I'd like to apologize for abandoning you, reader, for a few days. I had to wave goodbye to an old friend...Mr. Harry Potter and I had a date on Thursday night, and what can I say - I just wasn't up for blogging it out yesterday, after our sad farewell.
I'd like to take a break from the road trip catalog tonight, and really let my inner nerd go hog wild. This entry is dedicated to none other than Harry Potter. The pictures, incidentally, are from the trip I took to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios Orlando, this past April, for my 30th birthday. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
For me, this all started when I was dragged to the midnight showing of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, where people stood in line, dressed like Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore.
“How do they know what to dress up as, if this is the first movie?” I asked my sophomore year roommate (who had done the dragging). Her reply was to shake her head at me, as if to say, fool. I certainly was a fool, and a bored one, standing on line for what seemed like ever for a kid’s movie. It all changed in the next two hours.
Like many, I can remember who I was with when seeing each movie for the first time, and which theater we were in. There is camaraderie about HP fans, we find each other, share moments. We get it. But will that continue, now that the movies are complete? I feel it will soon be over.
Watching The Deathly Hallows also reminds us of the bittersweet reading of that final chapter - I finished on 7-31-07, Harry's 27th birthday.
With just as fine a memory, we can recall where we were when first reading each book. Not just the time and place (and company), as with the films, but a memory that contains an entire life we once lived, past homes and classes and jobs we had, the family and friends we saw each day…the lives we once had that are gone.
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Harry Potter, in ways large and small, helped us get through the challenges of those particular times. The anticipation of not knowing what happens in the next chapter was a great incentive to get through an otherwise gloomy day; waiting to be alone, pull out the book (back when it still smelled fresh!), and read...and the world disappeared for a few hours.
The world doesn’t really disappear, of course, because your nose is in a book. It doesn’t stop when you watch the game on TV, or while you go out drinking with your friends. It won’t stop while you work out at the gym or play the piano, or smoke cigarettes behind the school. It won’t stop if your parents get divorced, or your best friend dies.
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We also followed him down the dark paths, the dark-night-of-the-soul moments. He had a lot of those, but hell, so do we – and that’s when Harry really shined. The answers were, ironically, the same: Use your strengths. Remember what is important. Hold to your values. Friends will see you through.
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These books are private journeys each of us took alone, in our bedrooms perhaps, but more so in our minds. Saying goodbye to the series is enormously saying goodbye to our past selves – our own private histories. It is painful to see the end to films that have given us so much entertainment and shared joy, but also, even more painful reminders that our private journey with Harry has come to an end. Harry and friends have walked with us for a long time, held our hand, gave us comfort and strength through the throws of life. It’s time to wave goodbye for a while, and look into the future, alone.
~A
P.S. Alan Rickman...you had me at hello.
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