It’s been a long time since I read the Deathly Hallows; I admit I don’t remember much of what happened to Harry.
I am a part of the much less psyched tribe, you can call them ‘The Muggle Tribe’, who does discreetly follow the Potterworld, but less enthusiastically so. Lesser than the Ones who frantically wait in long queues on the eves of release days (or preorder sequels), squealing with joy. Not to forget, who also solemnly remember every relevant detail from the books and the movies.
(The Muggle Tribe: We are not the first ones to laugh at the Potter puns and the Weasely wisecracks. We are actually solemnly up to no good that way. But don’t kick us out from your fan clubs yet. We may not qualify as the ‘purebloods’, but we ‘muggles’ still love and cherish the Potterworld with an honest passion.)
NeedIess to say, I felt a pang of immense sadness when J.K. Rowling announced following the release of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child that she will no longer prolong this enterprise. A fitting swan song bidding adieu.
After Deathly Hallows, there were related books, her website Pottermore, her tweets, and countless fan fiction supplying all those necessary tidbits about the Harry Potter Universe. Like food for the souls longing for a fix long after they completed reading (and re-reading several times over) the series. But the enterprise was moving towards a closure.
Was Harry Potter going to be dead then?
No, it cannot be, the Boy Lived. The Boy was immortal, made immortal by the imagination of one, and then millions. Rowling had perfected what Shakespeare proposed, “That in black ink my love may still shine bright.”
Oh, how enthralled was I by the announcement of three e-book prequels! Three more books, ‘Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide’, ‘Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Political and Pesky Poltergeists’ and ‘Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies’ will unlock yet more secrets that couldn’t find justifiable presence in the core series.
Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! There can never be too much of this!
So grew up I did, yet I never forgot Harry Potter. His incredible adventures, his best friends Ron and Hermione, Hogwarts, the innumerable other memorable characters (if I name any it would be unfair to have not named the others) grew up with me. It still lives in me, secured like a warm memory in some corner of my brain where I sometimes escape for refueling my belief in everything that is good in life.
Nor did I forget J.K. Rowling. She was the maverick whose imagination was so fantastic that it brought alive a world of magic that served almost as a panacea to a generation who were beginning to dismiss the beauty of faith in something iridescent.
Not magic, not friendship, not courage, not sacrifice, not love. It was faith that she taught us.
Any disambiguation of faith will align it unjustly to something felt with a religious fervor. As much as a hard-core Harry Potter fan would perhaps argue that it’s indeed a system of belief adequate enough to be religion, I would disagree.
Harry Potter taught me to have faith not on a System, but on Life. A Life that was complex and organic and transient. Everything that existed in it was on the pivot of faith.
Faith in the magic of she could impregnate in words pushed Rowling against every odd to execute her idea with an empathy, steadfastness, and grandeur that resonated brilliantly in her readers’ imaginations.
Luna, Harry, Neville, Malfoy, Dumbledore, Lupin, Snape, even Voldemort, whoever you name, it was the faith in different ideologies, causes, things and people that motivated and connected all the characters of the story.
It was faith that made the readers believe in this fictional Universe truly exists in some yet incomprehensible dimension.
It has been the faith on its overall excellence to deliver a gut-wrenching, heart-warming, soul-blighting experience every-single-time that has fuelled and then sustained the exponential success of this enterprise.
So much that happened inside and outside the book resonate humankind’s quintessential faith in what exists beyond everyday existence.
Maybe making too severe a connection, but the announcement of the prequels restored some faith that some sweet pleasures in life will always find their way back to you. As did the announcement of the two sequels to the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them movie. The franchise cannot really die out despite Rowling’s retirement, and a well-deserved retirement it is.
She has birthed a body of literature that has transmuted itself into an organic universe that will live on till the millennials die out. There can be a limit to the narrative, but not on how it appeals to our conscience, or o the Universe that keeps expanding within it.
(All images have been taken from the Pottermore website. Thank you!)
For more, Read On:
http://edtimes.in/2016/08/ed-voxpop-what-does-the-harry-potter-series-mean-to-you/
http://edtimes.in/2016/02/harry-potter-book-latest/
http://edtimes.in/2015/07/biological-names-are-actually-harry-potter-spells/
