Farewell Harry Potter!

Just last Thursday, I was already at the cinema lining up for the final installment in the Harry Potter series. I cleared up everything for the day and convinced a friend to come with me for the Deathly Hallows Part 2 3D movie. Too bad my little girl is still too small to take with me to the movies.. and since she only wanted a pet harry wizard (hairy lizard) and not Harry the Wizard to whom I have been following since JK Rowling published her very first novel.

I remember the first time the Sorcerer's Stone came out,
I didn't have an inkling that the book will be so popular. Thanks to my sister who is the original Harry Potter fan. I started reading her copy of Sorcerer's Stone. I got hooked... not so much as to be part of a popular following, but the way author JK Rowling writes. I was so amazed by the richness of her imagination, totally creating a world of wizardry that reminded me a bit of the Tolkien series I was already addicted to.

JK Rowling at a Deathly Hallows book launch

Her books are so entertaining that I find it difficult to put it down and usually do an "all nighter" just to finish a book. I remember we used to order way in advance (just when the books release dates where announced) and line up at Powerbooks in Makati early in the morning just to get the first copy of her next installment of books. When the Deathly Hallows was released, I was already Gensan based, so I had to bribe my sister to get me a copy which she sent to me through courier. I just gave birth at the time, but at nights when my baby is sleeping, I couldn't put down the book. So I had sleepless nights not because of the baby but because I had to know what happened in the final installment of the Harry Potter Series. :)

I got so involved  in the series that the characters to me where like family. I cried when Sirius died, and for Dumbledore, even for little elf Dobby. All because I was so wrapped up in the story. And to think that the series is a children's fantasy novel. I have been a fan of JK Rowling ever since. 

JK Rowling's writes with a certain flair, she engages the reader making them crave for more. She has a knack for making up her own words, like the way she uses Latin for her spells. She has an entertaining way of writing letting us in on the way the world really looks like to a teenager such as Harry. She has instilled the love for reading for kids (and kids at heart) of this generation. What with the advent of electronic gadgets and other techie stuff, who would think that kids would still prefer to pick up a book and read? Only JK Rowling was successful in doing that with her Harry Potter series. 

With all that said, I guess it isn't goodbye to Harry Potter after all, JK Rowling's magic continues to live on. I am sure that for ages to come, many children of all ages will still get to know and love Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley long after the final book has been published, the last movie had made its final curtain call.

I leave you now with some hidden meanings I picked up in the book (well some I read in the internet :))

• I love that JK Rowling makes up her own words and uses Latin for her spells like “lumous” means “light” in Latin.
• I love that Diagon Alley is really "diagonally" the way the street and the stores are positioned.  
• That the Mirror of Erised is really the Mirror of Desire.. with "erised" is actually "desire" spelled backwards
• Voldemort in French means flight of death
• The name of Lord Voldemort with the words "I am Lord Voldemort" are an anagram (a phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another phrase) of his real name: Tom Marvolo Riddle.  --truly brilliant!
• Minerva is a Roman goddess of wisdom, crafts and war, and the Greek counterpart for the goddess is Athena. 
• Albus means "light"in Latin, which is a good description of Dumbledore in his plight against darkness spread by Voldemort. 
• That the war against Voldemort can be likened to the present war against terrorism.

Thanks to the Bookworm of Gensan for inspiring me to write this blog about Harry Potter. He is the original authority on anything "Harry Potter" in Gensan considering his extensive collection of books. Read about his blog here.  Thanks Sir G! :)