Does Magic Last?

[Prof. Sky Alton]

A soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium - Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon....

A sunlit street full of wonderful, shiny, mysterious, magical things-so full that you’d need years to see it all and even longer to find a use for everything. A passage that embodies the light, colour and wonder at the heart of Philosopher’s Stone.

What was it that first drew you into the wizarding world? Was it the magic? The possibility? The characters? Was it the first view of Hogwarts? Harry’s first time on a broom? Perhaps nothing that tangible. Whatever it was, it must have reeled you in and kept you coming back for six more books. And not just you: millions upon millions of other people from all walks of life.

This book and the universe that exploded from it started a 20 year long phenomena that I’m not sure we’ve ever seen the like of before. But do you think it will endure? Years from now, will Harry Potter be as special and spell binding for those coming to it for the first time as it was for us?

We’d love to know what this book means to you, what drew you in and whether you think that ‘something’ will still be captivating people in another 20 years.

[Prof. Will Lestrange]

I didn't read any of the books until a decade after the first one had come out: in the summer of 2007 I was working in a very boring New Mexico town that normally went to bed at 10 PM. Then, one Friday night in late July, I saw a party two hours after the town's normal bedtime... and didn't realize why. Going closer, I learned it was the Deathly Hallows release party and figured "anything that makes that town come to life has got to be worth looking into!" I started actually reading the books 2 days later...

[Ariella McManus]

What first drew me to Harry Potter wasn't so much of a "what" as a "who". In my mind, Harry Potter was a children's series, and it wasn't until my daughter finally wore me down that I even considered giving them a glance. Like a nice mom, I took her to see the first movie, and after getting lost in the magical world I was seeing, I just had to read the books!

I am a lover of fantasy, and the world brought to life by J.K. Rowling was simply breathtaking. For me it was the imagery and the way the setting seemed to come to life, highlighted by all of the little details she 'painted' with such exquisite attention to the tiniest of things. It really made me get lost in it, and the characters and setting almost seemed real. That's how it was for me at least, and I daresay that it is this rich imagery and the total immersion into a world so different than our own that will draw readers for many years to come. J.K. Rowling is not only a master story teller but a 'word artist' and 'world builder' as well.

[Hanna Inari]

First of all, I wouldn't say that I'm a HP fan. Of course I like the books, and I've reread them a lot of times, and I watched all the films except the 4th (the disc with it that my mother's friend gave us had so low quality that we weren't able to see anything and then we gave up, and it somehow didn't matter to us because my mother is not a fan and I've already read the book). People who are fans of something usually (in my opinion) like the characters or the plot of the books, while I like the world itself the most. I don't know many details and might forget a lot. I don't even have favourite characters and I never cared about them much, maybe because I was too little. I would certainly feel different about them if I read the books now for the first time. I also wasn't very observant. For a while I thought that Draco's father's name was Lucilius and that Ravenclaw's color was brown, and these are just a few examples.

At the time when the second book was published, I was 9. Everyone around me loved these books and was saying how good they were. Being a nonconformist, I immediately thought that something loved by everyone and that popular can't be good, and decided that I would never read HP. But then my cousin (who is only a year older than me but was a huge role model to me then) sent me the 2nd book, saying that it was very interesting. So I've started reading from the 2nd, and then he sent to me the 1st and continued with all the others as soon as they were published (he read them and then gave them to me). I thought that everything that he recommended was worth reading, so I came to the world of Harry Potter.

And... I can't say that I ever really left it. Moreover, I went farther and farther in, discovering forums and other places in the Internet, finding new friends and hobbies. There was a forum connected to HP that helped me in my darkest moments, and I'm still going there even though 10 years passed since I first came there. My friend and I had a tradition to go to the cinema to watch every HP movie that was released, and it was one of the things that was making us go meet each other. I watched the last HP movie when I was 19 and went to visit my friends (most of which I met on HP forums), and when it ended, they were crying and saying that it's over, our childhood was over, we were grown-ups already and the big era of our lives ended then and there. I didn't feel that. Surely the childhood wasn't over then or even now when I'm 25. But honestly, it was and still is a huge part of my life. A part so significant and important that I usually don't even know that it's there, thinking of it not like "HP in my life" but more like my life itself.

Will HP still be appreciated in 20 years? Of course it will, 20 years isn't a big deal. It's more interesting whether or not it becomes classic fantasy. And I think it will. Professors in my university told us that Harry Potter is a good book in terms of language, and that it's very educational and all... I've heard the recommendations to read it in the original many times (I didn't because I've already read it, but maybe one day I will). Harry Potter isn't just a book for children, it's a phenomenon that started a new thing in the fantasy world and in the lives of many people, and I think it won't disappear any time soon.

[Lavinia Rookwood]

I came into the Harry Potter fandom around the time the second book came out. I don't know if I was deliberately avoiding it because it was popular or just hadn't gotten around to reading it. But once I did start reading it, I was completely absorbed into the world. It already helped that I loved (and still do) fantasy in just about every stripe it comes in. And then I snookered my mom into it and then I started looking around online. I'm quite certain without Harry Potter, I wouldn't be invested in fandoms of any form today. Nowadays, HOL is really the only time I delve into Harry Potter, but it's always going to be a part of me. I'm always going to secretly sort people into houses, I'm always going to think that saying I'm a blend of Hermione and Luna is a good explanation for my personality.

The magic might be faint, but it'll always be there. As Dumbledore says, "Hogwarts will always be there, to welcome you home."

[Kirsten Hawthorne]

Well, I began the Harry Potter series at the end of fourth grade. My fourth grade teacher had read the first book to us at the end of the school year and I was really interested. I drew what I imagined certain things to look like, it was my escape.
Around that time is when things took a wrong turn. My parents were declared they were getting a divorce and my mother was heartbroken for years following that. The first few months were the hardest.. for everyone. I was nine turning ten that September, so losing my dad left me broken. I was dad's little girl. Harry Potter helped me escape that reality for awhile as I dove into the world filled with magic and imagined myself as a small student also going through those adventures.
This escalated quickly, but it shows just how important Harry Potter was - and still is - to me.

But, overall, the story is of course an amazing story. The story line is great and when you pick up the book you're absolutely hooked right from the start. You go through this big adventure with Harry that is his life, from when he was a little eleven year old boy disliking his life with the Dursley's to graduating and marrying someone very close to him!
I think everyone who has an interest with reading and stumbles across this book in their own little way will always be hooked to the series.

After all this time, you ask? Always.

[Zai Eln]

Boredom. Boredom got me into the books. I was bored and decided to read the first one. It was so wonderful. What more can I say?

[Shiloh Adlar]

Harry Potter has a special place for me. I wasn't even a year old yet when the first book came out, and although I can't remember any of this, my mother has told me that my brother would sit and read to me. I do remember him doing this with later books as I was older however. It was something we shared together, and so it's a memory I will always have of him. I think what kept me interested in the books was the story and the fantasy and the power of magic. I had something happen to me when I was a lot younger, and one of the things I would pretend during that ordeal, was that I had magical powers and I was like Harry fighting against the forces of the Death Eaters. When everything was okay again, it was something that I continued doing to get me through difficult situations. I could be a witch just like Hermione, and later on, I became Luna, and solve any problem with magic. This world of Harry Potter became such a huge part of my life. When I wasn't dancing, I was a part of the magic world.

I actually put the books away for a while, all of the magic ending after the accident. That is until my dad brought them out again one day and started reading to me like my brother did. There is one quote in particular that still gets me by, and it came from Harry Potter. "You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself plainly when you have need of him." However, I replace the father part with my brother because I feel like I need him by me every day. It wasn't long after that I found HOL, and the books and films found their way quickly back into my life and became one of my obsessions once more.