One of the very first posts I wrote for this blog was about going to see Harry Potter with my daughter. This has been a tradition between us for 10 years. We went to the first movie when she was…well I guess 6. And we fell in love. With each passing movie we went on the first day the movie was out, right after she got out of school.
For those of you that are Harry Potter fans, you are aware that the very last Harry Potter movie was released on Friday. Shelby and I went at the 10:45 am showing. Like all of the rest of the movies in the series, it was brilliant. But about 3/4 way through, when a major character dies (I don’t want to give spoilers here), I started to cry. Shelby started to cry. I also noticed a lot of snurfing and blowing of noses from other people in the audience.
Now most people who saw the movies have read the books, so I would guess that seeing this character die was not unexpected. But what I realized in that moment was that it was over. This was not just the end of the series, but the end of an amazing personal adventure.
A decade of events that Shelby and I put in our calendars, counted the days for, was over.
When we walked out of the movie my darling teary, red-eyed daughter said, “I feel like my childhood has ended.” Now at 16, clearly she isn’t quite an adult yet, but this part of her childhood has finished. Yes, we have all of the books and CD’s so we can revisit Harry, Hermione and Ron’s journey whenever we want to, but I wonder if what she was referring to was that OUR part in the journey was over.
Prior to J. K. Rowling an entire generation of kids had considered “reading a story” to be the skimming the instructions on the back of a video game box. She created a series of books that not only kids loved, but adults loved as well. And yes, there were those people who found the books morally reprehensible (“WIZARDS!”). But for the most part, those voices were drowned out by the millions of children and adults world-wide that got lost in the story where good actually does finally win out.
In a world where we are surrounded by real “boggy men”, abductions, school shootings, 9/11, wars, and economic terror, it was nice to be able to fall into a world created by a woman who was on welfare and struggling for her very existence. Talk about an amazing ending to HER story! She created a world that I am sure, she wished would sweep her out of her personal trauma, and in doing so she took millions of us with her.
For those hours that Shelby and I read the books or saw the movies, we could be swept up into the adventures of three children and their amazing world. We could forget our problems.
I understand the sadness that the actual Journey has finished. But that world is still there (especially with J.K. Rowling’s POTTERMORE and all of the kids and adults writing Harry Potter Fan Fiction).
But as the books progressed we watched three children grow up and realize that things and people are not always as they seem:
To look back at the first film now — with the unbearable Dursleys, the bullying Draco, the sardonic Snape, the gently paternal Dumbledore — is to see a movie full of broadly drawn, almost Victorian-era villains and heroes. But remember that we were seeing them through Harry’s eyes then, and those people were as a child would have seen them.
Watch the new film and you’ll see many of them from a more mature viewpoint. And you’ll realize they were often far more complicated than we, or Harry, first realized.
Because if growing up means anything at Hogwarts, it means acknowledging how little we know of people’s real problems, and potential. Ferocious werewolves may turn out to be heroes; motherly teachers may turn out to be fiends. Everyone is vulnerable to envy or despair; everyone is capable of remorse and rebirth.
Everyone, that is, except Voldemort — which is why it is only Voldemort who is finally, fully, beyond all redemption.
And as for Shelby, she and I have over a decade of memories to relive.We just need to grab our wands, close our eyes and the journey can continue if we want it to.
Remember, when you are doing things with your kids – they don’t always remember the isolated over-the-top birthday party when they were 5, they will remember the journey that YOU create with them. Make it real, even if it is an imaginary journey with Wizards!