Ah, the book that started it all. I remember not being able to get through this book when I was in the fourth or fifth grade. Why was I on chapter four and he STILL hadn't ended up at this mythical school that would teach him how to dominate in the wizarding world? Why did I spend the entire first chapter learning about a lurking cat? Then I was forced to listen to it on tape during a long car drive and proceeded to ask myself why I was such an idiot for not just reading it. It's okay.
Anywho, we all know what happens. Harry has been hidden from the wizarding world and has been left with the Dursleys. They're awful people and when he turns eleven, Harry finds out he's a wizard when Hagrid comes bursting through the door. Just before the clock strikes eleven, he meets the Weasley family and soon a friendship blossoms with his (mostly) faithful sidekick, Ron.
We all know how it goes. We've all read the books and seen the movies. But reading them now, just weeks before the final chapter hits movie theaters...it's a bit weird, to be honest. Here we are, over a decade later and these books still hold up. You still feel yourself smiling when they save Hermoine from the troll, you still get mad when it turns out it isn't Snape that's trying to get to the stone and you still wish you could high five Neville for gaining those last ten points for Gryffindor. By the time you close the last page, you find yourself looking at the clock and wondering if you could read the first two or three chapters of the next one before you fall asleep.
It's like being in elementary school all over again (in the best way).
Soo, I've been checking this every so often since you started writing. I don't have a blog so I can't be an official follower but know that I'm here nonetheless :)
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I just started reading SS for the umpteenth time since, as every fan is doing, I plan to finish #7 before Thursday night. (Unfortunately, I'm way behind and will have to do NOTHING but read 'til then if I want to finish in time) Yesterday I was watching the premiere in London and got totally emotional when the trio and j.k. were giving those speeches. It's been twelve years for me, really...
Let's rewind back to 4th grade, I was nine and my best friend at the time, Kim, came by for a sleepover. She immediately pulled a book from her overnight bag and started telling me that it was the best thing ever. This was odd for two reasons: 1. Why would she bring a book to a sleepover and 2. Kim wasn't that big of a reader. When I saw the cover I recognized it as the same book my mother had bought for me a few months back. I hadn't even opened it. Mom had heard about it on the radio and thought I might be into it. After reading the back cover, and being unimpressed, I threw it onto a bookshelf, thinking I'd get to it eventually.
I pointed to Kim's copy, "Is it really that good? I have one upstairs but I didn't think I'd like it."
Kim got excited. "Do you? Go get it right now. You have to read it."
Intrigued, I went upstairs, retrieved my paperback and began. I remember the first line just grabbed me..."Mr. And Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." Whoa.
Just like that, I was hooked. Kim and I spent that night reading SS on the basement stairs inside my childhood home; me reading up to chapter 3 or 4 while Kim was quite a bit ahead of me. (Some time later, at school, I said--with as much self-assurance as a a nine-year-old could muster--that Snape was the baddie. Kim shook her head, giggled and told me to wait 'til the next chapter.)
Since then, twelve years have passed in the blink of an eye. Harry has seen me through it all: puberty, high school, my first date, my first year of collge, the dissolution of my parents marriage, and, most momentous, my relocation to Indiana right before I was due to start eighth grade with all my friends.
I turn 21 on the last day of July (another thing I share with the boy wizard and his creator). It's the definitive end of my childhood. Time to stand on my own. Time to make important decisions--LIFE decisions. And to end this chapter of my life with Harry makes the journey that much more worthwhile.
Harry, I say it for an entire generation: we will miss you.
-Val C.
Aw, damn. Sorry, my paragraphs were supposed to be indented...
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