I recently read Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows again. Why you may ask? Well it feels good to lean back on things that defined your childhood. Especially if it is part of a series of those big fat novels you conquered as a nerdy kid.
Books are always a longer commitment than movies. You stay with them for a longer time, carry them around and sneak private intimate moments with them on a crowed bus or a boring meal. There are some moments that feature films can never capture. Presenting a few of them *drumrolls*
"The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son."
"...after a while Harry found himself taking it out simple to stare at Ginny's name in the girls dormitory, wondering whether the intensity with which he gazed at it might break into her sleep, that she would somehow know he was thinking about her, hoping that she was all right."
You could have sworn that the girl with the curly locks who barged into the apartment and fixed Harry's specs in the first book was the one he will marry but bleh! It was Ginny in the end. Throughout the book, Rowling keeps reminding you that Harry has his heart locked away somewhere else safe.
"He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had a family....The life h had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as at this moment when he knew he was about to see the place where it had been taken from him."
A few pages later.
"Tears came before he could stop them...the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surly, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them."
The only thing that can stop you from saying "I could be Harry Potter" is the immense grief he holds inside him over the loss of his parents. Maybe Rowling wanted to put across her point, you can never really have all of it.
"He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the manual work, glorifying 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."
The book is intersprsed with these non-magical moments to keep us grounded in reality while our heads fly through the magical realms.
"After all this time?"
"Always", said Snape.
This might be one of those rare moments where a movie manages to capture every single emotion the author wished to put his readers through. This is the moment, you fall in love with the preofessor you loathed all this while, and with Alan Rickmann. One word, and the world turns around for the potter lovers.
Books are always a longer commitment than movies. You stay with them for a longer time, carry them around and sneak private intimate moments with them on a crowed bus or a boring meal. There are some moments that feature films can never capture. Presenting a few of them *drumrolls*
"The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son."
This was when Harry found a part of letter her mother wrote to his godfather narrating her son and his first flying adventures. You could have never guessed what was on Harry's mind if you watched it as a movie sequence. It's wonderful how a parchment with ink drapped over do even after years to it's reader. It might the closest we have got near teleportation to the past, to be in a moment, your loved one was in, even for a brief second.
"The sword of Griffindor was hidden they knew not where, and hey were three teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was not, yet, to be dead."
When you watched the movie, you knew the trio will live. It was different when I read the book the first time. You never knew if Rowling wil pull out a RR Martin. The book builds up the anxiety and uncertainty of the lives of the protagonists as you read through it. You almost keep telling them under yourbreath "Don't die yet!!"
You could have sworn that the girl with the curly locks who barged into the apartment and fixed Harry's specs in the first book was the one he will marry but bleh! It was Ginny in the end. Throughout the book, Rowling keeps reminding you that Harry has his heart locked away somewhere else safe.
"He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had a family....The life h had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as at this moment when he knew he was about to see the place where it had been taken from him."
A few pages later.
"Tears came before he could stop them...the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surly, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them."
The only thing that can stop you from saying "I could be Harry Potter" is the immense grief he holds inside him over the loss of his parents. Maybe Rowling wanted to put across her point, you can never really have all of it.
"He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the manual work, glorifying 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."
The book is intersprsed with these non-magical moments to keep us grounded in reality while our heads fly through the magical realms.
"After all this time?"
"Always", said Snape.
This might be one of those rare moments where a movie manages to capture every single emotion the author wished to put his readers through. This is the moment, you fall in love with the preofessor you loathed all this while, and with Alan Rickmann. One word, and the world turns around for the potter lovers.
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