Happy Harry Potter Day - 16 years since the Battle of Hogwarts

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts when Voldemort was finally and ultimately defeated. 2nd May 1998. And I promised myself that I'd do a remembrance post.

My very own Harry Potter journey started the next year. November 1999, when I on my 9th birthday, got the first Harry Potter book in Swedish from my parents. I still remember thinking that the book was huge and that I would never be able to read all that. But 9 year-old me devoured it and from that point on I recieved Harry Potter 2, 3 and 4 continuously every year. Either on birthdays or Christmas. I remember that every time I got a new book I had to re-read the ones before it. So when I ultimately got Goblet of Fire I had to re-read Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban before finally being able to read Goblet of Fire. This has resulted in my first four Harry Potter books in Swedish being very, very tattered.

I remember the excitement when the first movie was announced and how I and my friends finally learned how to pronounce the British names when we saw that movie. I remember the long, long wait for the fifth book and how I scoured the Internet for rumours. I remember the Harry Potter merch you could buy in ordinary supermarkets before the release of the first movie (licquorice wands, Bertie Bott's beans, chocolate frogs, cauldron cakes) and I'm disappointed that I threw those old chocolate frog cards away when I, in my late teens, had a bout of "I have to grow up now". I remember that the second movie premiered close to my 12th birthday and my parents took me and a few of my friends to see it for my birthday. I remember that I watched the second movie so many times that the video tape became jumpy. I spent all my days pretending that I was at Hogwarts. I re-made my school timetables so they had Hogwarts subjects instead, cause it made school funnier. I continued doing that 'til I was 16. I remember how much I loved the first Harry Potter computer game and how I and a friend played the Quidditch World Cup game on her computer. And the Trading Cards! And the card games!

I remember all those countless hours I used to spend at hogwarts.nu. A Swedish Harry Potter community where I had all my friends. I remember sneaking online on our old modem Internet, before broadband when the phones didn't work while online, so that I could talk with my friends. I remember that I cried when the announcement came that the site would close down in December 2006. I remember going to my first Internet meet-up in Lund in 2006. A goodbye meet-up.

I remember the Barry Trotter parodies and the very first toy wands and the earliest Harry Potter trivia books. I remember the agonising wait for the fifth book to be released in Swedish. The Swedish version had just over 1000 pages and I read it in two days. Couldn't put it down. The sixth book was the first I read in English and I bought it during my first trip to England. I read it by myself long into the night and cried my eyes out when my hero, Dumbledore, died. I had to re-read the paragraph where he died 3-4 times before I realised that Rowling wasn't joking and that it had actually happened. I was sad for days because of that. Then I spent 2 years wondering how in the world she'd manage a book without Dumbledore in it.

I was queueing in Malmö for the midnight release of the seventh and final book. I wanted to read it slowly to savour the last book and not quite letting it end, but I couldn't and had finished it the next day. So many tears because of that book. All the deaths and the realisation that it's over. I also felt relieved because I had worried about Dumbledore not being in it, but instead the entire book was about Dumbledore and no matter what was revealed about him in Deathly Hallows, it couldn't make me love him less. About the same time I discovered Wizard Rock in Harry and the Potters.

But it wasn't over. In early 2011 I discovered Mugglarportalen, which became a substitution for hogwarts.nu. Summer 2011 was the premiere of the final movie and I was there for the midnight premiere and also the premiere for Pottermore where I signed up for the beta. In 2012 I went to another Internet meet-up along with a Potter party, in 2013 I went to London and The Making of Harry Potter, 2 ½ months ago I was at Amortentia, and this summer I have planned on going to Harry Potter: The Exhibition on it's European premiere in Norrköping. It will never end. Harry Potter is like The Wizard of Oz (published in 1900) or Alice in Wonderland (published in 1865): 100 years from now people will still read Harry Potter and love it, and I'm grateful that I was there from the very beginning and watched it unfold.