(p.s. all pictures are from weheartit.com because I am too lazy to draw anything and all my pictures from the Harry Potter (book) years are from polaroid cameras and are packed away right now and this ain't a post about the movies son)
I was first introduced to Harry Potter in sixth grade, about two years after Sorcerer's Stone graced the bookshelves of millions. I remember I was at my elementary school book fair (god I loved book fairs) and spotted a paperback of The Sorcerer's Stone on the top shelf. I had never even heard of Harry Potter before, but both of my parents had and decided that we should get it. I never say no to a new book, so we went home with my new paperback tenderly tucked in my lap. I have nothing but corny things to say about my feelings for that book. I loved it like a newborn child. That night, my father read us the first chapter aloud. We always gathered in my brother's room to read Harry Potter together. He had a wooden bunk bed, so I would climb to the top bunk while Gabe snuggled in his covers below and my parents both sat on the floor. We had a strict one chapter a night rule, which drove me absolutely nuts but which might have had something to do with the fact that my parents always sat on the floor. Because the bunk bed was wooden, I would often chew on the edge of the barrier protecting me from falling to the floor when times got tough at Hogwarts for Harry and his crew. There were teeth marks in that banister that my mother was not happy about when she discovered them a year later. We read the entire first book chapter by chapter, discussing theories about what could be in store for us the next night. I remember one particularly awful night when we finished the chapter preluding the climax, where we would discover who it was who was trying to steal the Sorcerer's Stone.
WHO COULD IT BE????
I flipped my shit trying to convince my parents to just read the rest of the book that very night. They told me no. So instead we all gave our two cents about who we thought the figure in the room was if it wasn't Snape. My dad thought it was Bane, the angry centaur from the Forbidden Forest. I don't remember who my mom and brother thought it was, and I know for sure that I didn't get it right. When we discovered it was Quirrel we were all blown away. What? WHAT?! How did JK Rowling do that? How did she pull the fleece over our eyes so easily? We were all duly impressed.
When we were done with the book, I demanded everything Harry Potter. I was obsessed. I wanted to eat, drink, and BREATHE Harry Potter. I had a Harry Potter journal, stickers, blanket, wand, and an extra copy of the first book from when I thought I'd lost my original copy and I threatened to do something drastic if I didn't get a new one. I pretended that I was a wizard who was being kept at a muggle's household for my safety (myself disguised as her with polyjuice potion) and that the real Otter was being kept in a storm drain in a local park. I am not lying. I also created my own Harry Potter alter-ego, Daffodil Potter, who was Harry Potter's twin sister. She was, in my little mad child dream-world, the more powerful of the two and had to be super protected from Voldemort because he wanted to raise her as his own child to be his prodigy. Instead of going with Harry to the Dursleys, she was raised by Snape in a suburban household. Everyone was in love with her. I pretty much just made her into what I wanted to be: Harry Potter in female form and with all the unwanted attentions of every single male in the world. One car trip I plagiarized the entire first chapter of Sorcerer's Stone but with some added changes that included Daffodil in them and then worried that JK Rowling would find out and have me arrested.
Please don't arrest me Jo...
The second book was read in the same manner as the first, chapter by chapter. I remember begging my mom to buy it immediately as soon as I discovered it was out and then dying inside because it took her a week before she went out and got it. By the third book, I was beginning to feel incredibly antsy about the whole reading one chapter at a time thing. I asked my parents slyly where the book was after school, but they hid it from me knowing that I would read ahead if I found the book. In the end I found the book and did read ahead secretly, then suffering a re-read of the chapter that night. It was during the third book that we discovered the true pronunciation of Hermione's name, which I discovered by reading an American Girl magazine (before we pronounced it Hermiown).
The fourth book was when I started going to the midnight releases. For the fourth book I dressed up as a French spy (on accident, I wore all black plus a turtleneck and a black beret for some strange reason). Since I had gone to the midnight release, I got a headstart on reading it. And by headstart, I mean I read through the entire night and well into the next day, finally passing out at 9 PM. My parents discovered this and finally FINALLY let me read them on my own. It was at this time that I and my friends joined a Harry Potter roleplaying site. YES FRIENDS I was indeed one of those kids. I was, at this point, well past the days of plagiarizing and believing that I was actually going to go to Hogwarts, I just hadn't received my letter yet. So I decided to live in a virtual world where it was real. My character was named Norbert and was a dragon-girl hybrid (three guesses as to what kind of dragon she was).
The story was that Norbert and her pixie sister, Margot (don't ask me how that happened), were both a couple of tricksters living in the Hufflepuff house. Other people who roleplayed with us included Railyn, an elf in Ravenclaw (also not sure how that happened, though to be fair I was a dragon-hybrid creature), Kopolyn, a Slytherin, Daphne, a bitch from Slytherin, Bane, a werewolf who sort of just ran amuck, Shmendrick, Margot's and Norbert's older brother, and a bunch of actual characters from the series such as Hagrid, Malfoy, Cho Chang, etc. There was a huge, ridiculously elaborate story line that involved Norbert and Margot being spies against Voldemort's death eaters and in the end, Shmendrick and Margot were killed in the line of duty (because those people got sick of roleplaying all the time). Going back to that site and re-reading some of those posts is still a hilarious past-time.
The fifth and sixth book were both well-received at the midnight release and read within the first 48 hours upon receiving them. The day of the Deathly Hallows release is the one I remember the most clearly. My friend and I both dressed up really strangely with mismatching colors in order to be wizards hiding among muggles (we decided she looked sort of like an herbology professor because she had a plant theme going on). We went to a local book store and took pictures of ourselves in those wooden face cut-outs where it looks like you're the character. We made Harry Potter themed snacks. We watched the movies while we anticipated standing in line for hours to get the final book. That night, the line for the book went on for a mile out the Barnes and Noble doors. It wrapped around the block twice. People in line told us their theories about the book, about characters, we swapped trivia, some people threatened to read us the last lines of the book when they emerged victorious with their own copies. Somebody actually did read us the last line I remember, but since it was "All was well" it was sort of lame because I could have guessed that the ending would have been happy.
That night I didn't read Deathly Hallows, I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Want to know why? BECAUSE I COULDN'T HANDLE IT! I DIDN'T WANT IT TO END. EVER. When I told me mom she was furious and told me that if I wasn't going to read it, she wanted to. So I started the book and fell in love. The Deathly Hallows is my very favorite one out of them all. I adore the relationships, the signs of affection, the characters, everything. The loyalty. That's what appeals to me. The epilogue was disappointing to me, but everything else was perfection in my eyes.
Harry Potter has been a major component of my childhood. Harry was my hero, and still is. Every time I had to do something that scared me, like get my teeth pulled or confront someone, I would think, "Well Harry had to go up against a Hungarian Horntail in the Triwizard Tournament, so I can handle this little bit of pain." Harry Potter helped me get through times in my life when I was depressed or homesick at camp. There was always a Harry Potter book tucked in my suitcase when I went anywhere away from home. My development of my own characters based off of Harry Potter have spawned their own children and have continued on my fantasy realm throughout childhood and into the beginning stages of adulthood. I promised myself that I would never stop being so in love with Harry Potter. The fires have cooled (so that I don't become a raging psychopath if people claim they like Harry Potter more than me, which was a common theme of my preteens), but I still get excited about it and love to read and re-read and re-read the books.
I seriously am getting slightly weepy over this. My childhood was Harry Potter. JK Rowling took an idea and made it into a culture, a culture that I was a part of.
I wanted to make this post due to the finality of it all. Harry Potter is officially over. But he lives on. IN MY HEART
I ditto. It was charlie and the chocolate factory though. It was Fairy relem. -_- Heh. It's over! Nooooooo!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI know :( So sad
ReplyDelete