Here Comes Harry

Oh. Yeah.

Get excited.

The beginning of the end is here. Tonight, at 12:03, I will be sitting in a theater and watching J. K. Rowling’s last, amazing book come to life.

I’m pumped. With previous movies and in times when the books were still being written, I would count down the days any time a movie came out. I was a frequenter of mugglenet.com and listened to their weekly blog. (Yes, I’m a nerd.) The number of road trips to San Antonio I passed listening to the audio books can’t even be counted. The first reading of books 1-4 in my dorm room with the first movie soundtrack playing in the background made me fall in love with the series. The times I spent with my first year class playing Harry Potter trivia are some of my favorite memories as a teacher. The midnight release of the fifth book, which was the first book that came out when I got into the series, hanging out with my brother at Border’s brings back some good times.

The third and fifth books were always my favorite, but when the seventh came out, it definitely took the cake. (I’m so glad they’re doing the movies of book 7 in two parts!) It’s so well written and such a great conclusion to the series. Jo couldn’t have done it better.

That being said, I take the movies with a grain of salt. The first two were great (Chris Columbus should have done them all!), but the third, which was at the time my favorite book, was such a disappointment. Since then I think I’ve only seen the fourth, fifth and sixth at midnight the day they came out. I don’t remember seeing them more than once. I always want them to be an exact visual of the books, but the always end up being a director’s interpretation of the books.

But it’s always fun to see the movies and relive the Harry Potter experience. This one sort of snuck up on me, to be honest. I’ve got about an hour til I go to the theater and hang out with all the other fans and wait in line for prime seats. And then it’s just a hop, skip and a jump until next summer and the whole series ends and it’s all over. At least until the next time you pick up a book….

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