Harry Potter Success!

Harry Potter success! Okay, the success was about 5 days ago, but it is success nonetheless. Perhaps now I will watch all of the movies again before Wednesday when Half-Blood Prince comes out. Then again, maybe I’ll just watch Order of the Phoenix and be done with it. I’ve seen all the others more times than is good for me already.

Rereading all of the books, however, I found to be extremely rewarding. I hadn’t read the first two since middle school, and it’s amazing what you can pick up when you’re a) older and b) know the end of the story and can see all of the lovely foreshadowing. That’s another thing that I noticed as I worked my way through the series all in one go—the complexity of the whole project. I am floored by just how perfectly everything fits together. And now, as an “adult” who has attempted to write fiction, I can truly appreciate the ridiculous amount of planning and forethought that went into the seven novels. It also reassures me that my (yet to be actually written) novel hiding in ever so many scribbles in notebooks may come to fruition one day and be all the better for the years of planning and researching and notes. (At least this is what I tell myself when I get frustrated and want to chuck the whole thing before I even start writing it)

A side effect of all this Harry Potter reading is reliving the first time I read the books. THIS brought back many memories of a 10 year-old girl who wanted more than anything to get a letter from Hogwarts herself. No joke. If you were a Harry Potter fan back in the day, you remember that feeling. I mean, I was just the right age. A little young at first, but then I was always about the same age as Harry, and I think that really helped me connect with the books and understand Harry and his friends just a little more than the adult world. Take Order of the Phoenix. A fellow 15 year-old knows exactly why Harry overreacts to everything, why he’s generally a jerk to everyone he encounters—it’s because he’s 15. That’s how everyone acts (or wants to act) at 15. Reading it now I realize exactly how moody Harry is (it’s not a flaw, it’s just an accurate characterization of a teenager under stress), but when I read it the first time I agreed with what Harry did (most of the time) and thought that he was acting just how I would in his situation. Okay, that was a rambly tangent (yes I know rambly isn’t a word, but I’ll use it if I like) and I apologize. I’m saving the rest of this tangent for a later post, to which it connects more directly and less tangentially.

Anyway, perspective is an interesting thing, and being taken on a tour of my own childhood was not something I was expecting when I set out on this reading adventure, but lo and behold, I opened the book and there was my guide with a large gold badge pinned on his shirt displaying his name: “Harry Potter – Tour Guide of Your Childhood.” While I analyzed our young heroes, watching them grow into their adult selves so much faster than they should have, I also had the opportunity to analyze young me. This was a gift I was not expecting, and I want to thank JK Rowling not only for entertaining me in my youth, but also for teaching me to look for the wonderful things in my life and treasure them and giving me a chance to myself for once. Not who I want to be or who I’m afraid to be, but simply who I am and how I got here.