…Yesterday night, by sheer chance, just a day after
Harry’s 40th birthday.
Do you know this awkward moment when you finish an
epic novel or a book series and you don’t know what to do with your life from
then on? Well, I am right there now, again. It has happened so often... When I
finished One Hundred Years of Solitude; War and Peace;
Silmarilion, The Hobbit and The Lord
of the Rings; after whichever novel/series by Blaga Dimitrova or
Dimitar Talev; after The Witcher series…
I have never been a real, devoted Harry Potter fan. I
might have grown up with J. K. Rowling’s novels, but I actually didn’t. I was 6
when the first novel was published and I started reading the series when I was
9 or 10, just about Harry’s age when he met Hagrid. :D. I read the first two
books in no time. It took me around a week or even less to finish each one. My
little brother was actually angry with me, because, instead of playing with him,
I was reading – ALL-THE-TIME. However, I have to honestly admit that I got
bored at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
I believe I even gave the books (or just the last one) away to a friend and I
was quite puzzled how happy she was…
At the beginning of this year, though, things changed.
With my boyfriend we decided to organize ourselves a
Harry Potter movie marathon at home. During the final credits of the last movie
I decided that I really need to have the books in an original English edition
and, of course, that I will read them from the first to the last cover of the saga.
And I did – today at around 01:15 o’clock after midnight I closed …The
Deathly Hallows.
The experience was quite a personal one. Unlike in any
other reading of mine, I did not feel the urge to leave here any quote, not a
single time for all the seven parts. However, if I am asked what is my favorite
part, I definitely have the answer – the gran finale, beginning with Chapter
33: “The Prince’s Tale”.
You may ask “But didn’t you have it all spoiled
because you read the novels after seeing the movies?!”. No, I did not. Somehow,
I had even forgotten some key discoveries and facts and I was absolutely stunned
when they were revealed. I had moments like those till the very end. Don’t ask
me how I do it, because I don’t know. But with War and Peace it was
exactly the same – I read the saga after and thanks to seeing the BBC mini-series,
but nothing was spoiled for me, not in the slightest.
I truly can’t find the proper words to explain what it
was like. I can only say that I was happy, sad, nervous… I laughed out loud and
I cried. In J. K. Rowling’s writing I found some of the magical tension of García
Márquez and some of the epic battle scenes of J. R. R. Tolkien.
In the end, I would like to share with you my favorite
(funniest and saddest) moments. Needless to say, I cried a lot during the very
last one I leave here.
v
From
…The Half-Blood Prince. In Chapter 21 when Harry, under
the Invisibility Cloak, is trying to discover what Malfoy is up to in the Room
of Requirement, while Goyle stands guard outside, disguised as a little girl
with Polyjuice potion:
[…] He waited until he was right behind her before
bending very low and whispering, ‘Hello... you're very pretty, aren't you?’
Goyle gave
a high-pitched scream of terror, threw the scales up into the air and sprinted
away, vanishing from sight long before the sound of the scales smashing had
stopped echoing around the corridor.
v Again in …The Half-Blood Prince. In Chapter
25 everyone knows that Harry Potter is going out with Ginny Weasley:
‘You'd
think people had better things to gossip about,’ said Ginny as she sat on the
common room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. ‘Three
Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true
you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.’
Ron and
Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.
‘What did
you tell her?’
‘I told her
it's a Hungarian Horntail,’ said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. ‘Much
more macho.’
‘Thanks,’
said Harry, grinning. ‘And what did you tell her Ron’s got?’
‘A Pygmy
Puff, but I didn’t say where.’
Ron scowled
as Hermione rolled around laughing.
v
The
saddest ones, of course, were when Sirius, Dumbledore, Mad Eye, Hedwig, Dobby, Fred,
Lupin and Tonks died. It was astonishing how the denial; the grief and the
numbness were described. Feelings such as those are not easy to put into words
but J. K. Rowling is a master. From …The Deathly Hallows, Chapter
23-24, Dobby’s death:
‘DOBBY!’
The elf
swayed slightly, stars reflected in his wide, shining eyes. Together, he and
Harry looked down at the silver hilt of the knife protruding from the elf’s
heaving chest.
‘Dobby – no
– HELP!’ Harry bellowed towards the cottage, towards the people moving there.
‘HELP!’
He did not
know or care whether they were wizards or Muggles, friends or foes; all he
cared about was that a dark stain was spreading across Dobby’s front, and that
he had stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry
caught him and laid him sideways on the cool grass.
‘Dobby, no,
don’t die, don’t die –’
The elf’s
eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words.
‘Harry …
Potter …’
And then
with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing
more than great, glassy orbs sprinkled with light from the stars they could not
see. (End of chapter
23).
It was like
sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he knelt again beside
Dumbledore’s body at the foot of the tallest tower at Hogwarts, but in reality
he was staring at a tiny body curled upon the grass, pierced by Bellatrix’s
silver knife. Harry’s voice was still saying ‘Dobby … Dobby …’ even though he knew
that the elf had gone where he could not call him back.
[…]
‘I want to
do it properly,’ were the first words which Harry was fully conscious of
speaking. ‘Not by magic. Have you got a spade?’
And shortly
afterwards he had set to work, alone, digging the grave in the place that Bill
had shown him at the end of the garden, between bushes. He dug with a kind of
fury, relishing the manual work, glorying in the non-magic of it, for every
drop of his sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had saved
their lives.
His scar
burned, but he was master of the pain; he felt it, yet was apart from it. He
had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very
thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not
been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so
his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now, while he mourned Dobby. Grief, it
seemed, drove Voldemort out … though Dumbledore, of course, would have said
that it was love …
On Harry
dug, deeper and deeper into the hard, cold earth, subsuming his grief in sweat,
denying the pain in his scar. In the darkness, with nothing but the sound of
his own breath and the rushing sea to keep him company, the things that had
happened at the Malfoys’ returned to him, the things he had heard came back to
him, and understanding blossomed in the darkness…
The steady
rhythm of his arms beat time with his thoughts. Hallows … Horcruxes … Hallows …
Horcruxes … yet he no longer burned with that weird, obsessive longing. Loss
and fear had snuffed it out: he felt as though he had been slapped awake again.
[…]
Slowly,
under his murmured instruction, deep cuts appeared upon the rock’s surface. He
knew that Hermione could have done it more neatly, and probably more quickly,
but he wanted to mark the spot as he had wanted to dig the grave. When Harry
stood up again, the stone read:
HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE
ELF.
v
From
…The Deathly Hallows, Chapter 34, when Harry meets all his
dear ones thanks to the Resurrection Stone:
‘I didn’t
want you to die,’ Harry said. These words came without his volition. ‘Any of you.
I’m sorry –’
He addressed
Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him.
‘– right
after you’d had your son … Remus, I’m sorry –’
‘I am sorry
too,’ said Lupin. ‘Sorry I will never know him … but he will know why I died
and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could
live a happier life.’
A chilly
breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the Forest lifted the hair at
Harry’s brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to
be his decision.
‘You’ll
stay with me?’
‘Until the
very end,’ said James.
‘They won’t
be able to see you?’ asked Harry.
‘We are
part of you,’ said Sirius. ‘Invisible to anyone else.’
Harry
looked at his mother.
‘Stay close
to me,’ he said quietly.
©Hristiana Bobeva, 2020
