HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY POTTER!!!! Though I had long neglected writing about Harry Potter on this blog (until I broke my taboo) today is different. Today we must celebrate. Today, July 31st, is Harry James Potter's birthday. I will be celebrating later by swapping Harry Potter trivia and making cauldron cakes. (I'll post pictures later.) This post however, will be devoted to my love of the books in general and my favorite book of the seven, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
When I was seven years old I started reading Harry Potter with my family. My parents used to read to me and my siblings every night before we went to bed. It was even more touching that they would read ahead and when we were getting to a scary part, they would stop and wait for the next day. Harry Potter didn't make me a reader (though it did that for so many others) or even introduce me to fantasy. I was already a voracious reader dreaming about magic. But what the books did do was teach me what it meant to fall in love. I didn't fall in love with reading, with the world, or the characters. I fell in love with the experience that is Harry Potter. I fell in love with breaking the binding of the books, of memorizing the order of the chapters, of pretending to be Hermione Granger, and of making predictions and counting down the days until the next book came out. I fell in love with the experience of being drawn into a literary community. Now that I'm in college I have so many friends that I get to discuss literature with and share our favorite books. I will be eternally grateful to J. K. Rowling for introducing me to this experience.
Now on to my favorite book. Somehow Prisoner of Azkaban gets lost in the shuffle. To me, there's something so amazing about Harry learning more about his parents, their friendships, and finally getting that father-figure. And of course, I cheer every time Gryffindor finally wins the inter-house quidditch cup. It also seems relevant to me today, that it is the only one of two books (Chamber of Secrets is the other) that actually starts on Harry's birthday, even though they all start in the summer. The first line is, "Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways" (Rowling 1). A few pages later it says, "Yet another unusual thing about Harry was how little he looked forward to his birthdays" (Rowling 5). But in the first chapter of the third book Harry gets his first ever birthday cards and presents. He has been in the wizarding world, with people who actually love him, long enough to feel normal. Normal in this case, does not mean non-magical, but simply means that he has friends and people who care about him. And with that essay-like discussion I would like to say goodbye, because I have some rereading to do.
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