By Joule Artemson D. Visabella
September 30, 2010, 4:00 pm
I click the play button on a small screen on a screen Yahoo! Trailer website to watch the new Harry Potter teaser only to finish it with a broken heart. “It all ends here,” says Dumbledore, his voice sounding old but conspicuous with a seeming darkness to it.
Like Dumbledore placing his wand on his temple for a certain memory, mine were stirred together on the odd silvery substance in a stone basin that is the Pensieve. Sucked beneath its cloud like gas, I was transported to memory lane.
My 11 year old self, squeezing through the crowded aisles of my church, National Bookstore, I saw, the glistening gold font of that thunderbolt P, Harry Potter.
Innocently picking the book to study the colorful cover and its synopsis, I didn’t know that this was fate introducing me to my best friend. Then mother pulls me away for a party at the Dalapo’s.
Not less than a week, strolling in the mall, mother avoiding the toy stores, we went straight to the theater. Browsing the "coming soon" roster, there it was. A gigantic blue poster with a boy wearing rounded eyeglasses, a thunderbolt scar and a wand in hand. The world stops, as if the people were on Petrificus Totalus. That moment was when I knew that my adolescent life would never be complete if I never see the movie.
Fast forward after I saw the flick, I begged mother to buy me all the books and a promise to be a good boy. She did. Then began my wand waving early teenage-hood and imaginary Hippogriff rides to maturity.
Destiny, worming its way into people’s lives, got on a train with Joanne Kathleen Rowling (famously known as J.K. Rowling) en route to London . The idea that “fell into her head” got her excited to write about a humble, dark-haired and bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard.
Like all other successful authors, Rowling got rejected by countless publishers. She landed the London based Bloomsbury publishing house and released the book in the United States the following year.
The Harry Potter series became a cash cow franchise that sold more than 400 million copies, translated in 67 languages and Braille and adapted into a worldwide box office movie. It also garnered innumerable awards and praises. Rowling also made it to the richest authors by Forbes.
Proving to be more than a children’s book, its intimidating thickness is quite a challenge for children to read. But I read it anyway. Harry Potter is simply magical and inventive.
Despite the harsh criticisms and crazy controversies, Harry Potter has proven to be a commercial success, a classic and an inspiration to all of us. One of the major things that the Potter phenomena contributed is literacy. It became partly responsible for the lift in literacy statistics as it had taken reading out of the realm of visual content so popular today.
Personally, it has inspired me to write. My own version of Harry, Simon, which I later realized in high school was a childish rip-off, still sits on my bookshelf to remind me of Harry’s impact when I was younger.
You see, He-who-must-not-be-named (ahem, Voldemort) may scare you, Snape may annoy you and Draco may frustrate you, but there is no wonder, no speculation nor assumption that Harry Potter will be a one-of-its-kind classic that will be loved by generations, of any age group, to come.
Dumbledore was wrong, it doesn’t end there. It never will. Harry Potter is forever.
Sorry Harry, no Avada Kedavra’s for you.
