By Margaret Mattes, Princeton High School
The first few notes of the trademark tune began and I suddenly felt the corners of my mouth inching up towards a grin. I leaned back in my chair and shut my eyes tight, remembering all the other times I had heard those magical notes: a best friend’s birthday party in third grade, the last day of school in 2004, a typical Friday night at the movies while sitting with a bunch of rowdy middle-schoolers, my classmates. Those notes, and the story they introduce, have defined my childhood. After all, I am very much a part of the Harry Potter generation.
I am not sure which is worse, suddenly feeling very old knowing that my mom began reading me the first Harry Potter book in first grade or realizing that just like Harry, Ron, and Hermione, I am going to have to leave naiveté behind me as I venture into the deep, dark, adult world. Who cares if Mr. Potter has to deal with dementors and He Who Must Not Be Named and horcruxes? I have to manage high school and homework and college applications, which, while not quite as deadly, are just as frightening.
But over the past twelve years of reading and thinking and talking about Harry Potter, his dilemmas have become mine because, really, there is much more that unites my magical friends and me than divides us. Their relationships, their insecurities, and their dilemmas are all so relatable and so real. As Harry was falling madly in love with Cho Chang or Hermione was torn between her two best friends during an argument or Ron was feeling more like a sidekick than an equal, I was going through similar experiences things in my own life. My moments of absolute joy or horrible loss or deep embarrassment, which are the very essence of growing up, seem almost interchangeable with those of the characters. Muggle Studies may have been a subject at Hogwarts taught by the ill-fated Charity Burbage, but there is little difference between the emotions of these young witches and wizards and those of their boring, non-magical counterparts, like myself.
And through these parallel events in the life of an average kid, I became enthralled in, and somewhat obsessed with, the world of Harry Potter. I remember when Hermione thought of using fake Galleon coins to plan the next D.A. meeting or the moment Harry shot up out of the lake with both Ron and Fleur’s sister during the Tri-Wizard Tournament as if they were part of my memory at Hogwarts, not chapters in a book by J.K. Rowling. I feel as though I could jump right into a life filled with house elves and flying broomsticks, and fit right in.
The seventh book and the first part of the seventh movie mark a definite turning point in the lives of Harry Potter and his friends. After leaving Hogwarts at the end of the last school year to search for horcruxes full time, life is no longer filled with tests on transfiguring a mouse into a hat or having friendly conversations with Moaning Myrtle in the girls’ bathroom; it is about applying what these young wizards have learned about magic, and, more importantly, about themselves.
Although it would be a quite a stretch to say that my life is anywhere near as exciting as Harry’s, whose life is threatened at wand point on a daily basis, this final chapter in Rowling’s tale does ring true as I experience my last year of high school and the very beginning of a long journey to begin my life in the real adult world. In the end, I love the story of Harry Potter because it is really about me and the people I know and the events I live through everyday. Yeah, they might be slightly exaggerated at times, since unfortunately none of my teachers have ever turned a student into a weasel, but that is what keeps it interesting.