Harry Potter

As many people know the seventh and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released on July 21st of this year. Oh, yes, I was there at Barnes and Noble at midnight the Friday before waiting for my own copy. I was extremely paranoid about being spoiled, and so excited about finding out how the epic finally ends that I couldn't sit still and my voice squeaked at a high pitch for a half hour before and after I had the book clutched in my hands.

I will avoid giving any plot details for anyone who has not read or finished the book but read at your own risk.

J.K. Rowling truly did deliver. Though I was initially a bit disappointed after the first read by the few inconsistencies and the lack of information I was hoping to learn about her world after the story ended, I cannot for a second deny that the entire book, every page, blew my mind. It was incredible. I felt even better a few days later when I discovered that she was divulging tons of information to the media that she couldn't possibly have had space for in the books. Upon my second reading in 12 days of its release I enjoyed it even more.

This is the only of the seven books where I felt that every single thing that happened was essential not only to the plot of the rest of the book but also to the plots and information of previous books. She tied together every loose end and even things I didn't see as important in earlier books, or characters that were extremely minor all had a part to play in the end. We were given more information about characters and their pasts than I could have dreamed. I fell more in love with the characters than in any of the previous books and was heartbroken by the many deaths of some of the most loved.

I still want to read the book again. It reminded me of why I fell in love with the Harry Potter books in the first place. The payoff for my two and a half years of passionate interest was completely worth the obsession, the theorizing, and the anxious wait for the sixth book (in 2005) and the seventh book this summer. My only regret is that it took me so long to catch onto the phenomenon. Many people had waited ten years for the final book while they enjoyed the midnight releases, discussions, news and theorizing of the six books that led up to it. I only had a mere two and a half years. Considering the impact it had on me when I finally came around, I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble if I had read them earlier.

Most important of which I wouldn't have wasted so many years in film, a medium I am unsuited for and now hate with a fiery passion (meaning I hate making films not watching them). J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series inspired me to be a fiction writer despite my fears and insecurities and despite the fact that my sister was always the writer of the family while I spent years wandering around trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Honestly, she was probably born with a pen and paper in hand using words I still don't know. I was never as strong a writer in my early youth as she was in hers so I always assumed I wasn't meant to be a writer. Things have changed and Harry Potter has been a big part of that.

Now that it is over, and I still grieve for the end, I know that I have nowhere to go but forward with my own writing.