This summer we went to see the last Harry Potter movie. As I sat in the theatre looking at all my little witches and wizards (and yes they were wearing robes and many of them were carrying wands) I thought how Harry Potter has been such a huge part of their childhoods and I was definitely feeling a bit melancholy at the thought that this was 'the end.' But then I got the idea in my head to write a blog post about my family and Harry Potter and I started looking at all the related family photos, and I realized, that for my family, Harry Potter will never 'end.' Pictures like these
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| Getting ready for HBP Release Day Party |
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| Fred and George, complete with hand made broom |
Erin and Bayley are 20 and 18 now, but when they were 7 and 6 we read the The Sorceror's Stone out loud for the first time. Kris had heard about it on the radio, I had read about it in a catalog, we checked it out from the library and made it our family read aloud book. And we were hooked. We got the second one as a gift from my parents shortly after it came out and read that one in record time too. As each book came out, we read it aloud together. No one was supposed to read ahead. I almost always did. The kids tried hiding the books from me. But I am devious. Sometimes Kris and I took turns reading until we had both lost our voices. We irresponsibly let our kids stay up way past their bedtimes. We bought book 4 when we stopped for a bathroom break on our way home to Stratton and spotted it on display at a Safeway, but from then on it was Amazon release day delivery and we spent THE day glued to the front window, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the UPS truck. We read book five on Kris's parents deck the summer we were living in their basement. We read book 6 coming to and from church in Raton and it was sooo hard to leave it in the car and go in to sacrament meeting! We ended up with two book 7s when Amazon failed to deliver it by 5 pm on the release date (yes, we called them as soon as it was a minute past 5) and we had to run to the book store to fetch one and start reading immediately (the Amazon one was free...but late). We have seen every movie together, attended the book release parties, and have made July 31st into a family holiday with Aunt Marge pinatas and wizard trivia and treasure hunts.
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| OOTP Book Release Party |
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| Our House Elf |
So,yes, that last movie seemed a little bittersweet, especially as I looked about me and pondered all the other changes that were coming in our family. Except, in the weeks that followed I saw our tattered copies of the books still being toted about obsessively, the robes still donned fairly regularly and it was still perfectly normal for two or three or four children to be racing about the house casting spells at one another. And a few weeks after the movie we celebrated Harry's Birthday with butter beer and pumpkin pasties and chocolate frogs. I don't think Harry Potter is going to just fade away.
