"It's Not Really Goodbye, After All"

     As you probably know, the summer of 2011 marked the end of the much beloved Harry Potter series. On July 15, 2011, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiered in the United States at midnight. I don’t know how many fans attended the midnight screenings, but I know that I was one of them. My mom, two of my friends, and I all stood in line for who knows how long, dressed up in whatever Harry Potter gear we could find, and waited eagerly for the doors to open.

    It was a bit of an emotional night for me. I literally grew up reading Harry Potter. I can remember my mom reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to me before I was able to read chapter books. I had grown up with Harry, and he with me. So it’s no surprise that I spent the entire 130 minutes of the movie leaning on my mom, in tears.

     Probably the most emotional part of the movie, for me at least, was the epilogue. See, I’m a huge soundtrack nerd. The majority of my iPod is probably movie scores, and TV soundtracks. So when “Leaving Hogwarts” from the first movie started playing at the end of the last movie, I completely lost it. The significance of that music choice hit me, in the middle of the theater, and I realized that this is over. Harry Potter is over. This is it. And then I cried even harder.

     At the end of the movie, after the last line of the closing credits, everyone in the theater stood up and clapped. We all gave a standing ovation to a movie screen. The writers couldn’t see us. The actors couldn’t see us. No one except the person who runs the projector, and the other fans, could see what we were doing. And yet, we still did it. Because Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Jo gave us a something special. They didn’t just give us movies and a set of books. For many fans, they gave us a childhood.

     After the initial sadness had worn off, life returned to normal for me. Or as normal as it could be. The spring before the release of the final Harry Potter film, I “officially” exited the world of childhood, and entered to world of adulthood. On May 19, 2011, I graduated from high school. I had already been accepted to my college of choice, a smaller college not too far from home, and was eagerly anticipating the world of learning I was about to enter.

     Graduating high school was not as bitter sweet for me as it was for others. Yes, I would miss my friends, but I was much more excited about college than I had ever been about high school. You see, I didn’t really fit in in grade school. I enjoyed learning too much. I employed a Hermione-esque focus on my studies, and was often seen with three or four “fun” books in my backpack. Perhaps that’s why Hermione was always my favorite character.

     As the premier of Deathly Hallows Part 2 drew nearer, so did the start of my first semester in college, and my anxiety about moving out increased. The library in my house was filled with boxes of things to bring to college; lamps, trash cans, sheets, pillows, and far too many books than I could fit in a tiny dorm room. (Among them, the seven Potters, of course.)  

    2011 was a big year for me. I became a legal adult, graduated from high school, started college, and saw the ending of a series that defined my childhood. But as J.K. Rowling herself said, “Those who love us never truly leave us.” I knew that Harry would be with me for the rest of my life. And so, my sadness about the ending of the series leveled out, and it was no longer as big a deal as it had been. I’d survived, and things were fine.

Then, during the early summer after my freshman year in college, while I was listening to what’s known as “Wizard Rock”, I began to experience something fans call “Post-Potter Depression”. 

     Post-Potter Depression, for those who don’t know, is a period of sadness or depression, following the completion of the Harry Potter series. (The name is pretty self-explanatory, to  be honest.)  It might sound silly to some, but for fans of Harry Potter, it’s very real.

    I began to realize that the series was truly over. The summer of 2012 was the first summer in ten years, where there was no new Harry Potter. The books were finished, the movies were done, and J.K. Rowling and the actors had moved on to new things. While it’s true that we still have Pottermore, and with it a mass of new information, and possibly a Harry Potter Encyclopedia (written by J.K. Rowling herself), the fact is: Harry’s story is over. The Dark Lord was defeated. We won. And no amount of fanfiction, headcannons, speculating, or wishing, is going to change that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely thankful for Pottermore. (Although I’d much rather be in Ravenclaw than Gryffindor, but oh well.) I find the backstories and new information absolutely fascinating.

     Still, there will be no more midnight book releases, where everyone is dressed up, and stands in line an hour before midnight, trying to be the first to get the book. No more midnight movie premiers, with people standing outside for hours, in all sorts of weather, ready for those opening notes. No more staying up until all hours of the morning on the day the book came out, because you can’t stop reading.

     Nothing can replace the Harry Potter series. There will be other series that may touch people, and may mean a lot to people, but for the Harry Potter Generation, for those who grew with Harry, who learned from Harry, for those of us for whom Harry was a priceless friend, nothing can compare. Harry will be with us forever.

So I want to say thank-you, Jo, for giving us Harry. Thank-you for giving me a friend, who was always there for me. Thank-you for giving me a world to which I could escape when life got too difficult and too scary. Thank-you for giving me Harry, who didn’t always know exactly what to do, but who did the job anyway. Thank-you for giving me Hermione, a character I could look up to, a girl who liked books, who liked to study, who was smart, and who never changed who she was, because other people didn’t like it Thank-you for giving me Ron, who showed me that it’s ok to not always get it right, and who showed me the lighter side of life. For Luna, who taught me that it’s ok to just be yourself, no matter what, and for Ginny, who taught me that girls can be strong, and are perfectly capable of standing up for themselves.  And most of all, thank-you, Jo Rowling, for my childhood.