As I type this my family is out watching the last Harry Potter Movie while I get left behind. It's really not as tragic as it seems since I had already watched it, in spite of my own admonitions, by myself earlier this week. I had been repeatedly telling students not to watch movies alone warning that such an activity fosters an unhealthy individualism that would inevitably corrode our already fragile democracy, political science buffs might recognize Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone hypothesis here. But I couldn't find somebody else to go with me as I've been quite busy to look. Still, the desperation to see the friggin' movie was so strong that during my really long MWF free period I headed straight to the Country Mall Cinema (yes, I said the Country Mall Cinema and why not? It's cheap and really near TC. Sure there was that freaky guy who seemed to whisper to himself four seats to my right but it wasn't so bad).
You could understand my desperation (Oh alright... I admit, I was really so desperate that I watched it at the Country Mall) when you realize that I am part of what you might call the Harry Potter generation. I saw the first movie while in elementary, begged my tita living in the US to buy me the fifth book when in high school and watched Part 1 of Deathly Hallows with the ticket I earned when I went overtime at my call center job. I practically grew up with that kid who survived You-Know-Who but almost gets himself killed every school year. And there I was sitting alone in the cinema for the long awaited ending.
However, I have to say that around the time when I started college I actually stopped watching the movies and reading the books. Partly because I got busy doing other things (if I wasn't busy reading Cruz' Political Law or Meyer's International Relations and the Third World I was immersed in Guerreros' Philippine Society and Revolution) and partly because Harry Potter started to look childish to me. It became something that I had to discard and relegate to my baul now that more serious, grown-up concerns preoccupied me. Later on though, I ran into my old friend Harry and found that he too, thanks to Rowling's talent for character development, had matured from a confused orphan from Sorcerer's Stone to the angsty teen in Order of the Phoenix into the Chosen One who accepted the role he had to play and gave up everything, even dropping out of Hogwarts, to put an end to the Dark Lord's comeback. So I picked up where I left off and stayed on till the end.
And what an ending it was. Jeezas! I never realized that Harry Potter could be as epic as Lord of the Rings! I mean, seriously, an army of Death Eaters, giants and werewolves laying siege to Hogwarts!! And the professors did that really cool chain spell thing that shielded the whole damn castle!! I was literally making weird geeking out noises while watching, and I know I can be excused seeing as McGonagall also seemed to be feeling the same when she summoned the Hogwarts statues to join in the defense.
But the epic awesomeness, like all good things, has to come to an end. After good old Longbottom saves them all and the dust of the kickass battle settles, we fast forward to the epilogue 19 years later where we see that our young heroes who took down a full-grown mountain troll in their first year and struggled to get a date for the Yule Ball (well, only for Harry and Ron that is) three years later are now proud parents sending off their children to their first year at Hogwarts. It was amusing how they tried to make everyone look older using makeup, false beards and appropriate wardrobe. But in one of the closing scenes where the entire dramatis personae are shown together for a parting shot I couldn't help feeling emotional. It really is the end.
We too have grown up, so it appears. The people I used to watch the movies with and engaged in many deep discussions on our detailed analysis of the latest books are now either working, married, abroad graduated, have kids of their own or a combination/variation of the above. As for me, I sat there alone because in my preoccupation with my job, my masters and my extra-curricular activities I barely had time for stuff that I used to take for granted. It seems inevitable that we follow this sequence expected by society. We graduate, we find work, we integrate ourselves into the corporate machinery and we live out the rest of our lives selling our labor power happily oblivious about what else is happening around us. But is this really growing up?
In the end, we say the Harry Potter series moved from children's literature to serious fiction when Quidditch matches and Potions class took a back seat to the ultimate conflict between good and evil. Harry himself matured as a character when understood the role he had to play to finally defeat his archnemesis and willingly accepted it. Everyone else in the wizarding world faced a similar choice, to roll over to Voldemort and his Death Eater minions or to stand up for what is right and just. Most would follow Aberforth's advice and just go home and live long lives. But some took the road less traveled and chose to stand by Harry and defied the Dark Lord even when he was brought to them seemingly dead. A lot of them didn't even live to see Voldemort's demise. But when they chose to give up their own personal concerns for something bigger than themselves, that made all the difference. And that marked them as having grown up.
So it is in the wizarding world, so it is also in the Muggle world.
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