Last night at 11:59 pm, I logged onto Facebook and saw something J.Coco had posted on my wall. It said, “A year ago today we all met up to witness the end of an era. We were preparing to watch the end of Harry Potter. I was never ready then and I still am not.”
I hadn’t even realized it had been one whole year since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two was released. Yesterday was already an awful day, and this realization made it one hundred times worse. It was now 12:00 am on July 15th. I remember precisely where I was and what I was doing exactly one year earlier. I was sitting in a movie theater with my friends, all dressed up in crazy Harry Potter themed costumes of course, watching the beginning of the end. It was one of the happiest and saddest days of my life.
***Just a warning, this entire post is going to be extremely cheesy and melodramatic. I tend to get overly emotional when I talk about Harry Potter. Anyways…
To be honest, I haven’t been a Potterhead for very long, at least not as long as most other Potterheads. In fact, I used to hate Harry Potter when I was in elementary school. I remember in first or second grade, everyone was reading the books and for some reason, it made me really angry. I thought it was some sort of crazy, annoying fad. Being a young, first grade hipster, I claimed that books like Guardians of Ga’Hoole and Deltora Quest were far superior, but you’ve probably never heard of them. Actually, the real reason I hated Harry Potter was because my disgusting grade school nemesis loved them. Even now, I can’t look back at my nemesis without cringing. I wont’ mention any names, but even as a first grader, he was an arrogant, know-it-all smart alec and I hated him for it. He loved Harry Potter, and he even looked like Harry a little bit. Nonetheless, I saw the first movie when it came out in theaters. Now, not only did I hate the books, I hated Harry himself. I thought that Harry was arrogant and full of it just like my nemesis was. I was so blinded by their similarities that I wouldn’t even give myself a chance to like the books.
This all changed when I moved away from my hometown. By that point, I had watched the first three movies and I did rather enjoy them, even though I still disliked Harry. A family friend had bought me a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which had just been released, as a present. Being an avid reader, I decided to just go ahead and read them all. Obviously, I couldn’t let a perfectly good book go to waste. So by the time I was ready to start a new year at a new school, I was ready to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was in the fifth grade, and life at my new school was rough, like really rough. I hated going to school. It was too big and I couldn’t make any new friends until very late in the year. I spent most of recess sitting by myself and reading — reading Harry Potter that is. I couldn’t help relating to Harry. I knew what it was like to be in a place you knew you didn’t belong. I didn’t even realize how much Harry meant to me until it was all over.
Eventually I found myself in a place I knew I belonged in. I met a group of crazy, weird people who liked me for my crazy, weird self. And on July 15th, 2011, I hosted a crazy, weird midnight showing party and bawled my eyes out through the entire movie. It was epic, to the say the least. I dressed up as Fawkes, with a homemade mask and a foam Sword of Gryffindor. J.Coco was Harry Potter and K-Tosh was a Ravenclaw student. In our group, we also had a Bellatrix, Lavender Brown, Snape, and Batman. Yes, I said Batman. Batman was my non-Potterhead friend who had a sign that said “I’m only here for the trailer”. She got hated on….hard. Anyways, July 15th was the first time I had publicly outed myself as a Potterhead. I mean, everyone knew I like Harry Potter, but not even I knew how much until that movie ended. The two hours and ten minutes I was in the movie theater were an emotional roller coaster, but now that it’s all over, I know I will never forget all the beautiful memories Harry Potter has given me.
So last night at 12:00 am, I decided to pay tribute to those memories (something I plan to do every year on July 15th), and to the movie that ended it all (who am I kidding? Harry Potter will never end!). I spent two hours and ten minutes doing only Harry Potter related things. First I watched the epilogue on YouTube and sat in a corner of my room and cried…really hard. It was kind of embarrassing. I’m glad no one else was there. I’m also glad this blog is anonymous. Then, after my eyes couldn’t produce any more tears, I decided that instead of crying about the end, I wanted to smile at the beginning. So I pulled out my copy of The Sorcerer’s Stone and read until I felt like I was going to fall asleep. I did, however, read enough to catch some early Drarry moments. At some point, I put on my Fawkes mask, so once again, I’m glad I was the only one who was there.
Here’s a really awkward picture of me wearing my Fawkes mask at the premier. Yeah, I know it should have orange feathers.
When I was starting to get sleepy, I watched the beginning of A Very Potter Sequel, because it makes me laugh and not think about sad things, like the end of Harry Potter. My two hours and ten minutes happened to end exactly at the end of To Have a Home sung by Darren Criss. And in my drowsy, borderline hysterical emotional state, I thought to myself “Wow, this is what it’s like to have a home. To know that millions of people all over the world are feeling the same things you are. To simultaneously cry at certain scenes and at the deaths of certain characters. To laugh when you think of the Weasley twins and smile when you see the Golden Trio conquering evil. To feel motivated whenever Dumbledore says anything at all and to be able to crack open a book and feel these things whenever you want. And most of all, to know that no matter how much has changed, no matter what year it is or where I am living, Harry Potter will always be there for me, and so will its fans.” Yeah, I told you it was going to be cheesy. Anyways, I just wanted to share this with whoever is reading and share my personal experience with Harry Potter and help everyone remember that we will always be there for each other, especially on days like July 15th. So here’s the video of the music and lyrics for To Have a Home from AVPS and also some things I found on Tumblr last night from fellow Potterheads:
Oh, I love Potterheads 🙂
–Stosh
Just Plane Tosh 