day 23: harry potter

i was planning to write a post about this a long time ago. but i never got the chance to.
ten years ago, when harry potter and the sorcerer's stone first came out, i remember sitting in the theater with my aunt. who knew this whole harry potter business was going to erupt. i'll always remember being in second grade reading the first few books and as the newer books started coming out, i would start reading the series all over again. and then movie after movie, i started watching them and then reading the books even more.
harry potter came into my life when i was about seven. ten years ago. i waited as i turned eleven and waited for my hogwarts letter from dumbledore to come in the mail. it never came. when i grew up, i didn't really broadcast my love for harry potter. as if kids my age ever were connected to it as i was. i don't think it was until high school where i was able to find other kids with a love for harry potter. and after that it just grew bigger and bigger. the franchise exploded and all of a sudden, every other student in school was a harry potter geek.
i haven't read the books one through six in a few years. i'm going to say two years because i remember specifically, i read the books right after another.
and it wasn't until last year in which i bought my first harry potter book. it will be my first harry potter book and it is the last of the series. harry potter and the deathly hallows was by far my favorite book. maybe because there was so much adventure and fighting and love and friendship in it. at times it was slow, especially during the middle, but at the end, it was all worth it.
i got to read about my favorite three wizards fighting evil.
i remember in 9th grade when deathly hallows came out. it was the final installment of the harry potter series. the main question was whether harry potter was going to be killed off or not. i'll try not to spoil it but in a way he was and a way he wasn't.
i saw the london premiere this morning on youtube, along with many, many other harry potter nerds that i knew and that i didn't. my blog dashboard was exploding with posts about the live premiere. not to mention, my posts were exploding too.
it's just hard to imagine that in one week my childhood will be i guess "over". i grew up with harry potter. in this last segment of the movie, harry will be gone with his hogwart years. he's going to be an adult in a sense. seventeen is wizarding legal age. as i'm seventeen, i feel attached.
i might not have gotten my hogwarts letter when i was eleven.
but i feel like i've been there my entire life.
thank you harry potter, for growing up with me.
it's not goodbye. it's never goodbye.