously excited about that first movie. The crystal clear memory of heading into New York City for the first time with my mother, grandmother, aunt, and cousin on a bus in August 2001 (yes, a month before the tragedy of 9/11), and nearly jumping right out of my seat and through the bus window at the sight of a billboard ad for the first Harry Potter movie with the boats gliding up to Hogwarts and the text: The Magic Begins November 16th, still plays out like a movie clip of its own in my mind.
As does the recollection of me fidgeting in my seat, anxious for the previews and trailers to be done so the first movie could just start. Maribeth had been there by my side and we had been flanked by our parents, who then took us to Twin Pines afterward, where they got “breakfast food,” like eggs and such, and Mar and I got chicken wings that we shared.
Very nearly the same exact thing played itself out when we went to see Chamber of Secrets, except that we had had another friend with us, and all three of us had been giddy at the thought of seeing Remus and Sirius in the next installment (I had been the lone Sirius fangirl with Mar and our other friend being Remus fangirls first and foremost).
And, before heading into my experience with the third movie (and the fifth book), both of which were turning points for me as a fan and as an individual in general, I should note that I spent hours listening to the wonderful melodies that had been created for the movies soundtracks and that I had wasted away time playing the video games (and feeling extremely accomplished over the fact that I was able to beat those games with no outside help at all).
Anyway, like I mentioned above, the third movie and the fifth book were turning points for me. The third movie was the one that they hyped up as being “dark” and “grown up,” at least, in comparison to the rather child-like and innocent first two films. And it was. The look was much duller and more scratchy and “real” than the first two movies had been, but it was in this one that the omissions started and when the directors started playing with the plot and the script writer started making Hermione feel so out of character.
I had been hugely disappointed with the Prisoner of Azkaban.
My favorite book had been destroyed on the silver screen. I still feel this way about this movie, finding the only saving grace to be the touching scenes between Harry and Sirius, which had been made all more poignant by the fact that when the third film came out the fifth book had been out and read and that death was still so very, very raw and painful for me.
It was because of that that I cried for the first time while watching a Harry Potter movie, and I had been near bawling.
I cried for the first time while reading the books in the fifth one. The death of Cedric in the fourth hadn’t brought me to tears, but it had been the turning point for the series as a whole, the war was brewing just under the surface, and even though I had been young, I had been fully aware of that. Yet, I had squashed such depressing thoughts away by reading all of the amazing fanfiction (and looking at all of the beautiful, especially in concerns to the Marauders, fanart) that had literally come to life during that three year wait between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. It had also been during that three year wait that I had visited forums more (discussing the likelihood of Harry/Ginny, the SS Orange Crush, and the absolute absurdity of Harry/Hermione shippers, the SS Pumpkin Pie or “Harmony”), and watched wonderful fan creations such as Potter Puppet Pals.
The fandom, in my opinion, had really flourished and had been at its best during those three years, when books popped up all over the place about what the second leg of Harry’s journey would entail, and fan speculation over an “Order of the Phoenix” gave rise to a plethora of Fifth Year fanfics; a tradition that would be carried on for the sixth and seventh books respectively.
Despite this though, the fanfiction and the fandom’s take on certain characters’ personalities really ended up skewering not only my own views on the series as a whole, but many others. The feeling that the fifth book felt more like a fanfic than the actual, honest to goodness book, can still be felt in my chest and the internet exploding with fans not really feeling the CAPS LOCK!HARRY and that death were overwhelming.
Yet, I think that was the shock that the fandom really needed.
We had been so involved in our own fan created world of Harry Potter that we needed a dose of “reality” to set us straight. Or just set us off like a broken faucet that was broken it was beyond repair. After all, it had been with waterworks and anger that I had flung my copy (the first that I had gotten at midnight) across the room when Sirius fell through that veil and I, like Harry, was simply waiting for him to pop right back out-fine and dandy.
As we all know that never happened.
I had been depressed for a week. I’m also fairly sure that I had gone, a blabbering and sobbing mess, over to Mar’s house because I had needed someone to help me get over that horrid depression. Even though, for a while there, I had been upset with JK Rowling, I now thank her from the bottom of my heart. She had prepared me for the death of my favorite characters in series and she had given me that dose of complete and utter sadness that I had never quite felt before, but it had all helped me grow as a person and really brought home the fact that this story wasn’t going to end like a Disney movie or many other children shows, movies, and books.
This book was about a boy growing up, and so, just as Harry grew and evolved, so did the books and so did I.
After the fifth book and third movie, the fourth movie came along and made me sob quite a bit for Cedric Diggory, more so than the book ever had, but that was mostly because of Cedric’s father’s reaction and the way they used the music in that scene. Even now, just thinking about it can get a bit of a tear from me. Still, I had my issues with this movie as well, though it hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as with Prisoner of Azkaban. And it had been the first Harry Potter movie that I had seen at midnight. That had been a truly fantastic experience and is a memory that has been scorched into my brain.
It was also around the time of the fourth movie that the sixth book came out. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot actually, because the pairing I had been rooting for, for years, actually happened. It had made me elated, only to then bring me to a pile of sniffing, bugger inducing tears with the death of Dumbledore. And at that moment I had hated Snape with a fiery passion.
These later Harry Potter books really ended up becoming extremely personal: I would lock myself up in my room all day and night and just read them straight through, stopping only to eat, take a shower, and go to the bathroom. I would constantly send my emotions on a speeding roller coaster ride that would always chug-chug-chug its way slowly at first, only to hurl be downward and right to the end of the ride far faster than I would have liked. But I simply did not have the willpower to not do this each and every time.
The thrill was just far too much of a temptation.
The movies never quite reached that same level for me. The characters were always just a bit off, the pacing not leaving any room for that chug-chug-chug to really pull me in, and the story and plot only vaguely being similar to the words that had created scenes that had come to nestle themselves in my brain. Still, I found myself at the midnight showing for Half-Blood Prince (simply relieved that I was, at last, finally seeing it, since the delayed release was a huge annoyance) and I did get enjoyment out of it, even though the chemistry between Harry and Ginny was lacking and some very serious no-no’s had been made; a fact that had been rather upsetting considering the fact that the seventh book had already been out and the mistakes that the sixth movie had made had been glaringly obvious.
The seventh book: it came out when I was 17. It had been the first and only time when I had been the same age as Harry, Ron, and Hermione when I had been reading a Harry Potter book for the first time. That made everything about that book extremely special. Added to the fact that I had been eight or so when I first read Sorcerer’s Stone and was reading the last book when I was heading into my senior year of high school really spoke volumes to me.
That night while I waited in line outside of the North Haven Barnes and Nobles, when I saw nearly my whole high school pass me by, waving and smiling, a part of me knew that all of this was coming to an end. But I had pushed it all aside. I had snatched up my own large, orange Harry Potter book and let the tears pour right on down as I read the inside flap. Where the summary should have been was instead just a very straightforward blurb:
“We now present the seventh and final installment in the epic tale of Harry Potter.”
That had been the beginning of the end. I ate up the book, like I had done with all of the rest. I had my mind blown to pieces at certain parts, had my eyes blood shot red by the end, and had my inner fangirl pleased by various outcomes, devastated by others, and intrigued by a possible relationship that the slasher in me was pleased to find out was (at least one-sidedly) canon.
When I had closed that book I hadn’t cried. I think that I was perhaps in shock; either that or it was just not real to me that Harry Potter was over yet. We still had some movies to go and some years left with Harry and friends (and enemies). So everything was fine and everything was dandy.
Then the countdown for Part One of Deathly Hallows was upon me. I was seeing it all the way on the other side of the world in Japan. And while it was beyond words to describe seeing posters and advertisements for Harry Potter in Japanese and to have all of your Chinese and Korean friends getting eager to see it…There was no midnight showing for me this time. I saw it with friends, but not the friends I was accustomed to seeing it with. There were no costumes, the previews were all for movies that, while a few actually looked really good, I knew I would never be seeing, and running along the bottom of the screen were subtitles. It was a completely new and odd experience for me.
I had been abroad, so I hadn't had the time to watch and prepare myself for some of the changes that had been made to the film, so I was harsher on Deathly Hallows Part I than I had been on any other. The atmosphere, in which I’m quite certain there had been a lot of “lost in translation” moments, and the cheering and excitement that is usually so out and in your face at the midnight showing events were just missing. This caused everything to feel more tense than it should have and for the majority of the movie to just not sit right with me.
It had been at this moment in time that I found Harry Potter fandom frustrating and confusing. Fans were ripping other fans apart (either fans were annoyed by other fans who were too loyal to the book or by fans who were too loyal to the movies), unneeded jabs and pokes at Twilight were becoming old and stale, and so many fans were over the moon about A Very Potter Musical, which had been a play that I had tried to watch, but simply could not get into.
I had felt distant to the fandom, alienated by the way it was growing and changing. I felt like I was slowly starting to leave it behind and grow apathy for it. I had missed when I had been armored by it all, series and fandom, when I had felt my breath stopping when I heard JK Rowling read (live) from Half-Blood Prince in New York City, talk about her shoes, and basically confirm (without a doubt) that Ron and Hermione were going to end up together. Or when the fanfiction had used to be, well, good; I longed for a Harry Potter of the past.
And perhaps, just perhaps, this was a defense mechanism of mine. For with the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, here was also the End of the End staring me right in the face. There was no going back, all the speculating that had been done on forums or on episodes of MuggleCast about the possibilities of where the series would go or what JK Rowling was going to reveal on her website were done and past. MuggleNet, which used to flood in with news all the time would only occasionally update with news stories here and there…
It was all coming to an end and at a very rapid pace.
But then, somewhere along the way I was able to bring peace to my fears and anxieties. I was getting used to the idea that when I saw the screen go black this time at the movies it meant a literal THE END. As I think about it, it wasn’t the announcement of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park nor was it the notion of an online Harry Potter convention that basically anyone and everyone would be able to attend that elevated my worries and put me at ease with parting with this series.
It was Pottermore.
Here was the encyclopedia that JK Rowling had promised us mixed with an interactive Harry Potter game all finely crafted and supervised by Ms. Rowling herself. Here was a way for me to safely say that Harry Potter, and Harry’s story in particular, would not be coming to a complete and utter end. Here was a way for Harry’s story to expand without having to embark on another epic voyage.
There are other ways that I know my Harry Potter experience will continue to live on and prosper. I have yet to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a place where Hogwarts and the Wizarding World are made as real as they possibly can be. I have yet to go to a Harry Potter convention, which is an experience that I am sorely wishing to have, since I think it would be far different, and yet very nearly the same as conventions I am used to going to. One of my wishes is to have a class on Harry Potter during my years at college, the thought of being able to write essays about themes and motifs found within the series or the thought of debating the actions of characters (did Harry cross that invisible line between good and bad when he used the Unforgivable Curses in Deathly Hallows? Was Dumbledore really just a manipulative, old man or did he really come to love and care for Harry and use his manipulate for “the Greater Good”?) and other such things in a classroom setting is one that I long for.
Along with all of that, I still have to try watching A Very Potter Musical again and get around to listening to some more Wrock (Wizarding Rock). Never mind the fact that I, an individual who usually hates watching sporting events, would love to watch a real life Quidditch match.
So yes, me and the Harry Potter series still have a lot of experiences laid out before us. Will I be able to get around to them all? Rightfully, I don’t know, though I’m going to guess probably not. Still, I will always find myself wandering back to one of the books with a desire to go back to Hogwarts and hang out with Harry, Ron, and Hermione and I want to one day try listening to the audio books, a whole new way of experiencing the world that Ms. Rowling has created and that all of us have nurtured and have been able to bring to life.
Finally, if I, one day, do get married and have a child (or children) then the books and movies will be on the bookshelf in my home ready for them to read and watch for the first time. Hopefully they will latch onto the series just like I had and allow for Harry to continue living on through a whole new generation. It will be a generation that will have the completed series, both in book and movie format, waiting for them right there at their fingertips, and that’s okay. It will just be another way for the Harry Potter series to be experienced and I am looking forward to it one day.
I got on the Hogwarts express, heading for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizarding, when I was a child still in elementary school, and I am now getting off it as a twenty-one year old adult woman entering her senior year of college.
Harry has been with me through all of my personal happenings in life and he has been with me through major, life changing events in what will now become history.
Harry will continue to stay with me as I venture further into my adulthood and eventually into my middle ages and even to when I am an elderly woman unable to properly hear or see anything anymore. I would vouch now to say that he will be with me to my deathbed, when I will find myself at Kings Cross Station, ready to “catch a train,” as Dumbledore had so nicely and elegantly put it, knowing that Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, all the Weasleys, all the Hogwarts students and staff, the Marauders and Lily, all of those names that were even just mentioned in passing, and even the bad guys such as Voldemort and Bellatrix and the Malfoys with their albino peacocks, were with me basically my whole life.
And I will glad to finally part with them all then because, by then, all of my mischief will have been managed and I will simply be departing on the next great adventure in life.
The Harry Potter series is not simply just a book series or a box office, blockbuster movie franchise: it is a living and breathing entity that was magical brought to life through Ms. Rowling, through the people who put their heart and soul into creating the movies, and through the fans who have been with Harry until the very end. And Harry Potter will continue to live on, so long as there are those who believe in the Boy-Who-Lived.
I just now finished typing this at 6:16 at night. It literally took me all day to write, and I am perfectly fine with this. If any of my friends have actually read this far, then know that I am highly impressed! If not, then that is okay with me too, since this was more for me than for anyone else. This has been my experience with the Harry Potter series in a nutshell, from the beginning until “the end” and I felt as if it was necessary for me to write all of this down, right here and right now when my heart is still bounding from seeing the final film in theaters.
Now, I bid you all adieu...As I go to watch the movie once more tonight with my parents! ; P