Harry Potter… finally out!

Note: NO SPOLIERS HERE.

I remember reading Harry Potter for the first time. I used to frequent AWON library at Kupondole at every possible chance, and the library had been my recluse, especially when I didn’t want to socialise. When I was done with all the books in the kids’ section, I decided to look around in the adolescent section of the library. I remember taking five books from there, and reading Harry Potter only after I’d read the other four. That was eight years ago, when I was in grade 4.

Harry Potter’s magic, or JK rowling’s magic, for that matter, never really left me. I used to hope, back then, that on the night of my eleventh birthday, Hagrid would come and take me from my “evil” parents to a world where I would be better accepted (and considering the fact that the library was one of the few places where I felt at home, I did believe that the wizard world was where I belonged.) I even dreamt one night that Harry Potter (not Daniel Radcliffe; there were no Harry Potter movies made back then) flew in to my birthday party and gave me a broom.

I remember seeing the first four Harry Potter books at a friend’s before I started reading them. They were a gift to the friend from her aunt, and I had thought the book was a classic, perhaps like David Copperfeild (that being the only classic I had read back then,) but I had forgotten this incident, and it struck me only a few (maybe two or three)  years ago.

I also tried to persuade my brother to start reading Harry Potter. After he got to grade seven, he read them, and I hate to admit it, but became a bigger fan than me. He’s read books 1,2 ,4 and 5 six times and book 3 twelve times. Him, a cousin, and I also wanted to make a fan club, but we never went around to doing it…

Like all books which have been adapted into movies, the Harry Potter books seemed to me, much better than the movies. (The fifth movie is definately the best movie yet though.)

When the fifth book was released, a cousin sent it to me from America. My exams were going on, so my parents hung it frm the living room ceiling and wrote on a paper, ‘embargoed until ___’ (I forgot the date. Maybe it was 21 July). When the sixth book got released, my brother was determined to be the first person in Nepal to get it. After a foreigner who was in line before him showed some kindness, he did become the first. He used to read till 2 at night and wake me up before he went to sleep so that I could read it then.

Harry Potter (which my Dad says is becoming a cult or an obsession) never failed to amuse me. I laughed, I cursed, I complained, I cried while reading the book and I agrued about the characters and the story with other fans. I’m glad JK Rowling dedicated the new book to all of us, “who have stuck with Harry until the very end.”

P.S. Kudos to JK Rowling’s imagination and her art at writing…