Upon Finishing Deathly Hallows

The book was great, it was exciting and suspenseful with a great, epic finale battle and in the end, it was, I thought, a thoroughly satisfying ending after all these years (some have complained on a small level about the epilogue not being as good as the final chapter or not giving enough information about what happened to certain characters, but if you've read the book and felt that way, just read Mugglenet's "All Was Well" editorial, and if you're anything like me it will make the ending that much more poignant). Yet the way it made me feel was more interesting, it in a way, than my reaction to the book itself. From my post on one of the many Harry Potter message boards out there:


I spent an hour waiting(! Yes, only an hour, even though I actually ARRIVED at midnight because my family wanted to go to dinner and a movie, and even though I was almost the last people to pick up their copy. Apparently our local Barnes & Noble has learned well from its previous Midnight Magic parties), chatting it up with the fellow fans in line, who all agreed we were all completely mad to be standing out in that humidity (we live in Florida) in the middle of July in the middle of the night to pick up a book we could easily have picked up the next day (we didn't get armbands, but we had all preordered, we just arrived too late to get the armbands for it because they ran out by midnight). But it wasn't about just getting the book. It wasn't even about getting it quickly, or first. It was the wait; the last hour of anticipation, the last hour of mystery, and the last hour of hilarity as every so often somebody would peel off in a car yelling something like "HARRY POTTER DOESN'T DIE" only to not ten minutes later have somebody else do the same, except yelling "HARRY POTTER LOSES HIS POWERS AND DIES!". (Most amusing I think was the guy pushing a wheelchair-bound friend or relative of his, who left the store - we had to wait outside due to the Fire Marshal saying the building wasn't meant to hold that many hundreds of people - moments before our patch of people , the very last group, was let in. His joyful declaration? "VOLDEMORT SEEKS THERAPY!", which somehow is even funnier to me now and almost makes me cry from treasuring it now, that last spoiler-joke moment, you know?). It was... it was being a fan again. It was joyous. I was exhausted, I hadn't slept well during the week and I really, really should not have stayed up that late I know but damnit it was the last chance to experience that feeling that I shall probably never feel again, that experience that will be once in a lifetime for me.

I think I'm really going to cry now for real, if only just a little. But honestly?

It's the good kind; the kind that says:

Aw, man, that was a rollercoaster. Such a rollercoaster. Such a rollercoaster. But it was so beautiful, so utterly, inexplicably, indescribably beautiful, wasn't it? Years and years, wondering and worrying and anticipating and staying up way past when all logic told us we should be asleep and we'll never have it again, that exact feeling, that exact , singular moment, but it was so bloody worth it to stay up 'till 1 for the book and 'til 5 reading the first 8 chapters. It's gone now, but it was amazing when it happened, so utterly, completely , indescribably, wonderfully amazing. I'm glad to have lived it. I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to have been a fan, living with millions of others in hundreds of languages and thousands of cultures and one decade, yet through a time no other fans will be so brutally, wonderfully, agonizingly lucky to have lived through. A shared experience that nonetheless will never be repeated, not ever, not exactly, not quite. I love... I love. I'm not sure what, but I love. And it hurts, you wouldn't think it would, I didn't think it would, and some people will never understand that it does, but it does, oh man it does, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. Not ever. I love. I ache, and I love.

...and now I'm crying.


And (coming back to the present again) in conclusion, tearing up like that makes me hungry, apparently. Suffice it to say though that I was happy with the book and even happier to have lived through being a fan anticipating and loving it once again. Thank you, Jo Rowling. Thank you.

-Jamie