My thoughts on The Boy Who Lived

I logged into Blogger last night and the first, like, 15 blogs I saw had been posted in anticipation of The Deathly Hallows premiere.  And then this morning on Twitter, it seemed that nearly every person I follow was tweeting things like, “So sad it’s over” and “Thank you, Harry, for changing my life”.  I’ve never watched the movies, and don’t plan to (for reasons that I am aware are both strange and silly) but all these blog posts and tweets made me a little sad and nostalgic, nonetheless.

At the age of 12, I went to the public library to check out a book for my family’s upcoming ski trip.  I saw Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the shelf and thought, “I feel like I’ve heard good things about this”.  And I was obsessed from the first page.  I don’t just mean, “Yeah, that’s a great story” – I mean the borderline unhealthy, I’m-having-dreams-about-wizards-every-night, But-why-can’t-IIIII-go-to-Hogwarts kind of obsessed. 

I finished the book in a few days and immediately passed it to my sister, sitting to the right of me in the car.  Her tale of instant obsession is not much different than mine.

Over the next 8 years, I waited and waited, sometimes re-reading the entire series-to-date in anticipation of whichever book was to be released next.  Very vividly do I remember going at midnight to pick up my copy of The Deathly Hallows – I wore my earbuds/iPod through the store so that I wouldn’t hear when the token idiot (almost always a guy) opened to the last page and screamed out the final sentence.  I always heard of that happening….let me just say, I would have attacked someone.

I tried not to finish the book within 36 hours – I tried to force myself to take breaks, to eat, to sleep, to do normal 20-year-old-girl things.  But the end of book 7 (what would be my absolute favorite of the series) came all too soon.  When I felt the final chapters nearing, I said to my boyfriend, who was reading his copy of the same book on the other end of the couch, “You need to take me home.  I have to be alone for this”.  And, oh my goodness….did I ever need to be alone!

Prior to that, I had cried heavily at the end of book 5 (when Harry finds the mirror? and he realizes going to the Ministry was all for nothing? but it’s too late to do anything?!).  Book 7, however, was a different story….a whole new level of hysterics.  The Prince’s Tale chapter – heartbreaking, utterly heartbreaking.  The Forest chapter – tears all over the pages.  The King’s Cross chapter – just kill me now, J.K.  And then, of course, the book ended so flawlessly, reaching beyond my wildest expectations and I realized, “Well…it’s over now” and that brought on a completely new wave of tears.  I remember my mom asking me the next morning, “How was it?” and I couldn’t even finish a sentence without crying.  Eventually, I managed to say, “It was wonderful and perfect and that’s why I’m so sad”. 

I recently decided to re-read the whole series.  Yup, I’m 23 years old and no, a lot of people here don’t understand it, but when you spend the entire month of May in either the hospital or in doctor’s waiting rooms, you have to do something with your time, you know?  And it helps if that something is a thing that makes you happier than many other things in this world. {Oh and I also re-discovered this, which aired a few years ago….all 4 parts are amazing.}

A few days ago, I finished book 7 for the second time.  I was riding a train from Berlin to Poland and I purposely closed the book when I reached the “just a few more chapters to go” part.  I did not want to be the girl bawling her eyes out on a train, young adult’s fantasy book in hand.  So once I got home, I quietly slipped upstairs to finish the book in solitude and cried nearly as hard as I did the first time around.

So, yeah – I guess this is me, more or less jumping on the HP hysteria bandwagon, chiming in with the chorus of, “Thank you, J.K. Rowling, thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing us The Boy Who Lived”. 

And I leave you with the quote that gets me every time – the one that, embarrassingly enough, brings tears to my eyes as I type it right this very moment, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

Chills.

P.S. I’m totally Hufflepuff and totally fine with it.