On the Occasion of Harry Potter Book Night

Few days ago Potterheds celebrated the Harry Book Night. On the occasion of that one of our team member shared her love for Harry Potter.

REALM AND DREAMS OF MAGIC

The night was still young and being a Muggle more often than not gets boring. As a young woman, living the life of working and studying 22 year old, the day passes pretty unnoticeable. It’s the night that haunts your being, the time you crave the magic. It’s pretty obvious at that time what is amiss in life is the magic we all crave for ourselves, a world that’s eerily so perfect for us, where you just find yourself content and happy, even though the world of Harry Potter is less than perfect.

Born to a pureblood and a Muggle-born, Harry was designed to be a half-blood. A ‘normal’ child in every aspect, until the prophecy that quite literally ruined half his life. Destiny, however, had other plans, he was entitled to be a savior, a messiah, the chosen one. As I open my favorite book in the series, the half-blood prince, I’m reminded of the no so perfect life of Harry before the book actually takes place. The penultimate book of the series published in 2005 is the sixth book in the series and the cusp of a real adventure. The beginning of the search, the end of Dumbledore, the supposed reality of Professor Snape, and most of all, my child Draco’s real feelings.

Harry Potter came into my life at a very young age, unlike many other people, it came to me through the movies. Young adorable Daniel Radcliff was and still is my young love. Draco was the antagonistic bully I hated the first two years of my life, well to justify my young dislike for my lovely son, he was bullying my puppy love. The books weren’t a concept to me until after the prisoner of Azkaban, so my naïve mind was just not really familiar with most of the magic; fun and facts set aside. The movies as amazing as they are didn’t completely justify the realness of the books. They did great work in creating the aesthetic for the books as was the physical representation of something we were imagining in the books. The characters, however, just got sabotaged in a way or two. For example, the movies almost nowhere mention that Ronald Weasley and Neville Longbottom were so bad academically for the first couple years because they were working with hand me down wands, Ronald with Percy’s and Neville with his father’s. The movies also fail to showcase anyone else’s academic brilliance except Hermione’s and somewhere in the half-blood prince, Harry‘s. Nowhere do they mention that Draco was equally perfect as Hermione and was a young portions genius, a better mind reader than some of the professors at Hogwarts, an avid occlumens that he blocked Voldemort from reading his true thoughts for months at end. Am I getting sidetracked? Apologies, Draco makes me feel like the mother of a kicked child. Lol

The wizarding world is an enchanted escape for many, with numerous blogs, websites and of course, our beloved Pottermore, Harry Potter proudly establishes itself as the world’s largest fandoms (fan’s kingdom). It also boasts the largest fanfiction community in the world. The world that encompasses and revolves around different ships, as authentic as Dramione and Drarry and as bizarre as draple and snamione, and some more. It also boasts millions of fan art, edits imagines and graphics in all and every aspect imaginable. It's home to some, it’s a place, a mindset and a place so pure, but equally raw, it’s a world to forgive, and forget. The real-life poses challenges and gains, losses, victories, and failures. With the magical world of a Potterhead, everything is the essence of life, the magic of nature, hope prevails and it’s one thing that’s the center of keeping one’s sanity. Being a Potterhead is the cusp of living in a world so perfectly imperfect. Just the second you pick up the book, it’s a subtle trap. It will be a slow, amazing dream, a world so magical, you’ll forget some of your tension. The subtlety lies in being imperfect, but being realistic.

The generalized aspects of the life of Harry are ‘constantly search’. From the first year at Hogwarts, Harry is in constant search of one thing or another. The Sorcerer's /Philosopher’s Stone boasts his search for the philosopher’s stone. The Chamber Of Secrets boasts the search of truth and the real heir of Slytherin, for which Harry receives more than his fair share of scrutiny. Similarly the search of Sirius Black and the truth of the Potter’s death, the innocent death and martyrdom in The Order Of The Phoenix. The end of an era with Dumbledore’s death in The Half Blood Prince and the search for the Horcruxes in The Deathly Hallows, subsequent death of Voldemort. Harry Potter is not perfect, the wizarding world is not perfect, it has its own customs, rituals, superiority complex and the high and low society. It has every aspect of the fantasy, drama, mystery and thrill a person may seek and find in our own world, its uncharacteristically similar and different to our own.

With numerous wizarding world sets, theme parks, play-stations and honestly at this point, J.K Rowling has made the world a better and magical place to live in. Even though the release of the cursed child made the fandom divorce her for ruining some aspects of the wizarding world. It’s still thanks to her that we could very actively and sometimes scandalously indulge in the lives of harry potter, the world where everything is possible, where truth is a lie, the lie is the truth and the truth is still sometimes the truth. In life, relationships, friendships, hope, mistrust, trust, family, bonds and secrets, ruined loved and un-acquired affection, where a man lost the love of his life to save the life of a boy that was her life.

The tale of a boy who was an enigma, the boy who lived.

-ALAN