Warning: lots of Harry Potter-related posts coming up this week! I still can’t believe that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script book is being released this weekend- nine years since Deathly Hallows and I genuinely thought that would be the end of the Harry Potter saga. It’s so, so weird and I can’t fully process it even though I’ve booked my ticket for a midnight release party and pre-ordered my copy. One of the weirdest things is that Harry’s going to be ten years older than I am in this book whereas when all of the previous books were released, I was exactly the same age as him. I’m a bit nervous about how the characters are going to have turned out… Anyway, the first post I’m going to share about HP is something I wrote five years ago right before the release of the last film in the Harry Potter franchise. A lot of my thoughts are still the same now and I think it’s a good place to start! SO…
“Not really into notes usually but the last HP film is a big thing! Although I really don’t like the way people are saying it’s the end of an era… I grew up with Harry Potter (literally- the first book came out when I was 10 and got hooked from then on…read all the others the day they came out and happened to be basically the same age as Harry down to doing GCSEs the year he did OWLs and leaving school in his last year at Hogwarts). I’ve listened to HP audiobooks nearly every night since I was 11 and have no intention of stopping now!
Hogwarts was a kind of alternate reality when I was a teenager- was still waiting for a Hogwarts letter right up till I left school and, even though it never came, still ended up pretending I was there so much that when I read the books/watch the films now, it feels more like a memory of a direct experience than a memory of a fictional place. Imagination can be really powerful- sometimes I read the first three books and feel like they’re missing something, and I think it’s because I’d imagined being in them so much that I’d imagined more than was there and somehow convinced myself that it happened :s, although to me that makes it even more real! In between books, I tried to make up what I thought would happen in the next one and some of those things are as ‘real’ in my HP universe as what is actually in print, lol.
As far as I’m concerned, Dumbledore, McGonagall and Lupin were my favourite teachers (along with a couple of ‘real’ teachers). When I was at school, I used to pretend that I could ‘combine’ school and Hogwarts where I’d go to Hogwarts but it would have a ‘real’ school structure/timetable as well as a magical one, and some people from the ‘real’ world were there too (think I’d need several time turners for that one…still waiting for one to come through the post along with a Hogwarts letter so I can go back and go to school again but Hogwarts this time :p) which was a big part of my life from the age of 10-20, when the last book came out. By then, I’d grown up enough to actually ‘get’ a lot of the philosophy/ideas behind it so I feel really, really lucky to be the age I was for every book, think I was born in exactly the right year :), and to get into HP from the beginning. Even did my undergrad dissertation on identity/reality in the HP series which felt strange coz it was about a ‘fantasy’ world which was for me (and a lot of people) like a reality but glad I did, felt like a good form of closure although I’m still as into HP as I was as a teenager, just in a different way.
Talking of characters, there are a few in HP who are AMAZING. When I first ‘met’ Luna Lovegood in OOTP, I was 16 and a bit ‘weird’ (still am, lol, but don’t really mind as much now!) and was so glad to meet someone I could actually identify with and who was more weird than I was! She’s my favourite character of the series, think she’s amazing. I love Neville Longbottom too, and I love the way he ‘grows’ through the series. My other favourite character’s Dumbledore, mainly because of his incredible quotes:
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
“Time is making fools of us again.”
“That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.”
“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” (from the film version of PoA)
“In dreams, we enter a world that’s entirely our own.” (again, from PoA film)
“It is my belief… that the truth is generally preferable to lies.”
“If you’re holding out for universal popularity, I’m afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
I found the last book hard to read because of the ‘Dumbledore doubting’ but the end made up for it. Snape grew on me massively through the series- I always felt a bit sorry for him (and weirdly guilty at the same time :s) as a teenager, but when I read DH, he became one of my favourite ever characters. Also love McGonagall- I think she’s the best teacher in the series and I’d love to be like that when I’m older! She’s really fair and cares about the students but manages to be firm at the same time… Thought it was interesting how Maggie Smith saw her as an older Miss Brodie, hadn’t made that connection before but can kind of see how it fits.
I haven’t seen the last film yet (seeing it on Tuesday), since I’ve cried in both HBP and DHp1, I think I’ll end up crying, even if it’s just saying ‘bye’ to the characters (although it’s not really…). It’s weird, I don’t usually cry in books/films but HP still makes me :s, I must have seen HBP over 20 times and still cry at the end! Think it must be something to do with the ‘reality’ of the series, and how it takes on a greater ‘reality’ than just the words on the page. I don’t like the idea that the last film is the end though – I’m with Dumbledore on this one, as long as something exists in your head then it’s real! HP has been ‘real’ for me for the last 14 years…why should it stop now?! If anything, it’s more real because it’s an individual experience of the HP universe that’s carrying on, not someone else’s interpretation of it which, much as I enjoy watching, never matches up to my teenage ‘memories’. HP has been a massive part of my growing up (that really isn’t an exaggeration) and the film franchise has nothing to do with that, and I really don’t see why that’s going to stop any time soon!”
Thoughts from an Iridescent Starfish 