Children in earlier times used to eagerly wait for their 18th birthday. Reaching that milestone meant getting the license to drive, opening a bank account and legally calling themselves grown up. But this generation had not waited for their 18th but their 11th birthday. It was the day one hoped to get a letter from Hogwarts. I know I waited for mine to come.
Yes, we were the lucky ones to have been infected by Potter mania. On the contrary, we were the unlucky ones to have gone through the pain of accepting the fact that the whole wizarding world was just a farce. Those who haven’t worshiped J.K. Rowling in their teens wouldn’t know what I’m talking about but to Potterheads, I would make perfect sense.
I pretended that my pencil was a wand and I practiced my spells daily. But no matter how perfectly I ‘swished and flicked’ the pencil and chanted Wingardium Leviosa, the basket ball never flew and hit my brother right on the head. I could never punish him satisfactorily for making fun of me. I pretended the broom was meant only to fly but it never did. It hurt me instead. And in very wrong places. I pretended the new overcoat I bought in winters made me invisible but alas, that was never meant to be. The mocktails I brewed trying to follow the Half Blood Prince’s clever words never make me lucky. Or turn me into someone else. Any new bizarre item I saw, I believed it was a Zonko product. The world I lived in was boring. Harry Potter’s world was so much better.
Yes, I was one of those hardcore fans who waited up all night to put their hands on the latest book and then sat in bed all day reading it. But when the last book came out, I took my sweet time to finish it for I didn’t want the journey to come to an end. I actually cried when I bade goodbye to Albus Severus Potter. Before the release of Deathly Hallows, I had also gone through Mugglenet and dumbledoreisnotdead.com thoroughly and tried to interpret the well-awaited novel.
Harry Potter was a trend, a craze, an addiction. He taught us, as growing kids, the power of love and courage. True, the storyline was clichéd; the good was victorious over the evil in the end but J.K. Rowling really did weave a truly fantastic series.
I wish the creation – Harry and the creator J.K. Rowling a very happy birthday and thank them tremendously for introducing us to a literally magical world. A world out of this boring little muggle world. A world that made my childhood special.
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