Just another Harry Potter post...

I know everyone's going crazy about the fact that the last movie is coming out and writing blog posts about it. I wanted to as well.

But I couldn't.

I tried to think of something to blog about. Whether I should talk about some of my favorite characters (how do you even choose?) or background information on the myths J.K. Rowling put in the series, or perhaps writing techniques to pick up from the books.

I tried all of these, and I couldn't put my heart into it.

It's not because I don't love the series and I don't have anything to say about it (sometimes I think people would wish I'd just shut up about them). It's because despite how exciting this is, it's the end of an era. Of course, as Rowling said at the London premiere, Hogwarts will always welcome us back home, but there's no denying it's not the same now. And it's not because the books or movies have changed, or that the magic has faded. It's that with the completion of Harry Potter comes the completion of my childhood.

My generation had a very unique experience with Harry Potter. We always waited for that next book, that next movie, we grew up with the characters. I don't know if adults can really grasp how much this made our childhood, even as parents. The experience of a child and an adult are so different, even watching a child's excitement isn't the same as feeling it. My mom never blew out her birthday candles wishing for that Hogwarts letter even though she read the books. I did wish that, with all my eleven-year-old heart.

I've always been a huge bookworm. I've counted down the days for several books, bought them the day of their release, and waited for many movies that had been adapted from a favorite book. Yet Harry Potter stretched out for much of my childhood, opposed to any other book series I read before. Seven book, eight movies. Everything was a surprise, more than Christmas. When would they release the next book? When would we see a trailer for the next movie? What kinds of twists will be thrown at Harry and his friends? Who will survive the war? This occupied more than half of my life, and as I can't remember the first few very well, it feels like nearly all of my life. I've known little else, other than waiting for the next thing in Harry Potter.

Waiting is coming to an end. The final battle is near. Harry and his friends will all be grown. I've stepped with them through my entire childhood. They face the last evil in this movie, and childhood is done and over; Hogwarts is done. I'm done. I'm not a child.

But just as Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, all send their children off to Hogwarts in the epilogue, I hope to do the same with my future children (someday far, far in the future). Just as James, Al, and Lily, Hugo and Rose, will have a different experience from their parents, so will my children. They won't know midnight releases and years of patience (if I'm lucky, they'll pick up the next book as soon as they finish), just as the Potter and Weasley kids won't know Triwizard Tournaments and Albus Dumbledore firsthand. But they'll experience Hogwarts as well, in a different way.

I'm sorry if this post was scattered, but it's a strange time and I can't seem to organize my thoughts.
Last thing though, a little something from BYU's Divine Comedy, which I think sums up the Potter generation to perfection.