My childhood journey, Harry potter.

I love Harry Potter.

There I said it, so that's what you in the future can ever exspect from me when talking about these books. yeah, the books, not the movies. anyhow.

I love Harry potter so much, it is litteratly the first book i ever read and I remember it well.
It was my 11 year old birthday (no really) I got a heavy present from my mom, it had the shap of a VHS tape, so I hoped it would be Pocohontas or something, I don't know, anyhow, I was really dissapointed in getting a freaking book, I hated reading my own books!
My mother pointed a finger at me and told me firmly, if I just read the first five chapters and still did not liked her present, I could go trade the book for any VHS I liked.

All right! read chapters and go get a disney cartoon, if not for anything else then to please my mom.

Holy shit that witch! I don't know how, but somehow she knew, I was enthralled by that book, I divourvered it and was stunned by it. my little child heard almost burst with all of the magic going on and I started beeping out of the window in hope of an owl appearing with a letter so I could go to Hogwarts.
Just to give randomn information, my birthday is December th 16 and I managed to wish me the remeaining allready published books before christmas, and even got Harry potter 2 and 3. at the time only the first four books had been published.

I was there as the first movie was announced and all ready a fan of the books, and I was excited as hell and pain, I loved that first movie as it came out. The second and third one as well, how ever by the time the fourth one came out I had started being old enough to actually being aware what made a good movie and what didn't so the other movies in retro spect weren't that great either.

Damn me did I have it all, at Halloween I was dressed as Draco Malfoy with my hair slicked back with hair gell to match his hair dude in the first movie, my natural color is the same as his, so figure. I had the computer games including "Quiditch" the game, which was my favorite one. I had wall posters, I had secret boxes with drawings on them and still have the magical coffe mug with the magical appearing picture on it which only appears when something hot is in the mug!
safe to say, since of me being a nerd showed themselfs on a early age.

Is it really allready three years ago that that journey ended?
honestly it's hard to phantom as Harry potter indeed was my childhood journey, I was there at the mid night openings at the book stores of Harry potter, all dressed up and nerdy, I was looking so much forward to it, and I kept imagining myself in the wizarding world of Harry potter. I would be a Gryfindoor of cause, as I am stupid as hell in school and coul never be a Rawenclaw, I am one of the good guys so of cause not Slytherin, and what the hell is a Hufflepuff anyway?
There's probably no book I have read more times, There was once were I could proudly announce how many times I had read each of the books.. honestly I can't remember now.
There's even a news paper article with me because I was such a great harry potter fan, I believe it was made because of ther release of fifth or sixth book. I still have that news paper article, it's pretty big. and features little me with my wild yellow hair pocking in all directions sitting exited with all my harry potter books and all sorts of other related crap. I always were and always will be a media hore.

The amazing thing about these books is that as they got published, I didn' grow from them, they grew with me. the last book which was released three years ago, was released when i was 17, and the main characters were 17 as well.. huh.. what a coinciden.. I read the first book when I was eleven, though that is due to evil plotting from my mom, and the last book came out when I was 17. holy shit. something above must be watching me oO;

anyway, not only did the characters grow in simply fictional age, but their mentality as well as the themes of the book kept on growing. the first book is litteratly a childrens book well suited for eleven years old, the last ten chapter of the fourth book is not and it kept on getting grimmer from that point on.

If anyone is a fan of Harry potter, and have bothered enough to read this far which must mean you are fairly interested in my and what I have to say. I am guessing you are sitting with one big question on your mind, it's at least the question I have been asked the most when people figure that I am a potter fan.
What did I think of the seventh book? the reason why it have been asked so much is because a lot of people don't like the book, a lot of faithfull readers and fans even claim to hate it.

well.. I like it. and this was not the point of this post, but I am just writing in sort of a flow, I really like the seventh book. And I know people are going to shoot me for saying stuff like this, but I kind of fell, that all those faithfull fans who have been on the ride all along but hate the seventh book, it's not because the books have grown for smart, or dark or adult for them, not at all. It's because they have become to grown, smart and adult for the book.
They can still accept the old books because of familiarity, but it seems to my they had analytical glasses on while reading the books and thus have been unable to accept it.

people have said the book did not make any sense what so ever, and they used magic as a plot solver one to many times... well.. we are living in a magical world here where you can make stuff apear out of thin air with a puff and a swing of a wand. litterately.

That the thing supposedly made "perfect sense" in the beginning was not at all what made me fall in love with it. It was the picture filled discription of how aunt Petunia looked like a horse and uncle vernon like a prune, how incredible fat and cartoonish Dudly were and how many presents he got for his birthday while Harry didn't get any. in a very cartoonish and fairytale kind of way, non of it seemed for real, but like a really good story. and then the letters started appearing everywhere and someone was going on. I was sold.
We entered the castle where the threat of the evil dude was always present, but it was okay because Harry was the hero. the teachers were all characters who were described very destinquedly and I could picture them all. it was really magic for my little childish mind.

Seriously, how stupid is it to devide the students into four different colouges based on personality in the first place? I mean think about it, a kid comes off the Hogwarts and is raised by an "evil" family, so he goes to Slytherin, he would never even stand a chance to reconsider his ways as non of the people that would exspand his view would talk with him, because he is a slytherin, he would talk by no other people than other Slytherins, and no one likes them. That's a down right stupid system. but it made up for fun intriqes, and when the book were still in it's childish age. it fitted perfectly with the mood and the at that point childish atmopshere of the book. Later it evolved to an important plot point. everything regarding the book grew. which is kind of sad, but neccesary, and just because the book grew away from the childis dream does not mean I can't go back and read the first books again. I own them, I can read them how ever much I like.

though, reading the later books is a horrible feeling. the first books sat up this nice childish fairy tale world, and then after building the sand castle, J.K. Rowling totally started smashing it by presenting the cruel world as how it was. as revealing all of the grant magical characters for who they really were.
It all started slowly in the third book where within the book we had presented Sirius black as a dangerouse murderouse criminal, who very much diserved to die. Lupin as the only nice grown up in the world without alterior motives, just a really nice fellow and Peter Petigrew as a tragic victim of surcumstances.
By the end of the book we figure that Sirius the sad victim, Lupin is a werewolf and Peter Petigrew is a traiter, but yet Petigrews is not evil. just a slimy scarred little worm. That is totally crashing the sand castle right there.. just for randomn facts, the third book is my favorite book in the series, and Lupin my favorite character.

the four book where we are running the theme of Rita Skeeter putting up realities in the paper which are not true. Hell, that theme appeared all the way back in the second book as that is all the character of Gildory Lockheart is about.

And Rowling went on exsposing characters in the fifth book where Voldemort was starting to be revealed as an actual person with a past as a school student.. all though that started in book two but got ellaborated, Nevielle is revealed to have parents and a sad past. the character who for five entire books had been comic relief and the "clumsy guy" suddenly was exposed and he had depth. which was always there, we just didn't see it. Harry's own parents were revealed to only have been human beings and had one or two dushy moments.

And here in the seventh book, Rowling made the biggest exsposion of them all. I never saw any of these exposions of characters come, with exception of Gildory Lockheart, but I believe that was on purpose by Rowling. but this more than all else came a shock.
She exsposed the big man as a human character. The merlin and Gandalf of the story. the untouchable Yoda Master... She exsposed Dumbledoor as a human being, as having a youth where he made mistakes and many wrong things.

Holy shit, did she just do that? yeah she did. I can understand why some people were upset by this, I was upset the first time around, so was Harry as a character. But it made sense to me, it had been going on in the book all over.
Though funny how the one book Dumbledoor was not in, because he was bloody dead, was the most about him. only works because he was so important in the other six books. but for me it does work.

I am just writing this as a stream of thoughts, and it's starting to get late, so I am just going to wrap up... I don't even remember why I started writing.

Loving harry potter is the only thing you will ever hearing coming out of my mouth when talking the books. movies is another matter, though that is also for me a very different subject. The books are brilliant and have so many subjects and layers to them. I just find them to be a very good read.