No, you don't. I really really love Harry Potter. In a spent-my-childhood-with-some-fake-parchment-and-real-quills kind of way. Oh yes.
I grew up with Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came out in 1998 (I was six) but by the time I was 10 I had quickly read myself through the first four books in the space of a week. That's a lot of pages.
Following that I spent three midnights in our local Barnes and Noble waiting in line for my pre-ordered tome. My best friend until I was 12 read them so many times she'd practically memorized the entire series and then started reading them in Russian. I attended countless Harry Potter theme parties where we dressed up in our robes and were fully informed about our characters. When I was a freshman/junior in high school we flew to London and were overjoyed to see Platform 9 and 3/4. My sister like friend and I ran letters written on tea-bagged distressed paper with feathers and sealed with wax across the street. We were our own owls.
When she called me last month bearing the news that tickets for the first installment of the last movie were on sale I squealed a little bit. Never mind the fact that the movie started at 12:01 A.M. or that we would be getting there at 9 P.M. to wait in line after class, or that I needed to be awake to work with preschoolers the next morning. No, because this was Harry Potter, this was our childhoods and we were going to go. My roommate and I launched ourselves out of our collective black hole to throw on some pigtails and old graduation robes (hint- keep your robe from your Master's- those sleeves are much more magical) and head over to the movie theater. It was the perfect remedy to a not so great week.
Behind us in line were a group of young professionals teaching at the University. They'd carefully coordinated all of their outfits to perfection: Rita Skeeter, Snape, Mad Eye Moody (with a very large googly eye attached to an eye patch), Professor Sprout, and Hagrid. Our group mostly sported eye liner scars and jackets under robes. We made instant friends with the people around us, who were just as crazy to be standing in line three hours before we'd actually get to see the movie. The people ahead of us were dressed in their usual Muggle wear, and being in the minority were slightly uncomfortable.
Sitting down to start a movie at midnight on a Thursday felt completely ridiculous but utterly right. As the starting credits starting to roll the theater full of house-elves, witches, wizards, and owls let out shouts and applause. It was truly the first time in my adult life that I'd been part of some cultural phenomenon. I finally understood the Disney movies people feel deep connections to, and the music and all of it.
The movie was, in essence, a joy.
<3
ReplyDeleteSweetness in 6 paragraphs.